— IV —
Horunka's Tavern, Basement — Three Hours Before
The staircase was barely wide enough to descend single file.
Mito went second, one hand trailing the stonewall for reference, the other on the grip of her scythe out of habit. Above her, Lisbeth's boot found the step she'd just vacated.
Below, the darkness had already swallowed Neo completely, and only the faint sound of his movement distinguished the air from empty black.
Asuna came down last, and with her, the last sliver of light from the tavern floor above disappeared.
They could hear each other's breathing.
"Neo." She kept her voice low, though she wasn't sure why. There was no wind, no monsters, no ambient system effects. Just the cave-cold air of a cellar that had no reason to be this deep. "The bartender isn't around."
A pause. Then the sound of Neo moving – carefully, methodically – through the dark.
Their eyes adjusted by degrees. Stone shelving materialized from the black, and along it, shapes: barrels stacked two high, ceramic jugs sealed with wax, coils of rope, crates with slat-cut lids. The standard inventory of an NPC tavern's supply room.
However, nothing explained why the trigger sequence existed at all.
/Davis\ wasn't in the basement.
"Hm." Neo's voice came from the far corner. Not surprised. More like confirming something he'd already half-expected. "Kayaba is such a trickster."
"What do you mean?" Asuna asked, squinting into the dark from the base of the stairs.
"The NPC shouldn't lead nowhere," He crouched near the shelving – examining something at floor level. "Or whoever made the questline ran out of time, and the nut job shipped it anyway."
"So there's nothing here," Lisbeth said, with the particular flatness of someone who had walked down a cramped staircase in complete darkness for nothing.
Mito had been moving along the shelving while they talked, running light inventory scans on the containers out of methodical habit rather than expectation: Barrels of wine. Cooking oil. One barrel that the system read as empty but rattled faintly when she brushed it.
She stopped.
A shadow behind one of the barrels.
She tilted her head. Listened.
A small sound – shallow, irregular draw of breath that didn't belong to anyone in their party. Organic and uneven, the rhythm of something alive and frightened.
"Something is here," she whispered.
The others went still.
Neo crossed the room in four steps and moved the empty barrel aside with one hand. Behind it, in the narrow gap between the shelving and the cellar's rear wall, crouched a figure barely half a meter high.
It was a Kobold.
Not a regular «Ruin Kobold» – those were designed for combat, angular and aggressive even at rest. This one was smaller and differently built: its frame hunched inward on itself, limbs drawn close, skin a desaturated blue-grey rather than the vivid cobalt of the field mobs.
Its hands, larger than proportional, were folded against its chest. Two lengths of heavy iron chain ran from shackles at its ankles to iron rings mounted in the stone wall behind it.
/Thokk the Bound\
*IMAGE*
The creature's eyes, wide and pale and already wet at the corners, fixed on Neo. Then swept across the rest of them. Then snapped back to Neo, which seemed to be where its instincts had decided as the biggest threat.
It pressed itself harder against the wall.
"Please." The voice was thin and high, barely above a whisper "Pleasse, I not fightt. Nott fightt. Pleasse."
Nobody moved.
Neo absorbed the scene as always – without urgency, running whatever internal calculus he always ran before he acted. His eyes went to the shackles.
Then he crouched, slowly, until he was closer to the creature's eye level.
"We're not going to hurt you," quiet and even. "What are you doing down here?"
Thokk's eyes moved between them again. Three girls and a boy, the boy closest, the boy talking.
"I makke thingys," it managed. "I do for masterr. Masterr keep here. I not go farr." One of its feet shifted, and the chain clinked, taut at approximately two meters, pulling the ankle back.
"What do you make?" Neo asked.
A small pause. Making internal calculations.
"Armss. Tooll. Good thingys." Thokk's hands opened slightly, the way hands do when their owner needs to demonstrate something they can't otherwise explain. "I f-forge. Masterr take, not give. I remainn."
Lisbeth had moved to stand beside Mito. "Is this a quest NPC?" she murmured, low enough that only Mito caught it.
"The system hasn't triggered anything yet," Mito murmured back. "It might be waiting on him."
Neo hadn't looked away from Thokk. "What can you provide," not a question with a rising tone, but a genuine inquiry stated flat, "in exchange for us leaving you alone?"
Not 'we'll free you', not 'we'll help you.'
Thokk blinked. Whatever it had been bracing for, this hadn't been it.
Its wide pale eyes moved rapidly across some internal inventory, and then it straightened – only slightly, barely an inch of posture, but enough to signal that something had shifted.
"I can makke," it said. "Good thingy. Bestt for stronghtt warriorr."
The system prompt materialized in front of all four of them simultaneously.
── Quest Alert! ─────────────
SECRET ARTISAN OF THE CAVES
A desperate creature, bound in servitude
beneath the tavern, promises a masterwork
in exchange for a single component...
OBJECTIVE:
Defeat the Ruin Kobold Trooper holding the
Tempered Stone Fragment, and bring it back
(East Caves of Horunka, Floor 1)
REWARDS: 1200 Cor | XP | Anneal Hammer
[O] Accept [X] Decline
───────────────────────────
Mito read it twice.
The «Anneal Blade» was a documented weapon in the Beta forums: a one-handed sword that could be upgraded across multiple floors without replacement, carrying a player through content that should have demanded a full equipment swap.
If there was an «Anneal Hammer», the same logic should apply.
She looked at the quest reward. Then remembered the party's combined skill list: One-Handed Rapier. Two-Handed Scythe. Hand-to-Hand Combat. One-Handed Mace.
Nobody here swung a war hammer. Even with the weapon in hand, the proficiency gap would cut its effective damage to something barely above their current equipment.
As long as nobody replaced one of their skills or gained another slot, the «Anneal Hammer» was worth nothing to a party with no one to use it, unless they wanted to make a profit.
She glanced at Neo.
He was looking at Lisbeth.
"Take out your weapon," he said.
Lisbeth blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Show him what you use." He pointed at the creature.
The look Lisbeth gave him contained 40% suspicion and 60% reluctant compliance.
Moving closer, she pulled the weapon from her inventory – «The Starter Mace» – and held it out in front of her.
Neo stepped in.
He didn't take the weapon. His hand – which brushed hers – moved closer, his fingers hovering a fraction of an inch from the handle, close enough to gesture the shape without contact.
Lisbeth's expression shifted from suspicion to something redder.
Asuna, two steps behind, pressed her lips together in the way that meant she was choosing not to react to something.
Mito said nothing and watched Thokk instead.
The creature had leaned forward on its chain, eyes fixed on the object with deep attention.
"Not a hammer," Neo said, addressing Thokk directly, his hand still hovering over the weapon. "Look at this shape: head weight, haft length, the balance point."
"…Yess," Thokk said slowly. Its large hands flexed. "Mace."
"That's what we need." He straightened. "The construction principles are almost the same."
Thokk got quiet for a long moment. Its hands hadn't stopped moving. A small, unconscious kneading motion, the kind that happened when a person's fingers were ahead of their decision.
"…Can do," Thokk said at last. "Same qualityy." It settled back on its haunches, the chain slack again. "You bringg Stonne. I makke."
The quest prompt shifted in front of them. The reward line rewrote itself:
────────────────────────
REWARDS: 1200 Cor | XP | Anneal Mace
────────────────────────
Lisbeth lowered her weapon. She was still looking at Neo with the expression of someone filing a grievance for later.
On Mito's side, she understood that an «Anneal Mace» in Lisbeth's hands was an investment. The kind that, upgraded properly, will carry them without worrying about unlucky drops on the way. Though it implied going into a monster's nest first…
As the group discussed the pros and cons of taking that risk, Thokk had pulled a collection of loose equipment from somewhere within its chain radius — a small stone anvil set into a worn wooden block, a pair of hand tools, a fragment of metal that still held latent heat at its edges. Working materials that had been there the whole time, invisible in the dark.
The creature's hands moved with a different quality now. Not frightened. The specific economy of someone who had been waiting to do this for a very long time.
"Come bak with stone," it said, without looking up. "I be readdy."