Chapter 45: Chapter 45: The Second Trial: True Eye

Nay stood there in the snow swept temple ruins with the jar in one hand and the net in the other. Her interface chimed with incoming notifications. She accessed the HUD.

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Open The True Eye]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

[Quest Detected]

[Quest: Catch 5 Vigama]

[Accept Quest Y/N?]

---

She sighed and accepted the quests. I’d rather be back in the kitchen right now, she thought. She wondered how Nom and Gracie were handling things back at the Lodge.

“So, I’m supposed to catch something I can’t even see,” Nay said.

She walked forward, stepping deeper into the roofless temple. All of the pillars were like trees that had their tops sliced off, ascending towards the sky and then just ending in crumbled stumps.

She tried to divine what Ilyawraith had called the vigama, but she saw nothing. She looked out into the surroundings outside of the temple.

There were maimed and disfigured statues, missing limbs, faces gone or weathered by time and the elements to the point where they just looked like scoured rock.

Nay sat down on the stone floor, setting the jar next to her, the net draped across her lap.

She thought about sensing the globules of vigor when she was trapped in the sea water tomb. She had seen them. But her eyes had been closed because she was focused on her breathing.

That was it, she thought.

So she closed her eyes and settled into the rhythm of the Spirit Song technique. She could sense her veins wanting more vigor. They reached out and she could feel herself inhaling the vigor in the air around her and she began cycling it through her vein pathways.

She saw the globules of glowing vigor in the air then.

And then she saw them.

At first she thought they were birds. But they glowed. They were bluish-white spirits flitting back and forth on fairy wings. They had ovoid-shaped bodies and faces that looked like ghost masks. There were two big dark circles as eyes and a much smaller one as the mouth. The effect was that of a face that had a perpetual surprised expression.

They looked pretty cute and innocent.

As Nay cycled the vigor, she opened her eyes and realized she could still see the spirits.

“The vigama,” she said. “I can see the vigama.”

There didn’t seem to be a lot of them, but she saw a few in the temple with her. They were lackadaisically hovering back and forth in little paths. They were outside too. She saw them hovering over the frozen lake as if they were winter fireflies.

---

[Quest Complete!]

[Open The True Eye Quest Completed!]

[Congratulations!]

[You have been rewarded Vigor Points]

---

Above her, she saw a line of vigama corkscrewing out of the sky. Except these seemed a bit different.

They were flying fast, in fact they were rocketing towards her. And instead of a blueish-white, they were more of a gold color. As they got closer, she flinched and covered her face with her arms but the vigama flew into her torso.

Then they were gone.

She didn’t feel any pain. Just the usual feeling she got when she completed a quest, a slight rush that she had always just attributed to dopamine hits.

Wait a minute, did the vigama have something to do with Vigor Points?

She accessed her interface.

Vigor Rank: Base

Status to Iron: 69%

The vigama were Vigor Points. That meant each time she completed a quest and was rewarded with the points, vigama had flown into her from some mysterious Quest Giver in the sky.

And although her interface was able to update her on her vigor percentage, she hadn’t been able to see the vigama because her True Eye hadn’t been opened.

Now that it was, she could now observe the relationship vigor had with this world. She not only saw the vigama, but the globules of vigor flowing through pathways in the trees, the frozen water and in the wind.

For the first time since she hadn’t gotten here, she felt as if she was truly seeing it for the first time. There was a strange mesmerizing beauty to it.

“Alright,” Nay said. “This cold is getting old. Let’s work on getting out of here.”

She grabbed the jar and approached the vigama nearest to her. She watched its flight pattern. It seemed to be on its own little patrol, always flying out to the same place, then turning around and coming back.

It was a loop.

So she positioned herself at one of its turning points. She readied her net on its stick and waited for the vigama to make its way back.

As it slowly flew towards her, it didn’t seem to notice her presence. If it did, perhaps it didn’t care.

This is going to be easy.

Right as it turned around, she swiped the net through the air and the thing zipped off, emitting a chirp and a high-pitched mew.

The net was empty.

Nay blinked and watched the vigama race away, disappearing amongst the pillars.

“Okay, so that’s how it’s gonna be,” Nay said.

Two Dexterity Biscuits appeared in her hand out of her inventory. “You want to go fast, let’s go fast.”

She began eating.

/////////

Nay crouched near a pillar, waiting for a different vigama to fly near her.

This time, she didn’t miss. She swept the net through the air, moving swifter than normal, having stacked Dexterity as much as she could from her food.

It was fast enough to catch the vigama. She felt resistance as it started thrashing like a fish in a net.

It let out sing-song mews and chirps that melted Nay’s heart.

“Aw, I’m sorry little guy,” Nay said. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise. I just need you in this jar so the crazy lady can come back and take me somewhere warm. That’s understandable, right?”

She opened the jar and pushed the opening into the net. The vigama flew in and Nay quickly covered the jar with the lid.

---

[Quest Log]

[Catch 5 Vigama]

[1/5]

---

She held the jar up, casting her face in a blueish-white glow from the vigama inside. It seemed to decrease in size a little. It flew slowly around the jar, chirping.

She had an idea, then.

I wonder if I can absorb it like the vigama that represent Vigor Points.

She concentrated on her breathing, falling into the rhythm. She began to sing her Spirit Song as she focused on the technique.

You are reading story MONSTER MENU at novel35.com

She reached a hand into the jar and the vigama landed on her palm. She took it out of the jar and the vigama mewed at her song. Then it flew into her chest.

She felt that dopamine hit and she looked to see if she had gained any vigor.

Vigor Rank: Base

Status to Iron: 69%

So, no uptick yet.

It probably took a bunch of them to see a change in the status.

Also, these vigama probably weren’t worth as much vigor as the golden vigama she got from completing quests.

Interesting, she thought.

She set to collecting more of the blue vigama so she could complete this quest and get out of here.

/////////

She was putting the fourth vigama in the jar with the others, where it bumped into its chirping comrades before settling into its own flight path, when she noticed something strange near the frozen lake.

She had left the temple and wandered towards the lake as she hunted vigama in the snow amongst the razed statues.

There was a stone bench near the snow-covered shore of the lake, and it appeared as if someone was sitting there with their back to her.

In the time she had been here, she hadn’t heard or seen anyone except the vigama. She looked around and didn’t see anyone else. She wasn’t sure what to do.

If this person was dangerous, she might either be fighting or running for her life.

So she could back away and try to find a vigama on the other side of the temple and hope that Ilyawraith would come soon after.

Or she could try and talk to the person.

She was trying to make her decision when the voice interrupted her own thought process.

“It’s cold here, isn’t it?” the figure on the bench said, still with their back to her. There was a melancholy tone to the voice.

“You’re a mysterious stranger and you’re really gonna open with a comment about the weather?” Nay said.

“You’re as much a mystery to me as I must be to you.”

Nay cautiously approached the bench but kept her distance. She made sure she was off to the side and not directly behind this person.

When she got parallel she looked over to get a glimpse of the person.

It was a guy who looked like he was in his twenties. He was rake-thin with skin the color of a pale moon. Which is to say there was a silver glow to his white skin. His black hair was scraggly and dark as night, as if someone had teased not hair but the void itself.

Nay could tell when he stood, he would be tall. He was wearing a black cloak as dark and as shimmering as his hair.

When he looked at her, she couldn’t tell if his eyes were blue or silver. They reminded her of the stars.

“Collecting bugs, are you?” the man said.

Nay looked at the jar of vigama in her hand.

“Something like that,” Nay said. “But I doubt they like to be called bugs.”

He seemed amused by that.

“I remember when this place wasn’t so cold,” he said.

“You do?”

“It was still cold,” he said. “But its bite was nothing like this. The pupils of the Snow Sage practiced their techniques all along the shore here. The water wasn’t frozen then. It was full of fish.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m just a wanderer,” he said. “Perhaps not so much different from you.”

“I thought I was a mystery to you.”

He looked at her again and then scooted over on the bench.

“Would you like to sit?” he said.

She looked at the space on the bench next to him. Although he was beautiful, and she was intrigued, there was something unsettling about the man. She didn’t trust him.

“I think I’m good right here,” she said.

“Apologies,” he said. “I can see my presence disquiets you.”

He stood up, his black starry cloak billowed around his rapier-thin form. Nay was right. He was tall. Well over six feet.

“Forgive me,” he said. “You take the bench. I’ll stand.”

He walked away from the bench, giving her space. He stood in the snow and stared out at the frozen lake.

This gesture surprised her and she felt awkward. She didn’t know what to do but she found herself walking slowly to the bench anyways. She sat down, on the furthest end from him, but didn’t look away from him.

His eyes in the dark sockets of his face seemed to twinkle like stars.

“There are other paths,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“There are other paths if you don’t like the one you’re on.”

“And what path am I on?”

“Cultivation.” He sneered at the word.

“And how do you know that?”

He nodded at the jar of vigama. “You’re not collecting those just to have a pretty bauble to light up your room when it’s dark, are you?”

“You know, I think I’m gonna leave,” Nay said. She stood up. “This conversation is getting a little weird.”

At that, he crouched down and touched the snow with two fingers. A starry pool of darkness formed in the snow and black veins spread out from the pool.

Something dark began growing out of the snow. There was a shoot and black vines crawling out of the frozen ground.

It was a black rose.

It crinkled as the buds finished blossoming. Ice crystals speckled the petals.

He plucked it from the ground and held it out to her.

Part of her wanted to run, but she couldn’t resist.

She cautiously stepped towards him and reached for the black rose.

He handed it to her and stepped away.

She looked at the rose and the black petals seemed to swirl with stars, as if she was looking at a galaxy on the surface. The pistils in the center of the rose were purple.

When she looked back up the strange man was gone, leaving her at the frozen lake by herself with the haunting wind whistling around the half-formed statues around her with a black rose in her hand.

You can find story with these keywords: MONSTER MENU, Read MONSTER MENU, MONSTER MENU novel, MONSTER MENU book, MONSTER MENU story, MONSTER MENU full, MONSTER MENU Latest Chapter