🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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I yanked my sword out of the netherbeast, stepping back to regain my balance. My chest heaved with deep breaths, the adrenaline pumping in my body slowly ebbing to reveal the wave of exhaustion washing over me.
"That's a good haul, don't you think?" Kinver, the leader of the party I happened to join as Dragnasand's representative, said, giving my shoulder a heavy pat in passing me by. "We're so glad we have you with us."
He fixed the rifle slung over his arm and trudged off to join the rest of his party, all equally absorbed in ripping loot from the carcasses. We needed it both for proof we completed the mission and for whatever the guild's research department would be using it for.
I moved to catch up to them when a familiar purple light caught my eye. Hidden beneath a shower of leaves and vines, another symbol glowed with faint violet rays bleeding through the green and brown around it. Another one? I summoned my notebook and pen from inventory and started sketching this new symbol.
The previous page listed all of the symbols I have come across in most of my missions. Adding this current one, it totalled to about fifteen. There might be more I've missed, but seeing this in almost every mission with an infestation of nether beasts to the scale of the jjangkai mission, it wouldn't be far-off to assume these symbols had something to do with the rising abundance of creatures in Solarlume.
Running my finger across the list including the town I found them in, I frowned. When I visited the Great Archives with Cavya, we didn't find anything of significance as to what these symbols could mean. Dragnasand, with its abundance of scholars and archivists, has failed to help us. During the search, I managed to sneak my own agenda in between. Like the information about the symbols, I also found none about jumping worlds or anything close to what happened to me. As far as I was concerned, nobody here thought there were other worlds beyond them apart from their own.
Well, there's that.
Cavya told me he'd shop around for any scholar outside the Central Empire who might know the script the symbols were written in. It's been a couple of weeks since then and I still haven't heard anything about it back.
The journey back to Mystriae was muted. I engaged with the Twin Scales for as long as it was necessary, at least until the familiar bustle of the street leading to the guild house came up. After that, I was on my own while Kinver went and updated his party's stats and merits.
My footsteps dragged on my way towards my room. The days spent on the road were no joke. Still, it wasn't any different from what I experienced back home. I was tired there just as I was now. The only difference was, this time around, no one was forcing me to do what I was doing. I just...didn't like staying sedentary. The feeling of worthlessness crept up every time I sat still for a moment.
I hated feeling that way.
The door croaked weakly when I entered my room. My bed, made of some netherbeast's down, had never looked so inviting. I collapsed on it, sparing a moment to withdraw all of my gear back into inventory.
