Silas Calder – Chosen of the 84th Solstice.
Silas's head was ringing, dizzily looking around him. Then the pain came in. His hand felt like it had been ripped apart as he looked at it. Then he noticed some sort of gem embedded within the center of his palm. Silas recognized it immediately, it was the gem he put inside his robot. It looked bleak and dull, as if drained of all life.
'W-what the hell is this?'
As Silas looked around him he found himself in what looked to be some kind of ancient scrapyard for as far as the eye could see. Littered with all kind of ripped-up swords and weapons.
The air stank of oil and iron dust. The horizon was drowned in fog, heavy and unmoving.
Before Silas had time to gaze around at the scrapyard he heard something rummaging around in the distance at what he would guess was about a mile away. Silas instinctively hid behind a pile of scrap and slightly raised his head to look at what was making the noise.
Silas couldn't believe this was actually happening. He was looking at something that resembled some kind of scrap giant standing at least 20 meters tall with what seemed to be some kind of huge lantern for a head. His right arm ended in a giant spear and his left arm had a claw attached to it.
The rest of his body looked as if it was made out of leftover scrap pressed together.
He had heard about all kinds of worlds with horrifying beasts you wouldn't ever have to confirm actually exist—but this place he was in was unheard of, atleast among the slums it was..
Then his heart sank, the giant was looking straight his way. Before he could react he heard a loud noise crashing underneath the scrap, it was moving at an immense speed. Right as it seemed it would reach him it darted straight past him. It looks like it's going straight for the scrap giant.
On all sides of the scrap giant there were trails of scrap flying through the air. Dozens of creatures were coming straight at the giant with incredible speed. The one that flew past him was the first to surface. It looked like some kind of mechanical 4 legged spider.
It jumped at the giant with great speed latching onto it's leg. The giant reacted quickly using it's claw to grab the spider and crush it to a pulp.
The giant didn't get a break on the other hand. One by one dozens of spiders quickly latched onto the giant. The giant used his spear and claw to grab, stab and crush the mechanical spiders at great speeds.
But alas, it wasn't enough. The spiders tore through the joints of the giant slowly wittling it down. After a short battle the flame inside the giants lantern head subsided as it stopped moving.
And just as fast as the spiders came, they left. It didn't take long before the scrapyard grew completely silent once more.
Silas noticed what looked like soft and gentle Blue flames floating between each of the spiders corpses. Basically everyone back on earth knew about how the returnees grew stronger. It was by absorbing these flame like essences. Essences were divided into 7 ranks each consisting of 3 categories and their corresponding colors. The type of essence released from a creature depended on the rank of said creature.
Nym: Brown
Varn: Blue
Kael: Red
Gorger: yellow
Thane: White
Voren: Purple
Zehr: Black
Each of these ranks consisted of 3 tiers.
Tainted, clean and pure.
Silas acknowledged it was dangerous, but deep down he knew this could be one of his best chances at surviving this mechanical hellscape.
"Tch, to hell with it." Silas exclaimed right before he sprung into action silently moving toward the corpses of the spiders.
It took him almost half an hour to quietly maneuver around the piles of scrap and reach the battlefield littered with corpses.
'Here goes nothing'
He cautiously moved towards one of the corpses and saw a blue essence floating within it's remains. He reached his arm out to touch it. Nothing happened.
'What the hell is this?! I've never heard of someone not being able to collect essences!'
Silas waved his hand through the essence without response. Then by chance the gem in the palm of his left hand touched the essence.
The essence flew into the gem as it begun to glow for a short while before growing bleak and dull once more.
A voice inside his head rung out:
You have absorbed a Tainted Varn's essence.
'Nice, this could be the luckiest day of my life.'
Silas moved through the corpses of the spiders absorbing their essences. They all seemed to be of the Tainted Varn rank.
You have absorbed a Tainted Varn's essence.
You have absorbed a Tainted Varn's essence.
You have absorbed a Tainted-
'I wonder how many people were even able to absorb a single essence of the Varn rank in their Harvest. I just came here and already have this many.'
After absorbing all of the spiders essences he counted a total of 9 of them.
Then he turned to the giant hoping it's essence would still be there.
Walking to the giant lantern that used to serve as a head for the giant construction he wondered what rank the soul of this creature would be. When he reached the head he saw something floating in the center.
'Y-yellow??' Even getting an essence of the Varn rank in your first harvest was rare but an essence of the Gorger rank? That was simply unheard of.
Silas stepped through the broken glass panels of the lantern, making sure to avoid the broken shards of glass and walked through the giants head until he reached the essence. Reaching his left arm out he absorbed the essence.
The voice rung out again:
You have absorbed a Tainted Gorgers essence.
"What a score!" Silas exclaimed, quickly shutting his mouth knowing how much noise he just made.
'The Harvest might be easier than I thought after all.' Silas thought to himself.
Oh how wrong he was.