Chapter 28. Preparations

Ash was pissed as his fortune seemed anything but good right now. He was in a group with these muscle heads and they took his pack. They left him his weapon but he did not have a good feeling about that.

They seemed confident that they could take him down even with his weapon. He performed a status check on one of them stealthily. He got some info but was surprised that they knew he performed a status check on one of them. He was beat and that confirmed what was already seen in their stats, they were way stronger than him.

Name:???

Lvl:4

Male

Age: 13

Occupation: Warrior

Status- healthy

{Str: 5 Vit: 3 Sta: 4.1 Agi: 3.6 Int: 1.3 Spi: 2.1}

Innate talents: ???

Elements/Concepts: Physical

Beasts:???

What worried Ash was the fact that they seemed to have beasts. He could not see them, so that most likely meant that they have a type of housing artifact called a bag of spirits hidden on their person, which was different from a storage pouch.

A storage pouch was less valuable than a storage ring but still cable of holding a couple of closet's worth of items. Neither are made for living beings. A bag of spirits was however, made for living beings.

It was an artifact that could hold beasts, an expensive one at that. It could store your beast for awhile, they still needed necessities like: food, water, bathroom time, and to absorb energy though.

Fortunately, there were runes and various upgrades that could offset a few of these problem. You wouldn't want to take out a dangerous beast you had to capture to let it go to the bathroom or eat. Hence, why the higher the level the bag the more valuable they were.

They were often used by lower level tamers as their main source of storage and people who wanted to store beasts they would sell.

Most tamers wanted to get something called a spirit orb. Spirit orbs where even more valuable as they could store beasts, increase the strength of your link, increase elemental affinity, and nurture your bond.

You could upgrade them which made even the worst of them extremely valuable. They would reside inside the body and make calling your beast out nothing but a thought.

Your bond could train and absorb energy while inside making it a cozy home for them. There was land inside that could be added onto. You could have a forest or volcano all inside that tiny little orb.

The other captive was the frail boy who actually wore glasses. It seemed he was smart enough to take them off when receiving a beating.

His name was Alvin, and he wasn't that talkative. Ash wanted to see his stats but would not risk getting caught preforming a status check on him after the muscle head's beating. They paid more attention to him after that stunt.

After being temporarily enslaved, Ash was immediately taken to a cavern entrance the size of a several men. It was covered by dense foliage and rocks. The feeling of being watched shot into his being like lightning. He had no doubt that whatever was inside had just glanced at him.

He looked at the boys who then took out some beast cores from their storage rings. "Damn, almost nobody has a storage ring without a background. I still don't know what group they're from. The emblem on their pants I don't recognize ," Ash thought.

They gathered the spirit cores from their storage rings, then took out some blood in a foot long bamboo container.

The boys went and handed them to the other enslaved boy, Alvin. Although they handed the material to him, they watched him like a hawk and stood next to him in case he tried something.

"Make sure you do this right or we'll cripple you for real four eyes. You do this and we'll set you free. Even give you back your bag of spirits." Alvin's eyes held mirth but deeper than that was ruthlessness.

Alvin acted scared and nodded his over sized head as his body adjusted to it's change in posture. He got to work by setting all of the cores in a formation. He made a crack on a regular looking rock in the middle of the formation. Using the blood, he poured it all over the rock.

It glowed as he launched hand symbols to it which linked the glowing rock with all the spirit cores.

Alvin was sweating like a lake after it was done. He pointed to the rock in the middle and told the boys that it was the control for the entire formation. One of the boys picked up the rock and used it. A suppression filled the area, it locked onto Ash as he hit the ground. The boys chuckled and they addressed Alvin.

"Nice work four eyes, we won't have to break your spine. Wait until we finish this battle and we'll set you free."

Once one of the muscle heads finished talking, the others let out barely noticeable smiles. Ash didn't think they would let either one of them go. Alvin would either keep being used or end up dead.

The boys tested the formation as one of them walked up to Ash. He gave Ash a lumpy orange berry, it took everything in Ash to prevent himself from going nuts. This berry was called the pulu berry. It emits a wonderful aroma that can put one in a pseudo enlightened state.

Problem is that it would attract nearby predators as even a half enlightened state was enough to increase concepts and abilities at a much faster pace.

The boy's next words killed any chance of Ash coming out alive. "This fruit is a hallucinogenic fruit, it will keep the monster's focus on you. It will be too disoriented to actually harm you though.

Crush this berry and run immediately after. The monster inside will follow you as if drunk. Your bond will stay out here with us until you come back.

What a load of bullshit. They hadn't even told him what the monster was. They most definitely wanted the monster to follow him, but if he crushed the fruit, the bulk of the fruit's aroma would linger on him even after he got out the cave.

If the monster killed him inside then they would just kill Grim, additionally they had another meat shield(Alvin) to do the dirty work should he expire. The fruit was rare but not enough to stress over if they lost it. Any way you think of it, he was at the losing end.

He very well may be consumed by whatever is inside after running out here. Not only that but they are keeping his bond in order to force him to come out and move to the formation. The brutes would definitely kill him once his usefulness was over.

Putting on a blank face Ash agreed. He knew asking more would only set the guy off. For muscle heads they sure thought of a good plan. Ash's mind raced to find solutions, he let Grim know to stay with them.

Grim wasn't at a very high level of intelligence yet, but he could see that there was something wrong. He cawed and conveyed that they should just fight them together but Ash refused. He was set on not dying in that cave or out here.

That wave of determination sent vibrations in their link, as Grim felt it he calmed and sent back similar waves of emotion. Both of them determined that it was not their day to die.

Ash was already walking in the cave, with his back turned. The muscle heads could not see his eyes glowing white. Grim was in the formation next to the group but closed his eyes so they couldn't see the white light flashing in them.

The only one paying attention was Alvin. He smirked a little and mumbled, "It seems I do have a chance. Better him than me."