— Aster —

Now I could go on and on about how I dominated the test and didn’t even break a sweat, but that would be a lie. I could tell you in detail about each room to my surprise was a small cat statue that would pounce at me. It was incredibly fast and would strike at me as it quickly passed me. It bled me for a while until I was able to catch the cat during one of its strikes with my knife. Finishing the second room, I made it to the third room bloody and cut up only to see….you know what I’ll tell you about this part.

I made my way to the third room. It was an enormous round room with a two-story step pyramid with a cat statue on top in the center of the pyramid. The tower was dark but thanks to Cats Eye I had near-perfect night vision. Thanks to this it did not take me long to see a problem. Circling the tower were ten large tiger statues prowling. Time was working against me. I had wasted half my time on the first two rooms. I needed to be quick but if I rushed things would not work out. I took my time to observe until something new happened. A light appeared, similar to when I was avoiding the cameras. ‘Sight Lines’. After the first incident, I dubbed these crystalline light sightlines. After all these missions all my movements no longer made a sound. I bet it would be almost unnatural to others. Quietly I made my way up the tower narrowly avoiding the tiger’s vision. I had run into another issue climbing the tower sightlines would blink out randomly and appear again at random intervals. This would cause many near misses until I reached the top. Tired and exhausted from the climb I grabbed the statue setting off a loud alarm. All the tiger's gazes locked onto me.

I ran down the pyramid heading toward the door as fast as possible. The tigers took chase quickly catching up. Yeah, I can’t outrun a tiger, good to know. I needed to be faster. I believe I can go faster. I needed to believe it with all my soul. Right as they were about to catch me about halfway down, I yelled with all my heart believing in myself “MOVE FASTER!”

I felt a small drain of my energy, but I began to pick up speed faster than my panic-stricken legs had ever run. I didn’t think I just ran. I just barely made it out the door into the second room before slamming the door, a loud thud sound from one of the tigers on the other side as I collapsed to the floor.

How’d I done that? I sat there thinking about how I moved that fast. Must have used my Words. I waited for my heart to stop beating out of my chest before entering back into the testing room with the three men. Once I entered I heard the final ‘Complete.’ Run through my head.

“That was great!” one of the men said, “Very Entertaining.” Said the other. Then the one who greeted me earlier came over “Congratulations! Please give us a few minutes to discuss. Please wait outside.”

I was too exhausted to ask any questions being led outside. I slowly began to concentrate on healing some of my wounds, since there were a lot of them. Slowly, but surely the burning itching pain of healing began. I had learned this trick early in my career knowing I would need to be able to fix myself up as soon as possible. I was thrilled when first aid appeared on my screen it seemed to become even easier after that. Still hurt like hell every time I needed to use it, but I was able to somehow put the pain to the back of my mind and concentrate on healing. The scratches began to fade to nothingness as I was in the guild I healed much quicker than normal aiding my skill. I felt even more drained from the energy and concentration it took to heal all those little wounds. Not long after I finished the door opened.

“Sorry, it took so long. Please come in.” Waving me into the room. “First to let you know what you did wrong. Room one is perfect. In room two you let it see you instead of you taking it out before it could see you. Room three you forgot to check for traps on the target, remember just because you’ve gotten past security doesn’t mean you’re done with security.”

Quick and succinct, but I still needed to ask. “So did I pass?”

“Of course! You are now officially ranked one, in fact, the only reason you aren’t going directly to two is due to the amount of time remaining. Thirty seconds cutting it close. Although we were impressed that you did this at level three.” At this, I dropped my head. Of course, I was excited about passing but I didn’t like to think that my level was holding me back. The man saw this “Don’t feel bad in fact as soon as your level has increased to level five you will automatically be upped to rank two.”

This lifted my spirits. “Really?”

“Yup we use a special stamp that once you reach level five it will change on its own. We rarely use it.”

I smiled and I was excited. I knew it would normally take a full six months to reach rank two from rank one, but I made it in half the time. Now I just needed to raise my level. I was even more determined than before, I got my book stamped and happily left the room to show Delilah. In all the time we spent in the guild I felt we had become friends.

When I reached Delilah’s desk she looked towards me and my tattered clothes “Sooo… How’d it go?”

I handed the book to her. Smiling “Congrats now you just need to get your level up. And I believe you owe me dinner.”

I had forgotten about the dinner but went with it. “True! Come by my room after you get off and we’ll go.”

Delilah smiled “Ok”

I left for my room to straighten up before moving the eggs around. After some time I heard a knock. “Come In.”

“You better bring me some…place… good” her words fell as she looked around my room. There were hundreds upon hundreds of finished mission eggs.

I looked around wondering what she was gapping at. I only saw my egg so I asked “Ready?”

Delilah was dazed “Are all these your mission eggs?”

“Yeah, it’s a lot right?” I looked around proudly

Delilah seemed to be confused “Why haven’t you cracked them?”

Now I was confused “What do you mean?”

Delilah just stared dumbfounded towards me till something dawned on her. “No one told you?”

“Told me what?” No one here tells me anything anyway.

“I now understand why you never leveled much.”

“What?!?” How could she suddenly know why I haven’t leveled? “HOW?!?”

Sighing deeply “You have to open the eggs to get the experience and rewards, IE Break them open.”

“But they’re as hard as rocks.”

“Only during the mission. Once it has been completed they’re as fragile as any normal egg.”

“What?” I was dumbfounded by this revelation.

“The one who opens the egg gets both the experience and the reward. Decay man, it gathers all the energy you built up to when you’re on a mission.”

“Reward I thought they were holding onto that till I finished my six months?”

“What did you think we were going to do? Take it all? Instead of going out, open all your eggs.”

I still wasn’t fully convinced. I went to pick up an egg and experimentally cracked it. I found it was as easy to crack as a hen’s egg. Once cracked I felt a warm energy flow through me. The shell fell to dust and five coppers fell out. I looked on in disbelief at Delilah “So all I had to do was open them to get experience?” How could I never have known this?

“Yup!” She was now laughing at me.

I began to grab the hundreds of eggs I had accumulated from my walls. Throwing them on the bed haphazardly creates a large multi-colored pile of eggs. Once the pile had begun to barely fit in the bed I began to crack them. Every time I cracked one a few coppers would fall out. It seemed for each rank zero egg five to ten copper would fall and for every rank, one would drop around twenty to thirty copper. Normally this would not be much of an income but with the number of eggs, it was slowly turning into a mountain of coins. Opening my tenth egg something different fell out, a smooth round red stone. Holding it up to Delilah I asked. “What’s this?”

Delilah looked at the stone “A small heal stone.” Seeing the blank look on my face she continued “You place it near a wound and it will quickly heal until the energy is gone. Kind of like a portable crystal. Very handy, but one-time use. They shatter after use.”

It looked like a normal red stone except I think I could see a pulse of energy inside it. Looking back at Delilah “So I get to experience, money, and sometimes other rewards?” now slightly annoyed “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Delilah sighed “There is a lot we don’t tell you. But didn’t you ever look at the second page of the egg? No, I guess you haven’t otherwise you would have known this.”

“SECOND PAGE!?!” picking up one of the eggs I hadn’t cracked yet and looked over its screen. I didn’t see anything except one thing at the bottom right of the screen, something that made me feel even dumber than I already felt. On the bottom of the screen said:

Page 1 of 2 ->

I hid my face behind my hands taking one of them and touched the screen and slid it to the left. Of course the second page slid on the screen.

Mission Rank:1 Type:Ghost Delivery

Name: Deliver a Package

Rewards: two Copper Coins

Bonus:

Add Dramatic Flare – Magic Healing StoneComplete

Express Delivery Complete in 1 hour – 10 coppersComplete

To Claim:

Once mission has completed crack egg for experience and rewards.

Staring at the screen I finally understood. Not only do the screens tell you how to get the experience, they tell you the pay of the mission. That explains why so many were left untouched. No one wanted cheap jobs. Noticing the bottom part I decided to ask before making a dumb mistake….again. “The claim…Is it all crack for rewards?”

Delilah sighed again, she seemed to be doing that a lot tonight. “For experience always. But some of the rewards require you to go somewhere and show proof. That is usually only when the reward might be something other than an item.”

“What do you mean?”

“The eggs are essentially capsules, so they can store large objects as well as weapons, armor, large piles of money, almost anything. Anything up to around the size of a medium bed.”

“What do you mean by other items?”

“Sometimes there are things, like a car, house, writ of nobility, offer of marriage and other things as rewards. Sometimes intangible things. These require a meeting with the person who made the request.”

It began to dawn on me as I stared down at the eggs “Do I need to read them all?”

“Don’t worry until rank four everything is just crack the egg, part of the system.”

Sighing “Does it matter how I crack them?”

“No, as long as you break them they are yours.”

Smiling, I jumped doing a belly flop onto the large pile of eggs. “That’s one way to speed this up,” Delilah said while smiling. I rolled off the eggs watching them fall away to dust with money slowly appearing.

Then I began to visibly glow “HOOOOTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I felt as though my body was on fire for only a second before the fire began to die down. The absorption of the experience had always felt like a warm embrace. But apparently, I had done too many at once. Delilah even seemed surprised when I began to glow. I think the scream may have startled her. I recovered myself continuing to crack the eggs two by two then three by three until after an hour of cracking I finally seemed to finish. My room that was once covered in colorful eggs became a drab normal room covered in a still disappearing pile of eggs. I kind of miss the color, now it's a little depressing.

Sarcastically Delilah asked, “Is that all?”

“Nope!” I pulled out a large pile of eggs from under my bed. Delilah was dumbfounded.

“How many missions did you do?”

“All the rank zero and Rank one for a couple months.” My bed began to look like a small dragon's nest with all the random objects strewn about the pile of coins.

“There has to be at least fifteen-thousand copper” Delilah commented.

This was not really the type of income one could normally achieve before Rank two let alone rank zero. Not to mention the insane amount of experience I must have gained who knows what level I am.

When I finished breaking all the eggs, I was sweating and panting. I was hot and tired from opening all those eggs. I think even the room warmed up. It would have been a lot easier but the warm embrace of every egg magnified itself as I continued to open the eggs.

Looking over my pile of loot on my bed I began to separate everything into piles. There were three piles one of the healing stones, one a pile of energy stones, and one a pile of miscellaneous items I would need to check out later. “Done!”

“Ready then?”

Oh, we're still doing the date! “Oh Yeah!” Linking arms Delilah and I left the room.

It wasn’t long before I realized we weren’t heading out but, on a path, I had made many times before just to be disappointed. The crystal room where I repeated the motions I had tried every day for the past three months. Delilah stopped at the entrance pushing me through.

“Good Luck.” She turned and left.

Seeing the crystal, I began to get excited. Placing my hand on the crystal, nothing happened and my heart began to drop, but then the red glow I had been waiting for the past few months finally came. Immediately I felt the floating sensation then the voice from nowhere came.