Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 34: starheart

The morning was already going bad enough for Yunan so he did not expect to be called a lucky bastard by all of debauchery, if they thought getting hit by a meteorite was lucky, to him it felt very unlucky. No matter how you look at it, he was the one with the bald patch in his head, and still being taken as an altar to be used for a lucky stealing ritual, he hoped they sucked off the bad luck from the rest of his day, at least that would be useful for him.

Standing there examining the stone "it is the culprit, there is no doubt about it, how much luck does he have to have this fall on his head" said Balin with indignancy. "Too bad it is not effective on us anymore, it would be very lucky to have it delivered to our hands" said Bai. "can you make something out of it for the kids? Their luck is beyond my imagination" added Lucian.

"Well that boy has endless luck, since we are involved with him let's do something good for him and create some karma to hopefully leach some of his luck, Balin you have until midday to make an enchanted necklace with concealing, restraining and amplification effects, this must not be known outside the party, don't be frugal, if there is not enough money dig through the savings, i have a feeling that us doing this is going to pay a thousand times more."

Balin moved so fast he almost apparated outside the hall and disappeared soon after that, dustan ran after him almost as fast, Fae did some weird hand moves and then frowned and disappeared like a ghost from he spot with Lucian in tow. Leader gathered the kids around her and explained " what you have here is called a starheart, it is born inside a dying star and after it dies it is ejected into the universe, some of them have fallen in our world, while some were brought out by the dungeon as drops from monsters, that is how we know about them."

"The starheart is only effective on those under 18, it gets consumed when being around teens and children, it uses its own energy to boost your constitution and comprehension as well as the rate your stats can advance. If we first planned for three years training, with the help of this we can be done in two, also this stone that many would never look twice at, has the ability to push your stats beyond the limit of age, meaning you can get the required 10 points before you become 15 and even 20 if you are lucky before it turns into sand and lose all its power. This thing is the best item we can add to train you youngsters into masters of all trades"

"This information is a secret you need to protect, otherwise the annoyance from before is nothing to what will happen if it gets out that we have a starheart, believe me there will parties who have not left the dungeon in years coming to take it" said Bai "so try not to even talk about it, here comes proof" he pointed at the door where Fae and Lucian were dragging over two men each into the hall. " They were eavesdropping on us in an effort to get whatever they can from the training we are giving you, this information is worth more than you can expect to aristocrats who are hoping to create better trained explorers and reach deeper into the dungeon"

When Fae and Lucian dropped the unconscious men on the ground, Leader shot an inquisitive look at the duo, "the rest have not arrived yet" said Lucian. Bai started chanting some unfocused words that were forgotten the moment the children heard them. He then placed a palm on the foreheads of the four men, one by the other. Reina almost screamed "memory magic" she was born in a family of magic users and have seen many peculiar spells and magic used by her family members.

"Yes" Fae responded to her "Bai is good at memory spells, he is wiping away the memories they have about what we said this morning and is replacing them by the memories of us explaining memory manipulation magic and us capturing them for a showcase" then she helped Lucian move the ones Bai finished with to a corner of the hall, once Bai finished debauchery immediately started the training. Not unlike yesterday, Reina had to run a lap every 15 minutes and everyone went on to play chess like usual while singing some popular tavern songs. Once the four men woke up the walked away embarrassed for being found out and used for showcasing, cursing their late companions for not protecting them when they were needed.

Once the bell announcing the end of class rang out, debauchery took Yunan and Leol and Reina to their dorm, where Fae cast a few spells and all of them ate lunch while waiting for Balin and Dustan to arrive. It did not take long for Baling to arrive wearing a silver colored necklace, with a lower half of a sphere hanging on it, leader passed the starheart to Balin and he pressed it in the half sphere, a light flashed and both the stone and the half sphere disappeared and in their place was a black bead, it looked like the most common necklace that can be bought in any street stall.

Balin passed the necklace to Yunan and said " this necklace has a 4 times strengthening effect, a restriction effect that will limit the radius of the stone to 3 meters in any direction around you, those around you will gain the effect of the starheart, there is also a concealing effect, so unless someone can apply a level 25 appraise on it in their hands, they would never notice anything, so try to staying close to each other to get all the time, if the records the dwarven masters left are to be trusted this stone will last about 3 years so get as much from it as you can during that period"

After lunch the group went back to hall five and continued their training as scheduled, dagger and dodging for all the three children, and the effects of the stone were almost obvious to see, they could last longer and were resting faster, which prompted leader to increase the difficulty by adding the divergent series singing into the mix, to tire out the kids and teach them to work together with minimum communication.

Reina was the happiest with the effects of the stone since she was almost fully rested after bathing in the afternoon, thus Yunan proposed an intellectual passtime after class, to gain even more from the stone, he thought about changing the general knowledge class into application of general knowledge, and use the time from after class to dinner time for reading through general knowledge books in their room. As for play time it was left of the weekends, the week was for working as hard as possible and they can relax during the weekends.