Evil

Shellsby Harbour

"Caw!"

"Ah!" I screamed like a little sissy, pressing myself  against Lucius' chest before the sinking realisation hit me—It was just a stupid crow.

"Pfft..."

"Don't," I didn't look up and thought about how I would explain away my scream without making it sound like I was a sissy,"Just don't."

"So the great Artemis who can take care of herself is scared of a crow? My, my." Lucius chuckled, his frame trembling as he laughed.

Wanting to get away from the embarrassing topic, I found the strength to extricate myself from his hold and swiftly got off the hammock, a sudden chill making me miss the warmth I felt in his a—

No! Get it together woman! Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you? Ugh, must be the exhaustion talking is all.

I slapped my cheeks to wake myself up and conjured up a little water to wash my hair on the go. Splashing a little on my face too, I found myself reinvigorated.

As Lucius left for a bit to answer nature's call, I took out the map and did some simple yoga to warm up,"It's 16 kilometres from here. We'll reach in three plus hours if I fly full force and sacrifice a few lives to get back energy. It'll be fast if I amplify but it'll use up about 20 lives instead of 10 and I only have about 27 lives remaining if I hurry...HEY LUCY!"

"HUH?"

"I'LL BE BACK IN HALF AN HOUR!"

"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

"BYE!" I zipped off into the forest. Just like in Final Fantasy, I had some grinding to do. My eyes scanned the forested area we were in and immediately killed off any animal I saw and kept the corpses. I even found a rank 2 deer-like beast resting on a rock. Unfortunately, it didn't even see what killed it before it died. It was killing three birds with one stone. I got more food for free, more lives and if I needed, I could sell the corpses for gold—

"Oh! That's right! I completely forgot about the stuff Julius passed to me!" I slapped my forehead and took out the two boxes. Opening them, one was small vial of opaque spheres, kinda like those magnetic beads but golden in colour,"Inquirer what's this?"

[This is ambrosial crystal, Artemis. A catalyst for increasing one's metal affinity used when one undergoes the process to ascend to rank 2.]

In the other box, a very handy book with the name 'Julius Lionel Barshiek' written on it. It was a book of notes on the steps to ascending to rank 2 and 3 filled with his notes on what to expect,"Heh. Not bad. Not bad at all." I made a mental note to thank him whenever I back to Juniper city and continued my hunt.

In the end, I managed to clear out an entire section of the forest and came out with about ~1500 lives to spend though it took 15 minutes longer than expected.

I initially wanted to spend it all on lives but that irrational part of me spent 670 lives to make the 33 red moons into another blue moon, totalling 6 blue moons and 6 red triangles. The rest of the ~890 was put into lives which came out to a total of 117 lives. Killing myself once to replenish energy, I was left with 116 lives.

Heading back, we had breakfast and prepared to head off. As per the norm, Lucius remained in his human-ish form to make it lighter and hugged my waist tightly,"Ready?"

"Yep." Lucius nodded, confirming that he was ready.

"Second form," I muttered, a pair of angelic wings sprouting from my back,"I can only fly for about three minutes before needing to land. We'll reach in about fifty minutes."