"Ahh cold, cold..." Merlin's surprise from the situation wore off, and only now did he start focusing on the fact his hands were essentially frozen solid and stinging. "It hurts, why couldn't it be like the time the priestess froze my arm."
A loose thought came to mind which involved shattering his arms and just having them regrow, but the thought of going around without limbs for however long it took to heal was an uncomfortable thought.
Various NPCs seemed to be staring at him from a small distance away, some of which clearly saw the blue flash.
Worried about the state of the ruin, Merlin turned around to gaze at the door frame, only to find that it was still in pristine condition. Fortunately, his mildly chaotic testing methods hadn't caused any visible complications, that he was aware of.
He reached through the door frame with his arms, and just like before, they passed through without any resistance.
"So... That was odd." He muttered to himself, "It may not be the key, but the dagger is the only thing that has interacted with the ruins so far."
He stared at the information window of Ghostsaw's blade, wondering why this was different to everything else he had on him, including his other dagger, the Wolf's Fang.
'The only thing I can think of is that it's an infused weapon.' He thought to himself, 'Perhaps souls can't travel through it?'
'But then again, I have souls infused in my body, yet I can pass through it.' He continued to wonder but his thoughts were interrupted by the painful stinging sensations coming from his arms.
Tucking both his arms underneath his cloak, he quickly chanted out a skill name that he hadn't used yet, "Overheat".
Suddenly, the red gem that decorated the cloak's clasp began faintly glowing a warm red, and the inside of his cloak began heating up quickly. Within a matter of seconds, it was as if he had been wrapped in a heated blanket that was cranked up to its highest setting, which caused him to start feeling slightly drowsy.
He felt a moment of relief as the warm air soothed his freezing body, but after eight minutes, the gem stopped glowing and the skill ended.
"Ah, ran out of mana," He said with a disappointed tone in his voice, forgetting that he no longer had the obscenely large mana pool that he once had.
It seemed his hands were healed, for the most part, and he could now move them around.
"Oh wait a second," He muttered to himself before opening his inventory and scrolling through it. "I almost forgot I had this."
He pulled out a wispy green ball of light and held it tightly within his hand. It was the goblin soul he had acquired and hadn't yet stored away at the soul receptacle.
As he moved the soul closer to the door frame, he felt resistance against his hand as the soul inched closer. Once the soul was only about a fist away, he began seeing a faint blue ripple effect form within the stone frame, something that didn't happen when he held the blade to it.
However, much like with the blade, Merlin was unable to push the soul through the door frame. The ripples were becoming more violent the harder he pushed, so he eventually pulled back and threw the soul back into his inventory.
"So you're a portal of sorts that won't allow souls to enter," Merlin's eyes lit up with excitement, "What is the story here, I wonder? A sealed dimensional rift..."
Unfortunately, he was forced to move on as he didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to figure it out right away.
'I guess I should pay a visit to the Artemis shrine at some point.' He thought to himself, 'I also need to get rid of the excess energy in the dagger, but if I hold it my arm will freeze again...'
Shaking his head, he threw his hood over his head and began making his way out of the city. Merlin summoned his ball of light as he stepped into the darkness.
'I guess I should activate my stream, I'll have to pause it when I go deal with the thieves guild though.' He thought to himself while travelling down the road.
He eventually chanted the command to start his stream and the transparent floating eyeball returned.
"Good evening everyone," He greeted everyone who had quickly piled into his chat.
He had a pleasant conversation with several members of his chat, and then some people began spamming claiming that they were fellow classmates, which caused Merlin's face to cramp up.
"Quinn, are you there?" He asked his stream chat, to which Quinn promptly responded.
┌───────────────────
[MOD] Quinntessential: Yes, I'm here. What's up?
└───────────────────
"If anyone starts doxxing me, ban them immediately," He ordered with a frustrated expression.
┌───────────────────
[MOD] Quinntessential: Roger that!
[System] Moderator Quinntessential has banned xX_L1tsune_Xx.
[MOD] Quinntessential: Whoops, finger slipped.
└───────────────────
"What, that wasn't permission for you to ba--" Merlin remarked, but he was quickly cut off when he received a private message from Quinn informing him that it was Vasco's account. "You cheeky..."
He let it slide because it was likely that Vasco would have tried to cause trouble now, that was just the type of person he was. Except this was now an excuse for him to start trolling on an alternate account. Merlin could only hope that Vasco wasn't smart enough to operate a VPN to get around the streaming service's IP address ban.
Eventually, Merlin had walked through the forest safely and was now at the rolling hills where the boars spawned. The moon was rather low in the sky at this point, and it'd be dawn in the next few minutes.
Merlin saw some sparks in the distance and there were several light sources scattered around, it seemed as though several groups were strong enough to farm boars now.
Although as was common in games, people had begun fighting over regions of the field, and upon closer inspection, it seemed as though the main culprit in all the fighting was Kyle's group, as usual.
They seemed to be fighting against a couple of other groups, one of which was a familiar sight, the trio of girls he had run into in the wild weeks ago. The other groups seemed to be players that Merlin hadn't yet interacted with, and a couple of people seemed to not even be from the first wave.
One person stood out as peculiar within this whole crowd, quite a tall individual amongst everyone else, and who seemed to even be taller than Merlin. But that wasn't the reason why Merlin found him interesting, rather it was because this individual had already acquired a metal helmet and breastplate, two fairly expensive items at such an early stage, alongside leather bracers and shin guards to protect their extremities.
This individual seemed to have a large masculine build, although Merlin couldn't tell from quite a distance away and under poor lighting conditions. They were wielding a large kite shield and swinging around a short sword in their main hand, both of which they utilised effectively, and Merlin watched as they cut down one of Kyle's goons with minimal effort.
Merlin's chat was telling him to jump into the fight, and Merlin was tempted but wanted to see what everyone's karma was at first before he made a move.
He quickly ran closer to the fight until he could finally see names appear over everyone's head. As expected, Kyle's group were bright red, and a group of unfamiliar faces who seemed to be attacking anyone who got near them were all orange.
"Oh, this is going to be a clusterf--" Merlin muttered to himself, his words were cut off as a spark of magic flew past his head.
Merlin's attention snapped to the individual who shot magic at him, a nasty looking individual with a red name. One of Kyle's group he could only assume, but it wasn't one of the three he was familiar with.
"So you recruited a mage, huh?" He muttered, gripping his Wolf's Fang and unsheathing it.
Merlin was about to run into combat when he heard the armoured individual shout out a skill name while charging at the caster, "Shield bash!"
The individual's shield seemed to faintly glow, up until the point it was used to backhand the caster.
Merlin watched as the caster's body flung backwards, and he could almost make out shards of shattered teeth scattering in the air.
"Wait, that was a knight skill," Merlin muttered, "How has he upgraded his soul already?"
It was at this moment that Merlin realised he had been slacking off. Although he was keeping the lead due to quests, he was putting off the grinding element that helped level souls up faster.
Keeping those two elements in balance would be the key to acquiring a steady amount of power, something he was failing to do due to old habits and his hatred for endless grinding, a hatred that developed from his fifteen years as a ranker.
The individual, whose nametag Merlin barely caught a glimpse of, reading it as "SaintMRP", had charged towards the caster who was staggered, piercing his blade into his enemy's chest and finishing him off quickly with another attack with his shield.
As Merlin's attacker had been made short work of, he was forced to changed targets. And after slipping into the crowd, he quickly located his favourite person to torment, LordKyle.
Merlin was approaching Kyle as fast as he could, but he didn't make it in time to save one of the other players that had just been cut down by him, falling to the ground as a corpse.
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