Chapter 99: Mission 3 Update
The climb up the stairs was a monumental effort. Each step sent a fresh ache through my legs, a dull protest from muscles pushed far beyond their limits. Erik's bath was a luxury I'd taken for granted before; now, it felt like a distant, promised land.
I managed to get the hot water running, steam quickly fogging the small, wooden room. I didn't even bother undressing with care, just peeling off the filthy, blood-stiffened clothes and letting them fall to the floor in a heap that smelled of the road and death. I sank into the tub with a groan that was pure, unadulterated relief. The scalding water enveloped me, searing away the grime and the cold that had sunk deep into my bones. I leaned my head back against the rim, closing my eyes, letting the heat loosen the knots in my shoulders and back. For a few precious moments, there was only the warmth and the silence, a blessed emptiness in my head.
That's when it happened.
The familiar, unwelcome shift in the air. The silence in the room became absolute, the steam seeming to freeze in place. I didn't need to open my eyes to know a blue box was hovering in my vision.
With a weary sigh, I looked.
***---***
[MISSION UPDATE]
MISSION 3: THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Retrieve the Philosopher's Stone and absorb its energy to increase your Ki reserves.
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: Learn a martial art that fits your type of fighting.
PRIMARY REWARD: [UNKNOWN]
BONUS REWARD:[UNKNOWN]
MISSION DURATION: 320 HOURS (10 Days)
***---***
I stared at the text, the water suddenly feeling less soothing. So. Finally, the objectives were revealed. No more cryptic titles. The System had laid its cards on the table.
My first, immediate thought was a strange sort of relief. This meant Silveridge wasn't the place for it. Just like Mission 2 had only fully unlocked once I was already tailing Freya, this mission was activating now. Here, in Torak. The prompt to officially [Start Mission] hadn't even appeared yet. The world's events were still catching up to the System's script.
But the mission itself… it made a brutal, perfect sense.
Retrieve the Philosopher's Stone. A legendary artifact, on this world or any other. The thing alchemists dreamed of. A source of ultimate power or transmutation. And the System wanted me to find it and use it not for gold or immortality, but to fuel my Ki. To turn a legend into a battery.
Learn a martial art.
A grim, tired smile touched my lips. The System Administrator's voice echoed in my memory: "Fifty of those missions will draw from you, your memories, fears, ambitions, regrets."
This wasn't just random. This was a direct response. In the dust and blood outside the city, I had decided I needed to become a warrior, not just a brawler. I had vowed to find a teacher. And now, here was the System, weaving my own ambition into its inescapable fabric. It was giving me exactly what I wanted, and tying my survival to achieving it.
It provided all the added information I needed. The path was clear, and it was terrifyingly simple. Once the mission started, I had ten days.
Ten days to find a mythical artifact that every power in the city would probably kill for.
Ten days to find a teacher and learn a fighting style from the ground up.
And all while a powerful crime lord was hunting me, my only allies were a traumatized merchant and a wounded bodyguard, and my statistical chance of seeing the eleventh day was still hovering in the red.
I sank deeper into the water, until it covered my ears, muffling the world. The mission text remained, burning against the backs of my eyelids. The bath was no longer a refuge. It was the calm before the storm. The starting line.
The hunt was on.
I scrubbed until the water turned grey, then I drained it and ran a fresh bath just to soak in the clean heat. By the time I was done, the filth of the road was gone, washed down the drain with the blood and the worst of the memory. I put on the spare set of clothes I kept in my room, simple trousers, a tunic, soft-soled boots. I felt lighter. New. Or at least, a convincing copy of new.
I walked downstairs, my damp hair combed back, the lingering scent of soap clinging to me.
Erik was polishing a glass behind the bar. He didn't look up, but his nose twitched. "Well, now you smell like a person," he rumbled. "A vast improvement. I was considering charging you extra for fumigating the place."
"You're all heart, Erik," I said, my voice still tired, but the edge of my humor starting to creep back in now that I didn't feel like a walking corpse.
"Don't I know it," he said, finally looking up. His eyes flickered past me.
I followed his gaze. Seated at a corner table, half-hidden in shadow, was Freya. Her black hair was pulled back in its usual tight tail, and she was wearing a simple leather jerkin over her shirt instead of her full plate. She was leaning across the table, speaking to her father in a low, intense voice. She hadn't noticed me come down.
Erik gave a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head, a warning, or maybe just a statement of fact. Trouble at the table.
I was about to slip out when Freya's head turned. Her black eyes, sharp as ever, landed on me. The intense conversation died on her lips. Her expression shifted through several phases at once: surprise, recognition, then the familiar, default setting of cool assessment, tinged with the unresolved tension of everything that had happened between the wall and her father's study.
"You're back," she stated. No warmth, no hostility. Just a fact.
"Observant as always," I said, walking toward the bar but keeping her in my periphery. "The quest ran long."
"I didn't notice," she said, turning slightly in her chair to face me more directly. It was a lie, and we both knew it. She'd have checked the board, seen the escort quest closed out. But admitting she'd noticed would have meant admitting she'd looked, and that was a bridge too far for whatever this was between us.
"Must be nice," I said, leaning against the bar. "Being so busy with important knightly things that a lowly D-Rank's comings and goings just blend into the wallpaper."
Her jaw tightened. Before she could fire back, she turned her focus back to Erik, the subject clearly more urgent than trading barbs with me.
"Father, please," she said, her voice dropping back into that earnest, pressured tone. "Just speak to Guild Master Valerius. One more time. A small party. A retrieval, not an expedition. We know the general area now, from his last reports…"
Erik set the glass down with a firm clink. "Freya. We've been over this. The Guild Master has ruled. The Edelmere is in a state of heightened agitation. Sending a team deep into known goblin territory, on a cave-roaming mission, for a body…" He sighed, a sound of infinite patience worn thin. "It's a suicide run for a corpse. Valerius is right. Rordan is gone. We honor him by not getting more people killed for the sake of bones."
"He wasn't just bones!" Freya's voice hit a sharp note before she reined it in. "He was a comrade, the son of a wealthy noble family. He deserves a proper pyre, not to be left as… as goblin filth in the dark." Her hands were fists on the table. "And we wouldn't be roaming blindly. We have someone who knows exactly where he is."
Both of them turned to look at me.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
Freya's gaze was suddenly charged, pleading in a way that was completely at odds with her usual armored demeanor. "Kaizen knows the cave system. He fought his way out of it. With him as a guide, it wouldn't be a roaming mission. It would be in and out. A day, maybe two."
I held up my hands. "Whoa. Hold on. Pump the brakes, Silver." I looked from her desperate face to Erik's weary one. "First of all, that 'cave system' is a godforsaken labyrinth that I barely survived by the skin of my teeth and a mountain of luck. Secondly, I just got back from a… let's call it a 'complicated' escort mission that involved more back-alley diplomacy than I ever want to see again. I am bruised, I am tired, and my desire to go spelunking in a monster-infested death-forest is currently sitting at a solid zero."
"It wouldn't take long," Freya insisted, ignoring my protests. "You know the way. We'd have a full team. It would be safe."
"Safe," I repeated flatly. "In the Edelmere. Where the trees try to eat you and the local wildlife is mutated by raw chaos. To find a body that's been rotting for weeks. That's your definition of safe?" I shook my head. "My idea of relaxing involves a horizontal position and not being stabbed. It does not involve volunteering for a dungeon crawl."
Freya's eyes flashed with frustration, but also something like betrayal. She'd seen me fight. She knew I could do it. In her mind, my refusal was just more of my selfish cowardice, the same thing that made me walk away from Ronta Vro.
Erik watched the exchange, his long face unreadable. He was on the Guild Master's side, but he also saw his daughter's pain.
I'd had enough. This was a family argument I wanted no part of. I pushed off the bar.
"My sympathies for your fiance," I said to Freya, and I meant it, even if it didn't sound like it. "But I'm not your guide. Not today." I turned to Erik. "I'm heading to the guild hall. Need to file the official completion for my last contract. Collect the other half of my pay."
Erik gave a slow nod. "Try not to start any wars on the way over. We have enough of those."
"No promises," I said, offering a ghost of my old smirk. I didn't look back at Freya as I headed for the door. I could feel her glare on my back, a mixture of anger and disappointment.
The cool afternoon air of Torak hit me as I stepped outside, a stark contrast to the heated tension I'd just left. The guild hall awaited. Paperwork, money, and the first official step before the real work began: finding a stone that didn't want to be found, and a teacher who could keep me alive long enough to use it.