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

Mishki bobbed along at the rear of the group, struggling to keep pace with the others.

The dwarf, also in the rear, nudged him with his elbow and pulled out a glowing, pale green Potion of Paced Stride. "Here you go. These long-legged folk wouldn't know how to slow down if their lives depended on it."

Senna snickered. "Come on, Brummy, if I had to wait for you, I'd have to cut all the places I want to see in life by half. I'm human, so I don't have the luxury of living 300-plus years like you."

"I'll probably only make it to 250 thanks to how hard you push me," Bromlin said. He didn't sound mad, though.

Mishki thought that was all incredible, considering most gobles died of old age in their thirties. The warlock had been only 23, and the oldest person Mishki knew was a 41-year-old. Mishki was only 12 years old, which probably put him at about 36 in human years, or as a centennial in dwarf years.

"I don't mean to take all your stuff," Mishki said to Bromlin.

"Don't worry about it, lad. I'll just have her make more."

The human tinkerer shot the dwarf a look. "You really think it's that simple, don't you?"

"Aye."

Senna sighed. "Yeah, it actually is."

The dwarf cupped a hand to his mouth. "She always has plenty on hand so I don't 'slow her down.'"

Mishki accepted the kind gesture and swigged the potion.

Your movement speed is enhanced to: Human Stride
(24 hours remaining)

It didn't directly increase Mishki's stamina, which had been slowly dipping lower, but now he could maintain the pace, while giving his reserves a chance to recover.

He liked this group.

While he hadn't cared for the guild officers' prejudiced looks, he had barely noticed them. Even back with his own tribe, he had been ostracized for his peculiar love of reading and his supposed wasted investments in Intelligence. But nobody here viewed him any certain way.

He finally caught his breath, but unfortunately, just ahead, the trees broke into a wide clearing. That put them in direct sunlight. Sunlight didn't hurt him, but it certainly bothered his eyes. He was much more accustomed to the dark. He preemptively squinted his eyes as they entered, and then Logan lifted a hand and stopped the group.

"Hold on." He glanced toward the tree line. Then he took them back through the shadows around the clearing. They didn't go deeper into the woods, though. Instead, all they did was skirt the clearing.

"Was there a reason for this little detour, Logan?" Alden asked.

"Nah, I thought I saw something," said Logan, but for a fraction of a second, he caught Mishki's eye and winked.

Huh. Had that been intentional accommodation for him? Yeah, he definitely liked this group.

A presence above him drew Mishki's eyes up. There, a small flicktail squirrel chittered and made eyes with him.

Mishki cocked his head. Something was wrong.

"Wait a second," he said to the group.

"We find out we have months before calamity falls, and everybody wants to take breaks," Alden said, but he stopped. Mishki suspected there was a lot of fluff behind his griping.

Mishki held a hand out, and the squirrel leaped down from branch to branch until it landed on his palm.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

A series of images flashed into Mishki's mind, one after another, and Mishki gasped as he understood.

Critter Taming is level 32!

The others gathered around, asking Mishki what he'd seen.

Mishki patted the little squirrel's head. "He lost his family." Mishki knew a bit of what that felt like, being separated from his tribe. But even then, he hardly considered them family.

Logan's shoulders tensed. "Is it prowlers?" The gauntlet-swiping man muttered. "I hate prowlers."

Bromlin readied his axe as he scanned the woody depths, and Mishki's newly gained Manasight showed radiant mana pooling around Cassandra, likely being used to weave a ward.

Manasight is level 6!

"No," he answered. "It was an explosion."

Mishki relayed the scattered images as best he could.

Several tall figures were forging their way through the woods, one in the lead holding some type of glowing mechanism. This little squirrel had rushed with his family to the entry hole of their home, peeping out from behind the drakla pits stacked in front of it as a measure of camouflage.

The people—their images were hazy in the squirrel's memory—grew louder and more excited as the mechanism blinked brighter. They were making their way to a dark green fissure in the ground.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Mishki had seen the purple fissures that had appeared around the time Devouring Coil awoke, but this was different. According to the impressions he was getting from the squirrel, this fissure had been spreading along the ground, gradually stretching closer to the little squirrel's home over several moons and suns. It had to be the blight's source.

As the strangers neared it, their device blinked faster and faster, and the fissure shook with each step they took. Once they reached it, the fissure thrummed so violently it exploded in sickly green, almost black, sludge.

Next thing the little squirrel knew, he was flying. His parents had saved him by curling around him, but they had taken the brunt of the impact. Mishki trailed off there, not wanting to say the squirrel's family's fate aloud in front of the frightened creature.

"That's horrible," Cassandra said as she lifted her fingers to her mouth. "Oh, the poor little dear."

Mishki agreed and gave the squirrel some reassuring pets.

Critter Taming is level 33!

Logan approached and gave the flicktail a consoling rub as he turned to Senna. "Do you still have the device we disassembled to incapacitate the Coil?"

She nodded and pulled it from her storage. The squirrel cowered at the sight of the device, and Senna apologized as she tucked it back away.

"The one from the memory was bigger, I think," Miski said, "but it is similar."

Cassandra shook her head. "So the guild was still using some type of mana detection equipment. I guess we never told them that the device they gave us was broken."

"Not broken," Logan said. "Miscalibrated. The question is still whether or not it was intentional." He turned to Mishki. "Any chance you can tell if any of those people were fairies?"

Mishki nodded. "The one at the back of the group was, yes."

The others muttered the name Vellia and shared nods.

"Do you know what direction the blast went?" Logan asked.

Mishki consulted with the squirrel. The little guy had come from a short distance away and had to jump up to the branches to get a better view. Logan's dragon, Nugget, flew up beside the squirrel, wings spread in offered shelter, and Mishki felt touched on the squirrel's behalf.

When the squirrel came back down, it chittered and lifted its tail, flicking the tip north.

"Thanks," Logan said. "Give me a moment."

Mishki watched Logan climb the tree with ease, sinking his gauntlets into the bark as if he was just as comfortable climbing as he was walking, and Nugget spiraled the trunk, ascending with him. While they waited for those two to come back down, Senna walked over with a ripe drakla melon and handed it to the squirrel. Mishki helped the critter break the melon open, and the squirrel nuzzled against him as it ate.

When Logan returned, he nodded. "Yeah, so I can see some of the blast radius from up there." He offered a sorrowful look to the squirrel. "Sorry all that happened to you, buddy. But we'll try to figure out what caused it." To the others, he added, "Mariv told me about a fellow divining wizard who lives in a cottage out this way. They have a divining rod that can determine threshold perks, and I was hoping to make a stop there. The cottage is supposed to be near a pond with a single dead tree rising out of the center."

He looked into the trees and pointed. "Which happens to be right over there."

The glade wasn't far away, still in eyesight of the landmark pond. But when Logan saw the state of the cottage, he sagged.

It was mostly leveled by the blast, with only portions of the building's skeleton still standing. Some pinwheel-like mechanisms drifted lazily in the small breeze, their creaking adding to the desolate feel. First the news of that little squirrel's family, and now this? It was just one bad break after another.

"Shall we check for survivors?" he asked.

The others agreed, and they spread out.

Logan stepped over the fallen doorway and lifted chunks of the wooden walls and collapsed rafters. Judging from the remaining roof beams, the place had been a modest, single-story cottage. Some of the debris had landed at angles, leaning against overturned furniture like tables and chairs. Logan peered into the triangular gaps these made, but didn't spot anyone beneath the debris.

He stepped over a grandfather clock that had toppled onto a rumpled rug but then stopped short.

The grandfather clock had fallen from the left side, just like the other debris, since that had been the blast direction. But the wrinkles in the rug beneath it looked shoved upward from the right, not flattened by the clock's fall.

"Can I get a hand over here?" he called out.

Bromlin and Alden came over. Bromlin crouched low, squeezing himself into the tight space between the fallen clock and a chunk of an exterior wall that had landed on top of it, pinning it in place. He wedged his shoulder under the edge and let out a grunt as he pushed up, bracing on his knees. Dust showered down, and tiny clock gears rattled loose as the dwarf lifted enough weight to free the clock from the wall pressing it down.

As Logan and Alden worked together to lift it, the grandfather clock rocked backward at first, but the heavy pendulum inside swung in the opposite direction, causing it to teeter back and forth until it settled. Logan and Alden kept their hands on it to steady it completely and prevent it from toppling over again.

With his boot, Logan nudged the rumpled carpet and gave a satisfied huff when it revealed a wooden trapdoor with a black iron ring.

Cassandra walked over, Nugget sitting on her shoulder with his head high. She held up a small, weathered, leather-bound booklet. "Look what Nugget just found. It seems to be the diary of the divining wizard who lived here."

Senna and Mishki joined the others as they all huddled around. The orphaned flicktail squirrel was hitching a ride on the goble's bald head. Its tiny claws digging into the goble's dome didn't seem to bother Mishki.

Cassandra pinched the first half between her finger and thumb, then let the pages flip up with motion as she spoke. "These first few pages are all standard. They track wildlife, foraging spots, and constellations." She pinched a middle section. "But this is where it gets a bit more interesting. It seems the author, Eurilius, had predicted a 'withering breath' would settle over Gnashridge Valley, although he didn't understand what that meant. It wasn't until the blight crept in that he linked it with his divination."

She flipped through a few more pages, her eyes darting along the words as she looked for a particular spot. "He grows more worried, speaks of an unholy rot, and…" Her eyes lit with recognition as she tapped a page. "Listen to this.

"I see it plain now: my days within this shelter draw to an end. My bed will not know my weight again. My books will keep their spines uncracked by me, and never again shall I enjoy my possessions. Fitting, maybe.

"Yet it does not need to be how it sounds. If I am to gift all to rot and wandering crows, let it be so; but my purpose is not done here. Let clever fingers earn what my sight once promised.

"Locks within hinges. Hinges beneath the shelf. Marks laid quick and mean in midnight hours when sleep won't come will give me eternal rest until my slumber breaks or the threads sever at the center.

"If I am wrong, I am wrong. If I am right, then let my treasures survive beyond me."

Cassandra's words lingered in the silent moments after she finished until the squirrel started cleaning its paws.

Logan squinted at the trapdoor. He hoped the seer was alive down there, just waiting for rescue.

But if Eurilius was gone, then maybe whatever he sealed beneath this floor had survived him for a reason. He had written of treasure, after all. But until they descended, Logan wouldn't know if he should expect a gift or a curse. Risen undead were becoming commonplace for him, and if there ever seemed a place to face a zombie, it couldn't get much more niche than this.

He set his hand on the iron ring and shared a glance with the others, and they all nodded.

The hinges creaked as he lifted it open.