Devourer Class

Galahad's week turned out to be completely uneventful and stretched into a very slow and painful time of working in the shop. He hadn't found himself lost in the forest again or in the dungeon fighting beasts. Instead he worked the clerk desk beside his mother, getting constantly glanced at by every customer that walked inside.

Sora and Derock refused to let him move stock around due to his injuries and forbid him from anything too straining on his body. He practically had to beg to be allowed the broom for sweeping the shop floor. The whole time felt like punishment for thinking he could be anything fast acting with his power.

'I would love to see their reactions to the fact I can momentarily turn into a human volcano, and lift the display shelves over my head. They'd lose it.' Galahad could only daydream while confirming purchases on customer's Karmic Plates without much effort.

He just had to remove the enchanted tag and have the customer tap there Karmic Plate to the big tablet sitting on the counter, allowing credits to move out their vault account and into the store's.

It wasn't until the third day that Galahad quietly went upstairs with receipts to hear his parents discussing amongst themselves in a hushed tone. He heard faint whispers and his name once or twice. He crouched down on the stairs and slowly crept to the door and watched their feet move in the kitchen from the crack at the bottom of the door.

"I just don't want him to be going out so soon, we don't even know what he wants from him." His father worryingly muttered.

His mother responded with her own worries. "We can't just ignore this, it was handed directly to you. Besides, they saved his daughter; you really think he'd do something horrible to Galahad?"

Galahad pushed the door open to let the creaking noise to intrude on their conversation.

Galahad wasn't sure what exactly they were hiding from him, but then he saw the dark red envelope on the table. He immediately knew what they were keeping from him now, somebody was inviting him to discuss. Most definitely the person whose daughter was on the brink of dying in the dungeon; the Count of Teramore.

"So I heard I have mail or am I not allowed to read it?" He asked as he stepped into the room.

Galahad's nonchalant tone was hiding the simmering rage at his parents. He knew they meant well, but he was starting to think they want him to stay in the house like this forever.

He actually stopped himself from speaking further to clear his mind, because the red flames of Fury and Fyre were starting to spark out of his fingertips, trying to ignite his Chi.

'I wonder how Victor kept this kind of emotion suppressed, he always managed to fight without showing it.'

His father stepped forward first. "Gally . . . We just don't know if it's a good idea to go out just yet."

Galahad kept walking forward without acknowledging his father's pleas. He grabbed the envelope and saw 'G. Mystroff' written in golden ink against the red. He opened it and read the letter to himself. It was written in matching gold ink and red paper like the outside.

"Dear Mr. Mystroff,

I'd wish to discuss a few things with your regarding the incident in the dungeon. Please just stop by my office in the business district when you have a moment.

Best Regards,

Count Swittar P. Gafordum"

"Good gods." Galahad exclaimed after he read the letter over twice.

"What? What is it?" His parents feared what the letter said and thought the worst of it when Galahad was audibly shocked.

"It's such a waste of paper, this tiny note barely covers a quarter of the paper." He turned it over for his parents to see the very expensive seeming paper being wasted.

Sora sighed at him, "Galahad please take this seriously. You are being summoned to meet with someone who practically rules all of this city. Any issues he has with you might lead to the shop being shut down, or worse."

Galahad looked at his mother and realized the gravity of the vague letter. He could be called into the Count's office for a number of reasons. Mainly questioning about the incident or pressing the blame of all the casualties upon him.

'No one but Solteer knows about the black orb, so the Count wouldn't be questioning me on that. Not unless the giant chicken roast gave me away. Hold on, I did save his daughter, why would he come after me for that. The only risk is he might try to blame me for not trying to reattach her fingers.'

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Galahad said while trying not to tense at his own self reassured ideas. "His daughter is alive thanks to Frederick and he told me wrote a report on the whole event when he dropped off all my gear at the medical center. I also wouldn't worry about a leader chosen by the king to selfishly take out me because his child came out of the dungeon in not so perfect condition."

Both of his parents looked at him like they wanted to argue, but held their tongues. Galahad's logic was pretty sound, the only problem was nothing is ever absolute in the world of Endora.

"I can't just ignore the man who controls our fates within the city limits. I'll go myself tomorrow, but after we get this paired with the resonance tower." Galahad pulled out the green Karmic Plate from his pocket. He was starting to get anxious just sitting inside the store without doing anything to save his friends. What was even worse was the hunger to consume more mana orbs was growing to a sensation he could no longer describe.

Sora and Derock watched as Galahad went upstairs with his cane with dozens of objections running through their minds. Instead of saying any of them, they looked back at the letter on the table with great concern about their son's imminent future.

*****

Their attempt at deceit the night before had left them concerned about Galahad wanting to distant himself. Luckily he harbored no such thoughts, he was only angry for a few moments before figuring out the intent of their actions.

They were his parents and if there is one thing he knew about them, it was how to use their paranoia against them. He planned to push them away at the entrance to the resonance tower so he would be be less likely to be discovered as a battle class now.

Using their sensitivity to the situation felt a little twisted, but Galahad didn't really care enough to feel sorry. They were better off not knowing about the class he unlocked and only feeling a little hurt in replacement.

After a long walk through the freezing streets, they arrived at a very tall and sleek looking tower. It was much taller than the spire in the center of the city, with clean grey bricks shaping the walls and a giant white crystal perched at the top, it looked like something out of a fantasy book.

The towers constructed across the city of Teramore could emit short wave magic frequencies to communicate and interact, but the moment a Karmic Plate leaves the range of the crystals, scry messages and other wireless information is no longer available.

If a person wanted to send a message out to someone at a different city, they'd either need to send a messenger on horseback or a creature trained to be a messenger. Just like the method that brought the mail to Derock in the forge.

The Crystal Resonance towers were still relatively new technology, it was deployed across the Etherite Kingdom roughly thirty years before he was born. The fact that they seemed so new, but also older than Galahad made in always feel so strange about his own relativity to time.

Besides from its futuristic look, the tower wasn't as wide or as well defended as the gate to the dungeon, it was only somewhere on the city's top twenty lists of priorities under the event of an emergency. It's relatively low category of importance gave it a five-man team running security with the small team of creation class technicians inside.

Surrounding the tower were some enchanted traps as well, nearly invisible to anyone who walked by. Sora could always notice them because of her abilities and she like to point out and laugh at some of the effect they'd have whenever they used to walk by when he was a kid

The pool was a processed form of mana orbs the city would use to keep the signals between the Karmic Plates online. Derock had a miniature mana pool sitting in the back corner of the forge to power the fire infused crystals in the bottom of his forge pits.

He used to process and burn up the mana orbs Galahad would give him, but ever since his son resurfaced half dead, Derock went out and bought them from the guild office to keep the forge fires operational.

Inside the area, a few citizens chatted with the technicians of the tower who stood about the room with some task involving on the giant machine. They were always performing some kind of maintenance, connecting new plates to the system, or filling the mana pool with more mana orbs every day. The ability to communicate back and forth

A short blonde woman in her late twenties stepped forward to meet the family as soon as they were made their way inside. When she was close enough to speak with them, Galahad could practically see blue stains all across her grey work overalls. If she found Galahad's disfigured face gross or appalling, she didn't express it. She simply greeted them with a smile

"Hello, are you here to pair you Karmic Plate?"

"Yes." Galahad pulled out his green crystal and followed the short woman to the nearest door of many doors in the tower, he didn't stop to see his parents follow. He did the best moody impression he could in order to scare them off, and it seemed to work. He shut the door behind himself and he was alone in a dimly lit room with an absolute stranger.

'Time to reenter the world of wireless communication.' He thought as the process began.