[Grom's Unyielding Signet]
Quality: Rare
Type: Ring
Weight: 0,1
Attribute Bonus:
+5 Physical Damage
Special Effect:
[Unyielding Will (Passive)]: Once every 50 seconds, negates a single instance of incoming damage that would not be higher than 75% of your total health.
Requires Level: 5
Description:Forged from a single piece of cold, unadorned iron, this signet ring is heavy with more than just its own weight. The craftsmanship is undeniably Dwarven—solid, stubborn, and built to endure. A faded rune, likely that of an anvil, is deeply carved into its flat face, though the edges have been worn smooth by a century of forgotten history. It feels out of place in a goblin's hoard, a testament to a story long since buried.
A solid piece. The passive was a built-in damage buffer, an excellent tool for survivability. He began to slide it onto his finger.
The moment his skin touched the cold metal, the world dissolved.
[Storyteller's Intuition has been triggered!]
The throne room, the loot, his party—it all vanished, replaced by a chaotic storm of sensory data. The world turned grey and muted.
CRACK!
The sharp, percussive sound of a pickaxe striking rock echoed in his ears, followed by the deep, resonant hum of powerful magic. A guttural oath, sworn in a harsh, unfamiliar tongue that his mind somehow identified as Dwarven, rumbled through him.
A flash of sight: a grizzled, bearded face, eyes wide with manic discovery in the flickering torchlight. The glint of a raw, pulsating red crystal, buried in the rock like a cancerous heart. Then, the terrible, grinding groan of stone giving way. A wall of rock collapsing, plunging everything into darkness.
The sensations were followed by a tidal wave of emotions that were not his own. Stubborn pride, so potent it was almost tangible. Unshakeable loyalty to unseen comrades.
And then, a sudden, sharp, soul-stabbing feeling of betrayal.
The crushing weight of the earth. The feeling of being trapped. The cold. The dark.
The vision shattered. He was back in the throne room, the ring halfway onto his finger. He stumbled, catching himself on the arm of the goblin throne. His party stared at him, concerned.
"Kage? You okay?" Lily asked, her voice soft.
He didn't answer. A flurry of notifications had appeared in his log.
[You have glimpsed a Lore Echo.]
[New Conceptual Keyword Discovered: [Betrayal]]
[Conceptual Resonance with [Betrayal] has been set to 4% (Academic)]
[Quest Started: The Stone Remembers]
Grade: Rare
Objective: An echo of a broken oath and a forgotten treasure lingers within Grom's Unyielding Signet. Uncover the truth of the stone's memory.
The UI for the quest was unique. It looked ancient, as if carved into the very window of his interface.
Kage pushed the disorienting vortex of another being's trauma aside. A new questline.
The Operator's mind began to recalibrate, processing the new data. Other players would only have seen its value and stats. They would have equipped the ring and moved on, completely blind to the rare quest sleeping within its code.
But his class... It had unlocked a hidden layer of the game, effortlessly revealing a high-value asset that was invisible to everyone else.
He cross-referenced this with the data from the final fight. The discovery of Rhythmic Flow and the state of Perfect Cadence had already proven that a path to combat viability existed, however narrow and demanding. It was a hint that the class possessed a hidden, synergistic depth that defied its surface-level stats.
The humiliation of his forced class change still stung, but the data was undeniable. The path of the Poet was inefficient in conventional grinding, but its ability to generate unique quests and its potential for high-skill combat expression... it was a system of staggering complexity.
Maybe, he conceded with a flicker of grim analysis, this class wasn't a total liability after all.
A problem to be solved later. He finished sliding the ring on.
"Alright, let's get out of here," Finn said, the adrenaline of the fight finally giving way to exhaustion. "My hands are still shaking."
The party turned to leave, but Kage stood still.
He was staring at the spot where the Goblin War Chief had died. The glittering loot pile was gone, collected into their inventories, but the boss's body hadn't fully dematerialized. It remained as a shimmering, semi-transparent afterimage, a glitch in the world's cleanup protocol.
At least, that's what his party saw.
Kage saw something more. Visible only to him, a single, ephemeral string of dark red light emerged from the corpse's chest. It slithered slightly in the still air like a wisp. Floating just above it was a line of text: [Conceptual Material Acquirable].
He instinctively tried to grasp it with his will, the same way he composed a verse. He focused his intent on the string, trying to pull it into his inventory. Nothing happened. The string remained untouchable, a prize locked behind a pane of invisible glass.
He searched for possible options.
His mind's eye went to his inventory. To the simple feather he'd received from the Chronographer. The First Maker's Quill.
He materialized it. It appeared in his hand, a simple, unassuming object amidst the grandeur of the throne room. His party watched, confused, as he approached the lingering afterimage of the boss.
He slowly extended the Quill, bringing its sharpened tip close to the ethereal red string. The moment it was within an inch, the string seemed to gain a life of its own. It latched onto the Quill's tip with a faint, inaudible hiss, a wisp of smoke connecting to a needle point.
Kage began to pull back slowly, carefully. The string offered a slight, tangible resistance, like pulling a single, crucial thread from a complex tapestry. He watched as the red energy flowed from the corpse, coiling around the Quill, before it finally came free. The moment the last of it was extracted, the afterimage of the Goblin War Chief dissolved completely, leaving nothing behind.
The red energy on his Quill solidified into a small, red scroll and vanished into his inventory.
[You have harvested a Conceptual Material: [Concept: Chained Fury]]
"Okay," Zara's voice cut through the silence, completely baffled. "What in the name of the system's code was that?"
He took a slow, steadying breath, his face returning to its usual neutral mask.
More data points. I will have to look at all of them at once. Later.
Then, he calmly walked to the back of the massive stone throne. Tucked away in the shadows, growing in a damp crevice, were exactly five patches of pale, faintly glowing moss.
[Gloom-moss]
Quality: Uncommon
Type: Lichen
Weight: 0.1
Description: A rare, pale-green lichen that clings to ancient, damp stone in places the sun has never touched. It emits a faint, cool light and smells of deep earth and cold minerals. When crushed, it releases potent regenerative compounds, making it a crucial ingredient for poultices designed to mend stubborn breaks in bone and tissue.
He glanced at his nearly empty Awen bar. His first instinct was to gather it quickly and complete the objective. But his Operator's mind re-ran the calculation. This was a rare, geographically-locked reagent. The potential for a better quest reward from Anya—and the chance to acquire extra samples for his own use—made the time-cost of waiting for Awen regeneration a worthwhile investment.
"Fifty seconds," he said to the party, his voice flat.
They watched, confused, as he stood perfectly still, his eyes closed. To them, he was doing nothing. But they learned to believe that whatever he was doing had a purpose.
After a tense few seconds, he had enough Awen for a verse. He knelt by the patch of moss. He focused his intent on the potent regenerative properties Anya had described, trying to coax a richer harvest.
Title: A Potent Yield
Poem: Growth
The [Perfect Cadence] buff was already off.
[-50 AWN]
A soft green light pulsed from his hand into the moss. He began to gather.
[Gloom-moss Acquired x3]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +4.5%]
[EXP Gained: 30]
A good yield. He waited for his Awen to tick up again, then repeated the process on the next section of the patch. This time, the light that pulsed from his hand flared with a brighter, golden hue.
[Harvesting Critical Success!]
[Gloom-moss Acquired x2]
[Gloom-moss (High Quality) Acquired x1]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +6.0%]
[EXP Gained: 40]
[Quest Objective Complete: Gather Gloom-moss (5/5)]
He had his five quest items, plus a bonus high-quality sample. Perfect efficiency. He slowly harvested the last three patches, netting a total of 13 Gloom-moss.
Job done.
The party followed him out of the throne room, their chatter a low, buzzing mixture of adrenaline and reverence. They were walking on air, high on their impossible victory.
As they stepped into the antechamber, the buzz died.
Argent and the rest of the Gilded Jackals were still there, rooted to the spot. Their expressions were a frozen tableau of disbelief. All the delusions of Kage being a copycat were gone.
Argent's eyes met Kage's. He tensed, a storm of confusion and humiliation brewing in his gaze. He saw Kage stop, his blank expression drifting in his direction. For a split second, Argent's ego flared—he thought Kage was finally acknowledging him, meeting his gaze to deliver a final, cutting taunt.
He was mistaken.
Kage was looking past him, using the empty space to summon his interface. The UI was a purely mental construct, invisible to all but him. With a flicker of intent that took less than a fraction of a second, he completed his post-level-up administration.
Artistry: 32 -> 34
The task was complete. The Gilded Jackals were so far beneath his notice that he had used their leader as a focal point for his menu.
Argent saw only a blank, dismissive stare that lasted barely a second before Kage's focus shifted away again. The anticipated confrontation, the acknowledgment of their rivalry, never came. The moment was entirely a figment of his own self-importance.
Then, with the quiet confidence of a man who had already moved on to his next objective, Kage calmly walked out of the Goblin Mines, right past Argent's stunned guild.
His silence was absolute, a void more damning than any insult he could have ever conceived.
It was a simple, unspoken declaration.
You were never even in the equation.