His world went white. Every nerve in his head rang like struck glass. The lightning shield rippling across the entire golem ripped his windsphere apart and rode the backlash up into his bones. For a heartbeat he couldn’t feel his body at all—then the golem did him the courtesy of reminding him via blunt force.
It twisted violently, and he went flying like a thrown nail.
A balcony came to find him. He crashed through it into a half-broken bedroom, hit a wall, and fell onto his stomach in a drift of dust.
Moving hurt in a way that put new vocabulary in his mouth, none of it polite.
Ow.
Of course it’s got a defensive mechanism.
It’s built… for fucking war.
The wingcloak was the only thing that’d saved him from getting turned into paste. It hardened its exterior and softened its interior as he hit the wall to blunt the impact, then slowly eased off so it wasn’t crushing him now as he lay on his stomach.
He groaned anyways and took inventory: one thigh full of metal, shoulder throbbing, his back a furnace of pain, and his hands shaking like bad cutlery.
Outside, Granamere continued to scream.
He lifted his head and looked out the balcony. The gargoyle golem had forgotten him again. He was just a fly, after all, and it only seemed interested in destroying whatever was closest to it. It cleaved through a building with a single swing of its spear, staggered and crushed another by complete accident, then unfurled its wings once to shove off all the ash and soot that’d accumulated on its back, releasing yet another shockwave of wind that decimated every intact window around it.
Every instinct in him said ‘get up’. The rest of his body said ‘not a chance’.
That thing was built for war, and he wasn’t.
If he wanted to stand a chance against it, he’d need a decisive advantage.
… Fuck it.
Fuck it!
He clicked his teeth and punched the floor in a fit of rage.
In a more fortunate life, he’d have liked to take his sweet time gathering all the materials for his most desired Title, but he had no choice. Getting a Title meant he’d immediately gain a bunch of base attribute level—and mana—he could use to lift himself onto his feet, because even the most powerful title ability in the world wouldn't be able to save him if he couldn’t get out of this burning, crumbling building within the next few minutes.
First, he checked his Tag. How many mana did he have left?
***
Name: Dain Sorowyn
Grade: Common-4
Title: None
Title Ability: None
Acquired Skills: None
Might: 14 (+2)
Swiftness: 11 (+2)
Resilience: 10 (+1)
Clarity: 15 (+1)
Mana: 9/34 (+0.9/hr)
Relics: Windscar Prosthetic Arm (Common-4), Bloodlight Eye (Common-2), Oreblade Cane (Common-2), Silverplume Wingcloak (Common-4)
***
Not nearly enough mana to be fighting.
I need more now.
He yanked off his Altar, threw it in front of him, and unwrapped it with one hand before upending everything in his satchel. Materials slid and clattered across the floor, but he didn’t even bother looking to see what he had before clapping his hands.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Belara!” he snapped. “You there?”
The reddish purple portal swirled open without fanfare, and four pale hands slithered out slowly as usual. He immediately fumbled in his pocket, found one of his precious Tags, and held it up to one of her hands.
“Base offering for a Title Tag!” he said. Then he looked around the floor for the materials he had to work with, and to his dismay, he didn’t have much. Half the materials he had were still buried under a mound of rubble, including his soulfire metal, his mechanical core, and the other half of his silverplume feathers he hadn’t used to upgrade his relics, but…
His hand went straight for the shiny crystalwurm eye he’d bought from Karr for far too cheap. The inner veins still glimmered through the sapphire eye.
“Baby All-Seeing Crystalwurm eye!” he said. “It’s an Uncommon grade resource harvested from the abyssal depths of the Thalassene Sea, rare enough to serve as a main offering for a Title. You want it or not?”
One of Belara’s hands snatched the Tag from him. Another snatched the crystalwurm eye, and both hands vanished into the portal.
“Good. Then, for the second main offering…”
He blinked, eyes stinging from the smoke outside, but he still managed to grab a smaller, blood-wet satchel just sitting in front of him. He didn’t think this was how he was going to use them, but life had been nothing but unusual the past few days.
“Ten fucking silverplume owl heads,” he said, shoving the satchel of heads forward. He couldn’t help but chuckle stupidly as he did. “It’s… well , they’ve still got some silverplume feathers on them, and each of them has still got a pair of eyes. Good enough for a main offering, right?”
Another pale hand took the satchel from him, pulled the cord out, and turned the opened satchel towards the portal—as if Belara herself was peering into it to count the number of heads. The thought that Belara was physically looking at him through the portal unnerved him more than he’d like to admit, but when the pale hand pulled the satchel into the portal, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly relieved.
“Just one more,” he mumbled. “One more main offering, one more main offering, one more…”
He immediately found the four golem eyes and pushed them forward. Their dead ruby lenses caught firelight and reflected it back at the portal.
“Molkhara golem eyes,” he finished. “There. Three main offerings. All of them have something to do with eyes, so how about a Title with a sight-related title ability? Maybe ‘Scout’? Maybe ‘Assassin’? Anything—and I mean anything—that’ll immediately give me a wad of base attribute levels will do.”
The final pale hand swept the golem eyes into the portal, and he immediately sagged, sweat cold across his lip despite the heat.
But the portal stayed open.
And the four hands slithered back out, simply hanging there.
“... What now?” He scowled at them. “That’s three main offerings and a base offering. That’s all you’d need for a Title Tag. What more do you…”
He trailed off halfway through, because he finally remembered who he was bargaining with.
Belara didn’t care about ‘common recipes’. Belara didn’t care about ‘most materials’ or ‘most relics’. Belara was an Eighth Curator God the world didn’t know about, and the relics she gave were cursed.
So when all twenty pale fingers unfurled like petals to slowly point at his left eye, all he could do was hold very, very still.
Pain leaned its weight on his ribs. Fear threatened to turn his mind to mush if he let it. Instead, he bared his teeth at her wicked sense of humor and chose to laugh, because if he couldn’t be brave, he might as well try to be nonchalant about it.
“Bastard,” he muttered. “First you take my arm, and now you want my eye as well?”
The four hands curled once more, as though to say ‘give it’.
“Fine,” he growled, and he peeled his eyelids apart, gritting his teeth as hard as he could. “But you better give me something incredible, you cursed go—”
White exploded through his skull so fast the rest of the world fell away. A scream ripped out of him without permission and bounced off the walls as Belara gouged his eye, but he bit his tongue halfway through, because that was something to bite, and because swallowing sound made him feel like he owned it.
Maybe it was better the hands hadn’t given him any time to brace for it.
As he rolled onto his side, wheezing and panting with one hand clapped over his missing eye, he hissed through his teeth.
“Make it… quick.”
He really wasn’t picky now. ‘Scout’. ‘Assassin’. A Title that’d immediately give him swiftness would be best, but something that’d give him a sight-related title ability wouldn’t be too bad either. He just needed something to even the scales against the gargoyle golem, and any base attribute boost was better than watching Granamere burn with his mouth empty.
“Come on,” he whispered to the portal. “Come on, Belara, if you’ve ever liked me even an inch—”
The hands came back, and for the first time, they came back cradling their gift to him gently.
The relic they carried was a pitch-black, rectangular piece of paper the size of a large seal-stamp, and the writing in black letters on the paper… confused him, to say the least.
For starters, Tags were supposed to be golden.
Also, he’d never heard of this Title before.
***
Name: ‘Collector’ Title Tag
Type: Consumable Trinket-Class Cursed Relic, Common-9
Attribute Addition: +2 Base Swiftness, +10 Base Clarity, +10 Mana, +2 Mana Regeneration
Ability Description: When ingested, gives the holder the title ability ‘Eye of Belara’, which will allow the holder to see basic information related to all living beings and relics. Furthermore, the holder can open a portal to Belara whenever they clap their hands.
However, the holder can only equip and use cursed relics once the Title Tag is ingested.
