The Miner's Bunkhouse faded behind Kage, the scents of stale ale and old sweat replaced by the crisp Oakhaven air. Herman's story was clean and structured, but it had a critical missing variable: location. A quest without a map marker was a sentence to wander aimlessly, an unconscionable waste of time. He needed coordinates.
Herman's lead, "Mad Barnaby," was an unreliable source. Kage stopped in the town square.
His fingers made a deft motion in the air, pulling up a semi-transparent system window only he could see. He bypassed the social channels—Global, Trade, Party—and tabbed directly to the local Oakhaven chat log. It was a rolling transcript of every public message sent within the town's zone of influence. A firehose of useless chatter, guild recruitment spam, and arguments over loot drops.
Useless to most. To Kage, it was an archive.
In the search bar at the top, he typed a single word: Barnaby.
The log filtered instantly, collapsing days of conversation into a handful of relevant lines.
[Local] LeafysGreens: lol did u see that crazy old dude by the west stream again? Barnaby i think? he was yelling at a rock.
[Local] Gilded_Grunt04: Argent wants us to steer clear of that side of the river. Said the old nutter Barnaby is bad for the guild's image LOL.
[Local] PiousPete: I gave old Barnaby a few coppers. The gods teach us to care for the unfortunate. He just stared at my coin and muttered something about 'false shine'.
[Local] FishinFrank: Barnaby's scaring the mud-minnows away again. Wish he'd find a new patch of rocks to talk to.
A single location, confirmed by multiple sources: the stream, west of town. The Gilded Jackals' mention was a minor bonus; it meant the area was likely clear of arrogant peacocks.
Kage dismissed the window and set off, his worn leather boots making little sound on the cobblestones. He moved with a quiet efficiency that blended into the background bustle of Oakhaven. Other players, clad in mismatched gear from their first dungeon runs, laughed and shouted, comparing new stats and weapons. They were here for an adventure. Kage was here for a result.
The town gave way to open fields. The stream was a meandering line of silver cutting through the green, its banks dotted with willow trees. He saw him almost immediately.
The figure was just as Herman had described: an old man with a shock of untamed white hair and a beard that looked like a bird's nest. He wore the tattered remnants of what might have once been a surveyor's vest over simple homespun clothes. He was kneeling in the shallows, water soaking the cuffs of his trousers, his hands sifting methodically through the smooth river stones. Players on the nearby path gave him a wide berth, their gazes a mixture of pity and annoyance. A broken bit of world décor.
Kage approached, stopping a few feet away. He observed. The man, Barnaby, held a simple grey stone up to his ear, his eyes closed.
"No, no, not you," Barnaby whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "You're too young. You only remember the trout and the flood. I need an older voice. I need the one who remembers the crack."
He tossed the stone aside and picked up another, repeating the motion. A player from a passing group called out, "Hey, old-timer! Find any cool loot in there?" and laughed.
Barnaby didn't even flinch. His entire world was contained in the handful of wet rocks before him.
Kage felt the familiar flicker of annoyance he reserved for inefficient systems. This was a social puzzle. A lock that required a specific, non-obvious key. Trying to reason with the man would be a waste of Awen and breath. It was a password prompt disguised as madness.
Barnaby picked up a flat piece of slate. "Ah, you… you remember the blood-song. You remember the promise made in the reversed moon…" His voice trailed off into a low hum.
Kage's mind referenced Herman's story. Grom the Oathkeeper. A famously stubborn Dwarven foreman. Kage just had to provide the bait.
He took a step forward. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion.
"Grom."
Barnaby froze. His hand, halfway to his ear with the slate, trembled slightly. He slowly lowered the stone, his wild eyes turning to fix on Kage. It was probably the first time he had acknowledged anyone. Kage the response. Correct input acknowledged. System is waiting for the next command.
Barnaby's gaze was unfocused, looking through Kage more than at him. "The name… yes, the name is iron," he mumbled, his speech falling into a strange, rhythmic cadence. "An iron will, a name to keep… a promise sworn in caverns deep…"
The next password. Herman spoke of a defining characteristic.
"Oathkeeper," Kage stated.
Barnaby flinched, as if the word were a physical tap on the shoulder. He blinked, a sliver of lucidity sharpening his gaze. "The promise… yes. A sacred trust, to guard the prize… beneath the stone, where power lies…" He pointed a trembling finger at the ground. "The beating, beating, never sleeping…"
The core of the legend. The treasure. The goal.
"Mountain's Heart," Kage said, his tone unchanging.
A shudder ran through the old man. He dropped the slate into the water with a splash. His head snapped up, and for the first time, his eyes focused directly on Kage. The madness was receding like a tide, revealing the sharp, intelligent gaze of the surveyor he once was.
"You… how do you know these words?" he whispered, his voice losing its singsong quality. But before Kage could answer, a wave of pain and ancient anger washed over Barnaby's face. "But the heart was stolen! A serpent's hiss, a friend's dark art… a poisoned word that tore apart…"
The final keyword. The catalyst. The event that set everything in motion.
"Betrayal."
The word hung in the air between them.
It was like a switch had been flipped. The fog in Barnaby's eyes vanished completely. He scrambled to his feet, water sloshing around his ankles, his breathing ragged. He looked at Kage as if he'd been expecting him for a century.
"The word is true," Barnaby rasped, his voice raw with a grief so old it had turned to dust. "The stone told me. It screamed it as the mountain died."
His gaze dropped from Kage's face to his hand. To the simple, heavy iron ring on his finger. Barnaby's eyes widened, a storm of recognition and awe within them.
"The Oathkeeper's seal," he breathed. "Heavens above… you carry his very will."
The moment of clarity held. Barnaby seemed to shrink, the brief return to his old self draining the manic energy from his frame. "I was just an apprentice," he said, his voice quiet and haunted. "My master was an apprentice of a master whose apprentice's master was a friend of Grom's friend's niece..."
H-huh?? Kage's mind blue-screened. Is he bugged?
Barnaby continued as if what he'd just said was perfectly normal. "He said Grom had found something… magical. Something that would change the fortunes of all Dwarven-kind. But he also spoke of Vorlag. Called him a smiling snake with a black-ore heart."
He fumbled inside his frayed vest, his hands shaking. "I was charting the upper tunnels the day of the collapse. We felt it, miles away. It was a scream. A single, final note of agony from the bedrock itself. My master went to investigate. He never came back. I found this near the collapse."
He pulled out a folded, yellowed piece of parchment. It was a surveyor's map, stained with water and time. The ink was faded, the lines drawn with a meticulous, steady hand that Barnaby no longer possessed.
Kage's UI chimed softly. [A new marker has been added to your map.]
Barnaby unfolded the map, his gnarled finger tracing a path deep into a section marked with cross-hatched warnings. A labyrinth of tunnels that Kage recognized as the Goblin Mines. His finger stopped at a dead end, a solid wall of black ink.
"There," he whispered, his voice cracking. "The others called it a granite fault. An impassable wall. But we… we called it the Weeping Wall. It was said it mourned the mountain's broken bones."
Barnaby looked up, his eyes boring into Kage's. The madness was beginning to creep back in at the edges, a familiar fog rolling home. "My master's master told my master… he said, 'That wall knows loyalty. Only a true friend of the stone, or someone who knows the right words, could ever hope to pass. The greedy will shout until their lungs give out, and the mountain will remain silent.'"
The clue was a key, handed to him on a platter. It was another password prompt.
A system notification solidified the revelation.
[Quest 'The Stone Remembers' has been updated.]
Grade: Rare
Objective: An echo of a broken oath and a forgotten treasure lingers within Grom's Unyielding Signet. The mad surveyor has given you the location. Find the seamless 'Weeping Wall' deep within the Goblin Mines.
[EXP Gained: 300]
141/1470 -> 441/1470. Still a long way from Level 7.
The quest completion marked the end of the first part of the chain. He finally had a hard coordinate.
Barnaby's moment of lucidity was over. His eyes glazed over, and he looked down at the map in his hands as if seeing it for the first time. He carefully folded it and tucked it back into his vest. Then, without another word, he turned back to the stream, knelt, and picked up another rock.
"Do you remember the forge-song?" he murmured to it, his voice once again distant and lost. The info-node had served its purpose.
Kage gave the old man one last look, then turned away. He brought up his own map. There, deep within the territory of the Goblin Mines, a new quest marker pulsed with a gentle, golden light. It was in a section far deeper than the path his party had taken to the War Chief's throne room. It was uncharted territory, likely filled with higher-level mobs.
Going alone would be risky. The mobs would be tougher, the path unknown. His [Blade of the Self-Styled King] was powerful, but its Unstable nature made him avoid drawn-out fights, especially against multiple opponents.
He could message Lily. The party was effective under his direction. Jax was an idiot, but a functional meat shield with good damage. Zara was sharp, and Lily's heals were a safety net. It was the logical, safer option. Resource management. Risk mitigation.
He played out the probable scenario in his mind. A tense fight in a dark tunnel against a new, powerful monster. Lily, low on mana. Zara, calculating damage outputs. Jax, a single hit away from death. Kage, seeing the perfect opening, would need to use Tyrant's Strike to land the killing blow.
The move would work flawlessly. The monster would turn. Jax would be saved.
And then, his sword would bellow for the entire cavern to hear: "A weapon to RULE ALL MANKIND!"
He could already picture it. Lily's baffled silence. Zara's intense, analytical stare as she immediately tried to deconstruct the mechanic behind the public broadcast. And Jax… Jax would probably die laughing, right before the second monster killed him anyway. The subsequent mockery would echo in the party chat for the rest of eternity. He would never hear the end of it. They would probably nickname him "King."
The thought was a physical sensation, a hot wave of pure, undiluted mortification that was more terrifying than any in-game death penalty.
The Operator did a swift, brutal calculation. The risk of a corpse run while soloing was a temporary, logistical setback. The risk of Jax discovering his sword's built-in battle cry was a permanent, soul-crushing debuff to his dignity.
The equation settled instantly. He was going alone.
He closed the map. The golden marker vanished from his vision, but its coordinates were burned into his memory. He then glanced down at his hip. The [Blade of the Self-Styled King] hummed with its stolen, arrogant power, its jagged crown crossguard a parody of true authority. It was a foolish, absurd weapon. It was also his. A tool created by his own unique, ridiculous class.
Without a backward glance, Kage began to walk, his steps sure and steady. He moved directly toward the path leading into the wild, toward the dark maw of the mountains.
He had a map, a weapon, and an objective. And, for the moment, his mortifying secret was safe.
He'd return to the mines.
And he'd find out if a Poet could open a door that had stayed sealed for hundreds of years.