Foster looked at the message box floating in front of his eyes, and then back to the ‘Snake of Death’ that was still suckling on the tip of his finger, “Erm… what?” He let out in confusion, unsure what this exactly meant. He had heard the explanation from Aaron and Joyce earlier, but he didn’t even think about whether or not he wanted to go for this yet. Although it did seem like it was a little late for that.

—

[The Legacy Holder has activated the first phase of the Legacy]

[The Tier 1 Class {Martial Necromancer} has been acquired]

[The Class Skill {Martial Necromancy} has been acquired]

[The Legacy Quest {Path of the Martial Necromancer} has begun]

—

“Well, shit.” Foster said with a wry smile on his face, looking back at the message windows floating right in front of him. He was unsure what all of this meant, though… He literally had not the slightest clue.

It hadn’t been that long since Aaron and Joyce headed to bed, so maybe he should just wake them up and ask them. Foster didn’t want to do anything that could be dangerous to him now. He quickly turned around and rushed down the creaking steps as he watched the metallic snake slither back around his wrist. Foster made his way in front of Aaron and Joyce’s door, when he heard the two of them talk to each other.

“…can be trusted?” Aaron’s voice suddenly appeared out of nowhere. As if he suddenly unmuted a TV or something. When pulling his head just slightly back, he couldn’t hear him again. Just when Foster was a step in front of the door was he able to hear their voices.

“Is this some kind of magic as well?” Foster thought to himself, as the other two continued talking. Joyce responded to Aaron.

“I’m not sure, but… he does seem genuine, right?”

“Genuinity doesn’t mean anything, Joycye. First of all, we can’t read minds. He could be some kind of psycho that’s particularly good at acting. And he was given a calamity’s legacy! I don’t know why we didn’t just kill him right then and there when finding that out…” Aaron groaned loudly.

Joyce replied after a few moments of silence, “Because you didn’t want to? We just lost Simon, and Foster clearly didn’t want him to die either… He still seems like a good guy, right? Shouldn’t we just trust him? I mean… If he just got to this world yesterday, then he couldn’t even have gotten a class yet. We’ll stay around him, make sure to watch him, and don’t underestimate him like Simon did.”

“Just understimating someone doesn’t let you get beaten up by someone in that way. He’s an Otherworlder, Joyce, you can’t look at him the same way as you would other people. Simon was a martial artist himself, he-”

“He just fatally injured a calamity, he wasn’t thinking. He was gloating, and Foster used dirty tactics on him. Listen, I get that-”

“No, you obviously don’t, Joyce! I know what I said out there, but fact is, without that asshole, Simon might not be dead right now!”

“We don’t know that! You saw what happened, and that would have happened anyway, like Foster said!”

“We could have dealt with it ourselves! If that guy was able to fend them off, it couldn’t have been a big deal!”

“It needed a fucking calamity to seal it away! It couldn’t ‘not’ have been a big deal!”

“Don’t you care for Simon at all, Joyce?!”

“How could I not?!” Joyce yelled out in an angry voice, “He was as much my friend as he was yours, Aaron. Do you think I don’t care for his death? Do you think I don’t feel angry at Foster?! Of course I do, but both of us know that we need him! He’s an Otherworlder! Sure, they can be fucking terrifying, but do you really think that Foster is the bad kind? If he was, then we would already be dead by now, right? Chances are that he’s been sent here for a reason, and that reason might be to help. He might be a ‘Hero-type’…” Joyce said, yelling through the tears that she had been fighting back this whole time.

“…I know. I know it, alright? But… Fucking god dammit…” Aaron muttered quietly, before he went quiet for a while, “But how about… How about we make up for it? Listen, he hasn’t activated the artifact yet, so if we kill him and take it from him, it could be ours, right? A Legacy artifact in the hands of two A-Ranks will make up for the loss of a ‘Hero-type’!” Aaron exclaimed, and Foster felt a chill run all over his body.

“Shit…” He whispered quietly, as he took a step back. Foster looked at the snake on his wrist, “They want to… kill me?”

Immediately, he turned around, running back up the stairs to go get the bag that he dropped upstairs, as well as maybe some extra knives or other weapons that were in an at least decent state. Once more, the staircase creaked loudly once Foster stepped onto it, just that this time, it somehow gave way. Foster still ignored it though, he was kind of in a rush.

He made his way upstairs and quickly grabbed the things that he needed from here, before making his way downstairs again. But when he did, the step that gave way a bit suddenly seemed to glow in a dim light.

“Is there…?” Foster muttered quietly, as he jumped over the missing step. He pulled it away to see what was behind it. After all, he wanted to grab anything that he could from this place before heading off. And when the step was fully removed, which was really quite easy to do, a secret, hidden room was revealed to him. It was a space in the basement, that immediately made Foster think of some kind of secret stash, filled with things that could be useful somehow.

He quickly rushed down there and hid the entrance with the steps, just in case. If Aaron and Joyce decided to come attack him right now, then he had a good place to hide, at least. Foster made his way down the new steps, these ones carved into the hard dirt and rock the cabin had been built onto. He descended, far deeper than he thought he would.

Soon, he reached a cave-like room that had been hidden underneath the hut. There seemed to be a rather long tunnel on the other side of the room, that was stretching out far into the distance. Something like an emergency-escape tunnel… and it was something that Foster could really use right about now. He wouldn’t need to go back upstairs and risk running into those two again. Instead, he could grab whatever he needed to grab from down here, and then make his way out through the escape tunnel.

Now with his rough plan of action taken care of, Foster could really take a look at what was down here. There were some shelves, more weapon-displays, and a bunch of maps and paintings on the walls. The latter of those things were the most interesting to Foster.

He rushed up to one of the larger maps and took a look at it. The notes written onto it seemed to be anything but english, but most likely through that ‘Translate’ spell that was placed onto him, he was able to read it anyway. He learned a language instantly… Foster really owed Thiodrus for all he did for him in that short time they knew each other. He didn’t care if those other two called Thiodrus a ‘calamity’, they were the ones possibly thinking about killing him.

Foster looked at the notes on the map. While it didn’t seem to include this forest, a map was always useful. He took down the frame that the map was in, and smashed it onto the ground to break it out. He pulled the map out from underneath the shards, and then moved on to the next. Most of them seemed to be useless to him for now, but he still grabbed all of them. And then, Foster finally found the right map, one that showed this forest on it as well.

“Perfect.” Foster muttered, and added this one to his collection. He rolled all the maps up and tied some thread that he found around it to keep them like that, before moving on to the other objects that were laying around.

There were bottles filled with liquids that Foster couldn’t identify, as well as books that seemed to be hand-written. Rather than just being hand-written, they were notebooks created by Thiodrus, in which he noted down martial-arts techniques. Foster grabbed another empty bag that he found here and stuffed as many of the books that seemed useful in there as he could, and just for the sake of it, since they might come in useful at some point, Foster also grabbed some of the different bottles here. In the end, he had no idea what these were, though, so he had to be really, really careful and find someone that could tell him about them.

But until then…. he first had to get out of here.