[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 22

As surprised as Hal was about the prompt, he kept the knowledge to himself. It would have felt wrong somehow to bond with Hermes over Vorax, and he was glad to see that the Shard agreed.

Feels a little greedy to try for two soul companions, Hal thought, but who was he to deny the will of the Shard?

Focusing back on his essences, Hal tried to sense what blighted essence gave him. Clearly, the Shadesblight was something different that neither Besal nor Val had ever seen before.

That meant it was exceedingly dangerous.

To have been able to stay out of sight for so long would be an incredible feat. Especially when Hal had already battled a Voidwracked Kinslayer before, and nothing about him had set off alarm bells or any sort of hint as to the Shadesblight’s essence Family.

Due to the way his Class had grown, Hal no longer needed to worry about monster attunement Perks or anything of the sort. He gained the full breadth of a given monster type’s powers and to a degree a portion of the total Family’s powers based on his essence’s Rank.

Currently, his blighted essence stood at a rather anemic Copper I, which meant he had the most basic access to its skills, traits, and abilities.

Blighted essence gave him a ridiculously high resistance to all forms of afflictions, a useful trait that went far beyond simply resisting the Shadesblight itself. That was something his Manatree blessing covered easily.

Unsurprisingly, the blighted essence also allowed him to spread corruption and toxins. Spinning up the essence made him feel a little sick and unclean, but after checking himself over thoroughly, he wasn’t leaking anything gross from his pores so he kept at it. Even Hermes wasn’t bothered by it.

He found it fascinating. Hermes did too.

Splicing an essence was the best way to figure out what it offered. And Hal could see a whole slew of nasty things he could do while splicing blighted essence.

Passing poisons and afflictions from one creature to the other was just the start. He could increase the affliction stacks of any creature. Turning his normally straight-forward Beastborne powers into a nasty damage-over-time build.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have many spells that could apply afflictions. And as powerful as essences were, they paled in comparison to the spells granted by a given monster type.

With his blighted essence at Copper, he could at least start to gain spells from the blighted creatures the next time he went through. Splicing the same essence as the creature was a way to boost the chances of obtaining a spell from them, or so Val had told him.

Hal didn’t have much chance to test it out yet, but given that splicing the same essence as a creature blunted the damage it could do to you, Hal was more than eager to try.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard Hermes say to Vorax, “Really, no coffee? That ought to be a staple on any Worldshard that isn’t Dark.”

Hal looked up. “Did you just say coffee?” His eyes were wild and crazed with need. “I haven’t had coffee in so long…”

Hermes stared. Somehow, Hal could sense that the oppa was carefully choosing his response. “Ya, coffee. I…got some, if ya want? Whole buncha types, really. One of the many things I like to steal and trade. Goes over real well with the ladies.”

Hal’s eye twitched.

“Yer eye is goin’ bonza, mate.”

“Shashasha!” Vorax laughed in agreement.

Doing his best to smooth his expression, Hal said, “Vorax, if you would be kind enough to get Hamrin and bring him here, please?”

Hal’s cloak separated from his shoulders, floated up to the door and with its hem, opened the handle. It flew out the door and into the storm, the door shutting behind him.

With the speed that Vorax went, it seemed even the mimic wanted coffee. No doubt influenced by Hal’s insatiable need.

“You might have just become the most famous oppa in all of Brightsong,” Hal said. “Maybe the entire Worldshard.”

That perked Hermes up. “The entire Worldshard?!”

“Coffee is pretty rare here. At least the coffee we have on Earth,” Hal assured him. “If anybody can grow coffee here in this frigid hellscape, it’ll be Hamrin–”

“It is hard to compare to Brookmoors’ coffee bean,” Hermes said in agreement. He was rubbing his paws together, envisioning his glorious new position.

Hal was watching the oppa carefully. “Did you just say ‘Brookmoors’?”

“Ya, mate. Thought ya said Earth.”

“My Earth didn’t have a Brookmoors,” Hal told him. “However, we do have somebody who went to Brookmoors on a different Earth.”

Hermes stared at him. “Different… Earth?”

Hal flapped his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Point is, you might actually know Mira.”

The oppa put a paw to his white muzzle. “Nope. Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I suppose it was a big school,” Hal said. He pulled up a seat at his worktable. “You got any skills, Hermes? Or skills you would like to have? If you’re new to Aldim, you’re probably low Level I imagine.”

Hermes scampered up onto the table and looked at the scattered bits of tools and bones that he hadn’t stolen the first two times around. “I… don’t really like to take things,” he admitted, stirring an oblong bone around and around.

Hal folded his hands on the tabletop. “Then why do you do it?”

Hermes shrugged his tiny furry shoulders defensively. “Iunno.”

“Nah.”

“Nah?”

“I don’t believe it,” Hal elaborated.

Hermes snorted at him. “I’m not a liar! I’m a no-good dirty scoundrel and a thief, but I ain’t a liar!”

“Then tell me why you take things.”

“Because I want a stash!”

Hal mused on that. A part of his soul, the dragon part, he guessed, understood wanting a stash or a hoard. It was a way of amassing power.

Goodness knows enough of his people back on Earth understood the desire to hoard wealth and resources. It was practically the backbone of western civilization!

However, to hold it and do nothing with it… that seemed plain wrong to Hal. Always did. Even dragons would have wept at what people on Earth did.

“Don’t you think doing something with that stash would be better?” Hal asked. “Creating something, perhaps?”

Hermes looked as if the idea had never truly crossed his tiny furry skull. “Make… something?”

“You know, taking some random parts, then combining them together into a new form.” Hal motioned to the bits of worked on bone. “That’s what you were taking. Pieces that I was working on.”

Hermes turned, looking at the assorted bones in a new light.

“You seem to like bones,” Hal prompted. “Maybe you want to make something with them?” He took out one of the [Blighted Bone Amulets] he had made earlier and set it down on the table. “Maybe something magical like that. Something to help people. If you did that, you wouldn’t need to steal anything. People would give you things just so you could make more.”

That seemed to get the little oppa’s heart all aflutter. He stared at the amulet with shimmering eyes, then at the pieces of bones as if trying to see how Hal had built the thing.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he could somehow, Hal thought.

Before they could talk further, Hamrin burst through the door with Vorax around his shoulders. The mimic dropped the befuddled Gourmage in a chair and turned into a gold-banded chest once more.

Hamrin looked flustered and wild-eyed. “I was asleep in bed! I thought I was going to be killed, and then this magic cloak–”

“Vorax,” Hal interjected helpfully.

“–took me around the throat, clasped itself to me like some sort of barnacle and then flew me out the door in my pajamas!”

Hal grinned. “Sorry about that, Hamrin. I did tell him to go get you. It might have seemed more urgent than it really was.”

Hermes watched the exchange with keen interest, noting how the man called Hamrin seemed to calm down once he learned it was Hal who wanted him.

The world was beginning to come into focus for the little thief.

“What was it that was so important you couldn’t come get me yourself?” Hamrin asked, tempering his discomfort and brushing off clumps of snow from his pajamas.

“Our little friend here has something for you.”

Hermes rummaged around in his patchwork cloak. From a patch where silvery chainmail was stitched together with some golden fabric, the oppa pulled out a wooden box covered in tons of stamps and seals hailing from many different lands.

He held up a paw, as if asking for a moment, then rearranged some of the panels into a different pattern.

Hal started to wonder if he was looking at some kind of puzzle box.

One side opened out of the odd contraption, and a drawer began to slide out, containing squat boxes and bags of coffee beans. Each one had a different emblem, just like the outside of the puzzle box.

As soon as the fragrant smell hit Hal, he began to weep.

But then he remembered that you couldn’t plant roasted coffee beans and his heart sank. “Those… are roasted,” Hal said, his voice choked with emotion. “Do you have any raw beans in there? Seeds or… whatever? I think they look like red berries before they’re removed.”

Hermes looked over, then pressed on the contraption again. The drawer started to extend even further, going so far it met the opposite wall of his cottage.

“Hmm, all beans in this section.” He tapped the box again, and the drawer shot back in. The oppa began to rearrange the puzzle again.

Hamrin watched the exchange with great interest. “Is that wonderful aroma what I think it is?”

“Coffee,” Hal confirmed.

“It is divine.”

“Yes, yes, it is.”

Hal couldn’t help but wonder what sort of magical properties coffee would have if it was grown with mana. Hamrin could make anything grow. Even in this blizzard, all it took was more mana to keep the farm free from frost and ice.

Several new farms were going up to make food that was suited to the cold so they could lower their mana expenditure, but even with the non-combatant farmers they had, they were able to meet the higher demands comfortably for now.

Hal had been able to pull all-nighters with the stuff before it was magical. What could he do if it was an actual magical elixir?

Another drawer shot out of Hermes’ box. This one contained raw coffee seeds and berries.

Hermes tapped one burlap bag. “This one is pretty good. [Shrubley’s Golden Bean]. Traded with a kobold for it.”

“Do you mind?” Hamrin asked Hermes, leaning over and poised to grab the burlap bag.

“Shrubley’s bean?” Hal asked.

He recalled a shrub-like creature when he had opened all those rifts as separate passages to pull his missing friends back home. There were others too. That woman with the haunting melody on the bridge. The orc woman hard at work harvesting the wood from a tree, and then a small shrub creature fighting a hoard of skeletons.

Nah, it couldn’t be the same one, Hal thought to himself. It was silly, really. What sort of monster—a shrub monster at that—would name itself Shrubley?

“The best coffee out there,” Hermes confirmed. “Even Stowhr has a back order on these babies. And they’ve got every hero from Reth to Metira on their roster, every Kindred, Olympian, Valhallan, Stygian, Demigod, every Hero that’s ever been worth anything makes their way through Stowhr, eventually.”

“I thought Brookmoors was the school for magic,” Hal muttered to himself.

“Nah, Brookmoors is like… preschool compared to Stowhr, mate. Even the best of the best at Brookmoors ain’t gettin’ into Stowhr. Not on their first life, anyway.”

“You make it sound like a school for reincarnated heroes.”

Hermes gently put a paw to his nose as if Hal had guessed right.

Before Hal could continue that line of questioning, Hamrin stood up with a wrinkled red bean in his hand. “I can make these grow again,” he said with complete assurance. “But I’ll need a very different farm. Hillside, terraced with varying elevations. I can sense that the change in elevation will dramatically alter the characteristics of this little guy. What a fascinating thing!”

“You can really make it grow?” Hal asked. “In this weather?”

It had been too much to hope for before.

“I can,” Hamrin said, smiling to himself. “What a wondrous bean.”

Hal leaned forward hungrily. “Tell me everything you need.”