Progenitor's Burden

Rose had been pacing in Sinclair's small, cluttered study, surrounded by the faint scent of old leather and metal. Her friend had left for Eldfell only a couple of hours prior, leaving a quiet emptiness behind that unsettled her. She hadn't realized how much she'd come to rely on his steady presence until he was gone.

She reached out to touch the hilt of an old sword leaning against the wall, her fingers running over its worn leather grip. It grounded her, a silent reminder of Sinclair's strength and resilience. But then the room seemed to shiver, an unnatural cold sweeping over her.

System Message - Tutorial Ready

New Quest: Midgard's Crucible

Description: This quest has been granted at the behest of another. The difficulty has been increased to Hard. Find the path you are meant to walk and obtain the class destined for you.

Goal: Complete the objectives to obtain your class and path.

Rewards:

Gold

Experience

New Items x2

Accept? Yes/No

Mentally "clicking" the "Yes" option, she was yanked forward into a bright kaleidoscope of lights. Her vision blurred as the familiar walls of Sinclair's study faded away, replaced by an endless fog stretching under a heavy twilight sky. Her heart hammered in her chest as she struggled to make sense of the strange, haunting landscape surrounding her.

The silence was as thick as the mist that clung to her skin. Then, from somewhere within the shadows, a voice resonated—cold and ancient.

Welcome to your tutorial, Rose Arrington. Prepare yourself.

Her throat tightened. This wasn't a request. It was a summons.

The voice carried an unsettling, almost threatening tone. She glanced around, but all she could make out was a dense wall of fog. She found a path beneath her feet and began to follow it.

Walking along the path was a surreal experience. Occasionally, tendrils of fog drifted forward, brushing against her skin, though she felt no pain.

She was relieved that she had equipped the leather armor Sinclair had given her before she'd left, along with a spear she thought she could handle tolerably well, in a pinch.

New Quest: Echoes of the Forgotten

Description: Recent tremors have shaken the mountain, causing landslides that have swept away the main road, leaving a caravan buried in debris. The cries you are about to hear are from those trapped beneath the rubble, scattered across treacherous terrain and in desperate need of rescue. Dig out survivors from the rockfall before time runs out, but beware—the unstable cliffs could unleash another landslide at any moment.

Goal: Rescue as many trapped as possible.

Rewards:

Gold

Experience

Note: Delaying too long will result in further casualties.

Countdown to next landslide: 1 hour, 59 minutes

Reading the message, her stomach lurched. She bolted toward the cries that suddenly had become audible to her, cursing her legs as she forced them to carry her up the steep, 30-degree incline. Each step was a struggle, the rough path unyielding, but she pushed forward, ignoring the burn in her muscles. Minutes passed in an agonizing sprint before she finally reached the scene.

Chaos greeted her. Horses and people lay scattered, some clearly injured, others draped in cloaks, motionless. Children's cries pierced the air, their desperate calls for their parents freezing her for a moment. This is no ordinary trial. The thought barely registered before she jerked into action, sprinting toward a group struggling to move a massive boulder.

"Move aside—let me in to help!" she called, and a few people glanced her way, quickly shifting to make space.

She took hold of the boulder's edge, her fingers digging into the rough stone. Strength at 24 . . . it should be enough to help, right? Doubt clawed at her as she assessed the rock, which easily weighed close to a thousand pounds. She gritted her teeth and pulled, every muscle straining as she wedged her foot against a smaller rock for leverage. Slowly, painfully, the boulder began to shift.

Just when her strength began to waver, the rock lurched forward, tumbling aside as the others scrambled back. Small debris fell away, revealing a narrow, dark opening. She squinted into the shadows, catching sight of two small hands and hearing faint sniffles—a child, barely visible but unmistakably trapped within.

Reaching into the hole, she grasped the child's small, trembling hand and gently helped her slide out of the cramped space. The girl clung tightly to Rose, her face smudged with dirt and her small frame shaking uncontrollably. Rose turned, finding a nearby villager to take the girl into caring arms.

She knelt down again, reaching as far as she could into the darkness, feeling blindly until another tiny arm grasped hers. She pulled the second child free, handing him to another nearby helper before anxiously peering back into the hole, hoping to find no one else trapped.

Finding nothing but shadows and stone, Rose leaned back, scanning the chaos around her. How am I supposed to find people in all this rubble? She squinted, wishing the stones themselves would somehow mark where the survivors were hidden. The scattered cries of people calling out for their missing loved ones pulled her back to the grim reality.

Rose stepped back, catching her breath, pushing the clamor of voices into the background as she tuned inwards. There has to be a magical way to do this, she reasoned. Sinclair said the System responds to willpower . . . so maybe I just have to want it badly enough?

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She closed her eyes briefly, drawing mana into her core and channeling it up toward her eyes. If anything, a vision-based skill would be the answer, she thought, focusing all her concentration into her gaze, straining to pierce through the rocky debris. She poured every bit of desperate need into her sight, willing herself to see past the rubble, to sense the flicker of life beneath the earth.

After several agonizing minutes, her eyes throbbed with pain, each beat sending sharp pulses through her skull. Had she seen herself in that moment, she would have been startled by the streaks of blood trickling from the corners of her eyes. Her irises, glowing an intense, majestic blue, mirrored the brightest summer skies, a stark contrast to the dust and shadows around her.

New Skill: Farsight of Hliðskjálf (Rare)

Description: Drawing from the strength of wisdom embedded within Odin's high seat, Hliðskjálf, this skill allows the user to sense the presence of life forces hidden from the naked eye, detecting even faint traces of movement or heartbeat within a radius.

Effects:

Life Detection:

Sense all living creatures within a 50-meter radius, even through obstacles, granting awareness of friend and foe alike in dense terrain or hidden areas.

Vital Pulse:

Provides a brief glimpse of a detected life force's health status, alerting the user to injuries or weakened states amongst allies or unknown presences.

Well, that worked, she thought, feeling a faint triumph as she turned back to the rocks, triggering her newly awakened skill. Scanning the rubble slowly from right to left, she began to get a feel for how the vision worked. She carefully fed mana into her eyes, sensing it coiling and intensifying until the landscape before her was tinged in a dark cerulean haze.

Almost immediately, a faint, vibrating blob of red appeared about ten feet into the rock pile. She narrowed her focus on it, her pulse quickening, and scrambled forward. "Help me! Someone's under these rocks!" Her hands were already at work, lifting and tossing rocks out of the way. It was only a few slow seconds before others joined her, but once they arrived, the group moved the stones away with practiced speed and care.

After a minute or two of digging, they found themselves waist-deep in rubble, uncovering a man wedged beneath the shadow of a larger boulder. With a final heave, they freed him, pulling him to safety as Rose took up her search again.

Scanning the rocky landscape, she spotted several more faint red glows scattered between thirty and fifty feet from her. "There's someone over there—another over that way!" she called, pointing out the spots. Without needing to question her, everyone dashed to the marked areas. They must know I'm using magic to locate them, she mused, noticing how quickly they followed her directions.

With locals covering each marked spot, she picked one for herself and started digging, joined by a few others who had just freed someone from another area. The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of urgent movements, the group freeing over a dozen people as the minutes ticked down.

Finally, she paused, glancing at her quest log to check their progress. Her heart sank. They'd only reached about 75% completion, and the countdown showed just over an hour left. The remaining survivors were getting harder to detect, each one further afield, scattered across the treacherous landscape.

Rose turned to one of the locals, waving him over.

"Hi," she began, a sense of urgency in her tone. "I know we haven't had a chance to talk, but what were you all doing in this area? Were you headed somewhere specific, or was this just a pass-through in the mountains?" She needed to understand the layout of the place—if there were more people trapped somewhere nearby.

The man, dust-streaked and visibly grateful, nodded. "Thank you for helping, stranger. We were on our way to a mine just over there." He gestured to a rocky area further up. "Or it used to be, anyway. The rocks have covered the entrance, and now it's buried deep in the scree."

A realization sparked in Rose's mind. There might be people hiding in the mine. "Can you show me where it should be?"

The man nodded and motioned for her to follow. "Sure can. Name's Ulfhir, by the way."

Rose gave a brisk nod as she followed. "Rose," she replied, her eyes already scanning the rocks as they moved. She spotted two more survivors along the way, pointing them out to nearby rescue teams, who immediately converged on the locations.

After climbing through mounds of rubble, Ulfhir stopped about two hundred feet from the road, pointing down and at an angle. "If I had to guess, the entrance would've been here." He looked at her, a hint of hope mingling with doubt. "Do you think anyone made it?"

Rose rolled her shoulders, assessing the area. Her eyes scanned the rocks, but she couldn't detect anything yet. Realizing they might be too far, she crouched down, starting to dig in a wide area. The rocks were larger than she'd anticipated, their weight straining her arms.

"My quest log says we're still at 25% left, and this is as good a lead as any," she muttered, glancing back at him as they prepared to dig.

Rose dug furiously, her fingers slipping on the jagged rocks, scraping her knuckles raw. The others around her joined in, pulling at the heavy stones as fast as their arms could move. She kept her eyes locked on the ticking timer in her quest log—fifteen minutes left. Her breath came in sharp gasps, the air thick with dust and urgency.

"Dig faster!" she shouted, straining her voice above the grunts and groans of the rescuers. Her gaze darted down as she activated her new skill, the dark cerulean haze washing over her vision. Suddenly, just below the layers of rock, a faint pulse of red appeared—signs of life.

"Here! There's someone right here!" she yelled, her heart hammering. The others crowded around, working together to shift the rubble. Inch by inch, they exposed the rough entrance of the mine, the narrow opening barely wide enough to pull people through.

The ground trembled slightly, sending a shiver of dread through her. Ten minutes left.

One by one, they pulled survivors from the rubble, each person covered in dirt, eyes wide and hollow. She couldn't stop to see if they were injured; there was no time. She was pulling a woman out when another faint glimmer caught her eye—a pair of small red spots, further back.

"Children! There are children still in there!" she shouted, her voice strained with urgency. They worked with renewed intensity, rocks flying from their hands as they tore down the last layers of stone.

The ground quaked again, this time stronger, and she checked her log. Five minutes. Dust began to seep from cracks above, and she could hear the low groan of the mountain preparing to unleash a deadly landslide. Rose lunged forward, reaching through the narrow space until her fingers found two small hands gripping hers with desperate strength.

With a fierce tug, she pulled the first child out and turned, handing him off to a nearby rescuer. Then she reached in again, grabbing the second child's hand and pulling her through just as the ground beneath them shifted dangerously.

"Run!" she screamed, her voice cracking as she scooped up both children. The rescuers needed no further urging, sprinting down the slope toward the tree line. Rose followed, but the strain of carrying the two small bodies slowed her, each step becoming harder as the mountain's rumbling grew louder.

The timer was down to a single minute. With a sudden, deafening crack, the ground gave a violent shudder, buckling beneath her feet. She fell hard, sprawling forward, the two children landing beside her. She scrambled to her feet, grabbing their hands, pushing her legs to their limit as she ran for the safety of the trees just below.

The mountain roared behind them. She looked back, seeing the towering wave of dust and debris surging down, swallowing everything in its path. Desperation surged through her veins as she forced herself forward, her breath ragged, feet barely hitting the ground. But it was too fast.

Just as she reached the edge of the tree line, the wall of dust overtook them, swallowing Rose and the two children in a thick, choking cloud, obscuring them from view as the mountain thundered down in a final, echoing collapse.