Chapter 12
Admiral Benaft!
Elijah’s consciousness had been robbed from him. When he awoke, wind howled, rain poured, and lightning filled the sky. The teen shivered. He struggled to make sense of where he was, what was going on, and why he was naked.
The Trial of Evolution 1: Treasure Seeker
You have reached Lv 25 as a Treasure Seeker! Welcome to The Trial of Evolution: beat the Evolved Treasure Seeker to the treasure to prove your right to undergo the first Evolution. A better performance in this trial will lead to a more powerful Evolution with stronger monster Skills and Traits.
The familiar yet different message helped in returning his memories. As soon as it all snapped into place, he shot to his feet, expecting to find some manner of monster trying to kill him. But no, that was not what the window had said. For once, he was not in a battle but a race.
Despite the realisation, Elijah did not calm down. His heart rate only rose as he looked at his surroundings. He had been sleeping on the edge of a cliff! Mere feet away, the land fell. Sharp, jagged granite spikes obscured his view of the white horses that charged the base, sixty feet below, determined to wear down the rock. The sea was angry, riled up by the storm.
His breath caught in his throat, and he was forced to cough up water. If not for the purple lightning, this could be home!
Nothing was exactly familiar, though everything was close. The refreshing smell of salt, the harsh storms, the grey, nearly blue rock peppered with gems of reflective quartz, the lack of vegetation, the cliffside trail beneath his feet. The cliffside trail beneath his feet?
That meant there were people somewhere around here. Or more ghosts.
“Focus on what’s in front of you,” Elijah reminded himself. He was slowly freezing to death. The trail, though surprising to find, could be useful. It most likely led to somewhere warm and dry, he hoped.
Before taking off in search of shelter, the young man took a moment to select a Class, having remembered that was an option. He chose Beech Berserker; he felt too squishy, and that seemed to deal with the problem. He then placed 100Xp in it, bringing it to level 1.
New Class Skill Unlocked!
New Class Skill unlocked:
Berserker’s Bark: C
Uses 3 Stamina per second to cover the body in bark. Damage blocked by this protective layer can be added to an attack while the Skill is in effect. This Skill automatically uses Health if Stamina is depleted.
You have reached Level 1 in B????e?????e????c?????h???? ?????B???e?????r???s????e???r????k????e????r???!????
+3 Vitality
+2 Endurance
+2 Strength
New Threshold Met!
You have reached 10 in Vitality! This would be the cap for Race: Elijah, but the System allows you to push beyond your limits! Having reached the first Threshold, Your life force is bolstered; it is more difficult for you to contract diseases. Vitality can no longer drop below 10.
That brought a pep to his step. A rush of healthiness flashed through his running body. His boosted Agility ate up the ground, and his Dexterity ensured he didn’t slip on the wet, muddy rocks. His Health had been raised to 110!
His skin was still a ghostly shade of white, and his eyes still held their customary bags, but it somehow no longer looked unhealthy.
“Now those were some stats!” Elijah commented aloud. His theory had been right. Beech Berserker was a rank C Class, and it gave him 5 Attribute points on its first level. As a bonus, it was in an area in which he was lacking, Vitality!
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That Skill, Berserker’s Bark, wasn’t half bad either. Curious, he tried it, just for a second. His skin turned a wrinkly grey. Poking at himself, he couldn’t feel a thing; he still felt perfectly normal; his movements were unencumbered.
He only noticed when he dismissed the Skill that there had been an awareness of how much damage he had taken in the back of his mind. If he had wanted to, he could have added the strength of that poke to a punch or kick. This was Awesome!
Elijah’s mood was dampened somewhat by the constant downpour of rain and the seemingly endless barren cliffs. Had he been wrong? Was this to be another repeating, empty world?
No.
The teen crested another rise and finally saw something he had sorely missed. With his Perception above the first Threshold, Elijah was able to see the squat little stone building, nestled between two rocks, hiding from the storm, with ease, despite the rainy night.
A tear may have welled in the corner of his eye at such a familiar sight, though no one would be able to tell for all the rain. This place looked like it would fit right in at home, with its traditional materials and construction.
His pace increased as he ran down towards it, nearly slipping twice. The teen didn’t dare hope that the firelight pouring out from the windows or the sound of raucous laughter were actual signs of life. He had spent so long alone that he couldn’t believe it to be real.
A sign flapped about in the tremendous gale. On its surface was painted a noble-looking ship’s captain, sword in hand. It was strange, however, as the person depicted was not facing towards the viewer but away. He checked both sides, but Elijah was unable to see the person’s face.
Beneath the odd image was engraved a name:
The Admiral Benaft Inn
There was a porch separating the inside from the outside with heavy, wooden doors. Elijah entered, drying himself as much as possible before equipping his clothes. The yellow and red items went underneath, and the faded green smock on top. He looked ridiculous, but it was better than being naked.
As he placed a hand on the brass knob, prepared to enter into the lively tavern, the teen hesitated. He felt nervous. It was ridiculous, really. He had fought and beaten monsters the likes of which would have terrified him mere weeks before, but the thought of a room full of people had him rooted to the spot, his hands shaking slightly.
This was more than nerves; it was… fear? He was afraid he wouldn’t know what to say. He was afraid that the people here might reject him and he would be left alone again. He was afraid.
Elijah had learnt how to deal with the fear of death in the Slime trial. Just don’t think about it. Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose!
Before he knew it, the young man was striding into the common room, filled with drinkers and revellers. Despite his fears, no one reacted. He was just another face in the crowd.
These were people, actual, real humans. Elijah couldn’t believe it! He tried using Identify on them, but it didn’t work, proving they weren’t secretly monsters. They weren’t the sort of people Elijah was used to seeing; they all wore clothes one might expect to see at the Empire LARP fest, except more real. This was not a modern society, but that didn’t matter.
Elijah walked up to a skinny lad, dressed in simple linen, sat at a table, alone in the corner, nursing a tankard. He shook his arm, still not quite believing this was all real.
“Excuse me? Are you real?” Elijah asked, not quite with it.
The man turned to him with a weasely grin, held up a squirming sack he had been hiding under the table, and asked, “Interested in buying a pig?”
“What?”
“Interested in buying a pig?” the man asked in the exact same tone of voice with zero deviation.
“No?” Elijah half said, half asked, not sure what was happening.
“Then scram!” The man replied, suddenly turning nasty and dismissing Elijah.
“I’m sorry,” Elijah said, not scramming. At his words, the other man’s face switched, appearing just as amiable and slimy as it had before; he asked:
“Interested in buying a pig?”
The sack wriggled. A hissing sound could be heard from inside.
“I think that’s a cat.” Elijah said.
“Interested in buying a pig?” the man asked for the fourth time in the exact same way.
The world spun around Elijah, and he felt something horrible brewing in the depths of his gut. Slightly manic, the young man rushed over to the barkeep.
“Excuse me,” he began.
“Beer?” the rough man asked, not looking up from the mug he was polishing.
“What's your favourite colour?” Elijah asked, thinking of a question at random.
“Beer?” the barkeep asked.
“What’s the capital of france?”
“Beer?”
“What's one plus one?”
“Beer?”
It sounded like someone had recorded the one line and was just replaying it over and over. This couldn’t be happening!
Elijah examined the people more closely. They weren’t real. They looked perfectly fine, but the truth lay in what they did. A gambler at one of the tables dealt cards, looked at his hand, sighed, threw them down, gathered everyone’s up, then started over, repeating his actions ad infinitum.
A drunk took huge gulps from his flagon but never seemed to run dry; even the conversations people had were just the same words on repeat. These were not people; they were like NPCs in a video game, devoid of any soul.
For a brief moment the young man had dared to think he had escaped the hell of endless death he had been thrust into. It felt like someone had removed the ground from beneath him. His consciousness seemed to float as he began to feel detached from ‘reality.’
The room fell silent, and Elijah was snapped back to himself. Everyone was looking at the door. An old man with bandages covering his eyes, clearly blind, had just walked in. The only sound in the pub was the tap, tap, tapping of his stick as he walked slowly along.
People moved out of his way, not because of respect, but out of fear. Everyone seemed to believe that touching his black, ragged cloak meant certain death. The tension grew as he continued walking.
He stopped at a table with a lone occupant, a drunk man with a great bushy grey beard. Silence filled the room, only broken by two sounds. The dripping of rainwater off the blind man’s cloak and the snoring of the drunkard.
A bony hand gripped the wrist of the sleeping man with surprising strength. He awoke suddenly with a jumbled mix of sounds that may have been words. A note was pressed into his hand. The audience gasped. In the centre of the parchment, visible to all, was a black spot!
patrons:
