The Mysterious Amulet

Town centre, a three-story building, three thousand meters wide stands in the middle. This building is known as the lotus inn. accompanying lotus inn in the middle of the town centre are three other buildings two of which are even taller and wider than it and the inn is located between these two taller buildings.

The one on its right is the grumbling house. If this was a city such an establishment would have been hidden form the local authorities; however, in this isolated pod town it thrives, and is built to show its wealth, power and glory for all to see. It is also broadest covering an entire seven thousand five hundred square meters, and grandest building in the town.

On the lotus inn's left is another magnificent building, but unlike the gambling house it isn't broad. It covers just four thousand square meters. However, its height is something else entirely. The building is eight stories tall, hence it's the tallest building in town. This building belongs to a child care organization known as Angels Embrace.

The last and smallest building in the middle of the town centre is the town hall which stands at two thousand six hundred square meters wide and two stories high. It's the least attractive building in town, but is ultimately the most important one.

On the ground floor of the lotus inn are various people chatting about on their tables, some enjoying their food and drinks while others wait for their orders to arrive.

On one of the tables are a group of people listening to their friend as he talks about his adventures, he says, "…I saw that the beast was tired after running around chasing," he grins as he observes his audience's reactions and seeing their tense expressions, his grin broadens.

"I took out my Zapzap whip and lashed at it…" he continues to kill his friends with the suspense.

"stop grinning like a madman and tell us what happened next," one of them couldn't stand the suspense, and says with a mixture of anxiety and frustration.

The one telling the story chuckles and continues to say, " the Zapzap whip wrapped around the beast's leg and…"

On another table are two people whispering to each other, one of them says to the other, "did you hear, the little beast of the Graire family is in town"

The other opens his eyes wide in shock, "really…, if so, there's going to be trouble," replies the other grimly.

All sorts of conversations and secret deals are going about in the crowded ground floor of the inn; however, all this doesn't matter to a certain someone who is busy cleaning one of the inn's rooms, this someone is none other than Alex.

The room Alex is cleaning is messy, and messy to the extreme the bed sheets are wet from some sticky blue substance.

The bed is also broken and somehow the previous inhabitants of the room even managed to mess up the ceiling as well with the blue liquid substance.

Alex looks at this mess and sighs with a tired expression as he pulls out the sheets and tosses them into the cleaner bot next to him.

The cleaner bot collects the bed sheets and places them in its cleaning compartment, then begins disinfecting and washing them.

At the same time, he then had it lift the bed, while he uses a vacuum cleaner. The cleaner bot is something he made himself to help him in pretty much anything that requires intense labour.

Whilst vacuuming underneath the bed, a strange object gets stuck in the vacuum pipe. Alex turns off the vacuum cleaner and removes it manually.

What he found is a blue crystal with runes engraved on its surface. He had seen something like this before. The inn lady has one exactly like the one he's holding except for the colour. The one the inn lady had in her possession is white in colour, and the one he's holding is blue.

He had once asked the inn lady about these stones, and she said that they were called storage stones and they were used to store information. She even said some of higher grade can even be used as inventory and that their colour indicate their grade.

Alex examines the stone for a while before tossing it into the lost and found section on the cleaner bot, then goes about doing his work.

Time flew by, and late in the afternoon a commotion erupts outside the gambling house near the inn.

Alex who had just finished his work decides to go and see what was happening. What he sees makes him freeze on spot.

There at the front yard of the gambling house, his adoptive father is laying there covered in blood. His body twitching from time to time, next to him is a man with light brown hair neatly arranged.

He is dressed in a military like kind of way with black t-shirt and green trousers. He's glaring at Alex's adoptive father, with his hands are clenched into a fist emitting a white mist;

"still not going to pay?!" The brown-haired man ferociously shouts at Alex's adoptive father; however, the brown-haired man doesn't get any response.

Frustrated, he makes a punching motion aimed at Alex's adoptive father, and another grave wound appears on Alex's adoptive father's body. Blood begins gushing out of the wound like a broken water pipe.

After receiving no response, the brown-haired man losses interest in him, and signals for his man to follow him, "pathetic," says the man, as he leaves the area with his men.

Alex slowly walks towards his adoptive father and comes to a stop in front of him. He looks at the man for a while, his expression indifferent.

A few seconds later he knees down and helps him up. The onlookers look at him with varying expressions, some were confused, others approved while others disapproved.

The reason for this was that the fact that Alex's adoptive father was abusive towards him was no secret in the entire town.

However, Alex cared for none of that, all he wanted was to help his adoptive father. Though the man had mistreated him, he still gave him a roof over his head, and for that he was most thankful. He supported him all the way to their shabby pod.

When they got into the house, Alex helps him to his bedroom and laid him down onto the bed.

Afterwards the room was quiet for a while, with Alex leaning at the wall in exhaustion, and his adoptive father calming his breathing.

The silence continues for a while before Alex decides to leave the room; however just as he turns to leave a word floats to his ears, the word is faint and the voice is strained, but its sincerity is quite evident, "sorry…".

Alex looks at his adoptive father, and the man looks back at him with a calm smile, his eyes showing no fear of death about to befall him.

The man with some difficulty takes out an amulet from underneath his clothes, and places it in Alex's left hand, then with a strained voice says " open it, once you do everything shall be reviewed to you," he stops midway to gather his breath for a while.

"However, you must have the power to keep hold of what's yours," as his voice fades, so does his last breath, with that he was dead.

Alex is dazed for a while looking at his dead adoptive father. After sometime he recollects himself and turns his attention to the amulet in his hand. The amulet is coin shaped with a slight dome like surface on one side and flat on the other.

It feels smooth to the touch and Alex can feel a faint yet subtle heartbeat coming from within, so he thought. Strange marks on it glow with a white light and fade in resonance with the heartbeat.

He looks at it for a while debating whether to open it or not, the internal debate didn't last long before Alex decided on opening the amulet. Who wouldn't?