71 Four Months Later

Book 2: THE BROKEN

Galahad didn't even realize it, but the time of winter soon faded away as the warm spring air started invading Diagon. In all that time, Galahad had put himself on a regular schedule of working in Regin's workshop and dungeon diving on the days he wasn't.

While dungeon diving alone, He was able to consistently grow his level an impossibly fast rate and by himself at that. He managed this without needing to deal with a life threatening situation in those months. No pretending to sacrifice himself just to get a big pile of orbs, no death defying stunts, or even having to lie to government officials. His time during winter slowed down to a nice and easy routine.

All he documented in his journal was the level ups and stat improvements, in addition to places he fancied eating at. It was before he even knew it, winter was over and the goal of reaching level thirty had approached too.

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[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 28

[ 2455/2800 XP ]

Battle Class: Spartan

1245/1245 HP

Title: Lone Survivor (1/2)

Attack: 56

Defense: 34

Agility: 48

Fury and Fyre: 4:01

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"ACHOO!" Galahad sneezed himself awake as his allergies were always terrible this time of year. A house at the outskirts of Diagon was not exactly the prime place to avoid pollen.

'Damn it, the black orb couldn't just rid of my allergies while it was so busy enhancing my body.' Galahad grumpily thought as he got out of bed. He used to sleep in and nap most days before the incident; but after steadily leveling up, Galahad's drowsiness was fading to only needing an average of six hours of sleep.

'I wonder if my body will lose the desire to sleep all together?' He occasionally asked himself when waking up before the sunrise once again.

He looked around the room and noticed the only window was cracked a bit and the forest full of pollen was blowing it inside. He got out of bed and shut the window the best he could, it always seemed to leak out a bit air since it was his own version of a repair.

The original window was broken by some hooligans that used to come by and vandalize the old places before he moved in. Half the stuff in the house was practically rebuilt or bought from a second hand store to replace what was damaged.

He made a few additions as well, such as the mirror by the closet door, where he would occasionally check himself out in the privacy of his room. There he could all the changes done by black orb.

The development of a human body would grow to maturity and stop at about the age of eighteen. Galahad had turned twenty during the time of winter, but it seemed he couldn't stop growing now. He first started picking up on these changes back Teramore, but now anyone who knew him would from home would recognize he experienced a drastic change in his physique.

Galahad grew a little over an inch taller and more broader than he thought was physically possible for his scrawny shoulders. His body was also slowly swelling with a toned surface of skin and more firm muscles expanding with each time he leveled up.

'I hope that when I reach the higher levels I won't grow to the size of a giant. That would make a family reunion very odd.' He thought as he stopped poking at the first appearance of his abs pushing out along his abdomen.

Galahad eventually made his way down the stairs and into his living room. The kitchen had the same iron oven and stone counters from when he first moved in, but Galahad replaced the broken table set and put new kitchen utensils together since most of it was missing from the time of people that vandalized and stole.

After checking the newly restocked pantry three times in hope to discover something that interested his stomach, he gave up and moved to the refrigerator.

The refrigerator was certainly an unusual device Galahad bought from the second hand store, he hadn't heard of them until Terra mentioned that she herself had one. They were practically cabinet pantries, but the walls were double layered and vacuum sealed between with air magic and a low tier mana crystal was running a freezing spell at a low power input to keep everything inside chilled.

When Galahad first saw it, he couldn't believe someone had managed to create such a unique little household appliance. It made buying meat and perishables a bit easier, getting larger portions and chilling them meant less trips to stores and markets. The less time he spent outside of the dungeon, the better.

Galahad thought the simplicity yet high valued abilities of the fridge was very clever, but the moment he mentioned the designs of it to Regin, the dwarf got more pissed off than usual. The dwarf went off on a tangent where he kept blaming the Karmic Crafting Company for stealing the designs from only gods know where, declaring at the end of his rant that he'd never buy such products and Galahad should do the same.

He had no idea why his boss had such a hatred towards one of the largest corporations to have ever existed in Endora, but Galahad never mentioned or brought up the topic since then. He only hoped his boss would never come over to see the Karmic Crafting Company's light system or one of their heating/cooling units fitted against his house. Galahad had prepared his living situation to something even nicer than how he used to live, finding that Diagon's living style was much more extravagant compared to his original expectations.

In the end of his search for food, Galahad had grabbed some milk and a few pink fruits from the fridge, making his way to the living room. He had another hour before needing to leave for work, so he decided to sit down and finish up the last book he bought from the pile sitting in his living room.

Terra had recommended over a dozen different places to eat, shop, or visit across Diagon; but the one Galahad frequented the most was one particular bookshop out of the many within the market district; Diagon's Leatherbound Dynasty. The place had so many books they collected and resold to the point of becoming nearly the size of a library.

The building was a red-brick covered store that rose over three-stories tall, the inside filled with aisles of books and the strong smell of aged paper settled against binding glue. Galahad found the store had almost any common topic he could find, and each visit would result in a lot of new ideas sprawling through his mind about what he should look for.

Galahad checked their resources the first time he visited and once again found no information on black orbs or Spartan class. The closest thing he found was a skill an attack could perform involving balls of dark magic.

Galahad could only assume that a Spartan was some kind of Unique class or abnormality for an adventurer. He wasn't concerned as how to categorize his class, but more about what he could with the powers it gave him.

Soon after getting a few pages through a bestiary on phantom-like demons and similar monster types, Galahad put the book down and eventually started on the half hour long walk to Regin's workshop.

He turned off the light crystals in his house and made his way past the remains of the ghost town that surrounded his own home.

*****

Galahad made his way through the market district, watching a few salesmen setting up shop with assorted products on display. He only gave the items for purchase along the street a quick glance, being more concerned about arriving to his job on time made window shopping a low priority. Galahad made his way to the now familiar sight of the old and yellow aged building and straight down to the basement.

"You're late today." Regin shouted from across the workshop floor. Galahad had no idea how his very short boss could see him enter the room, but he ignored his own surprise and countered the statement nonetheless. He was always ready with a quip and remark, getting to know the dwarf better had slowly gathered ammo in his pool.

"It's hardly considered late when I'm in the building on time, but your giant door takes a full five minutes to open." He shouted out to the source of the disembodied voice that echoed about the room.

"never blame a tool on the creator, blame it on the user." Echoed the voice loudly back at him.

"That doesn't make sense. Its the creator's design that's faulty." He said, starting to pit a little bit of thought in the argument.

'Actually, how would someone define the blame of faulty tools when the use of it is either unknown or not fully explained? If the maker used the faulty tool, then who truly was at fault here?' Galahad was willing to go into a full discussion about such things, but then Regin ended the topic as quickly as it came.

"Shut ya trap and get back to the list I gave ya."

"Aye Aye Captain." Galahad ended the dispute with some old fashion sarcasm.

The dynamic of boss and employee was always a blurry thing for Galahad. The only job he ever had before coming to Diagon was working in either his mother's shop or his father's forge. It would have been unusual if they had no retorting of words and only worked as professional collegues. Or as Regin liked to put it; master and simple-minded laborer.

It seemed for Regin that his idea was equally blurred. He always worked on his own and after creating too making experiments and projects for one person to handle; he began yelling at whoever was closest to start cleaning up his aftermath. It seemed he and Galahad got along swimmingly after a few rough days of starting out.

Galahad began running over the list he was verbally given a few days ago. Every other week, Regin would always yell new things at him to start doing or to stop doing. Galahad couldn't figure out what half the experiments would accomplish, and sometimes he couldn't even tell what he was looking for when told to watch an experiment run.

Regardless, he made every new addition on his system's task board; Galahad never struggled with the list and after a few weeks of interchanging chores, he hardly had to think about what he was doing.

Eventually noon had past and Regin stopped Galahad from starting any new tasks. Instead, they walked over to a stool against the wall and not out the giant metal door for break. He sat down to wait for the dwarf to find a familiar object leaning against the wall somewhere behind a bunch of supplies. Galahad sighed as the dwarf began moving boxes to once again to find the object he kept moving around every other day.

"I don't see why we do these abnormality checks when I haven't been in the dungeon since the last time we've done this." Galahad complained from his seated position.

"Quit ya blabbering, you always need to document and mark any changes seen when measuring out data. Even if you did nothing since the last time, ya could've changed without us knowing. Or are ya suddenly an expert on the thing churning through those guts of yours?" Regin retorted as he finally found what he had been looking for.

Regin pulled out the purple lense Galahad had now become well aquainted with. It was a refined mana crystal powder infused to a piece of glass that could detect and show the type of energies flowing through a living thing. Meaning it could detect the energies running through any adventurer's body; including all forms of mana, chi, and faint hints of realm energy.

Galahad had no idea such a tool was capable of existing without any runes or arrays, it's designless features made its abilities completely hidden and that was extraordinary in his eyes. Then Regin explained it was not just mana crystal powder, but also a combination of various ingredients with a lot of extract from monster eyes, Galahad lost a bit of his excitement about the tool after hearing that last part and just called it Regin's gross appraisal tool.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I just have to deal with your oh so massive intellect and sharp sense of researching until we figure out what exactly is in my body. You say we've come a long way, but all we know is I have a karmic plate in my brain, and I can exponentially grow after pulling in monster orbs, but we don't know how this is possible"

"Quit being so impatient." Regin barked, "I got at least a dozen theories, but the more and more odd stories I keep hearin' are not helping me narrow down an answer."

Galahad shook his head at the dwarf now staring at him with the lense warping the shape of his bearded face and insane eyes in an odd way.

"Hard to imagine just a few months ago I was going to hide this from you and try to sneak into the dungeons until I was powerful enough to get the orbs for your Dungeon lock. Maybe it was a good thing Solteer snitched." Galahad honestly admitted.

It was as Galahad said, he had shared everything that happened with Solteer who in turn shared it with Count Swittar, Regin's old aquaintance. He had no choice in denying the events in hope of receiving Regin's help.

As it turned out, the situation worked out for the best as Regin had a tiny bit of curiousity for the unknown hidden beneath his angry exterior. He was willing to help Galahad as the incident surrounding the black orb in hopes of learning something nobody else knew about the dungeons of Endora. It also helped that Count Swittar was calling in a big favor for Regin to keep Galahad out of Teramore and no longer making him Teramore's problem.

'At least that's taught me a valuable lesson about sharing with strangers you might not think are in your social circle.' Galahad thought as he decided he would keep his lips sealed about what happened. He planned on figuring everything else out with only Regin or by himself.

The only thing Galahad had successfully kept to himself was his murder spree against the bandit camp and raiding all their gear. He never said a word about it to anyone else. Even if he didn't get locked up or dissected by the kingdom's research teams, he'd certainly get in a lot of trouble for what he did while under the influence of an aggressive foreign substance.

Fortunately the news about happened was not made public, otherwise the whole town would have talked about it while Regin would certainly piece two and two together about Galahad's letter and his coincidental arrival into Diagon.

The process went on for another five minutes of getting stared at, until Regin started commanding Galahad to use some of his skills.

The only options Galahad had was Fury and Fyre, then making his armor appear and disappear. The rest of his abilities were only passive abilities he picked up from drinking elixirs and potions.

In total, Galahad gained five skills from the enhancers he consumed over the time spent in Diagon.

~[ Passive Skills ]~

[ Venom Breaker ] alleviates small doses of poison in bloodstream.

[ Grounded Skin ] lightning attacks are somewhat nullified across skin.

[ Cold-blooded ] high temperatures accelerate metabolism and prevent overheating.

[ Warm-blooded ] blood thickens to retain body heat in cold atmosphere.

[ Iron Bones ] Density and durability of skeleton doubled.

They may not have been skills Galahad could use directly against an enemy, but passive skills were hard to develop for any regular class wielder and their standby skills meant a lot in the background of a fight.

Having immunities or resistance skills could make an elemental attack useless against an adventurer. Running the dungeons by himself meant Galahad needed as many resistances as he could find.

Galahad had also been looking for ways to stack up in these abilities but repeatedly drinking the same potions or elixirs didn't improve them. He could only hope that finding higher quality items would improve his passive skills, but it wasn't in his budget to start such projects now.

"Alright now do me a favor, try this instead." Regin interrupted Galahad's wandering thoughts with a different approach.

"Activate that ridiculous red fire and swap your armor in and out. I wanna see if they react differently."

Galahad did as he said and after he kept flipping the mental switch for armor, a nauseating feeling took over and he had to stop everything before a bucket was inevitably needed.

"Ha! I figured that'd happen." The dwarf exclaimed triumphantly to Galahad, who was now coddling his stomach on the floor with a pale and sweaty complexion.

"What the hell did you do?" Galahad practically vomited the words with an irritated tone behind them.

"Well I cant say for sure what ya did to yourself, but figured out what exactly that weird bit of red fire is." Regin's tone clearly told Galahad the dwarf wasn't feeling any guilt for the pain he caused, but only pleased he figured something out.

"From what I've seen, your body is producing the right ratio of Chi with trace amounts of mana. But they are the right outputs for a battle class, not magician. That red fire that doesn't actually burn things isn't fire mana, you're actually overloading the Chi produced in your body."

"Okay, well I could have guessed that." Galahad was hoping for more news about what the black substance was and where the armor was coming and going. "Did you are least figure out what the black substance was?"

"Oh I have no idea, it doesn't show up as Mana, Chi, realm energy, or anything for that matter. Whatever it is, it's a part of you and nothing else."

Galahad rolled his eyes and sprawled out on the floor, clearly annoyed about the lack of breakthroughs. The time was passing by and he had no idea what had happened to him the night of the black orb. Each second that passed was more time for the Spriggan to create a new orb and consume all his friends.

"Why don't you tell me something I don't know?" He asked before proceeding to vomit across the stone floor.