Chapter 49: The Unwilling Hero

Patience.

Sköll Rune was a very patient man. At least he liked to think of himself as such, with good reasons too. He had been patient with almost everything that had happened throughout his increasingly ridiculous life, including the 10 miserable days he had spent inside this underground cell with heavy chains pinning his arms and legs in place.

The stone walls around him were bare, cold and damp, while the absence of windows made it impossible to tell whether it was morning, afternoon or the middle of the night. There wasn’t a clock or anything that could provide a conventional indication of time.

The only reliable way Rune had discovered to measure the passing hours was through the guards.

They worked in shifts, usually in groups of two with today being the only exception. Every several hours, the current pair stationed outside his cell would be replaced by another pair, usually accompanied by a brief exchange of keys, food trays and idle chatter.

Rune had eventually noticed that the changes happened at roughly consistent intervals, although there were occasional delays whenever something happened elsewhere in the facility.

The first shift was generally quiet, the guards spent most of their time talking amongst themselves or eating, while the later shifts became increasingly irritable as fatigue settled into their voices.

He had learned to recognize individual guards by their footsteps, which was a rather pathetic skill to develop. But to be fair, he had nothing else to do, especially because he had been chained to a wall inside a windowless prison.

One had to make entertainment wherever possible or risk going mad.

The schedule had become his clock.

The first shift meant that several hours had passed. The second meant he had probably slept for a while. The third usually meant that the underground facility had entered whatever passed for its night cycle, although he couldn’t be entirely certain of that.

Rune had only seen their leader 3 times during these 10 days. The first was when he was brought in, the second was something that demanded his immediate attention happened and the third was today.

The second was often triggered by captives escaping, fights between slaves, missing merchandise and dead bodies being found. Sometimes a slave killed another slave, sometimes one of the guards killed a slave, and in rare times a slave managed to kill a guard before getting killed themselves.

Every time something like that happened, Rune found himself staring at the stone ceiling afterward and wondering whether his decision to remain silent had perhaps been the best one.

Because it made him very aware of the fact that he was scared. Very scared, actually. He just couldn’t show it.

His face remained as tired and unimpressed as ever, his pink eyes half-idded beneath the messy strands of ash black hair that had fallen over them. Anyone observing him might assume he was merely bored.

That wasn’t true at all.

He understood that his situation was different from the slaves being kept elsewhere in this facility. Nobody had dragged him here intending to sell him as ordinary merchandise. His captors clearly believed he was worth far more than that, especially after their leader had revealed that they knew about the secret Rune had spent months desperately trying to keep hidden.

If anything, Rune was probably one of the most valuable people currently sitting inside this miserable underground complex.

Not that he liked thinking about his worth in comparison to slaves. The whole thing made him uncomfortable.

Still, being valuable didn’t mean he was safe from their abuse.

’Why did I have to be a genius?’

He sighed, resting his head against the cold wall.

All he had ever wanted was a quiet life.

He didn’t want wealth, fame, power or some ridiculous epic destiny. He wanted a workshop of his own, a comfortable chair, enough materials to work with and enough money to keep the lights on. He wanted to spend his days refining his craft, occasionally arguing with his master over ridiculous things and going home without having to worry about somebody attempting to murder him.

Crafting was the one thing Rune genuinely loved.

He had grown up around it, raised by the arrogant old bastard who owned the smithy where he spent most of his life.

Well, he wasn’t technically a professional craftsman yet, at least not by the standards his master insisted upon, but he had been trained from childhood and had developed an almost obsessive understanding of materials, construction and spiritual saturation.

He liked to think of himself as being talented in the field.

More importantly, crafting didn’t require him to risk his life.

Rune had always considered himself as a coward, and he wasn’t ashamed of it in the slightest. He liked breathing. He liked having a beating heart. He liked possessing all of his limbs and organs in their proper locations. He liked waking up without someone attempting to stab, shoot or feed him to a monster.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to stay alive.

Things had been perfectly normal until six months ago. When Rune had awakened.

There were two recognized methods through which a human could awaken their Patron Spirit. The first was a natural awakening, where a person’s Patron Spirit emerged on its own when their spirituality reached the necessary threshold. The second involved the World Tree Yggdrasil, which could forcibly awaken a person’s dormant Patron Spirit through a controlled ritual.

Rune had experienced the first.

He hadn’t even realized anything was happening until his spiritual energy suddenly erupted and his Patron Spirit manifested, thus bringing an end to his peaceful life.

His spiritual essence belonged to the Beast-type category, which was hardly unusual by itself. Beast-types were common throughout Elderwood. What made his awakening unusual was everything surrounding it.

His spiritual energy was abnormally dense and his Patron Spirit had reached the upper level of the spirit evolution stages.

Apparently, this was a remarkable event. A never seen before anomaly. A true prodigy!

Rune didn’t care about any of that. He intended to continue living as a craftsman. But this remarkable awakening of his had attracted a troublesome bunch.

A weird woman approached him, asked him to join her band of weirdos because he apparently was a weirdo too. They only had one objective...

...kill the unkillable Grand Keeper.

It was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard. It still is. He would have refused if he was given a choice, but the alternative was being forced to join the Ranger Corps.

Becoming a Ranger meant wandering outside the safety of the Biomes and fighting all sorts of powerful monsters.

He would rather swallow molten metal than that.

So he joined her band of weirdos.

He hadn’t exactly gotten the quiet life he wanted afterward. Things had become worse. He had been kidnapped 8 times in six months

Every kidnapping followed almost exactly the same pattern. Some idiot from the black market discovered his secret, kidnapped him, demanded information about the mysterious person protecting him, and then eventually he would get rescued by the same person.

Rune had figured out what was happening fairly quickly. Clearly, these kidnappings were staged. Or rather, some poor fools were set up.

’Curse you, Loki!’

This entire ridiculous operation was Loki’s annoying attempts to force him to use his abilities. It was irritating, but he wasn’t going to let that damn woman have her way with him!

Because Rune knew the nature of these kidnappings, he wasn’t particularly worried about most of them.

Usually, she showed up within 24 hours.

This time, however.... 10 days had passed.

Despite remaining relaxed on the outside, his mind was screaming.

’Where the hell am I?! Who are these people?! They’re so scary! What are they gonna do if they can’t find what they are looking for?!’

He swallowed hard.

’Where are you, Loki?!!’

As his panic was beginning to show externally, something touched the top of his head. He froze for a moment then slowly lowered his gaze.

Someone was standing directly over him.

It was the little girl with horns and she was... patting his head?

"Urr... nara... shi’ma... morra"