Chapter 215: Chapter 215

Arwin’s eyes fluttered open against his will as someone nudged him in the shoulder. He groaned. There was a crimp in his spine and the floor was ice cold against his back, but the warm weight on his stomach and wrapped around his neck somehow made it comfortable.

Weariness still hung from his mind like strands of torn cobweb clinging on even as sleep attempted to brush them away. The temptation to close his eyes again was strong, but he’d spent far too many years training to jump into battle at a moment’s notice to humor it.

Arwin pushed himself upright. He only remembered halfway up that the warm weight on top of him was Lillia. His hand shot out before his eyes were even fully open, grabbing Lillia and pulling her back against himself before he could accidentally dump her onto the ground.

She jerked in his arms as she woke with a surprised breath. “Huh? What? What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Reya said from beside them, her cheeks coloring slightly. “I wanted to let you sleep longer, but it’s been a while. Rodrick thinks those assassins might try to come back again pretty soon. The week is nearly up. If we’re going to give Melissa anything or send her off, we need to do it sooner rather than later.”

“How long were we asleep?” Arwin asked as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his free hand.

“Through the rest of yesterday and all night. Something around fourteen or fifteen hours I think,” Reya replied with an impressed shake of her head. “I’m not surprised. It’s a miracle you stayed awake that long in the first place. Should we just give the armor to Melissa? You could keep sleeping then.”

“No, it’s fine,” Arwin said through a yawn as he shook off the last of his weariness and rose to his feet, lifting Lillia along with him. Her hair was frizzy and more than a few strands were stuck in her clothes or her mouth.

He set her down beside him and looked at himself. His clothes were stained with soot. Holes had been burnt into several spots on his shirt and pants.

Effects: Gain guidance on a single class-related choice. This achievement will be consumed upon usage.

[Full Hand] – Awarded for forging a full 5-piece set. Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill.

[Couple of Crafters II] – Awarded for forging a set by linking your desires together with your partner. Get a room. Effects: The dissonance between you and your partner’s intent has been reduced for this set. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier.

[Sleepless Set - I] – Awarded for re-forging an entire set with less than 1 hour of sleep in the past day. Effects: One skill in your next Skill Selection has been upgraded. This achievement will be consumed upon choosing your next skill. Repeated instances of this Achievement are possible and rewards scale with its tier. See what happens if you get another level of this one. It’ll be fun.

[Overly Generous] – Awarded for stepping back and letting an ally take the challenge of killing an Overloaded Monster out of desire to see their growth. Power is often found whilst guiding others to it. Effects: A single delivery. This achievement will be consumed upon your mental request.

[Curb the Hunger] – You’ve unveiled a hidden aspect of your Class. All that lives must consume to persist, but some hunger more than others. Unfortunately for you, your hunger is far greater than what your body can sustain. Find a way to bring it under control before you consume yourself. Rewards: range on completion. Failure to complete a sufficient amount of the Challenge will result in your death.

Milestone 1: Discover your lack of knowledge and initiate the Challenge.

Reward 1: [The Hungering Maw] will have an extra variant to choose from upon your next Class Specialization. This achievement will be consumed upon your next Class Specialization

Milestone 2: Shed your training aids and take your first step onto the path of true smithing.

Reward 2: 1 bar of purified Albunium, 1 bar of purified Steel, 1 Palestone, 1 Ripperfish tooth, and 1 chip of Rockspider Carapace.

Bonus Reward 2: Achievement: [Yes you did.]

Milestone 3: Unknown Title

“Holy shit,” Arwin said, blinking in pain as golden letters flew at his head like miniature arrows. He’d never tried to view his fully expanded information before, and now he had a damned good reason to not do it again.

I’m not trying to read a novel every single time I take a look at my abilities. Let’s keep that condensed in the future.

It took him a moment of sifting through all the words floating before him to realize that he actually had leveled up again. He’d missed the notification from the Mesh while he was in his work-induced haze.

That meant he hadn’t gotten a new skill with the advancement, but that really wasn’t a surprise. New skills became less frequent the stronger one got. He was fairly certain he’d probably get one at Apprentice 9, but the real important advancement would be right after that, when he moved from Apprentice into Journeyman.

“Look at your information,” Arwin said, his eyes still scanning over everything to make sure he hadn’t missed any other changes in himself. He summoned Verdant Blaze to his hand and a thrum of energy met his palm.

The weapon was brimming with power. It wasn’t fully Awoken yet, but it was a soft breeze away from it. Arwin wasn’t sure how he could tell that — he just knew it from the touch alone.

It would become sentient with the next one or two pieces of magical equipment he made. What that meant, he didn’t know.

“Whoa,” Lillia said, her eyes widening in shock as she finished reading her status screen. “I reached Apprentice 7. I’ve got a new skill to select as well. When did that happen? I didn’t realize I’d cooked that much. I was so focused on improving the quality and magical effects of the food that I wasn’t even paying attention to the Mesh. ”

“You zoned out even harder than I did,” Arwin said with a laugh. He gently brushed some of the hair scattered around her face away. “Good options?”

Lillia nodded absently. She stared past him, studying the words visible only to her for several quiet seconds. A grin formed on her face after a few seconds. She blinked and her eyes refocused. “I got an ability that lets me take on attributes of things I eat. Anything I eat.”

“Anything?” Arwin asked. “Does it have to be cooked?”

“Not technically, no,” Lillia said. She scratched the side of her neck and snickered. “I could technically just try to take bites out of monsters mid fight like you.”

“You stole my trick?” Arwin demanded. “That’s just lame.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got higher standards than you do,” Lillia said, trying to keep herself from laughing any more. “I only eat properly prepared food now. I’ll have to get more into jerky. Carrying around preserved parts of powerful monsters we’ve fought will let me get some pretty strong power boosts mid-fight. I don’t have a lot of combat abilities that aren’t related to my tavern, so this’ll come in handy.”

“Can you eat inanimate objects?”

“No. It’s got to be food. Meat, vegetables, the like. I’m not taking a bite out of anything other than normal monsters unless we randomly run into something made out of bread.”

“Then my trick is safe with me,” Arwin said with an overexaggerated sigh of relief. “You are forgiven. Shall we go give Melissa her armor and figure out what else we missed over the past week?”

“If only so we can finally do something else, yes,” Lillia said. She glanced over to the heart in the corner of their room. It was still beating, but it had slowed even further. They’d kept vague tabs on it over the course of the last week to make sure their efforts didn’t end up getting wasted, but time was definitely running out to make something of it. “We should really finish what we started here.”

“Yeah. We’ll get it after Melissa is sent off today,” Arwin said. He noticed a few strands of hair somehow poking straight out of the top of Lillia’s head and reached out to flatten them. With all the soot covering both of them, it looked like they’d been caught in an explosion.

Lillia pushed up into his hand as he ran it over her head.

“What?” Lillia asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Nothing,” Arwin replied, finishing the motion with a laugh.

“Good,” Lillia strutted past him and somehow managed to look elegant in the process of it — and also revealing the back of her clothing, which was somehow just as messed up as Arwin’s were. She paused at the door at looked over her shoulder at him, arching an eyebrow. “What are you staring at?”

We both really need a change of clothes before we see Melissa or she’s going to think we just ran in after losing a fight against a soot monster.

Lillia’s cheeks went bright red and she quickly turned away in attempt to hide it. It struck Arwin that his words may have been misinterpreted, but rectifying that mistake was something he had absolutely no plans of doing.

He walked up beside Lillia and nudged her with his shoulder before pulling the door open. “Shall we? I thought we were heading over to give Melissa her armor.”

She cleared her throat and combed her hair back. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”