Chapter 18: What Is Anima And Beast Stone?

Chapter 18: Chapter 18: What Is Anima And Beast Stone?

... It was a massive hawthorn tree. It looked even more impressive seeing it in person than through the game’s screen.

It looked old and gnarled. Its bark was blackened as if by years of smoke and fires from offerings.

Symbols were carved deep into its trunk in spiraling patterns. They looked wore smooth by a mix of weather and touch, and at its center was the intricate carving of a barbarian figure.

It was huge.

But unlike the normal barbarian, it was three-headed. Its arms reached outward from within the wood itself, straining forward as though trying to claw its way free of the tree that held it.

It a nutshell, it looked less like a statue and more like a person that had been trapped behind malleable wood.

[Barbarian Ancestral Shrine of Worthiness]

Victor remembered this place from the lore dumps.

It was a shrine, legends had it that in the old times, before the erect of the Boundaries, the Babarian tribes would travel here in pilgrimage, to kneel before their ancestors and ask for strength.

Most players skipped it entirely. There was no combat here, and no loot drop worth grinding for.

It was just an old, forgotten mechanic nobody bothered to learn.

But if there was anything Victor learnt about this game, then it was that LORE was important.

And many times, had hidden advantages.

Scratch that. It had advantages most times.

At the center of the carved figure’s chest was a hollow. And it was segmented into rings of different widths, each ring smaller than the last. It looked more like a target.

Victor knew exactly what those widths meant.

After all, one would meet them in many areas of the game.

Each width ring represented a different tier of blessing that could be drawn from the shrine, and the size of what one could offer determined which ring your offering could fill.

No matter how many times, I try to comprehend it, I can’t believe that this is Gavalon.

He mused to himself tracing the lines of the rings with his fingers, as if trying to be sure that his mind was not deceiving him.

Victor crouched low. Then he dug into the pouch at his side, and drew out the two things he’d kept close since the arena. ℯℯ𝑙.

The first was the ruby-red third eye of the Basalt Dragonic Lizard. The beast had died a long while, but it was still faintly warm to the touch even now.

[Rank 10 Beast Stone]

[Description: Can be exchanged for commodities or used to increase Mp of armaments]

This was known as a Beast stone. If he ever decided to push with this world, it would come in handy.

But Victor had already resolved to gifting Popo before he left.

The second was smaller than the Beast Stone.

It was a bead, no larger than a pebble. It was pale and faintly translucent. Inside it, something moved.

It was a slow, swirling current of light. It looked like smoke trapped in glass, pulsing faintly in rhythm, much like a heartbeat.

[Fire Beast Anima.]

[Description: Carries the fundamental elemental soul of a beast of Encroaching Darkness.]

The soul of the Basalt Dragonic Lizard, condensed down into a stone small enough to hold in one hand.

Anima was not easy to get. In fact, the drop rate for anima was around 1 in 30 beasts and even that was depending on how inclined in elemental affinity the beast was.

But there was more to it. And it was this ’more’ that Victor had figured out to increase the drop rate of anima.

Yes. It was in pattern. Somehow, letting the beast stick to its habitual patterns stimulated something within the beast at the point of death that helped to preserve its anima.

This was revelation only a thousand hours of game play could teach, and that by accident.

The anima would always appear in the hands of the person that made the final kill.

Victor stared at the Anima in his palm, then at the width of the ring it would fit. It would fit in one of the smaller openings near the shrine’s outer edge, but an opening all the same.

The moment I do this and the Anima’s blessing lands on me, I’ll be able to finally leave this place.

Since Beasts could leave and enter through the boundary at will, the anima would grant him blessing that would make the Boundary perceive him as a beast.

From what Victor remembered, it also granted certain gifts. And since this is the first anima starting the game, it allows an extra buff which allowed him to share the blessing with two other people.

In the game, he used this to help himself and Kiki out in time before the Boundary came down.

This is my out. Once I can cross the boundary the first trial would be officially over. Then the Log Out will definitely unlock.

However, Victor’s hand trembled slightly, hovering an inch from the segmented hollow in the statue’s chest.

Do it. Just do it.

But his thumb wouldn’t move.

At such a moment, memories flashed in his mind.

Jaja, calling him family with a straight face, blood still fresh on his hands from beating an insect to death to protect him.

Popo, laughing him off as "favored by the ancestors" and the others also smiling with him.

The weight of babarian hands on his shoulder with hard pats of affection.

In the world he was so desperate to return to, those hands came down with punches and slaps.

But here...

Why am I even thinking about them right now.

He shook his head hard, physically, like he could rattle the thought loose. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

He was leaving. That had been the plan since the moment he opened his eyes in this body.

He raised the Anima again, lining it up with the ring.

Then it happened—

A horn split the morning air.

At least it sounded like a horn, but in truth, it was a Babarian War call. It was deep and guttural, rolling out across the village and into the trees.

Victor froze mid-motion.

Ugh. Damn it.

He hesitated a second longer, the bead was so close to the shrine’s surface that he could feel the faint hum of it.

Damn it.

He cursed, and shoved it back into the pouch at his side instead.

He threw one last glance at the three-headed carving, silently promising, just wait for me, I’ll be back.

Then he turned and ran.