Chapter 1298 (1/2)

Derek woke to the sound of a groan coming out of his own mouth. His vision was bleary as he blinked away the remnants of sleep crusted along the corners of his eyes. Most of his headache had passed, but there was still enough of it lingering that it made him wince as he began to move his torso.

His movement also set off a flurry of emerald motes of light around his face that dazzled him for a split second. In his slightly stunned state, his immediate instinct was that he was under attack. Then Derek realized that the lights were just the moss spirits that had been dutifully following him around since he had evolved his Class and condensed a Fate. With a grin, he whispered, “Thanks guys, you’ve been healing me right? I appreciate it…”

The moss spirits swarmed together and hovered about Derek’s head for a second. To his surprise, he could sense a hint of reproach emanating from the spirits, as though they were scolding him for overexerting his mental energies so much in the first place.

To that attitude, Derek felt nothing but depression. After all, he would gladly have avoided the brutalizing crash course in images he had yesterday if he had understood what he was getting himself into. Hell, this was the first time in about a month that he slept a full six hours; his body just rarely needed that sort of rest in the post-System world. It was a testament to the brutal training regimen of the Order Ducis applicants that a single day resulted in Derek staggering home to collapse in bed.

After getting a new Class and a Fate, Derek had begun to understand that unlike what Nathan had insisted earlier, the reaction from the moss spirits was anything but ordinary. So much so that Naffur Suite himself had come down to investigate what was going on in Nathan’s office.

When he heard the story, he immediately brightened and praised the compatibility of Derek’s images to Kharon. Then he offered, almost casually, to arrange a specialist to help Derek determine the limits of his new Class. Finding those as soon as possible would, Naffur had added, likely result in a huge boost of the power of Derek’s image. And because of the Ghosthound’s birthday, several individuals who weren’t usually free were present and able to help Derek do exactly that.

Feeling rather bemused, Derek had agreed to the offer. Which was how he had been introduced to Helen.

She carried a spear and looked Derek up and down when he had arrived in the training hall. Then she had attacked him. The ‘training session’ that was supposed to test the limits of his image was abruptly paused after fifty-two seconds when Helen knocked Derek out cold. She had, Derek later heard from Naffur, then waited about ten minutes for Derek to recover after striking him down.

Then she woke him back up and attacked him again. Derek lasted longer this time but earned himself even more grievous wounds in this round that required a longer period of time to heal. But that second time Derek awoke to someone pouring a Health potion down his throat. He spluttered and knocked it away, but when he got up to complain, Helen was already attacking him.

It had been an extremely long day.

Groaning, Derek sat up in his bed and stretched. Then he stood with emerald motes of light hovering protectively around him and began to pull on his clothes. His body creaked dangerously around him as it struggled to catch up with the sudden increase in physical activity that Derek had experienced the prior day.

“What’s terrible about the whole training thing,” Derek grumbled to himself. “Is that I can’t even tell if this Class is more powerful than my last one. The Skills seemed powerful, but their effects compared to Helen…”

Derek shivered. He hoped there weren’t many trainers like Helen in the Order Ducis.

After dressing, Derek snuck out into the hallway of the tiny apartment the Order Ducis had provided and peaked into the room in which Tim was sleeping. He rolled his eyes when a veritable swarm of moss spirits lifted up from Tim’s body and flew over to politely greet the spirits that followed Derek in a confusing tangle of light.

He was a little bit disturbed how obsessed with Tim the spirits had become, but he had only experienced positive results from interacting with his own moss spirits. Besides, they had only been here for a few days, and already…

Derek chuckled dryly to himself when he checked his mailbox and found a scroll waiting for him there. The Order Ducis had said that they would probably have some work for him to help with today, due to the upcoming birthday, but it still impressed him how efficiently the organization operated. It helped that there were only a few people at the top, but still. From everything Derek had been able to gather over his frantic few days on Kharon, Tatiana was a genuine miracle worker by keeping the mechanisms of this city functioning cohesively.

While deftly peeling a banana with his one hand, Derek unrolled the scroll with his right on the kitchen table. He began reading rather casually, but very quickly his eyebrows shot sharply upward.

For whatever reason, Derek Moss had been named the “Official Liaison between the Order Ducis and Affiliated Defense Forces for the Birthday of Randidly Ghosthound.” Whatever that meant.

The rest of the scroll detailed that today would be a day where he would attend a series of pre-scheduled meetings with the three main groups that would be assisting in the defense to familiarize himself with whom he would be working in the coming days. On the other hand, tomorrow would involve extensive meetings with the leadership of Kharon and Order the Ducis so he could understand his specific responsibilities and coordinate the defense forces.

“Errr…” Derek rather blankly looked down at the scroll. Then he laughed awkwardly. His mind drifted idly back to how interested Naffur had been when Derek mentioned that he had experience with military command structure. “I guess I take everything back that I thought about the organization here being well run…”