Biter

Identity Stones

“A black crystalline obelisk that is as dark as it is lustrous, created by the adventurer’s guild, a magical device that can be used to view the God Window of an individual; A “Player.”

Known primarily to confirm the “Status” of a Player, including their level and a quantification of their stat array under the System.

The true origin of Identity Stones can be traced back to the era of the dragons, along with the technology used to create them, where it has been lost to time.”

- Excerpt from “History of the Guildhouse.”

“Ah! Young master Sebas, what could I get you today, it seems that the knife I sold you has seen its time in the dungeon sun!” Ito Jella began his bootlicking in full force, hands practically shaking as they rubbed together at the thought of prospective deals.

“Identity Stone, can you get one?”

Ito, somewhat out of character, stopped and looked Sebas over before taking his time to explain, “Look, I don’t know what you’ve got going on, but if you could afford one of those for personal use, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Is it seriously that bad? Do you have anything that’ll let me hear my God Window, the fucking thing dissapeared, and now I have some sort of unreadable trait.”

“Oh? Curious, curious; how did you manage that?”

“Class up, now I’m officially a unique rank class.”

“I see… a biter?”

Sebas sighed and placed his copper plate underneath his shirt, “yes, I’m not sure what will happen, but supposedly something of Unique rank is worth the risk, at least according to Felix.”

“What kind of Unique?”

“Pardon?”

“Unique rare, Unique Epic?”

“Uhh… Unique.”

“Just?”

Sebas nodded in response.

“That is definitely out of the ordinary, you hopefully will be able to get something out of the ordinary when you advance your class.” Ito trailed on, losing Sebas attention towards the conversation, something about the prospects of the future. Eventually during his uncharacteristically focused speech, Sebas interrupted him.

“How much for a broodmother Pelt?”

“Aye! Now that’s a good question dear customer! With my current stock, I can get you one for the low low price of 50 Silver coins.” Ito held up a circle with his pointer finger and his thumb, presumably to signify the sheer cost of the pelt, or he was calling Sebas a circle.

“Uhhh… 10 silver.” Sebas said, laying on his side on the merchant’s cloth mat, focusing on his Skill.

Ito Jella turned beet red and shoved his hands in his face, in a silent, fed up protest.

“You’re unbearable, you have no tact, you simply don’t care for the art of haggling.”

“Dude I couldn’t care less, if I could afford it, I would.”

Ito Grumbled, “You’re the worst adventurer, Mister Sebas,” rubbing his hands against the bridge of his nose, he muttered out, “I suppose I could consider 20 Silver…”

“Can you do 15?”

“I can but I don’t wish to.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“What about 16?”

“No”

“17?”

“If I say yes, will you leave?”

“Probably, yeah, it’s not hard to get rid of me.”

“I’ll let you know when I get one, it should be soon enough anyway.”

“Thanks Jella, and just remember, this is what you get from nobility.”

“Ex-nobility.”

“Who-hoa, a bit feisty aren’t we?”

“Leave this place unless you wish to do business, I’m extremely busy.”

“You know I’m the only person who does business with you.”

“Please leave or buy something.”

“Alright, alright.”

Sebas made his way through the tavern, stepping over the hazards that were hungover adventurers that have yet to be removed.

Sebas knocked on the wooden counter “What’s lunch?”

“Broth.”

“What kind?”

“Bone.”

“Is it just the broth?”

“Would you like the bones?”

Sebas thought for a bit, and decided against it “Just the bone soup, no chunks.”

“6 copper.”

Sebas had little difficulty manually counting the small amount out, but soon realized that being unable to see the information made him desperate for a fix, being unable to see the small details of the world made for a concern he wasn’t familiar with.

Sebas collected the mug of orange steaming liquid, the scaling fluid tasted like a mixture of salt and meat, going down relatively hard compared to normal broth, a sucker punch of savory flavor hitting his tongue while burning it.

“Adventurers.”

“What’s wrong with adventurers?”

“You just drank what was recently boiling liquid.”

“… oh, thanks.”

“Mmm.”

Sebas made his way through the northern parts of the city, bounding through alleyways and leaping from each rooftop, eventually reaching a sheet metal rooftop overlooking the diamond shaped wheat field near the windmill dungeon entrance. Unaware of the location of his party mates, he decided that it would be for the best if he pursued further endeavors that would get him a specialized gauntlet.

Vaulting down towards the street below Sebas landed on his feet, his body felt strangely light compared to before, clearly showing that he must have been growing into his rapidly increasing .

Sebas walked through the ever-continuous line of adventurers coming in and out of the mill. He showed his ID to the guild assistant, and made his way in. Staring out at the congested underground wheat field Sebas saw giant insects in the distance leaping through the meter tall stalks of grain.

Sebas ran for the hills, past several farmers, leaping forward with a knife and a loud clang was heard as his dagger failed to breach the exoskeleton of an iron-shell, causing a vibration in Sebas’ arm that brought a small amount of nausea to his forefront.

Sebas grappled with the metal-clad creature, it screeched out and flashed wings that were useless for flying, but helpful for making a display and a racket.

The beast flashed a silver blue color and seemed to have a new aura around it. Sebas noted that the rugged and solid metallic feel suddenly became smooth and sharp at the joints, a clean slice went through his palm where he attempted to handle the flesh of the creature.

Sebas kicked the beast, where it flew through the air and thumped against the ground a distance away. His dagger had begun to glow from its normal gray to a bright purple light that began from its [Multi-Hit] skill. He sprinted across the field of wheat two large spikes of purple light striking the beast’s wings, a loud metal screech sounded as the long metal wire-like elytra.

The beast turned red as its head glowed, and a loud buzzing began to sound from its legs rubbing against the wing membrane, followed by a clicking noise that seemed to resonate from inside the insect's torso.

Sebas chuckled at the creature's attempts to enrage him. He shook his head and grabbed the front two legs and locked his arms around the beast’s torso, leaning backwards as he slammed the arms of the monster downward, an audible crackle was heard from the impact.

Sebas got to work as the dazed creature began to fumble, he shoved his dagger inside of the shelled membrane digging around for an access point to the monster’s soft body.

The locust began to wriggle around as a yellowish color began to emerge from the cuts he made. Brutalizing the monster, Sebas began to pull the left wing out of its socket joint.

A choking screech sounded from the beast as the yellowish liquid slowly turned green as the hole expanded from the prothorax’ cracking, the shell of the monster began to dig its way down to escape the adventurer’s brutalization only for its path of retreat to be thwarted as a dagger launched into the hole of the prothorax.

Sebas sighed as the last few rumbles of life were extinguished from the beast, and he made a few efforts to remove the thick plate shell off of the dead monster.

The main difficulty was that the iron plates were only able to be cut at areas where they had cracked, and albeit possible, his ability to break things at the level of metal-like material was severely limited. He managed to get the blade underneath the joints of each section of thorax, along with the animal’s limbs.

The disgusting green-yellow fluid leaked out as the dungeon insect’s head was removed, causing Sebas to roll his eyes as he attempted to scrape out meat and globules from the interior of the exoskeleton’s head, leaving him with what can only be described as a gross meaty helmet.

The prothorax and mesothorax of the animal was easily removed of debris, the prothorax was even able to be separated into pieces from its shattering mid battle, while the latter was picked clean, all meat pieces and legs removed leaving a large flat plate of solid metal with an odd, curved design that connected to a curved U shape piece of underbelly.

The final piece of the animal was an extremely long tail-like appendage, that made Sebas sick to his stomach to empty out, a permanent scowl was painted on his face as his knife ran up and down the interior of the elongated metal container.

A large bonfire of blue flames erupted from the ever-fueled pile of monster guts that had fallen from the pile Sebas created. Eventually he ended up with an entire limbless corpse save for a single wing that had been left on the prothorax of the locust. Sebas flicked the pieces of metal shells, and listened to the odd sounds they made from their protruding shapes.

Sebas decided to stand up and opened his magic bag, placing each segment inside of the bag, each piece except for the tail end of the monster fitting within each piece easily.

Sebas made his way through the fields, further making his way into the further reaches of the dungeon passing by farmers collecting wheat and adventurers fighting pests. Finally he arrived at the guild fort, where an attending guild official asked for his ID.

“You guys actually check it? The guild official at the south side fort didn’t do anything except complain about his job.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to remember that,” the scruffy guild official said, he appeared to be entirely professional, an air of confidence that was in contrast to his strange green colored hair, “Sebas Aren, you’ve been marked down, don’t cause trouble.”

“Just Sebas, and you?”

“Enn.”

“Nice to meet you,” He held a hand out for the man to shake.

“Keep your nose clean and we’ll get along nicely.”

“Yeah, yeah, I will. D’you know if there’s any way to determine what the mid boss will be?”

“It’s possible, if someone has the right trait, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to tell today since it’s already been cleared, you can enter after a half hour if you’re confident in your skills, but you won’t be able to get in if the current attendant sees the copper plate on your neck.”

“Damn…, thanks for the information Enn.”

“Mmm.”

“Okay, I get why Adam does this. He’s a little manipulative mastermind.” Sebas thought to himself, he viewed the interior of the fort, as a contrast to the horned rabbit dungeons dilapidated ruins, the plated floor of the fortress seemed to be a shade of metallic silver, presumably from locusts, while there were dozens of stalls at the east side of the courtyard, and aqueduct moved water to a massive container filled to its brim, while runoff went to a bathhouse.

The far interior of the building held another guild-managed booth like the entrance, but Sebas headed off towards the merchants. Several hundred pieces of equipment. Shined bright in front of him, compelling him to window shop was something familiar, a greedy little trait he was familiar with.

“So insight feels like this?”

Sebas followed his trait’s insight towards what can be described as “the biggest junk seller this side of Eruka.”

“Welcome lad, ye have a keen interest in the artifacts of the old world?”

“Old world?”

“Of course, of course, the old world young man, you weren’t there for it. War, demon kings, angels and gods themselves!”

“And dragons?”

“Of course, but they were before the old world.”

Sebas raised an eyebrow at the old gnome man, he held a single golden tooth within his mouth, the rest either rotten or gone, his hair was shabby and to the point of ruin, practically gone as his hairline sat right above his forehead, a pair of bifocals made his eyes larger than necessary as it seemed he was what you would find the line between bright sage and insane lunatic.

“Hopefully my insight didn’t want the tooth.”

Sebas took a long look at the objects spread around on a clothed surface, most looked like actual garbage, petrified wood, a rock found outside, a copper ring, no gem inside, a few fake tools or items that couldn’t be used to battle. Albeit there were plenty of things some could use, thieves' tools were in abundance, along with a full set of chess laid on the desk.

“Ah, that be my own, it isn’t for sale.”

“I see.”

Sebas found a small half key, that he strongly resonated to, the merchant seemed disappointed that he chose such an item.

“A silver will do, don’t know why you’d want half a key.”

“Might be lucky.”

“Then you should give me two silvers since you feel lucky my lad, don’t you know it’s good luck for one to tip their shopkeeper!” He wrung his hands together, which made Sebas chuckle.

“I’ll give you 3 Silver if you tell me where you found it.”