86 Selective Death

Argus Salendrum always considered himself a simple man; he enjoyed his long hours spent crafting custom orders for his buyers and being in the heat of the forge.

Just the other day, he was given a massive contract that requested standard water pipelines and valves for some kind of neighborhood rebuilding project. He couldn't have been more happy to accept the work.

Until the deadlines started coming in, rushing him to work late into the night. He had severely underestimated the timeframe given and was rushing right from the start.

It was only his second night, yet he still was stressing over the amount of material he still needed to pour into his slow and tediously designed molds, hardly a fraction were filled. On top of that, the whole city started going into a frenzy about some lockdown; forcing everyone out on the street to go inside the nearest buildings for shelter.

Unfortunately that included his forge, which was now filled with a teenage couple getting handsy in the corner, an old man griping about the heat, and a family with three children crying like tortured pigs.

It was a funny thing, the governing laws Diagon had; a lot involved a sort of 'good neighbors' mentality. It was now Argus's responsibility as a property owner in Diagon to make sure the people inside during the lockdown were not to exit until the emergency order was lifted, infuriating him beyond belief.

Argus tried the best he could to work despite the unwanted guests, but he also had to deal with their interference as well. He told the teenagers to not lean against his tool rack while sucking faces, and warn the old man repeatedly to not sit on the anvil, as it was still hot from the sheet metal he had been shaping earlier.

Then He just about lost it when he yelled at one of the three children to back away from his red hot pokers. Not because the kid was dumb enough to try and go touch it, but because the child's mother started screaming at him for telling them what to do.

Right when he was about to kick everyone out with rage filled screaming, he heard something get knocked over on the top floor that he used as a storeroom.

Everyone went quiet and Argus finally snapped, he grabbed the red-hot pokers with his magic gloves and ran straight up the stares to beat the living snot out of the punk who was trespassing on his forge.

*****

Galahad was quietly swinging from the fixture holding the light crystal in place, watching Argus angrily search around the crates and spilled hammers for the intruder.

He went as far back as to the other side of the room, giving Galahad the chance to escape without having to jump out the window. A third story jump was enticing as trying to strike a conversation with a phantom outside.

With a quiet tuck and roll, Galahad managed to drop down and rush to the staircase before the enraged forgemaster knew he was even there.

While making his way to the first floor, Galahad could here the assembly of people chatting amongst themselves. That stopped him as he tried pulling up his skull mask, but quickly realized it was still shattered somewhere in the dungeon tunnels. His heart then fluttered with annoyance, wishing for once that something would go right.

It seemed Argus was aware that Galahad was no longer on the storeroom and started running down the stairs after him. Galahad could hear the heavy footsteps and heavy breathing closing in, resulting into a dive through the second floor door.

The room was situated with a bed cot and a fridge, indicating it was where Argus lived when he wasn't working. Though it was hard to tell with all the armor and weapons scattered about the room.

Galahad wasn't sure why the man had all this equipment displayed across the room, but he immediately took advantage of it.

He grabbed what seemed to be a white, barbuta helmet with an enclosed mouth off a display stand and shoved his head into it. Now he could run away from the forge without worrying about his face being seen.

There was just one small issue.

'Oh gods, now I see why he still has all this gear. It's all his defective crap, I can't see a thing outta this.'

It was too late to change choices, so Galahad was stuck looking through the thin slot of the visor, waiting for Argus to come charging through.

When the burly man himself came through the door; he was shocked to see a lengthy man poised in a defensive stance with leather armored trousers, a cotton shirt, and his prototype helmet on his head.

The shock was brief enough for Galahad to drop a step forward and sweep the man's legs with a kick. The impact knock his balance off and threw him away from the door frame, giving Galahad the chance to run down the last flight of stair.

As he turned out the door, a hot flash ran across his calf and ankle, sizzling upon the moment of impact.

Galahad tried ignoring the burning iron-poker wrapped around his leg and sprinted down to the group of people sitting about the main floor.

"Get back here ya scrawny little shit!" Argus shouted from the floor, he clumsily got up and grabbed the poker from the floor. It left a burn print on the wood floor that certainly wouldn't disappear anytime soon and left the odor of burnt wax as well.

The crowd of people in the forge were startled to say the least at Galahad jumping down the

On the way out of the forge, Galahad bumped into a crate of mana orbs. His sight horribly suppressed beneath the helmet's visor and nearly knocked the entire thing over.

At instinct, Galahad would have grabbed a handful on the way out, but He wasn't trying to be a bigger thief than he already was. He just kept running into the streets and fled four blocks away and into an alley.

From there, Galahad saw three phantoms spread out across the skyline of the city, some of the stragglers that hadn't been destroyed yet.

It seemed the worst part of the event was over, pretty soon the city would be awake and crowded with people. By then, Galahad had finally figured out the mystery of the phantoms only dying in certain situations.

They were composed of raw mana in a vapor form; that mana had to originally come from some kind of element; be it water, fire, earth, air, corrosion, light, sound, or any of the dozens of other elements. It didn't matter if it was originally a magician or a raw element itself, just that it was tied to physical substance.

After watching and listening to Puilly talk about the 'fire-weak' phantoms over his karmic plate, Galahad realized that phantoms could not be killed by just any element. The magic attack couldn't be the same as what the phantom was composed of, they were selective of what was able to kill them.

Once his pulse calmed and he checked no one had chased him out the door, Galahad stopped to take a look at his leg.

The burn wrapped all the way around the calf, and travelled behind the shin to the tendons of his ankle. It looked severe, but nothing was ripped or torn out of his leg, leaving only an intense pain when the air touched it.

Galahad reaches for his belt and pulled out the mana orbs, waiting for the list to pull up.

[ Do you wish to devourer the Mana Orbs? ] [ Yes ] [ No ]

'Yep.'

[ Please select mana orbs for consumption ]

[ Elder Mimic lvl. 27 ] [ 280 XP ]

[ Mimic lvl. 22 ] [ 140 XP ]

[ Goblin lvl. 3 ] [ 35 XP ]

[ Golden Vesplug lvl. 16 ] [ 125 XP ]

[ Golden Vesplug lvl. 17 ] [ 140 XP ]

. . . [ 8 more orbs ]

Galahad consume only a few of the lower level monsters, waiting for them to heal his leg enough to walk on it till he was home.

When the rapid healing left only scabbing around his leg, Galahad started putting the pouch back. At least he tried, but the seizuring in his arm came back.

'Why does this keep happening?!'

This was the second time his body was fighting him. Like it didn't like his course on action.

Galahad stopped moving the best he could and saw a message pop up on its own.

[ Please select mana orbs for consumption ]

'I'm not doing this, who . . . Is it the orb?'

He finally felt a click go off in the back of his mind. The black orb was trying to tell him something indirectly, it was causing spasms until he stopped fighting and did what it wanted.

'Finish the bag of orbs, you're nearly there.' Was the message it was clearly conveying.

Even though the realization finally clicked, Galahad didn't immediately go for it. When starting out on his quest to save his friends, Galahad found himself almost in a starved addiction for orbs, he couldn't help himself. The sensation was like a drug giving his body a moment of pure clarity, healing and fixing the broken parts of his body.

Spending weeks strapped to a cot in constant, burning pain was quite the motivator to find orbs.

It wasn't until he used 'Gluttony' title for a brief moment, before he realized that he needed to slow himself down and not lose control.

Only after months of self restraint did he learn to strategically use the orbs as a healing factor in fight. Now it seemed like he was undoing all that disciplining.

After the moment of hesitation, Galahad began slowly activating down the list, it wasn't like he could refuse anyway. The dark substance in his body would have just started spazzing out again.

Galahad confirmed over and over again, right down to the Elder mimic.

Then two messages popped up;

[ Congratulations: You've leveled up to lvl. 30 ] All attributes +3

[ Additional Class unlocked ]

The message faded, the experience bar reset, and then the next one came.

[ Unique Essence Identified ]

[ New Skill Developed ] [ 3:00:00 ] . . .

'Well that's great, but now I somehow feel lethargic. Wait- where's the sparks? Why am I not going off like a firecracker?'

Galahad was quickly growing accustom to the light show of every level up, and figured the alley he was standing in wasn't going to reveal his position, no one was around but nothing came.

He double checked and noticed an image of a lock on top of his progress bar. It seems he wasn't allowed to level up until he chose another class.