Treasures and First Fight
Azraeus looked at Excalibur in his hand, especially the sharp blade and decided he absolutely couldn't carry it around as is. Sadly the sword didn't come with a scabbard and even if it did he would not be able to get far before being stopped for carrying a weapon.
'System, what am I supposed to do with this?'
[The system can create a small subspace to store inanimate objects. Do not worry host, the subspace is attached to the system so you will not lose it when you leave Earth.]
Azraeus was very happy with the system's suggestion as it sounded like an inventory, something iconic to people travelling to other worlds in fantasy stories. It would also be very useful, allowing him to travel light whilst also bringing lots of stuff with him, which he likely would need as he collected more items. Thus he asked for the system's price, expecting that it wouldn't be able to do something as amazing as create an inventory for free.
[Minor subspace cost: 10EP]
'Do it.'
[Creating…]
[Minor Inventory skill acquired.]
[Items can be placed into and removed from the inventory by will. When placing items it must be in contact with the Host. There is a total of 10 cubic metres of space in the Minor Inventory.]
It was not quite the unlimited inventory some story protagonists have but it was still very useful for Azraeus at the moment, especially since he was not planning to store something like a house. He immediately tried to test his new skill by storing Excalibur and the sword disappeared when he thought about it, and when he wanted the sword again it reappeared in his hand. Satisfied with the inventory he once again returned the sword and then tried to put his rucksack in the inventory wondering if it would allow him to store items containing stuff, which it did. During his experiments with the inventory he realised he could simply think about the inventory and he would receive a list within his mind, it appeared in a similar way to when he communicated with the system.
After that Azraeus began walking back towards the more developed part of the forest, he checked his treasure map and saw all the glowing dots indicating treasures around the world and a smile formed on his face at the wonder of what the other treasures could be.
* * *
Almost 2 months had passed since Azraeus found Excalibur, it took him far longer to move to all the points indicated by the map than he thought it would mostly because he needed to catch a flight from one country to another. A few weeks into his search he asked the system if he could speed up the process as he realised it would take him at least a year to get everywhere. The system informed him that he could teleport by using EP, Azraeus was delighted at this proposal and made a plan of teleporting between countries before using public transport to get to the treasure.
Azraeus now only had one treasure left to get and it was deep in the Amazon rainforest, he teleported close to his destination and began walking through the forest using various attributes of magic to scare the wildlife and move the shrubbery out of the way. He had spent the past 2 months practising his magic control by using all 8 elements that appear on earth and he had become quite adept at them. As he walked, through the shrubbery he pulled up the list of over a hundred treasures he had had the system make to keep track of what he found. He gazed at the best treasures he had found in the past two weeks at the top of the list.
[Treasures List:
- Fruit of Light (UC A)
- Frozen Sapphire (UC A)
- Lesser Halo Fragment (UC A Special)
- Solar Shield, Svalinn (UC A)
- Boots of Hermes, Talaria (UC B)
- Sword in the Stone, Excalibur (UC B Growth)
- Grand Tree Branch (UC B)
- Orochi's Fang (UC B)
- 10 ml of Soma (UC B)
- Philosopher's Stone (UC C)
- 1kg Mythril (UC C)
- Gold Ankh Necklace (UC C)
- Lesser Dragon Scale (earth) (UC C)
]
Azraeus was quite pleased with his collection, he now had four pieces of equipment, five materials that could be used to create artefacts, and a few special things like the magic potion Soma or the alchemical tool Philosopher's stone. He realised that his equipment were all things from legends or myths, firstly there was Excalibur from Camelot, that he had grown to B rating by pouring in mana during his idle time; Talaria, the winged boots of the god Hermes from greek mythology; the Ankh being the symbol for the aspects of life from egyptian mythology; and Svalinn, the shield that protects Earth from the sun in norse mythology. He had asked the system about this as some of his Common grade treasures were also named objects he recognised from mythology or history and he understood that they had all undergone the process of collecting mana through faith like excalibur. The system also told him that this was the reason ancient mages deified themselves, by having people pray or believe in them they could collect the minute amounts of mana produced by even normal people through faith gradually growing their mana pool over a long time.
The materials were all stuff he had heard of in fantasy like the magic metal mythril or the dragon scale. The Orochi fang was from Japan and the system told him it came from a mutated lesser dragon with eight heads and tails called Yamata no Orochi in Japanese mythology. Whilst the Grand Tree Branch was exactly as described, the branch of an ancient tree that absorbed mana. The frozen sapphire was a bluish-white gem that contained a store of ice type mana and could be used to make a tool that amplified ice type magic. However, the most impactful thing was the Fruit of Light which, from appraisal analysis, could allow someone to awaken to the light attribute regardless of their compatibility with that element. Overall he was very satisfied with his collection so far but he still had a slight dissatisfaction which stemmed from the 'Lesser Halo Fragment'. It looked like a small arc of a thick golden ring which gave off a dim glow. Azraeus was surprised that even this tiny piece of a broken halo was A grade, especially when it was a lesser halo to begin with. He had also never seen the Special attribute before and even when he asked the system it didn't tell him anything, this frustrated him even more because even appraisal only told him it was a broken piece of a lesser halo, which he already knew.
Azraeus turned his attention back to the map in his mind and realised that he was only about five minutes away from the final treasure on the map. He walked for another couple of minutes before the density of shrubbery around him thinned down and he stepped out into a clearing. The clearing was almost circular in shape, it had a still pool of water on one side surrounded by a crescent of land covered in a thin layer of flowers and grass. It looked like a small slice of paradise and was the exact opposite of what the rest of the jungle had been with its lack of overcrowded plantlife. Azraeus checked the map again and realised that the marker for the treasure was in the dead centre off this out of place clearing, he got closer in an attempt to see what the treasure was but when he got halfway across the clearing he heard a small rumbling sound and saw the ground at the centre bulge up whilst the mana he felt in the surrounding all started moving towards the centre.
Backing away to the edge of the clearing Azureus curiously observed the strange phenomenon happening around him. None of the other treasures he found had caused something like this, some were like Excalibur having created a seal, some were buried in the ground and others were just lying in the open. The mana swirled when it entered the clearings centre forming a miniature tornado of earth, leaves and petals carried by the wind. A few minutes passed before the clearing returned to peace but now with a more ruined appearance. Once the mini tornado cleared Azraeus was able to see what the tornado had hidden, a 3m tall being made out of earth that he could only describe as a golem. It had bulky limbs and no digits at the end of its appendages, within the centre of its chest was a baseball sized white orb giving off a soft glow that seemed like it would be the golems core. Azraeus quickly appraised the golem wondering if it was the treasure he was here to collect.
[Elemental Body
- A lesser elemental body formed from the four basic elements by an unconscious spirit seed for its self protection.
]
Reading the description, Azraeus understood that the white core was the spirit seed and the golem, or rather elemental body, was its defence mechanism. This made him excited about the grade of the spirit seed because no treasure had its own active defence mechanism. He quickly realised he would need to fight the elemental body if he wanted the spirit seed but he wouldn't be able to use the idea of breaking the core to destroy a magic construct because the core was the treasure he wanted to get.
He began by testing its reaction to a few blades of wind aimed at its arm, Azraeus was now comfortable using projectile attacks of all elements thanks to his two months of training. Surprisingly the body didn't react as he had expected to the attacks Azraeus had fired, as it simply allowed the blades shaped of wind to crash into its arm. Azraeus' puzzlement over the success of the attack was short lived as he saw the slashes made on the elemental body's arm quickly be filled in by earth.
The elemental body then turned to him and, to his surprise, sent out a barrage of wind blades aimed at Azraeus' chest. Azraeus froze for a moment. This was the first time something had tried to kill him. Even in his spar against Harold neither side had used attacks aimed to kill like these wind blades. Whilst Azraeus' mind was paralysed by fear from his first life and death fight, his instincts kicked in to protect him from the wind blades. A wall of earth quickly sprang up between the wind blades and Azraeus, absorbing the blades power as they impacted and dissipated into a strong but harmless gust of wind. As the wind swept past him, Azraeus overcame the paralysis of fear and quickly came back to his senses, chastising himself internally for his failure.
Although he had awakened to mana, learned of the secrets hidden from the world, collected treasures and gained the extraordinary power known as the system, Azraeus was still a normal person at his core. His personality may be warped slightly and he may have lost people close to him but he had still lived a peaceful life. He had never been in a fight with his life on the line like this before. The worst fight he had been in was when a couple of bullies decided to beat him up in his youth, and even then he subconsciously knew he was safe as they wouldn't go so far as to permanently injure him.
Now though, he had been forcibly pulled out of the illusion of safety the world of ordinary people provided. He was now standing in a battlefield where he could lose his life from a moment of negligence. Adrenaline started pumping through his body as his heart rate increased greatly, he started breathing faster as his thought process sped up rapidly. The survival instincts inherent to every living being had awoken in Azraeus, the instincts he had never needed before today. Buried deep inside his subconscious another thing awakened slightly, like a bud opening just before it bloomed into a flower, the desire for strength appeared. This small desire contains his subconscious thoughts and instincts to grow better than everything else around him, to elevate himself to an existence whose life can no longer be threatened.
Meanwhile, the wall Azraeus had created on instinct disappeared when he regained control after returning from the shock and fear. Azraeus immediately moved to return fire to the elemental body, he mobilised his mana transforming it into a ball of fire which he then split apart and shaped into spears. Azraeus then controlled the 4 spears of fire to fly towards each limb of the elemental body, his thought was to try a more destructive element if wind didn't work. Unfortunately only two of the flame spears hit, the ones targeting the two legs, due to Azraeus not having enough control over his mana to split his focus and control four different projectiles.
The two spears of fire exploded when they came in contact with the elemental body's legs, knocking it to the ground. As it hit the ground with a bang, it generated a wave of stones before launching them all around it as if a grade had exploded. Azraeus was able to dodge the scatter shot when it came flying towards him, due to the adrenaline rushing through his body he was able to think almost twice as fast and had enough time to position himself to avoid the scattershot as it formed. He once again formed the spears of fire but this time limited himself to two, unfortunately neither spear hit the elemental body as it had erected an earth wall, emulating Azraeus. Azraeus dashed to the side in an attempt to get around the wall to get a clear line of sight, but when he laid his eyes on the elemental body it was once again standing, having regenerated its legs using the surrounding earth.
Realising the elemental body would be able to regenerate its limbs, Azraeus was stumped for a moment trying to figure out how to disable it. He spent the next 10 minutes moving around the clearing carefully destroying its limbs testing its regeneration whilst avoiding its attacks with room to spare. Despite not being able to think like a human and only using magic instinctively like monsters, the elemental body was quite dangerous to Azraeus as its magic had power equivalent to his and his lack of combat experience led to him making mistakes and being more cautious than necessary. He also didn't want to enter close combat despite having Excalibur due to having no experience, prefering to just shower it with magic from afar.
Azraeus had realised through his testing that the elemental body was able to use all four of the basic elements and didn't seem to have a mana limit. Azraeus had tried to be careful with his mana consumption but he still exceeded his regeneration, and thus realised he needed to retreat or finish the fight soon. He had asked the system if removing the white orb in its chest was enough to stop the elemental body which the system confirmed, thus he came up with several potential ways to disable the elemental body and decided on the plan he would use.
He started by generating a ball of water but this time he poured a much larger amount of mana into than he would normally, deciding that he would simply retreat back into the jungle if this failed. The pall of water hovering in front of Azraeus grew much larger, eventually reaching almost the same height as he was. He then threw it towards the elemental body which had just finished regenerating its arms, he didn't shape the ball of water into a projectile and thus let it splash against the elemental body soaking the earth it was constructed from. Azraeus then proceeded to form a large number of icicles using the rest of his mana, he used the idea of absolute zero when shaping the mana into shape, when the icicles formed they were a deep blue in colour and gave of a cold air that was harming the hand they hovered over. He then released the icicles which hit all over the elemental body, quickly freezing the water that had soaked into its limbs.
The elemental body did not stop moving entirely but its movements had slowed down massively. Azraeus took the opportunity to rush up to it, he reached out and grabbed the orb in its chest, aware that its arm was slowly moving towards his head. As soon as he pulled the sphere away he ducked quickly to avoid the mass of earth that passed over his head. The earth that had been a part of the elemental body quickly fell apart with its core removed, leaving a pile on the ground where the torso had been and showering Azraeus in dirt mixed with chunks of ice as the arm disintegrated. Azraeus quickly backed away getting out of range in case removing the core didnt stop it. He shook his head to remove all the earth that had splattered over his hair and looked down at the glowing sphere in his hand, that was giving off a slight warmth, immensely curious as to what it was.
Before he had the chance to appraise the sphere and satisfy his curiosity, a wave of exhaustion washed over him. He had been in a fight for a little over ten minutes and both his body and mind were exhausted by the tension despite his stats being at the peak for Earth. He fell back onto the ruined ground, where most of the flowers had been destroyed and traces of burns were dotted everywhere, before lying down and staring up at the sky blankly whilst he got his breathing under order, his mind was throbbing from the headache caused by overusing his mana.
He rested for a few minutes recovering as he taught over the fight, for the first time since he woke up to the system he realised that in his subconscious he was considering himself special, but he had just been reminded that he could die like anyone else. This made him briefly rethink the idea of going to another world where there may not be law and order like on Earth before his newly awakened desire for strength squashed the thought. He realised that he had an immense opportunity so he might as well take it and try to make something of himself rather than going back to the idle life he had on Earth before awakening to mana, and even if his awakening had changed somethings, Earth was still quite boring for him, the fights were dull and more importantly the magic was far to simple. Azraeus was incredibly interested in magic but all anyone knew how to do on earth was manipulate mana, the spells weren't really spells just throwing mana converted into physical form around. Now that he knew magic existed he wanted to experience a proper adventure like those depicted in the stories he read when he wanted a moment of escape.
Azraeus pulled himself back into a sitting position, his desire to go to another world reignited after a moment of introspection. It may be difficult and he may even die but it would be more fun than the life he had lived so far. The rapid changes in Azraeus' life had silently created a crack in the mental barrier he always caged himself within. Azraeus turned towards the treasure he had one from a hard fight with a relaxed smile, subconsciously feeling slightly more comfortable with his new self, and used appraisal.
[Spirit Seed:
- Source: World of Earth
- Grade: Unique
- Age: 10,754 years
- The seed of a spirit formed using the entire structure of the world 'Earth' as its source. A unique existence throughout all of reality as only one world spirit may be born per world and requires exceptional circumstances to occur.
]
Azraeus, had got his hands on a unique treasure, a type of one of a kind treasure so rare that deities would fight over it, though he didn't know that yet.