Dain held his breath for a few extra heartbeats—just in case the pair of adventurers suddenly decided to turn back around—and then let it out slowly.

  His Bloodlight Eye closed with a last, indignant blink as he lowered his prosthetic.

  “Good,” he muttered, and immediately swooned left and right from the light-headedness.

  He’d overdone it again. It wasn’t like his injuries from last night already healed, and here he was overusing his prosthetic again, but how could he have expected the two adventurers would chase after the centipede after he so graciously led it away from them?

  Did they see my face?

  Memorize my voice?

  He’d tried to give them the curt version of Dain Sorowyn, but the younger girl who’d stepped on a branch—the one he’d used his Bloodlight Eye on, who couldn't be older than seventeen or eighteen—might’ve caught a glimpse of his face as she stumbled out of cover.

  … Whatever.

  At least I can still walk.

  He sniffed and pushed off the tree behind him. The important thing was that the two of them were still walking, breathing, and probably not his problem anymore, so he turned back to the frozen centipede carcass and grinned despite the pain.

  At least the reward was worth the effort.

  There was no time to waste. The frozen pond was already thawing, spidering with tiny cracks, so he planted a foot on the centipede’s nearest leg and pulled. The limb didn’t so much as budge.

  “Gods,” he muttered, digging out his dining knife from his satchel. “Don’t make me work for this.”

  He jabbed, sawed, cursed, and got nowhere for a full minute. Then he huffed and went for the softer bits: the joint seams and the strips of muscle on the underside of the leg where plate met flesh. There, the knife bit. He wedged and sliced the gap wider, found a tendon, and sawed through the meat until the whole leg finally came loose with an ugly rip.

  With the leg off, he carved off chunks of meat—blue-white, dense, and shockingly cold to the touch—and slid them all into his satchel. The frost-resistant chitin plates came next, which would be useful as side offerings to increase the frost resistance of his relics, but he had to downsize many of them just so he could stuff them in with the meat.

  These will probably go into a Manabrew Potion.

  I wonder what the cursed effect will be this time, though.

  Once he harvested all he could from the leg, he skidded around the ice until he was behind the centipede’s head. The mandibles had long since stopped twitching. Using the seams between its segments as handholds, he climbed up to its mandibles and peered down its mouth, immediately identifying the blue-lit ridges of cartilage inside.

  Aha.

  There you are.

  The bilefrost gland protruded from the roof of its mouth, so he reached in, pried it out with a wet squelch, and hissed the entire time while he tossed the frigid thing into a smaller, separate pouch in his satchel.

  None of the bilefrost centipede’s other parts could be used as offerings—not for any relics he could recall, anyways—and the bilefrost gland itself was also useless as an offering, but at least it’d sell for a pretty price. He’d heard northern Obricans liked to stew it during summertime to stave off the heat.

  He hopped off the frozen pond the moment he was done harvesting as much as he could, and right on cue, the final fissures split across the ice. The surface returned to liquid, and he watched as the giant centipede sank into the clear water, no doubt being dragged down by the currents of the springwater channels.

  It’d been a very risky plan, he had to admit. He’d grabbed half a dozen large leaves and nudged them across the lake, making the centipede believe it was solid ground so it’d chase him right across the clearing. Then, he’d baited it to use its frigid mist by annoying it with weak wind blasts, only to turn its own mist back by firing a larger, more powerful windsphere—exactly like how he’d dealt with the bladebeak kiwi last night, only this time, he’d used ice instead of fire.

  Wind-type Elementum-Class relics really are versatile.

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  My Bloodlight Eye did its job, too, scaring the two girls off.

  Readjusting the straps of his satchel and Altar, he mulled about the two adventurers as he resumed walking towards Granamere. The older girl with the long, braided hair had carried away the younger girl—with the obviously dyed black hair—with such ease that he couldn’t really see her as an amateur adventurer. She was physically fit. That swordstaff she had with her also seemed to be an Elementum-Class relic as well, so he couldn’t say he wasn’t at least a little curious about the two of them.

  Still, he’d rather not bump into the two of them on his way to Granamere, so he veered off the trail he guessed they’d take towards the town, taking the slightly longer route. His mana reserves were already scraping bottom, though, so he needed to go fast. Another encounter with a magic beast might just kill him.

  Times like these are when acquired skills would come in handy.

  Maybe I can try for a Skill Tag with the centipede parts?

  Acquired skills were permanent skills, so even if he ran out of mana, he’d still have something to fall back on. In fact, it’d be fantastic if he had a Title—and its associated title ability that was also permanent—but he supposed it was an impossible goal for the near, foreseeable future.

  There was a good reason why even most soldiers employed by wealthy kingdoms didn’t have Titles or acquired skills. The base offering for either a Title Tag relic or a Skill Tag relic was a Tag relic itself, after all, and those weren’t easy to come by. To obtain a normal Tag, he’d first have to offer several rare materials not easily found in the eastern continents, and then he’d have to offer up the Tag alongside several more rare materials in order to obtain either a Title Tag or an Skill Tag.

  Two layers of offerings for every single permanent ability is a hefty cost.

  I only have the Tag I have right now because I bought it dirt cheap from that same merchant who sold me the ichor gem. No way I would’ve been able to afford it at ‘market price’, whatever that is.

  He cracked his neck as he balanced across a fallen log. There really was no point thinking about Titles and acquired skills right now. The fact was, only seekers and heroes and great warriors typically had Titles, and he was far from being any one of them. He’d take his time building his arsenal of relics first, figure out what sort of seeker he wanted to be, and then obtain his Title.

  And I have to be very, very careful about the offerings I use to get the Title.

  This was because once he obtained a Title—also called a One-Title at its weakest form—and its associated title ability, he wouldn’t be able to change it or remove it. He could only promote it into a Two-Title, then a Three-Title, then all the way up to Four-Title by offering stronger materials, strengthening the title ability with each promotion. Choosing the right One-Title was easily the most important part of the process, because while he could choose between several options with each promotion, all of them would be related to his first.

  A One-Title ‘Warrior’ could become a Two-Title ‘Berserker Warrior’ or a ‘Serene Warrior’, and then a Two-Title ‘Berserker Warrior’ could become a Three-Title ‘Blood Berserker Warrior’ or a ‘Howlbrand Berserker Warrior’, but a ‘Warrior’ would never be able to become a ‘Gloomstrider Scout’ or an ‘Ebontrail Assassin’. His One-Title would stick as the foundation of his promotions for the rest of his life.

  What Title do I want, anyways?

  ‘Slayer’ would give him tons of base attribute levels alongside the Bloodhound title ability—the ability to see mana trails, which would be incredibly useful for hunting monsters—but there was a reason why most people in Auraline and Obric wanted the ‘Knight’ Title. Valorbound was just too useful as a title ability, allowing the ‘Knight’ to passively increase the resilience of people around them by half their own base resilience. Lords and ladies would pay heaps to have at least one ‘Knight’ around them all the time.

  His legs carried him while his brain did the fiddly daydreaming. Two hours blurred out from under him as the sun slipped lower and lower, and as he was starting to get worried he might have to camp another night out in the forest, he crested a small hill—and Granamere revealed itself out of the fog.

  He stopped at the top of the hill, breathing thinly.

  Granamere wasn’t Corvalenne. Gods, no. Corvalenne had been softer, with wooden buildings, warm dirt, and red clay roof tiles. Granamere was stone first and second and third. The houses were blocks and slabs, the streets were cut cobblestone, and smoke from many squared chimneys curled like wispy fingers into the sky. The town itself sat in the palm of the mountains around it, and far up into the snow-capped mountains, he spotted what looked like mine entrances, connected to the town below by narrow zigzagging paths.

  And even if it looks cold, it probably isn’t, he thought. It’s a mining town like all Obric towns. It’s perpetually warm because of all the furnaces and stoves and hearths, so I probably wouldn’t even need thick clothes to make do here.

  Even still, in the proper winter months, this entire area would be a bowl of snow. He tried to imagine it and failed. He’d never seen snow before—and he’d never seen a town that wasn’t Corvalenne, either—so for a good, long moment, he was simply stunned as he took in the view with a tired smile.

  Then his smile thinned as he remembered he wasn't here on vacation.

  “... How troublesome,” he murmured.

  A roof over his head, warm food, and new clothes—he’d need coin to afford all three, and coin was something he didn’t have.

  He glanced down at his satchel. His magic materials were all worth something, so maybe he’d have to sell off a few to the local material merchants.

  And preferably, nobody sees I have any relics on me.

  If anyone even suspects they look a little ‘cursed’, they might just send word to the Curator Church. I’ll be done for then.

  Now, how the hell do I hide this Elementum-Class prosthetic?