The sun hung low on the western horizon, bleeding a final orange across the canopy before its inevitable death, casting long shadows that stretched across the clearing.
Nico squatted beside Arlath’s corpse with a face masked in dried blood and apathy, viewing the world through the high-contrast greyscale of the Eyes of Relevance, holding a single object in his hand that pulsed with a golden shimmer against the monochrome backdrop, prompting him to sever the mana flow to his eyes to see the truth.
The grey world flooded back, letting the rusty hues of sunset revealing a black pendant in his palm depicting a stylized sun rising behind the world.
[The hell am I supposed to do with this...]
He scoffed, possessing absolutely no patience to play detective today before tossing the trinket into his inventory with a flick of his wrist.
Looking back at the corpse, he diverted 5 MP worth of Ice Reinforcement into his brain, while the remaining 50 MP fueled the Eyes of Relevance and-
-Whoosh.
The world turned to ash and charcoal once more while gold flared at Arlath’s waist.
His machete and a small leather pouch glowed with the obvious aura of relevance, so Nico stripped them off before checking the pouch to find vials and coins.
Banishing them into his inventory, he stood up, ready to leave and finally get on with his life, but a thought struck him as he looked at the carnage.
[Shouldn’t just leave the bodies here... If someone found... it’d start a whole new spiral of bullshit...]
He stared at Arlath, and a dark, practical idea flashed in his mind.
[Might as well...]
He scoffed before placing a finger on the body and triggering the inventory with a thought, vanishing it in a haze of blue.
[System... I wanna sell this body... and that machete.]
-Ding!
{Tier 4, Mid-Stage Human body sold.
At the rate of 25 credits per Stage for Humans...
350 Credits received.
Grade 8 Adamantite Machete sold.
470 Credits received.
Total = 820 Credits}
A dark chuckle couldn’t help but escape his lips at that.
"Would you look at that? Maybe I should take the easy path..."
He turned to walk toward the headless body of the ruined mage, repeating the process with the same detachment of a garbage man on his route, selling the body and the elf’s bow while keeping only the potions, the money, and the mage’s staff just in case Peko found a use for the wood.
He ignored the elf’s corpse entirely; the man was basically in unrecognizable pieces, and Nico possessed neither the time nor the stomach to scrape the man off in these last moments before nightfall.
-Ding!
{Tier 3 Body and Equipment Sold. 695 Credits received.}
He then turned his gaze to the ground where a familiar weapon lay, highlighted by the Eyes of Relevance in a soft gold hue, a few feet from where the mage had fallen.
Squatting to retrieve it, his fingers had barely brushed against the shotgun when a brighter, more piercing flash of gold in the corner of his eye arrested his movement.
He turned his head to find the source, and his breath hitched.
A solitary plant stood in a patch of soil that felt sickeningly familiar. It was the exact spot where he had lain gasping for air, clutching that vial of salvation before the elf’s arrow shattered it, spilling the Grade 2 potion onto the ground.
The same potion that had been miraculous enough to grant immortality for thirty seconds with just a few drops.
And now, from that saturated mud, a single plant stood.
The implication hit him with the force of a physical blow.
He stared at it, recognizing the tropes from a thousand novels despite the numbness in his mind, knowing that this was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.
If a few drops of that potion kept him alive through a meat grinder, a plant growing out from the spillage of the remaining ninety-nine percent of the vial was beyond priceless.
He looked down at the shotgun in his hand, noting the frayed, snapped sling with a heavy sigh, before speaking to the empty air.
"System, buy me a new sling... it needs to have a quick detach."
-Ding!
{Reinforced Boar-Hide Sling with Brass QD Clasp purchased. 46 Credits deducted.}
Nico pulled the fresh strip of dark, oiled leather from his inventory, the scent of which mixed strangely with the metallic tang of blood in the air.
He began threading the thick strap through the shotgun’s mounting swivels while walking towards the plant, pausing only to adjust the brass clasp that sat directly over the center of his chest.
His mind flashed back to the agony of Arlath’s boot crushing his spine, to the sensation of the old strap digging into his chest like a constricting python as the giant wrenched him upward.
He remembered the sound of his own ribs snapping under the...
[Never again.]
If anyone grabbed his weapon now, a single flick of the latch would release the weapon from his body, dropping the gun free and leaving him free to tear their throat out.
[Really hope it never comes to it...]
Severing the mana flow to the Eyes of Relevance as he reached up to the plant, the greyscale world flooded back for the rusty hues of twilight to get a proper look at the source.
And there it stood, a tiny, beautiful contradiction amidst the carnage.
The sapling rose from the mud with a polished hazel-amber hue, twisting elegantly like an ancient bonsai, while its leaves were crystalline jades that pulsed with a soft inner light.
But beneath this beauty lay a circle of death.
The grass for a full meter around it had turned a brittle yellow, drained of every ounce of life by the voracious parasite sitting in the center.
Nico didn’t care about the botany; he just wanted to be done.
He reached down a bloodied hand to rip the sapling from the mud and toss it into his inventory when-
-Ding!
{Host, that is an Azoth.}
"Cool..." Nico murmured before grabbing it.
-Ding!
{Wait!
READ THIS...
Name: Azoth
Classification: Spirit Plant
Rarity: Grade 1.
Primary Use: Core reagent for Grade 2, Grade 1, and Divine-tier Potions
Description:
Azoth is a parasitic, mana-devouring spirit plant defined by uncontrolled growth and absolute resource consumption.
The plant exhibits an aggressive metabolic cycle, forcibly extracting all minerals from surrounding soil and surrounding flora while continuously siphoning ambient mana to sustain rapid expansion.
All nearby flora is eradicated during this process. Ambient mana density in the vicinity is progressively stripped to near-zero.
Once the environment becomes barren and ambient mana is fully depleted, Azoth enters terminal decay.
During decay, all stored mana in its leaves is released simultaneously, causing an abrupt and extreme spike in ambient mana density.
-Component Breakdown:
Leaves:
Stores 100% of all absorbed mana.
Refuses to expend stored energy even during terminal decay.
Only known botanical material capable of stably containing volatile reagents required for Grade 2, Grade 1, and Divine Elixirs.
Wood:
Mana Resistance: 0%
Ideal base material for high-grade staves and wands due to perfect mana conduction.
Fruit of Azoth:
Rare byproduct.
Consumption grants a massive increase in MP Capacityif the consumer survives metabolic overload.
Behavioral Notes:
Azoth is not symbiotic.
It does not preserve ecosystems.
It consumes until collapse.
It is extremely fragile in its early development, requiring constant resources.
Observed Origin (This Instance):
High probability artificial genesis.
Grade 2 Healing Potions are composed of approximately 50% Refined Azoth Leaf Extract, used to stabilize and store extreme concentrations of vitality from other ingredients.
Upon spillage, the massive concentration of vitality merged with the trace biological essence remaining in the refined leaves.
And since the leaves’ primary function is to absorb and store mana, coupled with the spillage on fertile soil, the interaction likely resulted in the spontaneous growth of this Azoth.
Warning:
Unregulated growth will result in localized mana desertification and death of local flora, affecting even the entirety of Shinkotsu.
Nico’s hand that clutched the plant trembled violently by the end of reading that.