(Book 1 Complete!) Side Quest [Isekai / LitRPG]

Logan knocked on the door only once.

Not because he wanted to deliver a strong, confident, ominous single knock to intimidate the gnomish dweller into answering questions and lean into his System-assigned persona as a gnomish champion, but because the door opened before his fist connected for the next five raps in Logan's familiar knock sequence.

As a result, Logan somersaulted into the foyer and landed in a sprawled heap.

Logan's neck bent, his spine protesting the unnatural twist as he peered up through a tangle of legs at a short, cheerful fellow. Even though Logan lay at ground level and the gnome stood, only a distance of three feet separated them.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid I can't accept company right now," the jolly little gnome said, helping Logan to his feet and brushing off his clothes for him. He then turned his eyes towards the door. "I'm expecting a guest. You're probably looking for the Adventurers' Guild, anyway. It's that ugly—er, boxy building down there."

Logan recovered from his disgraceful entrance and picked up the fumbled chicken. He had bumped his head on the tiled floor and already felt a swelling lump. A spiraled staircase situated in one corner led up, with a complicated blue grandfather clock in the opposite corner. Against the side wall rested a small table with fresh-cut flowers, and a wall-mounted rack displayed several staffs and swords, none of which looked recently used. "Actually," said Logan, "I did mean to knock on your door."

"Hmm?" The gnome turned to Logan, then to the bird cradled in Logan's arm. "Oh, Louie!" He chuckled. "Were you intending to return this chicken to me? He often wanders around my yard, but alas, he is not mine. He belongs to Liorna. You likely passed her chicken coop on the way here." The gnome pressed a hand to Logan's back, ushering him out the door as he peered and stood on his tiptoes to see over the far hill. "It lies a little..." His voice trailed off halfway through the directions, his eyes scanning the horizon.

With a pause, he frowned and then checked the ticking pendulum clock. Perplexed, the gnome plopped his heels back down. To himself, he muttered, "I put the tea kettle on as soon as I heard the alarm, and it only just whistled a moment ago. Which means that..."

He looked at Logan and his eyes momentarily unfocused, which Logan now recognized as a telltale sign of the Analyze skill. For a fraction of a second, the gnome looked suspicious. "Unless..." He shook his head. "It couldn't be." And then he turned his eyes towards the clock, and then back to Logan's face. "But you're only level 5."

Logan bit his lip. He planned to reveal himself to the gnome, but only after establishing trust between them. But the window of opportunity quickly seemed to fade. He took a risk.

"I guess this is about my being a champion?"

The gnome paused with his lips parted and said nothing.

Logan shrugged and flashed a tentative smile. "I woke up in a cave with this and nothing else." From his pocket, he retrieved the tile with the interlaced triangles. He was glad the guild officers had assumed it junk with his other belongings.

The gnome gasped and clutched his tiny hands around Logans' hands to cover it. He then shut the door and steered Logan toward the spiraled staircase. "Come, come. Upstairs." The gnome pushed with surprising strength, nudging Logan onto the first step.

Logan grew dizzy with the speed of their ascent, and at the first landing he did a double take to make sure he wasn't seeing things. The room was far larger than he expected from the exterior.

The sprawling space felt both welcoming and enchanted. Soft golden light emanated from floating orbs that drifted lazily near the ceiling, casting a warm glow over the mismatched furniture. A crackling fireplace stood against one wall, its mantle cluttered with tiny, spinning trinkets and jars filled with swirling, colorful powders. Shelves lined the walls, overflowing with books and peculiar artifacts.

At the room's center sat a sturdy oak table, its surface scattered with open scrolls, inkwells, and feathered quills. The faint scent of parchment and ink mixed with something sweet and herbal, like dried lavender. On the polished wooden floor, nine squares looked like a tic-tac-toe grid within a banded border of five concentric circles.

The gnome snapped a finger and a wide green-tinted window dimmed. The gnome excitedly reached up to Logan's hands and unclasped them. "I'm terribly sorry, my boy. My name is Marivigus, although most people here call me Mariv. Feel free to use Marigari, or Marimari for that matter. I've heard it all." He tapped his brow. "I should have figured the champion would be so clever as to mask his level. You've certainly assumed quite an unlikely style," he said, looking at Logan's torn pajama pants and medieval tunic shirt.

"Uh, mask?"

The gnome nodded with a tittering laugh and waddled over to a small armchair before plopping into it. He invited Logan to sit on the neighboring ottoman.

"Here, I'll remove mine." The gnome extended his arms as if he was just about to say, "Ta-da!" It seemed an open invitation for Logan to Analyze, so he did. At first, he saw something about level 17, but it faded away and an updated level replaced it.

Name: Mariv (Divining Wizard)

Race: Gnome
Type: Person
Level: 83
Lore: Gnomes are renowned for curiosity driving them to unique places. They rely on higher Charisma and Intelligence to compensate for low Strength and Endurance.
Strength: Superior spell concentration
Weakness: Exotic beverages

The gnome's arms remained spread, as if waiting for Logan to do the same.

"I'm actually not wearing, or uh, using a mask."

The gnome laughed skeptically and regarded him again with that distant look. Then he lifted a finger to his mouth. "Oh my." Quieter, he repeated himself. "Oh my…" He shook his head with an apologetic smile. "How rude of me. May I ask, did you perhaps lose your levels when you entered our System? That is, you came from outside the system, yes?"

"I did."

"And what was your level then?"

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

"Um, well, where I come from, we don't really have levels. Unless you have a lot of money and, you know, you can be a CEO or something, but... I was just helping the local mechanic, you know, just doing some admin kind of stuff."

"Ballista mechanics?"

"No, um, uh, something called cars. I don't think you have them here."

The gnome frowned in thought, then shook his head, but his demeanor remained bright. "Well, what about skills? What's your rarest skill?"

The gnome's earnest excitement compelled Logan to open his status and answer. "Let's see. It looks like my rare skill is Gauntlet Mastery." Wait, had the gnome ask for his rare skill, or his rar-est skill?

The gnome stayed quiet for a moment with a plastic smile, as if waiting for Logan to deliver a punchline. But when Logan said nothing else, the gnome cleared his throat, hopped down from his seat, walked over to a tea kettle, poured two cups, returned, handed one to Logan, reclaimed his cushioned throne, and took a long, audible, pensive sip.

Shame overwhelmed Logan. It felt like he had destroyed the gnome's hope. The unrestrained joy had quickly turned to tempered resignation.

Before his father's voice could scoff at him, Logan set his teacup down. "I'm sorry, Mariv. I know I'm probably not what you expected, but I don't really know what happened to me or why. I was hoping you could help shed some light. I woke up in a cave to a strange message telling me I was summoned here and then boom, stuff tried to kill me. That doesn't happen to most people where I'm from."

Sympathy washed the gnome's face. "Of course. Would you mind telling me from the beginning what happened?"

"…and that's what brought me here."

The gnome had listened in perfect silence, never asking questions as Logan revisited his encounters with torch slugs and the Kalashi brothers, his dual race, trait, heritage boon, skills, and adventures within the blight with prowlers and even the vicious dragon shifter. He wrapped up with the monster fight and interactions with the Adventurers' Guild that interrupted his chicken-collecting quest. It struck Logan as odd that he had been so utterly forthcoming, but once he started he couldn't stop.

Mariv waddled to a bowl in the corner and grabbed a handful of feed and crouched down, prompting the herded chicken to flutter over and peck away.

"Most intriguing. Exalted Kin sounds vaguely familiar, but I have never heard of the Kalashi brothers. Give me a few days to study up on some scrolls that may shed insight.

"In the meantime, I suggest you keep a low profile. It will be difficult as you have already entangled yourself with the guild and I suspect they will request your services as soon as they realign their calibrations. But if you keep yourself busy, you should be able to postpone their attempts. I also recommend not mentioning the dragon or your secondary race to anyone else."

Logan sighed and watched chicken-Louie finish his meal. He idly checked his quest status, and it still said 0/8 chickens were delivered. For the quest to register it, Logan probably had to bring the bird to Liorna. He supposed he could bide time with chicken-herding, especially since it would give him some spare change. "What exactly did you need a champion for?"

Mariv hopped off his cushion and beckoned Logan to the grid. "You have seen the blight's effect. Well, back at my homeland, the Waterwoods, something similar occurred."

He lifted a hand, and the outermost band of the concentric circles around the nine squares shimmered with a pearlescent glow. Golden light danced along the grid, turning it into a miniature projection of a vast forest with meandering streams.

"Gnomes have always been stewards of balance," Mariv began. "Mana exists naturally everywhere, although it is strongest at sites of power. Mana does not itself have a type, but based on the location, it can assume a type. For example, you are likely to encounter higher concentrations of fire and earth mana near an active volcano."

The projection zoomed out to a broader regional view, at the edge of which lava flowed down a slope.

The lava dimmed from bright orange to dull black.

"But if that volcano went dormant, fire mana may become scarce in that area. Since the ambient mana in that region had been dispersed a certain way for so long, the change often leads to scarring in the ambient mana fields, which gives rise to monsters. The more traumatic the disturbance, the greater the scar."

The projection zoomed back into the forest view, but closer than the initial snapshot. It depicted a wooded clearing with a ritualistic black marble basin. A clear liquid filled the basin, welling up from a gilded hole at the center and overflowing gently beyond the brim.

"The Waterwoods were unique in that we had wells of untyped mana and the means to bottle it. Once bottled, untyped mana can be taken to sites of power that are strong enough to imbue it with different properties."

"So," said Logan, "you could take untyped mana to a different volcano and come back with more fire and earth mana?"

"Somewhat. Remember, you will still find all other mana types near a volcano. It is just the concentrations that differ. Plus, typed mana cannot be rebottled and will naturally infuse into the ambient mana. There's more detail we needn't get into here, but the important part is that we gnomes played an active role in alleviating the strain caused by scarred mana fields, which helps contain monster outbreaks."

The view shifted back to the first forest scene, but the warm glow faded. The streams thickened, turning a sickly green, while the once-vibrant forest grew gnarled and twisted. Logan leaned closer, his stomach sinking as he recognized the creeping resemblance to the blight outside the village.

"Then, it came," Mariv said, his voice heavy. "A blight swept through like a tide of poison. Our wells turned green as extreme Acid concentrations inundated our land and corrupted the untyped wells. Waters grew tainted, trees exuded toxins, and monsters emerged where they had no business being." He waved his hand, and miniature beasts on the grid defended themselves as hulking figures lunged from thickets. "The local creatures that survived did so by fighting these stronger threats, growing beyond their natural limits. But the balance could not hold. In time, the monsters overwhelmed the region."

His face looked hollow as the display shifted again. Neon green energy washed over the entire scene. "We fought to contain it, but the source eluded us."

"And you think the same thing is happening here?"

Mariv shrugged, visibly unsettled. "Something similar, but not the same. Minor scarring happens all the time, and nature usually recovers on its own. A high-leveled beast might rise from the aftermath now and then, but the ambient mana stabilizes and balance is restored. But the sheer quantity of over-leveled creatures you have seen is not typical. I've been monitoring the area for signs of deeper scarring, and while the mana has been off, nothing I've detected was severe enough to cause a true monster emergence. Until a moment ago," he said, looking to Logan's pocket where the orb rested. "May I?"

Logan retrieved the orb and placed it in Mariv's outstretched hand.

"This dark sheen you see? That is due to the monster's Void affinity." He tapped the pearlescent band on the floor. "My affinity is Dream."

He glanced to a clock and sighed. "We don't have time to go into detail, but here are the basics that apply to anyone. Using me as an example, I can use magic with or without my affinity."

He pointed to the orbs overhead. "A common use for radiant mana is illumination, which is likely no surprise." He gestured back to the grid with his light-based terrain model. "Yet when radiant mana is used with the Dream affinity, it can cast illusions."

"Is that how you masked your level?"

Mariv beamed and clapped. "Almost! That was achieved with psychic mana and the Dream affinity. Someone with the Life affinity might instead generate solar power through radiant mana, or heal mental maladies with psychic mana."

Logan rubbed his temple. "That sounds like a lot to map out."

Mariv shrugged. "Not so much when you grow up with this, but I can understand being thrust into it all might make it confusing. My suggestion to you is not to take on any affinity until you have a grasp on the general implications."

He glanced at the clock again and muttered sharply. "I beg your pardon, but I have more company arriving, and it would be for the best if you were not here. You said the guild has set you up with the innkeeper for food and lodging, yes? Wonderful. I would love to talk more tomorrow. Remember, keep yourself busy."

After the gnome ushered Logan out, Logan adjusted the chicken in his arm. "Well, Louie, let's bring you home."