28

A Rift in Time

“That was quite the creature,” Corvis said. “A quadriform. Certainly one of the most intimidating on this layer.”

“No kidding,” Rian said, winded from using almost the entirety of his stamina for that escape.

He opened his equipment page to look over his items. He was still wearing level 10 gear. Fighting that quadriform thing was probably suicide, but if he really wanted to, all he had to do was lure it close to the nullshard fragment, and he could disengage from the fight if it were going badly. Tempting, though he wondered if the System wouldn’t give him the full reward for cheesing a fight like that.

If he was going to take it on, what he needed to do was increase his armor stat. Even if the creature’s description said that its talons could rend armor, that probably meant its first attack would lower the armor value of whatever it hit. It was the second hit that he had to worry about, and he didn’t want to execute his strategy only to find out that the creature could one-shot him before he could get to safety.

He opened his inventory to see what he had to work with: a bunch of old equipment and a whole six scraps of leather.

[!] Upgrading Equipment

Players can upgrade their items. Equipment can be upgraded by accumulating materials of matching type and infusing the item with them via temporal energy (tesseracts).

To begin, combine a tesseract with the required materials; then quickly apply your hands to the item. You will be able to select the number of materials to apply, determining the upgrade level.

If you lack the correct materials, a tesseract may also be used to convert existing materials into other types.

Dismissing the notification, Rian checked his inventory, and he had exactly two tesseracts with some gold to spare. Just enough, he hoped. But when he looked at what he needed to upgrade his equipment to a decent level, he needed at least three cloth scraps for each. He had enough leather scraps to convert for upgrading two items but not all of them. It was enough to upgrade those items to +3, but according to his System info, he was pretty close to having enough for +4, which provided a far heftier bonus.

He just needed to kill a few more fellings and loot them of materials. He hadn’t stopped to pick up the scraps they dropped earlier, as he’d been entirely focused on leveling and hadn’t thought he’d need leather scraps for anything on a cloth-armor class.

Figures, he thought. Rule number one of MMOs. Loot goddamn everything.

He got up and headed in another direction, away from where he’d run into the murderous owl. In a matter of seconds he found more fellings, and each of them succumbed to his fists and kicks. Another level came with ease, bringing him to 17. After pumping his DEX stat some more, he stopped to pick up any leather scraps they dropped and, when he’d retrieved enough, started to head back in the direction he’d come.

Admittedly, it was pretty difficult to find his way through the forest without a map, especially at night.

“I hope you know your way around here, buddy,” Rian said. “I haven’t got the slightest clue which direction Elmguard’s in, by the time we’re done here.”

“I find it quite astounding that you off-worlders can’t even sense magnetic fields,” Corvis said, floating alongside. “Sometimes I really wonder how your species manages to survive in your home world.”

“I don’t think Earth is as harrowing of a place as you think it is, Corv.” Rian thought he saw something up ahead: not a creature, but a structure. A broken, metallic wall.

I don’t think this is the right way, but… He stopped, peered at the shine beyond the trees. What the hell is that?

When they stepped beyond the tree line, the remains of a wall lay before them.

Beyond it, an entire city sprawled to the horizon. Walls of bronze with etched markings glinted silver against the moonlight. Rubble lay upon streets choked with ash. The remains of observatory towers and glass statues in ruins. Convoluted instruments of metal, pointed at the sky. Upon almost every surface were etchings that resembled the markings of circuit boards, winding rivers of silicon and copper.

“Well,” Corvis said. “This certainly takes me back.”

Rian swallowed. He was already having flashbacks to the Runeknight encounter—the sense of being somewhere that he shouldn’t. When he stopped to listen, nothing was moving. The silence was whole, almost oppressive. He kept waiting for some kind of monstrosity to appear within the city, boss music and all.

Nothing happened. Trying to stay calm, he noted to himself that Corvis was still here, which meant he hadn’t walked into a special instance. They were still on the Overworld. And if some kind of over-leveled monster was going to spring on him, it didn’t seem likely that Corvis was going to stick around to end up as a potential casualty, however strong he actually was.

In front of the street leading in was an altar. A bronze platform, rising out of the ground.

Slowly, Rian approached, sensing the vast silence beyond it.

You have discovered a new area!

You have gained experience! (+36)

THE RUINS OF GORGHEIT

The city was magnificent, even from where Rian was standing. At first he’d thought he’d stumbled upon Elmguard again, and his stomach had dropped at the sense of it all being wrong, as if Elmguard was abandoned, desolate, and everything had fallen apart while he’d been gone—as if some tremendously evil force had appeared and slaughtered everyone in the town while he was out in the forests. But when he stopped to gaze over the layout of the ruins, it clearly wasn’t Elmguard.

He took about three steps into the ruins before deciding he’d rather not, just yet. When he retreated to the altar, inspecting it this time, a notification appeared which highlighted not only the altar but suffused the entire city in a momentary sweep of light.

[!] Temporal Rift Areas

Throughout Miracia, you may encounter the ruins of previous civilizations. These locations act as dungeon instances. To begin a session, a colored tesseract of matching alignment to the surrounding area is needed. A Temporal Rift may also be seeded, changing certain aspects of the dungeon by offering additional items.

There is no level requirement for entry, but beware: the nature of time may change as one progresses, and enemies will likewise become stronger the further one travels into the rift.

“As much as I’d advise against going into one of these alone,” Corvis said, “you don’t have the necessary item to enter it in the first place.”

To his relief, Rian asked, “That’s what the altar’s for, right?” It was nice to dismiss the anxious thought of Corvis ritualistically sacrificing him atop the altar, tearing out his heart and all. Rian wouldn’t put it past him. Not yet, at least.

“A colored tesseract is needed to activate the rift,” Corvis said. “All you have are colorless.”

“And how do I make a colored one?”

“If you recall, 100 gold gathered in one location will become a colorless tesseract, and ten of those will become a colored tesseract. So you’re quite a ways off.”

Well, that was a bummer. The entry fee was pretty sizable for his level, and attempting to solo a dungeon like this would probably get him killed right away. When he asked Corvis, he confirmed it: despite the Temporal Rift being an instanced dungeon, dying in one wouldn’t protect him from a “true” death like it did in PVP. There was no instantiation of the player involved.

It was basically off-limits for now, but he supposed he could talk to Kat about it tomorrow.

Er, today, he corrected himself. He checked the time on his HUD: it was a little past 4:00 am.

“So I’m guessing I shouldn’t go exploring in the ruins right now, either,” he said. “For loot and stuff. Pretty dangerous?”

“You’re free to explore, but Gorgheit has been thoroughly ransacked for quite some time now,” Corvis said. “The ruins themselves are dangerous—for the frailty of the remaining structures. Not for the presence of creatures, who tend to avoid this place.”

“Well, that’s cool.” Rian sat down, stretching his arms and legs to see if he could feel anything. “But I think I’m done for now.”

“You’re taking another break?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. If I can manage to kill a quadri…formes?” he said, trying to remember the name. “If I can kill one of those things before sunrise, I’ll be happy. But I probably shouldn’t be leveling too much. If I go too fast, Kat might find it suspicious that I jumped like ten levels since I last saw her. And someone in the guild’s eventually gonna notice I’m pulling all-nighters.”

He opened his inventory. Now was a good time to try upgrading his armor, he figured. He remembered how the shopkeeper NPC in Thile Harbor had done it, using a tesseract, but he wondered if it was as straightforward as he thought.

Retrieving the materials, he held the stack of leather scraps in one hand and a tesseract in the other. Okay, so how do I—

He blinked, then just brought his hands together. As if any sense of solidity in the items had vanished, they combined in a flash of light. It was almost frightening—what was in Rian’s hands was no longer an item but more like a corridor opening upon the space in front of him. He could see into it, somehow feel and understand it: a churning matrix of probability and potentials alternating through one another without becoming anything at all, like states of matter in an endless cycle of transformation.

The thought came to him as if that was all he’d needed to think.

Cloth…?

The weird vortex of light in his hands went dark, and in its place was a stack of cloth scraps resting in his palms. As if it had always been that way.

That was…a bit dramatic.

He looked around to see if Corvis was watching, to perhaps reassure himself that what had happened was normal and that he hadn’t accidentally opened a tear in the space-time continuum.

Corvis was busy, going diligently about in the forest nearby and gathering sticks. He already had armfuls of them.

Taking a deep breath, Rian retrieved the other tesseract from his inventory.

He smashed his hands together. The otherworldly vortex appeared in his palms again, and he pressed one hand to his palm—the cotton hand-wrap item—and felt a strange energy resonating through it.

A window appeared in front of him, showing him a meter and the required materials for each level of upgrade. When he focused on the meter, changing its position to “+4”, he had just enough materials to satisfy the requirement and leave some leftover to upgrade his other items. A loading circle filled to completion and snapped closed. His hand wrap began to glow, faintly illuminating his surroundings, but nothing happened yet.

His hands were still glowing with kaleidoscopic energy. He set his palms onto his uniform and pants and repeated the process for each of them.

Achievement unlocked: “The Art of Refinement” (Upgraded an item)

Your “Trainee’s Cotton Hand-Wrap” has upgraded to +4.

Your “Trainee’s Karate Uniform” has upgraded to +4.

Your “Trainee’s Cotton Pants” have upgraded to +4.

+2 Weapon ATK (4→6)

+2 STR (20→22)

+2 DEX (19→21)

Your Max HP has increased! (557→ 567)

Your stamina has increased! (209→231)

+4 Armor (2→6)

All at once, it was the strangest feeling: as if his clothes had suddenly become anew like they’d been run through the dryer and had teleported themselves back onto his body. Warmth radiated from the cloth to his skin. When his hands finally stopped glowing, the materials he’d used were gone.

He checked out his equipment.

Trainee’s Cotton Hand-Wrap +4 (Level 10)

Grade: C (Uncommon)

STR +3

Weapon ATK +6

Trainee’s Karate Uniform +4 (Level 10)

Grade: C (Uncommon)

DEX +2

Armor +3

Trainee’s Cotton Pants +4 (Level 10)

Grade: C (Uncommon)

DEX +2

Armor +3

Ah, the sweet feeling of numbers steadily rising.

He closed the pages as Corvis returned, carrying a bundle of firewood.