That-Shop-That-Was-Not-There-Yesterday Quest

[Vocalend]

You quickly rush downstairs, mind racking up plans and possibilities on how to survive the night. And honestly? You might have a shot at not dying.

You nearly stumble down the stairs as you reach the shop floor running, making your way to the tarp covered weapon that is to be your centerpiece in surviving the horde. You pull the tarp back, revealing the Banishing Ballista. You normally don't sell weapons of war of this size but sometimes, a large enough minotaur or other larger demi-humans visit your shop, asking for a repurposed heavy weapon. Why they don't just order a specially made weapon tailored to their size, you don't know. But you're glad to have this monstrosity of a weapon as you cart it facing the doorway.

Weapon Equipped:

Banishing Ballista
A nondescript large contraption of metal inlaid with arcane engravings. This weapon is made by the Galmer Arsenals, a famed producer of magical siege engines. This article of weaponry in particular is famed for their versatility and utility.
Qualities:

Omnivorous Ammo Tolerance
Siege Engine​

Click to shrink...

The best part of this weapon? It can self-charge. A feature that you pay premium for in that world and may very well save you now. You press a glyph, activating the arcane system that powers it. The ballista screeches as it sucks in air from all around, nearly knocking over the wares around you from the sheer pressure of air it sucked in, drawing the metallic string back..

With the weapon primed, you steel yourself, drawing one of the Void Daggers in your free hand, wielding both it and the sabre in tandem. "Right, this is it, Alicia. Let's... try to not die." With that thought, you dispel the mandala, which you quickly note to nearly be fully spent, holding together the door and allow it to open inward.

"... W-Welcome to The Wizard's Shelf," You said, glancing up and above. "A-Are you here to buy our wares?" You look at the extremely large being in front of the door, pausing to look at you. It is a humanoid creature seemingly made out of inky darkness around....nearly thrice your height with arms larger than tree trunks.

At your reasonable greeting, it screamed a guttural and deeper screech than the rabble outside.

"Guess not!" You quickly place the Void Dagger in your palm into the firing mechanism of the Ballista. Arcs of static energy cover it as the dark being lunges at you. You quickly aim the ballista to the center mass of the being before slamming your sword hand at the firing glyph.

True to its name, the Banishing Ballista banishes the being. The instant you fire the contraption, your vision seems to slow down, allowing you to perceive the torso of the intruder dissolving into gust of darkness in detail as the dagger simply pierces through it. The creature topples down with a silent thud, body dissipating in a cloud of black smoke.

The Void Dagger itself sailed off outside for you had forgotten to close the door. You quickly note that as you see more shadowy figures, all thankfully smaller than the first, topple to the ground in the same manner. You quickly close the door as you catch your breath.

And it would seem the beings outside did as well... for a moment before they somehow screeched louder than before. You must have well and truly pissed them off. Which is bad.

The large dark creature is slain. Alicia is down one Void Dagger. The mandala holding the door is slowly regenerating... and the mandalas holding the walls are deteriorating faster.

[] You've taken out the worst and you now know that you can actually kill them. Open the door and reroute the array to fully reinforce the walls. If they have any sense of intelligence, they should go and funnel themselves nicely through the door. You only have one other Void Dagger, but you can be creative with your ammunitions.
[] On the other hand, if they have better intelligence than ghouls back in your world, they might actually go and try to breach the windows while you're busy dealing with intruders getting into the door... and if they are less intelligent, they wouldn't care about your funneling attempts. Try instead to run circles around the entry points, stabbing them with sword and daggers, hoping to thin their numbers before they could fully overwhelm you from all directions.

--
AN: Bringing a siege weapon to one-on-one melee is plain overkill and I approve. A quick vote simply due to anti-climactic nature of your success. Vote should be open for less than twelve hours.

 

[Vocalend]

Your mind quickly set itself in motion. You can conceivably go and cycle through the door and the four windows that adorn your shop, allowing a quick respite for the mandala to recover. It'll be a patchwork job, you thought as you press the glyph on the ballista, allowing the string to tauten back and ready to fire. It's going to be dangerous, but doable.

A small part of your mind noted that you might be biting off more than you can chew, but fuck that. You lift the sword and move to the first window. You quickly pull the window inside, dispelling the mandala all the while, and you are immediately greeted with a featureless head with a gaping maw, screeching into your face.

You greet it back with a stab of the Void Dagger on its 'temple', allowing you feel the tensing of its body before you draw the dagger back, making it fall limply to the ground. With it gone, another two take its place, screaming all the while.

You give the two of them a taste of Lark's Vengeance as it cuts through their head horizontally, felling them to the ground.

That's pressure relieved, you thought as you slam the window shut and reapply the mandala. You move on to the next window, cleaning your 'yard' as you proverbially sweep through the blob of darkness that covered it. By your counts, you've cleared around one dozen of them.

By the time you finished with the windows and prepare to open the door, you mused that the work is easier than you thought.

Overconfidence proves to be an insidious threat, for as soon as you opened the door, you feel yourself knocked and feel the ground pointedly not below under you. It's a feeling that soon ended with the arrival of sharp pain in your gut and with your vision looking up to the ceiling. You look down after a short period of being stunned, to find a Void Dagger lodged in your belly.

"T-That's not at all what I expected, to be honest." You said as you stagger up, the pain numbing down. You know, from your experience of getting stabbed before, that this is not at all normal. You shouldn't be able to get up in the first place. Nor should the pain subside. You'll chalk it up to the benefit of Lichdom as you size up your new foe.

In contrast to the big boulder of a creature that you faced, this one is extremely slender. Whereas the vapourized creature from earlier big and mean and the 'normal' creatures only looking vaguely humanoid, this one is... doll-like. Smoothed out form of darkness that just stabbed you with enough force to lift you up to the air. It seems to wait for you though.

Well, its courtesy is its loss as you throw your other dagger into the primed ballista and fir-

Your instinct screamed at you as soon as the Banishing Ballista fires. Your right arm moving on their own in time as the ballista fired its payload directly at the slender creature... which promptly and swiftly catch it mid-air and spun on its heel to throw the Void Dagger back at you. You feel something snap in your shoulder as the flat of the sabre redirected the dagger up to the ceiling. The creature charges at you now, bounding with inhuman speed as you bring your blade to bear. You feel another bone snap in your shoulders as its hand thrusted to meet your blade which does not seem to be wounded by the impact.

"I bit more than I can chew, didn't I?"

You try to prop yourself to a proper fighting stance but that thing is too fast and decided to deliver a roundhouse kick on your face, one that you barely dodged by leaning back as you thrust the blade in it. The blade slid in as you expected, eliciting a much more shrill screech than the previous beings you fought. As you did not expect, though, it's stuck inside the creature's guts. You can feel malevolence radiating from it as it realizes the same thing as you did, opting instead to grip the sword with both hands clutching it.

All the while, the mandalas around the walls fray harder. And all the while, portions of the horde made its way inside the store, seemingly standing back to let their 'boss' do its thing.

The 'boss' seems content to letting the status quo stay. You frantically picture the worst case scenario of your store getting trashed apart alongside your body as the entire horde breached in.

It's a grim picture that ended the moment you recalled something.

It is fortunate that you still have another weapon at your disposal.

You wrench the dagger lodged in your gut, spraying your crimson blood all around the floor as you slam the dagger up on the top of its head. That elicited a much much more shrill scream as you push the entire thing off, using your legs to kick and leverage the sword off as well. You shoved the thing further back using your shoulder, an error to do as you feel another bone or three snap. You quickly press the advantage and restrain it, using the scraps of power in the mandala array to pin it still in front of the ballista. It seems to understand what you're going to do as you press the arming glyph, inserting the Void Dagger, now caked with your blood and its own inky blotch of darkness. The assembled heckler-hordes panic as they try to shamble closer. You allow yourself a unrestrained mirthful smile at the display, just in time for the ballista string to be completely taut. You tossed the Void Dagger inside the firing chambers once more.

"I'm sorry my dear costumer, but there's no return policy!" You slam the firing glyph, watching in satisfied rush as it pierced through the body, splattering chunks of much more solidified dark matter and disintegrating the unlucky shambling beings who are in the way to nothing as the Void Dagger once more sails to the distance.

It's a satisfied rush that ended as you feel the backlash from the entire mandala array holding the walls together simply snapped.

You feel a slight rush of utter terror instead when you hear the windows breaking as they did, streaming more and more of the beings inside. You raise Lark's Vengeance up. You're wounded and bleeding with fractures and broken bones. You're hilariously outnumbered with only one good weapon at reach right now.

You're also surprisingly calm at the prospect of dying. Maybe because you know you will not die from this. Maybe because the worst has passed. But whatever it is, you utter the following words with utter confidence.

"Who's next?!"

It's a challenge replied by the screeching of dozens as they lunge at you.

---

The mid-morning sun graces your face. The Long Dark Moon has passed, thankfully, allowing you to burrow out of the hiding hole on the Grand Plains. It's as pristine as you remember it. The golden grass swaying in the usual dry wind. It looks like it's going to be another productive day trave-

"Hrm? What's this?" You look down to see something lightly jutting out from the ground. You quickly dug up the object of the interest, dusting off the dirt from it.

"Blessed Fire! What is this?" A dagger of pure black from tip to handle, engraved with patterns you never seen before. Your instinct warns you to not touch the edges... something that you shouldn't need to be warned twice seeing the caked blood...

... and Abomination taint. You flinch as you flick the blade away... to look onwards.

"... And what in the name of the King is that?" You rub your eyes before taking another look. After being sure that you're not seeing a mirage, you could only gape gormlessly at the sight in front of you.

A building made out of stone, standing on top of a hill.

 

[Vocalend]

You decide, after some deliberation, to simply just get up to the structure. You also decide to pick the weird dagger up and pocket it. It might come in handy.

It's quite a quaint building, you note as you walked. Why would someone only build a two-floor housing in the first place, with no defense to start with? Architect-Knights from all around should be able to make a makeshift fort in several hours but this is just...

... well, you suppose that's a secondary concern to the fact that there's an actual house in the middle of nowhere.

As you get closer though, you see things that you'd never thought possible. The house? You're willing to believe that.

But an Abomination in broad daylight? You double-check your vision to see if you're not hallucinating again. You regret that slightly because you now see multiple of them in broad daylight. Feeling of terror well up in your chest amongst the feeling of incredulity before you realize something else. They aren't moving. Some sort of markings of pure white circle and encase the unholy creatures. They screech, seeing your arrival, in near unison. You sigh as you unclasp the clasp holding your mace to your waist.

With a thought, you lit the head of the mace and swung the flame-encased weapon at the first Abomination in your sight.
---

"Ughhh... where am I?"
---

THUNK

The Abomination screeches louder in pain as the flaming mace hits the it, but unlike your expectations (and perhaps that thing itself_, it... didn't die. Or rather, it's not allowed to. You can see that the impact very much hurt it as you thought it would. But the restraints that bound it together is most definitely stopped and absorbed a lot of the blow. Normally, one hit from the mace would kill one of this in an instant.

Well, time to try hitting it some more then.
---

"... That wasn't a horrible dream at all, was it?"
---
It's a tedious, if cathartic, thing to do to simply whack every Abomination in the vicinity with your mace. You note several important things though. Some of the bindings seems a lot more worn than others, evidenced by the fact that they shatter and broke quicker than others. Which is definitely interesting, but you don't see how it is relevant to your interest.

Not when you can instead focus on the death-screams of these Fire-Damned foul creatures.
---

You examined your wounds. Seven stab wounds at the least, utter feeling of numbness in your back which you suspect to be from the fact that your spine was raked thoroughly by one of them and many more parts of your flesh utterly torn to shreds.

Oh, and you're blind in your left eye.

On the plus side, you're still alive. Yay for Lichdom.

Now if only if the goddamn things outside would stop screaming, that'd be nice.
---

You pant exhaustively, the light workout being at all unexpected, when you thought of something else, the violent urges dissipating to clarity.

Is there even anyone living in there? You suppose there should be. But how did they survive The Long Dark Moon? Whoever owned this abode must've wielded very strange divine blessings to allow for that sort of magic. Well, you'll know the answer once you knock the door now in front of you.

"Is there anyone in here?"
---

"Is there anyone in there?"

You stiffen hearing the strange words outside. The sounds don't sound like any language you know at all, but somehow you know the meaning behind what the speaker, who you can clearly identify as a man, is saying.

"Hello?"

You raise yourself up from the floor where you had lain unconscious. Despite the fact that by all rights you shouldn't be able to stand, you did anyway. You held Lark's Vengeance, bloodied in whatever the equivalent of the blood is for the beings, in your right hand. You'd hold the other Void Dagger in your left hand but with less than the recommended digits to hold it, you'll refrain from doing so.

The sun is out, the floor of your shop is dirty, some of your wares are strewn over on the ground, there's the corpse of the slender creature in front of the doorway missing its head, and there's (hopefully) a customer outside.

What will you even do now?

[] You'll fire back an answer to the visitor. You don't know the language that he's speaking but you'll give a fair shot anyway.
[] You'll go and immediately open the door. Sure, there's the problem of 'looking like you've exited a whirlwind made out of sharp objects', but you can only hope that your visitor to be... accepting of the circumstances.
[] Keep your silence and don't say anything, not until you've cleaned up... somehow. You're not sure you could even do that. All of the healing spells you know definitely takes longer than one day to even start healing your body... but you gotta try to do something else, right?

 

[Vocalend]

You slid the sabre back to its scabbard, bloodied as it is, before making your reply. You consider a bit on how to proceed. Whatever magic is affecting you right now allows you to understand but not to communicate. You rummage your pockets, finding your somewhat bloodstained journal. Using your good hand to open it, you activate the glyph sewn to its leather cover.

Mind to text marker activated.

"Hello?" You replied back, parroting what he said, before shifting to your own language. "Who are you?"

There's a lengthy pause from the other side of the door. There's no doubt that the man is considering what you're saying. You took the time to make your way to the countertop. You activated the analytical arrays outside, covertly scanning the person waiting.

True to your assumptions, you see the visage of a man, seemingly tanned brown in complexity, scratching his black haired head in confusion with one hand. The other hand holding a rather sizzling mace. He carries with him a rather large pack on his back. Your still working eye veers to his waist, adorned simply with an interesting looking longsword hanging without a scabbard, completely black with a golden hilt. You also sense a sort of weird... magical energy of sorts permeating throughout his body. You can also sense the utter feeling of concentration on his face.

"Can you understand me? Say yes if you can."

"Yes." You apply to your left hand a Gausser's Glove, one of your best selling items. Accidental limb loss is something that's an unsolvable literal plague that haunts Artennova ever since you were born and an item that works as an emergency prosthetics is always in demand. The phantom feeling of having your fingers back is simply great. That's one injury hidden.

"Can you speak my language? Say no if you can't."

You pause in your musings to consider what the man trying to do. "No." You smile as you realize what he's doing.

"Are you okay?"

"... Yes." By phrasing whatever he's saying as questions and giving you the binary ways to answer, the two of you now worked out a crude and ineffective yet nevertheless working method of communication.

"Can I come in?" Of course, it's ineffective partly because you can't make a sales pitch and tell him about your predicament.

"No."

"Why no-" He paused. "Can I come in later?"

"Yes."

"Whe- In one hour?"

That would be enough for you to take a bath and bandage yourself... you think. "No."

"In two hours?" Of course, you need some more time. You look at the journal, matching the thoughts in your mind with the papers. You're transcribing his diction to something that you can look at and pronounce.

"No. Three." You do need to teach him how to understand you though.

"... In three hours?"

"Yes. Three hours."

A rather long awkward pause occurs before the man shrugged. "I will wait outside for three hours then. I will erect fortifications waiting for you. I will stay with you. It's still dangerous tonight."

Fortifications? "Okay, er, I mean, yes." Well, you'll see what he mean. Now you need something to do to pass the three hours.

Vote the following based on Ranked Voting:
[] You're curious about this strange man. At first glance, between the pack on his back and the fact that he's not even wearing anything resembling an armour, he looks like an average traveller. Yet the way he carries himself, what with the mace and the sword on his waist, reminds you of a Subjugation Knight. And fortifications? You're inherently curious about that.
[] You mustn't be distracted though, you need to clean yourself up. You're literally caked with your own dried blood. You need a clean hot plunge in the bath tub and tend to your wounds. Make yourself more presentable and all that.
[] Speaking of presentable, you need to make sure the shop looks presentable too. At least clean up some of the blood. You're not going to try and move the weird creature though. That one stays bound inside the mandala.
[] You need to find something to communicate better with the, for the lack of better word, Knight. There should be something in your inventory that would work.
[] You should also complete cataloguing the shop's inventory. It's not exactly the most appealing or important of things to do, but finishing it may give you a slight peace of mind.
[] Also something else that does give you peace of mind, your stash of money. You're not even sure how currencies will work here but you need to properly account what money you have in the place.

 

[Vocalend]

Artennova

The Floating Spires of Lark Castle
​

"Well then. I never expected that the experiment would turn me into a God... Okay then. Well for my first edict, time to sort out this distorted world. Let The Flourishing Begin Anew!"
-Lark, Ascended God of Magic​

Artennova is the widely-agreed-upon name of the spherical planet orbiting a blue star. It has two widely-agreed-upon celestial satellites, The Godly Palace and The Mourner. It has three widely-agreed-upon continents, housing all the major polities in the planet. It has four widely-agreed-upon major polities residing on Artennova.

That's the end of where all of the widely-agreed-upon things ends. For Artennova is a chaotic world infused with magic.

History
No one has an idea when or where the first intelligent beings began to emerge in the world. It's a question that is unanswered to this day even to other Gods, for The Mourner continued his eternal mourning. But it's agreed-upon that the first societies were formed sometime five thousands years ago, belonging to the Dragonkind. They built the groundworks for many of the 'younger' races to claim their right. The Dragonkind often times bonded with the fondly-remembered younglings, serving as advisors to the younger races and to help them in their times of need. In time, perhaps a Golden Era where all the beings could unite as one despite their differences.

But The Flourishing crushed that dream.

For numerous reasons, Artennova began to be flooded by an intolerable amount of ambient mana, to the point of become a stifling miasma that choke and kill beings not attuned to the magical elements that permeate the world. Many trials and tribulationns occurred during The First Flourishing from the crushing blow of Months of Insanity to the Great Massacre of Cascan. Many of the races find their numbers lessen or mutate into differing forms and shapes. The lands and even times themselves are distorted. Lands fly off to the air, water turn to gas in an instant, entire wars and conflicts changing the fate of the world happen out of sight in The Hollowed History. It is somewhat-agreed-upon that this period of the Flourishing occurred for close to two thousand years, enough for the races to develop an identity distinct from one another.

This changed when Lark, a human wizard, became the Ascended God of Magic. In one fell swoop, he changed the circumstances governing Artennova, doing anything on his part in The Renewed Flourishing to mend the bridges between the conflicting races, paving the way for the The Golden Age where a resemblance of the unity shown in the times before The Flourishing emerges.

Magic
It's hard to talk about Artennova without glancing at the impact magic has to society as a whole. The widely-agreed-upon consensus of the permeance of magic in Artennova is the quote from Lark (also widely-agreed-upon to had been appropriated from an unknown source inside the Hollowed History) himself:

"Every trace of everything is imbued with mana. Mana is imbued in everything from the rays of the sun to the eternal skeletal remains in Cascan. To claim that magic is not a fabric of reality, is to simply spit in the face of the fundamental rules of the world.

Click to shrink...

There's countless branches of magic in the Artennova with countless restrictions and rules besides. Lark Castle functions as the foremost authority in magical knowledge, what being governed directly by Lark himself. His style of governance is one in which he awaits for his priests and acolytes, which in essence is covers all mages in the world. Magic, to put it simply, is volatile to the point of being extremely dangerous. For this specific reason, Lark decides to promote to usage of magical items throughout Artennova instead. The effects of an item imbued with magic is often times weaker than the effect of a directly cast spell but provides consistency and without the risk of miscasts.

That said, despite Lark's best efforts, the expediency of casting magic directly outweighs the benefits of magical items ｰ though it is widely-agreed-upon that without Lark's push, magical items wouldn't be as popular as it is now ｰ to the point of creating the most important institution in Artennova, the Subjugation Calls.

Technology and Quality of Life
It is agreed-upon that the civilizations of Artennova found themselves in a great spot after The Renewed Flourishing. From the magocracy that is Lark Castle to the magophobic democracy that is Alten Republic, the poorest of citizens have access to cheap daily food, free clean water, and healthcare services amongst others. The advances in technology correlates directly to Lark's push in making magical items accessible to everyone. Even Alten Republic couldn't deny that despite the citizenry's hatred to magic, opting to try inventing technological analogues to known magical spells and items. This led to numerous works that are aimed to improving the overall standards in Artennova. From the Skyfleet of Mysert to the Ruination Golems, Artennova heads to an Enlightenment Era, one that hopefully continued on the advancements of the Renewed Flourishing.

 

[Vocalend]

With both hands fully capable, you set out to clean out some of the damages that had been done. To this, you enlisted the help of one mop and bucket. Part of a set, in fact. You trace your good hand along the handle of the mop, activating the time-saving function of the cleaning mop. In a single bound, it moves by itself, swiping the bloodstained floor with ease. You put the bucket, filled to brim with water near the central aisle as you turn the appraisal sets onto your own body, scanning your broken and battered form.

The outlook is... not good. There's no way of getting around the core fact that your body is currently decomposing. Your heart, stabbed from the front, no longer beats and with that, your wounds are not healing. Or rather, they are starting to rot.

Fortunately, you have several course of action, as you left the mop do its work and move upstairs to the bathroom. Your ruined clothes are going to need to be cleaned and reconstructed later. For now, you're going t-

Your thought processes stopped as you feel the rumblings of an earthquake below your feet. You stumble, trying to find your balance, as the earthquake intensified. What is happening now?

As if on cue, the knight shouted from below. "My bad, I tapped on the wrong vein! I can work with this though!"

What is he doing? As much as you'd like to check on his work, whatever the hell it is, you need to... sort yourself out first and foremost. You didn't even bother trying to get the blood-caked clothes off of you first, them being too sticky, and just activated the shower. You can feel the hot water course through you, all while the rumblings from the earth continues at a steady rate.

...

You left the bathroom covered in bandages with the ruined clothes thrown into the cleaning basket. You don't have enough medical expertise to start knitting your body together but you do know enough to commit to some first-aid... in so far as it is applicable to a Lich. A fact that you're doubting more and more now. You'll leave that thought for now as the rumbling stopped. You stopped to look outside...

"What the actual hells?" ... to stare unbelievingly at the fiery landscape all around you. You almost rush out of the shop, unheeding of your injuries, before the knight shouted again.

"Don't be alarmed, this is perfectly normal. Your house will not burn."

... You're not quite sure how you'd react but considering that the store is also rated for sudden firestorms, you decide to pointedly ignore the chaos outside and focus on finding the proper attire. You settle on a combo of thick wooly clothes, taking care to cover over the bandages as much as possible. You even make sure that the glove on your left hand can be considered as 'fashionable aesthetics' rather than the magical extremities projector that it actually is. Unfortunately, you're just going to have to go out with a piece of cloth over your missing eye, carefully putting on your spare reading glasses which flung off of you during the battle.

Fully cleaned off, you went downstairs again, using the walls as supports as the earth rumbled once more. You take stock of the situation on the ground floor, finding that the mop is halfway done doing its rounds. The cluttered merchandise on the store can't exactly be fixed in the next... two hours, but you do what you can, taking care to grab the Icon of Icons and putting it on the countertop. It's quite the item. In essence, it translate voices into a series of images emitted directly to the mind of the communicated person. The drawback is that it only work to one person... with the upside that it is a completely private form of communication so long as the Icon is held.

Icon of Icons
A small statue the size of one's palm. The statue is made in the resemblance of The Mourner, or at least, the form in which it might have been using before The Flourishing. It allows the wielder to communicate their words to another by sending the voice straight through the mind.
Qualities:

Speech to Icons
One-to-One Private Communication Line​

Click to shrink...

It will suffice as a sort of 'sophisticated' device to talk, at least until you actually learn the language. Which... is a problem. You'll need to properly research how to do just that. You have some thoughts on how to do that though.

Those thoughts will have to be postponed as you quaff several bottles of potions. The first, is the Tonic of Flesh. You taste utter raw liquified meat go down your gullet as you finish the potion. That should help quicken your metabolism rate and passively regenerate and knit your flesh together. The second, Tonic of Blood, should help you to replenish the lost blood from the fight. The metallic tang of the potion lingered on even as you wash the aftertaste of the potions. You don't have anything to deal with your lack of sight for now though. Something to also consider for later.

By the time the three hour mark is done though, you have cleaned the shop in its totality. The knight didn't call for you though. Still... you're curious about what he's doing. But first, payment for services rendered. You set about grabbing the newly baked loaves of bread from the oven and put it on a plate. In addition, you set aside a jug of water aside. Carrying the two items downstairs, you swing the door open and prepare yourself to meet the man.

Result:
-> The entirety of The Wizard's Shelf is utterly cleaned from the damage of the battle. None of the wares were harmed beyond repair and all of the reagents were quickly salvaged. ???
-> Aside from the lack of one eye, Alicia Lemongrass' physical condition is outwardly stable. No bad first impression possible when interacting. Wounds will regenerate in at least a week. Options to sped up the regeneration and healing of the eye unlocked
-> Icon of Icons found and serves as an excellent one-way communication device. Further options to understand the language available.
-> Not much is gleaned from what the man is capable of... only that it is extremely flashy and at least dangerous.
-> Money remains uncounted. ???
-> The remainder of the items remain uncatalogued.

---
Due to a combination of sickness and IRL business, the update is rather late. Finally got the time to complete it. As usual, if you have any ideas, submit them and please wait warmly for the next part.

 

[Vocalend]

You finish your work, planting State of Affairs to the ground, quenching the blue flame that envelop the blade on the now charred ground. Nature is always the first casualty whenever your lot shape the earth.

"Though the grass burns, humanity survives." You mutter the prayer under your breath, finishing your work. You should ask the lady soon. Two and a half hours had passed an-

You whirl as you hear the door open, readying your hand at the now-cooled mace hanging at your side before relaxing, if just. Out comes who you can only assume to be your Gracious Host for the night. You feel your breath hitch lightly at your throat at her appearance. Her skin, to be specific. Fair and light tone, bordering on pale. Her body itself is covered in garments that would border on uncomfortable for many of your kin. Your light admiration turned to concern however, at the lack of eye and the fresh bandage covering it. And the sword hanging on her hip. The Long Dark must've taken its toll on this maiden.

Before you could say anything else, however, your mind is hit with a series of flashing images. Your sight temporary sees a hand, held up in a sign of refusal before you see a pair of eyes. As soon as you processed them, you see face to face with the lady once more. She is holding a weird statuette of sorts in her right hand and balancing a tray filled with bread and water on her left, face kept neutral. You then see another flash of image. That of the foods and yourself, clothed in a cumbersome set of armour before the lady pointedly glance at the tray.

So she's asking you to not look too closely at her form and to accept the food. You think. It's hard to make sense of things from images, even if it is much better than trying to slowly understand what a single word mean through repeating.

You accept the tray from her hand. "My apologies then, I didn't mean to pointedly gaze at you." He paused. "It's simply unusual to have someone like you in here."

The lady cocked her head to the side, expression betraying what she was about to say. "It's a long story, but let's start by me asking a question." You rummage your pants with your free hand. The appendage quickly found the black dagger, wrapped in a piece of cloth. Confirming your suspicions, the lady's eyes widened. "You dropped this?"
---

Of all the things that you thought you'd never see again it'd be the Void Dagger. The Banishing Ballista propelled the weapon to the far distance, after all. "Yes." You said, remember to speak in the foreign language. The knight paused, putting the tray on the ground before handing you the dagger with two hands, which you accepted tentatively with both hands. You are, after all, unsure what customs work here. And as helpful as the man is, you can't help but to be wary.

Anyone carrying a black sword back in Artennova was trouble. While you are certain that this knight aren't paid by the Republic, your instinct told you to be careful still. Whatever magic he used, it is most definitely powerful. What he seemingly did was raising the earth around the hill by the way of using lava and magma flow from within the ground, creating a sizable wall of packed soil with very much still hot lava washing over it. That's not counting the smoke from the fire he set. Judging by the smoke surrounding the fortified complex, he had basically set fire to the entire grassland... which you don't even know its size.

While you inspected the surroundings, the knight had partaken in the meal you gave, quaffing the water and eating the bread given. After a while though, he asked. "I suppose that you would allow me to enter your abode, Gracious Host?" He looked expectantly at you. "You've offered food, will you offer your roof?"

[] You did clean the store for a reason. He could stay inside and peruse at your wares. You'll have to head off several tricky questions, of course. He is unfamiliar with your wares, and you're the same with his customs.
[] You'll refuse to his offer. The questions that could be asked could very well lead to some conflict. You have a hunch that this isn't exactly the right thing to do.

Aside from that though, what will you need to actually discuss with him? He did say there's a lot to discuss, and you can be certain that there'd be things that he want to know.
[] Those pertaining to himself. One can learn a lot from a person simply by their mannerisms, sure. But directly asking gives you a lot more knowledge. This is rather risky at the same time, because he will ask the same of you.
[] Those pertaining to the creatures you fought. Your wounds bled no more and your heart started to faintly beat now, but still, what the Gil were those things. The normal things are clearly analogous to ghouls of sorts. But what were the two weirder creatures you fought? The puppet-like being in particular would've killed you were you still a normal human. So answers regarding those would be great.
[] Maybe there's another thing that you want to talk about, but what exactly would it be? (Write-In Option)

 

[Vocalend]

As were the Glimpses of Things to Come. It's a pity that we'll not find out what those were about. And I would have loved to learn more about the setting we are in currently, as well as read more settings and people you'd come up with as the story continued.

Click to shrink...

Seeing as I am not going to use the notes as I did, I might as well give out the explanations of what would've been. Consider this a sort of a last explanation I can give ; v;

Worldbuilding: TL;DR: Shit's fucked big time. Humanity feared the dark ever since they huddled in caves of yore for Darkness made form....well, forms. In particular, the reason for the whole madness is because the Moon is alive and hates the children of the Spirits.

But humankind have always been adaptable. On the lands of the West - analogous to European Continent - people huddle within cast-iron walls and underground cities dug deep against the rays of the Pale Dark Moon. In these lands too, Fire Clerics became an institution. Basically, they are paladins with firebending but without armours because the claws of the Darkness-spawns tear through even plate mail and all the assorted layers to the bone. Any thicker armour just means you'll swarmed by all sides. Tenders are about as lightly armoured as a skirmisher but they can cast flamethrowers from their fingertips each and also the capacity to tap into the rich ore veins all around the continent and forge them to their will. I'd say an even trade ;v

To the East (why yes, I am a rather schlock writer ;v), the lands are.... more prosperous. Basically, most of the humans live in a big Pangean super-continent divided by avery much unnatural mountain ranges with the average height of Everest and the taller ones about the size of Olympus Mons. While the West are blessed with fire, the East is blessed with water. While the West builds tall, the East builds wide. Waterways carved out in intricate manners work as a subcontinental-wide array of Darkness-spawn weakening ritual.... but ones that would have frayed and get broken by the time Alicia done got isekai'd

As for the Glimpses of Things To Come?

"Child, I beg of you, stay." The wizened old man calls out hoarsely from the bed. What bare skin peeking out of his bloodied bandages revealed patchworks of raw scars and sutures. Despite having no arms, not any more after yesterday, he still tries to reach out to the much younger man, currently on the process of wearing his chainmail armour.

Not that it'd be help against the Abominations.

"I cannot, grandfather. Not after hearing what has been said by the Fire Clerics. If what they say is true..."

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This is the knight that Alicia encountered. My notes on him are about 2000 km away from me so I am typing most of these from memory but essentially, he just started his journey to see if he is the successor of the world's Charlemagne. The Firelord who beat back the Darkness and made human civilization on the Western part of the Pangea actually a civilization. He has to go to the East and to the Great Mountain Ranges though. That's....tricky, to say the least. A lot of the Darkness-spawns are there. Luckily, there's Alicia. Having the knight as a clientele would be the backdrop of getting to know all there is to know about the Western side.

The swordsman gurgled his last breath, his throat drowning with his own blood from the slice on the neck that he sported. He tumbled to the ground dead as his killer moved on to the next warrior in line.

The warrior yelled, making a charge at the killer. "Die you filthy abomi- hurk." A charge that failed as his lungs are pierced through, crimson blade jutting out of his back. Without a sound, the blade slides back out and without support, the body fell.

It's the twentieth body that fell dead tonight. The night is young and the Undead Moon is still up high. More must fall before It slumbers once more.

Click to shrink...

With the threat of extinction not a threat, the Eastern countries expanded wide....and carried their own sets of problems. The usual squabbles that came when existential threats did not occur, you know the types. And just so happens, someone disagrees with this state of affairs.... violently so. The wandering ronin is a man touched by insanity and wisdom in equal measure who made it his life goal to purge the nobility of their foolishness.

And yes, he would be the primary clientele for Alicia. I had great plans which...well, has to be squandered sadly.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" The faint girlish voice sounded from behind him. Two figures cloaked with garments as black as the night walked in silence, ensconced as they are in the dense forestry.

Suicide, is what they are practically doing.

"No. This isn't, my niece. But we must fulfill our duty. Even unto death, where we become Wanderers."

The niece said nothing in return, where they reached a clearing in the forest, where no trees nor vegetations grew.

Only a patch of cold sand where a chained body laid, trashing against the bindings that held it.

"Let us perform the Work."

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For all the talk about Abominations and Darkness-spawns...there are always those who would serve darker powers. Some people believed that the Darkness-spawns are either the forms of deceased humankind or the next step in human evolution. Understandably, this viewpoint gets you called a heretic by the people whose main powers tends to revolve around burning stuffs.

The niece here would have been Alicia's clientele and sort of expounds on the whole that is the Darkness-spawns. She also, has for a lack of better words, a lot of Bad End potentials. If she succeeds though.... well, that'd be interesting.

In the afternoon sunset atop the mountains, the festivities continued. Cheerful villagers chanted their hymns and songs, the great firepit, tended by the eldest amongst them, light up in a comforting heatwave.

"Are you ready, Chosen?" The eldest of the Tenders spoke out to the young man in front of him, barely eighteen summers, who looks positively excited.

"I am ready." The eldest Tender nodded and hand him the molten dagger.

"Then do it."

With the command, the Chosen sank the blade to his own heart.

Click to shrink...

Remember what I said about the fuck-off impassible mountain range? Just because it's impassible doesn't mean it's uninhabitable. In the skies above, the Moon and the Earthly Spirits have an...unusual interaction with one another. Those who lived in places where one can touch the clouds are touched in a way different than those who lived in the lowlands.

I will be honest, I have not fleshed out this bit as much as I need to and with the loss of the notes, I am just as much lost as you would be ; v;

The shipwreck washed ashore in the cloudy morning, carrying in tattered hulls two people, cold and barely hanging onto the wreck. The two who were the sole survivors of the journey. Their arrival was watched by three masked people, standing on the beach.

"P-Praise be!" The first survivor, an old man, nearly bones by now, wept tears of joy as one of the watchers made their way to his side, carrying with him a jug of water and a piece of warm bread.

"W-Why? Why must I be only one to survive once more?" The other, a much younger man, cried tears of anguish instead, lamenting his cursed luck. The second watcher made their way to him, carrying the same thing as the first one did.

"Because it is fate." The third watcher spoke, the masculine voice muffled behind the bleached white mask, as he made his way to the survivors. "The journey is long and treacherous to reach the Court Beyond The Sea. Do not be sad that others did not make it. Remember their sacrifice instead." He carry with him two masks, both bleached white, and offered them to the two survivors.

"Remember that here, the King will guide us to salvation."

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This one... is the 'last' of the things. Remember your costumer?

Ah, a new costume-

Power overwhelming. The Herald cometh. The Inner Fire is kindled.

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As you thought of the restraint mandala, the customer raised a placating hand. "Peace, shopkeeper. I mean no harm." You proverbially put your mind-finger off the trigger and to look at your customer more clearly. A fair-faced man with yellow hair and matching set of eyes pleaded on you. "My curse must have startled your sensibilities. W-whatever it is that you were going to pull on me, I implore you to not do it."

You have to admit, it's rare that a customer managed to startle you so. You...haven't exactly heard of such a curse, but it's not even the weirdest thing you've heard. "My bad then." You relaxed. "Must've been one hell of a curse, to be that impacting."

He chuckled wryly. "Y-Yes. Very."

Click to shrink...

From the top of the tallest building on the spire, you looked down. The shop had truly disappeared then. The entire space around the Wizard's Shelf had truly been displaced. You note the unfortunate man that had crossed to close to the threshold. He's entirely without his left arm now. He'll live though, nothing this world's magic couldn't fix.

"Well then, I guess we'll see each other someday, Miss Alicia." And with that, you vanished.

Click to shrink...

He's the King in Yellow, in the flesh. This will be the last chain of 'quest' that will get you travelling to other worlds and start expanding your wares there.

And that's it, the biggest of the post-mortem explanation. A closure to the experiment in detail.