It didn't take long for Diana to pull Azotreh out of her routine for something more. A contract posted by the adventurer's guild, or so the oversized text at the top of a sheet of paper said.
"A hunting group of glitterskins stumbled on one of these guys out in the fields," Diana said, her voice sharper than normal. "Bunch of lazy pricks didn't wanna bother with it, but still reported it. So we're gonna hunt it. Give you a proper workout."
Azotreh nodded silently and took the contract. Her aura flared as both residents of her soul tried to communicate the same thing.
She couldn't sense the arcane power of her body, but could still sense her aura as the pair focused it on the sheet of paper.
The air flashed gold, and the paper vanished. Diana looked startled as a distorted voice once more attempted to break through Azotreh's thoughts. Whatever the pair had done, it had caused a strange reaction from the system.
Even more strangely, something new appeared in the air. Not a fizzling static box, but a golden square filled with text. Its edges solid and stable.
[New Quest: Inferior Spryggan]
[Kill and loot the monster: Inferior Spryggan]
[Reward: 5 Greenwind Empirial Gold Coins, 5 G-Grade Kathmana]
Azotreh waved her hand through the box, and it shrunk into a small golden light in the corner of her vision. Diana looked at her like she was going crazy until her eyes widened in realization.
Diana moved faster than Azotreh could see. One moment she was walking to the door, and the next she was grasping Azotreh by the back of her neck and lifting her into the air. Azotreh struggled, but Diana was simply stronger. Her nails didn't even leave a mark on Diana's skin.
"Collar intact, so how are you seeing messages?" Diana half-asked herself and half the room. The administrator didn't respond, clearly occupied elsewhere.
Azotreh managed to twist a bit in Diana's grip and tried to bite into the older woman's wrist, only to feel her teeth slam into a material as solid as the sheer metal walls. But Azotreh had felt worse, so she bit again and again. Her jaw loosened before tightening around solid flesh.
Diana didn't even seem to feel it, preoccupied with something in the air in front of her.
Azotreh suddenly felt the brands ignite. The scent of burned meat began to fill the air as Azotreh screamed. She struggled harder in Diana's grip, but the hand clutching her didn't loosen in the slightest.
Diana's left eye flashed a brilliant white, and the pain intensified as one of the brands was cleanly sliced. A beam of searing light ripped through the rune, already melting her skin, and the symbol lost function immediately.
This time, when a system message flared into existence, it was the same shade of blue that filled the lights of the facility. It was still fuzzy around the edges, but no longer breaking like clay.
[You have been debuffed by: Solar Burn]
[You have taken severe damage. Seek assistance immediately.]
[You have acquired Light Resistance (0.01%)]
[Pain Resistance has increased to (2.31%)]
[Burning Pain Resistance has increased to (5.12%)]
[Ability: Hero's Might has slightly decreased the effect of Solar Burn]
Azotreh's voice went hoarse as she continued to scream, her ears ringing as her entire body convulsed. Suddenly, the cold floor of the facility hit her back, and she fell unconscious.
Azotreh awoke with an aching pain in her neck and a sticky feeling in her hair. She smelled copper and iron, and the faint scent of burns.
Her hands rose to her throat. Her skin was feverishly hot, and that sticky sensation stuck to them too. Her blood. She'd been burned and bled again, and for what?
She felt the mental comforting attempt by Nicholas, and the confusion of the dragon, but she pushed them aside. Diana was standing above her with the same vacant expression as before, though her hand was moving in front of her face.
Finally, she pulled a bottle of crimson fluid from thin air and dropped it on Azotreh. It was heavier than she expected, but not much so.
Azotreh ripped out the cork and downed the potion in a single gulp. The bottle then vanished from her hand in a dim flash of gold.
System messages appeared; these were blue, just as the ones that had appeared after the brand was sliced by burning light.
[You have ingested a potion of higher rank than yourself. Healing effect amplified.]
[Empty bottle automatically placed in Inventory]
Azotreh spent a couple of seconds looking at the suddenly visible messages. Her joy at finally being able to see the world as everyone else did was only slightly dampened by the voice repeating those messages in her head.
Each time the voice spoke, it sounded less and less like the man she'd only known through half-remembered nightmares, and more like the man inhabiting her soul. But it still carried the echo of a man who died before she knew just about anything.
She was forced from those dark thoughts by the ceiling opening and releasing a wave of warm water onto Azotreh's body, soaking her clothes and quickly making her shiver in the chilly room. Then her face was clouded in blue and red smoke, making her cough. The scent of iron and petrichor was too intense, especially after the overwhelming pain.
She wanted to clutch her head and go back to bed, but even when she closed her eyes, that golden box in the corner of her vision was still there. So instead, she slowly rose to her feet and took deep breaths to clear her head. It was easier to deal with her brain pounding the inside of her skull with the reassuring presence of Nicholas and the unsure power of the dragon.
She took a few minutes to stabilize herself as the water slowly dripped out of her clothes and hair. Then she squared her shoulders, shook her head to dry her still damp hair, and focused on Diana.
"Take me to it."
Diana led Azotreh through the Redwind Plains towards the place where the monster was last seen. Nicholas was pushing her aura to its max to try to find the monster, as Diana had said that she wouldn't help.
The mud under her feet was uncomfortable, to say the least. While the administrator had provided new clothes, he hadn't provided shoes for some reason. It led to the crimson, almost sanguine damp earth getting between her toes. Without much grass in the open plains, there was no way to keep the loose dirt from sticking to her.
The dim edge of the twilight barrier, the construct separating the plains from the Nightshade Forest, was always visible, but Azotreh couldn't focus on that. She had a task to complete, and even if she did make an attempt at escape, there was no way she was going to get through that barrier.
Instead, she refocused on her surroundings, using a barely understood ninth sense and Eye of the Red Dragon whenever she could to find sources of heat. She didn't know what the monster looked like or if it had body heat, but she hoped finding it would be easier with her senses on higher alert.
The sun was high in the sky, and despite the chill of the desolate season, it was mildly warm. It was substantially easier to track movement from the rare small animal as the duo continued their trek.
Finally, Azotreh sensed something. At the edge of her aura, something filled with an undying hatred for the world around it was brushed by her aura. She felt the thing's aura respond and, within seconds, saw something running across the planes.
Initially, it was a biped. But as it ran, its arms visibly grew longer, slowly shifting it into a quadruped, gaining speed as it ran across the desolate landscape.
Azotreh took the first stance of the only fighting style she knew as of now. Leaning forward imposingly, arms slightly raised. She'd come out without a weapon, and so would fight without a weapon.
The movement felt wrong, but her body moved that way anyway. Muscle memory from a skill she'd only managed to start practicing a day ago. The spryggan lifted one of its front legs from the ground and rapidly extended it to slam into Azotreh. She moved on instinct, and moved incorrectly. The flattened end of that leg punched into Azotreh's stomach with the force of a charging boar, sending her tumbling away.
The monster did not stop its approach, instead moving to reach Azotreh and shortening its front arms to once more swing at her. One branch-like arm sharpened into a blade as it struck Azotreh's rolling form, leaving a gash across Azotreh's shoulder and back.
As blood sprayed across the barren mud and patches of melting snow, Azotreh regained her footing. Her fingers dug into the wet ground, and her legs tensed as she finally found stability.
The monster was relentless, but once Azotreh had her feet beneath her, it wasn't too hard to let the muscle memory of her style influence her movements. She deflected another swiftly moving branch with a forearm as her only offensive ability charged in her throat.
Bright energy pulsed up from her core, though she could only sense it once it moved past the brands and into her mouth.
Her status listed fourteen total abilities. The system's basic six, her two draconic eyes, her two hero powers, Astral Library, Records of Existence, Draconic Longevity, and Kaleidoscopic Breath. The last was the one she charged.
It was her only offensive ability, so once she felt the amount of channeled energy reach its peak, she opened her mouth and released a concentrated beam of pure fire and rot.
It struck home as the spryggan was winding up another physical strike, its left arm sharpening into a jagged tip. But it left itself wide open, its humanoid frame without the defenses of its arms.
The beam blasted right through its wooden skin, piercing the pulsing green energy beneath.
[You have afflicted Inferior Spryggan with Burning and Rotting]
[You have debuffed Inferior Spryggan with Burned and Decay]
The monster, however, did not pause. It knew not pain, nor did it know hesitation. It only knew to kill and to hate. So it attempted to stab the stake of its own arm right into Azotreh, even as fire spread over its torso and thick, green-black blood began to spill from its open wound.
Azotreh barely managed to deflect the spike of wood into the soil by battering one of the spryggan's legs with her foot. The monster was knocked off balance and fell forward, foul blood spilling onto Azotreh and mixing with her own.
[Inferior Spryggan has afflicted you with Arcane Poison]
[Ability: Hero's Might has negated the damage of Arcane Poison]
[Inferior Spryggan has baned you with Slow]
Azotreh's muscles began to respond just a little slower as the thick blood of the monster entered her system, but she did not, could not care. The monster was destined to die, and soon. It was just a game of waiting. That, and Azotreh knew that if she was in any serious danger, Diana would step in, no matter what the woman had said. Azotreh was too valuable to the administrator to throw away so easily.
So Azotreh continued to block attempted hits from the spryggan, while occasionally beating on the wooden skin of the monster, once even digging her hand into the open wound to accelerate the bleeding.
She finally felt the aura of the monster retract as the spryggan collapsed into a heap of woodchips and green flesh. Deep green smoke began to rise off its body as the flesh rapidly began to dissolve before Azotreh's eyes. But before it could lose even half of its body mass, Azotreh felt a pulse of energy shoot through her aura towards its corpse.
First, a collection of blue system windows appeared before Azotreh.
[You have slain Inferior Spryggan (I): You have earned 20 EXP (C1:10xFG:2xTR:1)]
[EXP automatically allocated to Class: Hero. Hero has reached I-3 (5/15 EXP)]
[+50 Attention Depth, +20 Rate Depth, +10 Channeling Depth, +6 Surplus Depth]
Then several messages in gold.
[You have automatically looted Inferior Spryggan. +10 Tin Deadrearch Coins, +10 Duvdrearch Coins, +10 Greenwind Empirial Copper Coins, +1 Monster Core (Tin-Rank), +4 kg of Spryggan Bark, +10 Nature Quintessence, +1.5kg of Spriggan Heartstone.]
[Loot automatically stored in your Inventory.]
[Material quantity threshold reached. Longevity increased. +1 CE generation]
[Quest Complete: Inferior Spryggan. +5 Greenwind Empirial Gold, +5 G-Grade Kathmana]
Diana approached as Azotreh lay in the soft mud, looking over the notifications. It was a little overwhelming having all those messages after seeing none for most of her life. But Azotreh had to keep her head in the game, so she shook off the feeling of how small she was and looked up at Diana.
The woman crouched beside Azotreh and said, "That was terrible, but still exceeded my expectations a bit. I've seen worse. Now, what did you loot from that thing?"
Azotreh looked up at Diana and pulled the monster core from her inventory. She'd read enough to know that it wasn't something she wanted to hold onto. Surprisingly, though, Diana just held it for a moment before giving it back.
Seeing Azotreh's surprise, she explained, "The admin can cleanse this of its influence for you. We've got a deal with one of the astral cults to wipe the influence of these things. So you should keep it until then."
Azotreh nodded, some more mud getting in her hair before she sat up, putting the core back into her inventory. She carefully rose to her feet, the gash across her back still aching with a constant but low pain. But it wasn't life-threatening, and arcane entities regenerated differently. She needed to toughen up, so she didn't take a potion to heal the wound, instead just making her way back to the facility.