Click-clack went the horse hooves on the road. I had been listening to its song for hours now, each passing minute closer to insanity. Our plodding progress had already gotten to my head.
It had been 4 days since we left Tsubarian's lair; 4 days being pelted by Terose but with a light and sweet breeze every second of the day.
I took a quick drink from a leather water pouch we were sharing. The water was sweet in my mouth, although there wasn't any sugar in it. I placed the waterskin by my side and stared deeper into the summer sky.
I sighed and sat back, only moving to redirect the horses. We must have looked dumb, traveling down the road with horses pulling a plane. But alas, this was a place where no one knew what a plane was.
There were 2 problems with the plane so far, one was the fact that, in its current state, it couldn't carry the horses. The other was that it took quite a bit of mana to fly-- I could only fly it for roughly 5 hours before I felt too nauseous to continue, by my calculations.
I sat back even more. I was bored out of my mind. No monsters would dare attack us since they could feel our strength, and we had yet to run into bandits.
I opened my [Item Box] looking for something to do, but I didn't find anything. I decided to clean it out a little since it has been getting ridiculously messy. The time putting it off had finally caught up to me, with a full-force blow.
I plotted out where each item was supposed to go: the first quadrant for materials; the second for corpses and cores; the third for armor and weapons; and the fourth was for tools and other utensils.
I cleaned out Q2 and I was beginning to move the bodies until I noticed a red slip of cloth under a rather large [Armored Howler]. I pulled it out with a little resistance, but it wasn't that much.
It was a long, flat piece of cloth. I looked at it a hard, pondering what it was. It took me a cool second to realize it was a scarf.
I remembered exactly what it was, the [Scarf Of Pride]. I put it on. "What other forgotten goodies do we have here?" I shifted through my stuff.
There wasn't that much of use in the remaining items. The few pieces of the equipment I did want use, I would've rather given them to the others to use.
I tidied up for not even a speck of dust remained in my [Item Box]. I closed it and moved on to give the others their new equipment.
When I popped in with the new stuff, Deliva immediately questioned the scarf I had on. "What is that around your neck?" she questioned.
I touched it lightly, "It's a scarf," I answered. "But it is not Snowsom yet, why would you need it?" she asked. "It's a bit hard to explain, but it's a powerful magic item." I tried to explain. "You have so many magic items, how did you get them all?" she asked.
"Well, erm, have this." I changed the subject and handed Deliva a Heattooth Dragon leather chest plate and a dagger I made on the spot out of one of its canines. She gladly accepted it and put it on, although looking a little uncomfortable. She played around with the dagger, in a bit she gave a satisfied nod and put it away.
"You have yet to answer my question." Deliva continued. "Well, I'll explain that later, now I have to divide this equipment, I'll tell you in a bit," I responded
"Aaron?" I called out the blade resting by Kani. "Yes?" Aaron called back. "I have some armor for you," I said.
The blade transformed into his regular form, "Why do I need this?" he asked, with a tiny bit of annoyance in his tone as Kani had landed on his head.
"Just in case you need it. You may be a sword, but you're defenseless without a wielder." I answered. He only sighed and took Kani off his head. He took the leather and chain jacket and shortsword into his personal inventory. He sat back down after he was done, but didn't return to his sword form.
Kani jumped into his lap and rubbed against him.
"Kani, do you have a human-like form?" I asked. "Yes, but I would like for Aaron to see me first." she said playfully, "I don't even have a place to put it anyway," she added.
"Very well, Aaron will protect you from harm. Isn't that right, Aaron~?" I teased. "Yes-" Aaron let out an emotionless sigh.
"Now that that's all sorted out, I'll return to driving," I said. "What about Luna?" Deliva asked.
"Believe it or not, her dress is armor enough, she has a staff too," I stated. "What else are you hiding from me?" she asked. "Now's not the time for that," I responded.
"Is it that you do not trust me?" she continued. "It's not that, it's just it is a really long story." I sighed. "We have nothing but time," Deliva added. "Then who will drive the carriage?" I asked. "Tell us while you drive," she said.
"Fine then." I sat back onto the driver's seat and began my tale. It wouldn't be too bad of a time to tell it and if I never did, it would bite me in the ass eventually.
I took a deep breath, "Not too long ago, I was summoned here. I was what you would call, a hero." I started.
"What a lie, there are only 26 heroes and all of them are at the war," Deliva stated. "Not entirely, father said there were 27 but one never came back from a mission." Kani huffed in Aaron's lap.
"How did he know this?" Deliva questioned. "Spies," Kani said simply with her eyes closed.
"So they did cover me up ..." I pondered what else they could have covered up, but that thought was to be for another time.
"Well, Kani is right. I never came back from my mission." I stated.
"I was left behind and little did they or I know, it was the best thing that happened. I found out my class and beat a dungeon. A very difficult dungeon at that." I said.
"Speaking of which, Luna, do you mind turning into your scythe form again?" I asked.
"Sure," she pounced towards me and puffed into black smoke. I caught her midair. "Anyway," I spun her around and stopped her in an awkward but cool looking pose. "I'm a [Reaper]" I said in the coolest voice I could elicit.
Kani and Deliva had confused but impressed faces. I accidentally let out a grin, but I suppressed it as soon as I could. I let Luna go beside me and turned back to the road.
"[Reaper] is a class, that I'm aware, that only one can exist at a time." I continued. Luna returned to her human form. She nodded.
I dropped the reigns I was holding in my right hand, turned my palm facing up, and summoned a stationary fireball in front of me. "This is as close as I can get." I murmured.
"Anyway, this is a representation of a soul. This is the main core of your ego. It is you and you are it, understand?" I said. Everyone nodded in understanding.
"Very well, normally when you kill something with a soul, the soul is converted into EXP based on its power, this is why summons don't give EXP. With this in mind, my class allows for the complete bypassing of the EXP system, directly obtaining power from the souls themselves. Since I cannot obtain EXP, I don't have a level cap, as a soul can only carry so much foreign EXP. You got that?" I said. No response came.
"Yes...?" Kani said, she appeared to understand some of it. Deliva nodded slowly.
"Good," I continued without rest, "Normally one enchants a weapon with just magic, except I can also enchant with souls. Since the souls I obtain aren't turned into EXP, they aren't destroyed. They are stored somewhere, I don't know where, and I draw from them my power.
This brings me back to enchanting. To get a Soul Weapon the traditional way, the creator must sacrifice themselves to the weapon, enchanting it. Instead, I can wield a soul and imbue it into the weapon, with only some strength lost." I finished.
Deliva spoke up after a moment of silence, "This sounds too powerful to exist.".
"It shouldn't, but it does." I looked into the distance.
10 minutes rolled by, dead with the sound of silence. The occasional buzz of a random bug passing by was the only other sound other than clopping.
It was only then Kani spoke, "Smoke?" with the sound of confusion in her voice.
I turned to look at the direction she was and there was smoke rising indeed. I halted the movement of the cart.
I jumped out of the seat and landed swiftly. "Aaron?" I said, Aaron appeared by my side and transformed into his sword form. I put him in his sheath, "Luna, Deliva, stay and protect the cart." I ordered.
Kani landed on my shoulders, her softness and warmth were slightly distracting, but it was easily ignorable.
I could have simply cut down the densely foliaged forest down, but we didn't know if that smoke was friend or foe.
The smoke worsened as we stepped closer. We soon discovered its source, a burning castle.
The castle was small, only about 3 and a half stories tall. There were remnants of burnt corpses in iron armor, some still holding weapons.
We passed by them without a second thought. We found the entrance at the opposite side of its initial discovery point. A worn road lead off somewhere, but that was for later.
The burnt remains of a once-proud flag laid in ruins. We entered without a care in the world.
Initially, it was completely empty. The stone walls were charred high, with a few dying flames here and there. The smell of burnt wood was pretty strong, and it seemed only about a day old.
We continued to the second floor and just like the first, nothing. The third was a different story.
It was completely unharmed, nothing burned.
A voice penetrated the oddness.
"The Shadow Knight finally heard their calls, but he was too late." a black-robed figure stood ominously, black lighting surrounding it.
Behind it, were at least 30 others, all dressed in the same black robe. They were chanting something quietly, at a level I couldn't hear from that distance.
"Thank you for joining us, chosen one." the figure smiled.
That was when the shadows pounced.