23 New Opportunity
After saying a quick goodnight to his parents, Galahad walked up the stairs and laid face down on his bed before they could interrogate him about why he left. They stepped into his room to find him pretending to have passed out.
It seemed they would have to wait till the morning for answers. Sora ran a quick check to see if the bandages on his arm were clean before shutting off the light crystal and closing the door.
Once the coast was clear, Galahad sat up to his desk and hoisted the puncture bag onto the partially cleared surface. While holding the bag down with his bad shoulder, he managed to pry the arrow out with his good hand.
He tapped on the light crystal hanging above the desk to activate it back on and properly examine the arrow.
The arrow was made entirely out of a light grey metal he had never seen before. His brother and father would probably know more about the crafting process, design, and material, but the craftsmanship of the arrow alone was simply eye catching to even an amateur like himself.
The head of the arrow had a flat diamond shape with little natural vine-like styling carved in it, the pattern spiralled all the way down to the metal feathers. It was definitely an elven arrow, a rare sight in the city of Teramore.
He set the arrow aside and opening his bag all the way. The first thing he pulled out was all the medical gear and the holster of potion vials that were stowed away for emergencies.
Surprisingly, only two vials were cracked out the empty twelve and they only leaked the residue of the cheaper stamina potions. Galahad's little leather holster had done its job well.
In the bottom was a pile of small items, sitting on top was the right arm bracer meant to hold his Karmic Plate below his wrist. However the metal plating and leather grips were torn apart by the huge hole piercing out of the sides.
'It seems you were the one who stop the arrow, heh, well it's not like I need any armor anytime soon.' He commented to himself.
Galahad dumped the rest of the miscellaneous items onto the desk not really thinking there was anything important left. It made a racket as it cluttered along the surface.
Something dense bounced and landed on the floor, Galahad went to reach for it, but stopped when he actually saw the object.
'What is that thing? Did someone put this in my bag?'
He had never seen such an odd colored crystal plate before. He slowly touched the crystal before picking it up. The crystal was colder than ice and shine like a smoothly cut piece of obsidian.
'Is this Black Ice Stone? I'll have ask Dad later.'
He tried to put down the crystal gingerly, but it stuck to his fingers the moment he touched it, and started growing colder and colder.
"Oh no, oh no no no no no, ooh ow ow, shit that burns." Galahad raised his voice as the crystal emitted a cold that burned fingers attached to it.
He grabbed a dirty shirt off his bed with his bandaged hand and tried prying the crystal off. It didn't budge for even a moment, and the temperature kept growing colder.
A scream was building up inside Galahad's throat but suddenly he couldn't let it out any noise now. It felt like the potion stem was shoved down his throat again. His vision was getting blurry and he collapsed on his hands and knees fighting to keep conscious.
He tried fighting the pain for as long as he could, but knew that his willpower lost when everything went black and the sensation of weightlessness overtook him. The deafening silence overtook his five senses, he was fine with it because that meant he could no longer feel the cold pain spreading along his good arm.
'I guess the only thing I can worry about now is if my hands are gonna survive by the end of the month. I mean come on, can I get just a little bit of a break from all this nonsense?' He thought with much irritation.
Galahad didn't get a chance to relax in the void of limbo for long though, the shift from pain to weightlessness was slow, then he was suddenly rubber banded back into a standing position.
When he felt his feet on the floor, Galahad grabbed the bed from nearly fell over when lost his balance. He looked around and saw the sun rising through his window. He somehow slept till the morning sun rose.
"Is it too much to ask for a normal sleep schedule?" He asked himself. The last few weeks had given only a few moments to sleep normally and not experience strange dreams at an irregular schedule.
Galahad looked down at his hands and noticed nothing wrong with his right arm, the black crystal was gone and nowhere on the floor. His left arm was still bandaged and was now very itchy.
"Guess I better clean it again" He said unhappily. 'I am tired of dealing with this already, and it hasn't even been that long.'
He began unravelling the whole bandage and planned to replace it with the ones he kept in his medical kit. He looked across the desk and noticed his bag wasn't there anymore, Galahad looked around the room for it, the bag was not in the room.
The only thing on the desk now was the fist-sized drawstring pouch, it was the one filled with dozens of lvl. 1 and 2 goblin orbs. Galahad picked it up and opened the pouch, the little blue orbs clacked together as he jostled the pouch.
Frederick had return the little pouch to his bag when the standby medical team was taking Galahad to the critical ward in the medical center.
'I must have spilled this out when I flipped the bag, but who took the rest of my stuff?'
As he was setting the pouch down, a little bell noise went off in his head. Galahad's vision went fuzzy for a moment, white smudges were entering the center of his vision. He tried adjusting his eyes by blinking and focusing on them. When his eyes cleared, he saw the words etched into his vision:
[ Do you wish to devour the mana orbs? ] [ Yes ] [ No ]
Galahad blinked a few times to make sure he wasn't officially losing his mind. Sure enough, the text was still in front of his eyes. Even when he turned his head, the text stayed in a fixed position across his view.
[ Do you wish to devour the mana orbs? ] [ Yes ] [ No ]
Galahad had never been more confused in his life; not even when his parents explained to him why his pet Diredinger had to go to a nice farm in the north region of Etherite when he was ten.
"Uhh… what is going on?"
The text flashed to the color red and then back to white again, signifying he did not answer with a viable option.
"Hehehehehe," Galahad found this hysterical for some reason. He felt he must have finally cracked from all the trauma.
"It's official," He giggled. "I have just lost my mind. hehe Maybe I've been going crazy since this whole shit show started, and I am hiding all my own crap from myself, and when I am not losing it, hahaha I can see my words from nightmares in my face."
"hehe. Oh, maybe that elf wasn't even real. hehe, I made Brett burn down his lantern last night for no reason. HAHAHA!" He grabbed his stomach while trying not to start wheezing.
He could not stop laughing at his own insanity, "This is fantastic, why yes little floating words in the air, I would love to devour the incredibly toxic mana orbs sitting in front of me. Haha." He said in a very mocking tone.
The 'Yes' in the text flashed green and a long list popped up in front of him.
[ Please select mana orbs for consumption ]
[ Goblin lvl. 1 ] [ 25 XP ]
[ Goblin lvl. 2 ] [ Locked ]
[ Goblin lvl. 2 ] [ Locked ]
[ Goblin lvl. 1 ] [ 25 XP ]
[ Goblin lvl. 2 ] [ Locked ]
[ Goblin lvl. 1 ] [ 25 XP ]
….
The list went on for another forty-three slots that varied between the lvl. 1 and lvl. 2 goblin orbs.
Galahad was not surprised, he knew that the orbs all came from the massacre he committed just a few days before. The only thing on that list that wasn't making sense was the 'XP points.' Still laughing, he said "Yes, end it all for me, consume please." between all the chuckles.
The top goblin orb on the list glowed green and the row faded until it disappeared completely, there was one orb at the top of the bag that started shivering for a moment, then exploded.
A little glass pop went off in the bag, sounding like a violent popcorn kernel. Galahad stopped laughing now, he heard the bell noises and saw text in his head, but the glass exploding sound was very real.
He looked at the pouch and a little wisp of blue smoke came out. Even as Galahad stepped back, the little blue cloud was locked onto him and only got closer. Once the approaching cloud was a foot away, it moved like a bunch of little tendrils and spiralled straight into his loosely bandaged hand.
Galahad's laugh was gone now, he could plainly tell that this wasn't something his brain was making up anymore, this was real and he was scared.
Though the fear in his chest quickly dispersed when he felt the smoke enter, because the rising hunger in his stomach that hadn't left him since the night before had begun to suddenly subside. The only scary part was how he began to almost crave that new sensation instantly.
The cloth bandaging gave way and fell apart until only the hand was still wrapped, Galahad's forearm was completely encased in thick peeling scabs and dried yellow pus, it reeked strongly of decay.
The first thing Galahad would have noticed was the way the smoke entering his mangled arm and cracking open the scabs, but what he actually saw was a new text popping up on the right side of his view.
[ +25 XP ]
At the same time, little white progress bar popped up at the top of his view and grew, at the end it said:
[ 25/200 XP ] lvl. 1
"I-I-I don't understand, this can't possibly be real.'' Galahad felt his brain starting to misfire thoughts in every direction. What did this mean? Why could he see these words? Did that black orb do this? Or was it that crystal last night? Was his actual level connected to the orb he absorbed?
"That's it, I am officially done touching any shit I find that looks different. No more picking up weird cursed shit, I swear it on my own grave."
Once Galahad started calming himself done, he felt that he needed to figure out if this was truly real.
Galahad looked back at where the smoke enter his body. The wounded arm. He was originally repulsed by his own arm, so he never looked at it for too long before, he mostly focused on how badly it felt.
Now his arm felt noticeably different than the night before, so he forced himself to figure out why. His arm didn't feel painfully raw or burned anymore; he could see in the cracking portions some pink skin that didn't exist a little while ago.
Now he felt like he was about to throw up when digging his nails deep inside the dried out scabs along the inside of his elbow. As he began pulling it apart, he shut his eyes and tried not to listen to the loud crackling it made.
After a few more minutes of tugging, he looked back down in awe to what was hidden beneath once gruesome sheath. His arm was completely healed and showed no signs of the explosion,
'Maybe I'm not losing my mind, perhaps I am still dreaming' Galahad tried lying to himself. He let his fingers run along the new skin that stopped at his elbow. The scar tissue and burns were still stretching from his bicep to neck and cheek. Whatever was happening to his body, it hadn't finished fixing the mess just yet.
He confirmed it was not a dream by accepting to devour seven more times. More popping when off and a bigger cloud of blue mist started entering the burns around his bicep.
Once the mist cleared, he felt a familiar surge run through his body and releasing outward as a bunch of little golden sparks, he had just leveled up.
[ Congratulations: You've leveled up to lvl. 2 ] All attributes +3
Mana orbs lvl. 2 or below can now be consumed.
Health Points +10
Armor slots unlocked
Weapon slots unlocked
"This… this cannot be real…" Galahad was absolutely stunned at this. His mind still refused to believe what was happening.
His body was severely damaged to the point that his adventure level went down to extremely low drawbacks, and then his magic skills began to fade. Now he can reclaim all that hard work by simply consuming mana orbs.
He didn't know if he should shout out in joy or break down in madness. He instead sat down on his bed to ponder the scenario he was currently dealing with. Getting stronger to find his friends in the dungeon was suddenly a lot more possible than the night before.
'Hey, now I can tell Brett I have the start of a plan.'
The problem he faced now, was how to obtain mana orbs for leveling back up. He wouldn't be able to work in the dungeon and use up the mana orbs, he still needed money and gear to be considered for the Guild's Enlistment.
'Wait . . . can I even use mana again.' Galahad was trying to think rationally despite the excitement in his heart about the discovery he just made. 'One step at a time, I can't be getting ahead of myself with all this.'
He shut his eyes and tried to conjure his mana tethers. If he didn't focus on a particular soul to attach to, it would normally float around the room with aimless wandering.
[ Mana Tether support skills are not available ]
In the darkness of Galahad's shut eyelids, those words appeared in his view. They disappeared when he stopped trying to use his tethers. He was about to sigh in disappointment, thinking it was all too good to be true, then new words appeared:
[ Recommendation: Unlock Classes to obtain more skills ]
"Class...-es?" Galahad reread the line over and over.
"It says 'classes,' as in I can get more than one fucking class." Galahad put his hand over his mouth before he started to scream out in joy.
'Ask the universe for a boat, and they'll give you a fallen tree. Looks like I need to start carving out my boat.'
Galahad let out a true mischievous grin and looked down at the pouch of orbs. At least thirty orbs were sitting inside, clacking together like a sporadic symphony to Galahad's ears.
'If I want to save my friends; I need to be stronger, I need to better, I can't lose them. I need to unlock these classes and save them somehow.'
'I need to sit and think for a minute.'
His stomach let out an obnoxious loud growl.
'And maybe get some food.'
