ROTLE- Chapter 249- Do You Think You Are Lucky, Fjord? (Patreon)

It had been a few days now. In those days, Rometo had finally given up on looking for Fjord. Even the younger Order members who had gone out to find him had returned with shaking heads and no good news.

Tonight he stood at the root of a tree that was too massive for this part of the forest. His arms were folded over his chest as he watched some Order recruits sitting around a campfire, sharing stories and jokes. There was always a laugh or two there coming from the group. There was a misunderstanding about the Order in the outside world. Everyone thought that Order was filled with men as cold as stone who did not remember the sound of laughter in their lives. Such misunderstanding was exactly that—misunderstandings.

The Order was not some military barracks filled with men who knew nothing but the cold pain of suffering. Members of the Order were humans too. At least on this side of Nastild. He didn’t know much about the Order on the other side of Nastild, all he knew was that they were still feared on the other side, more feared than they were here.

He always took it to mean that they were supposed to be more active on the other side, but he could never be sure.

As his mind focused on other things, he noticed Zen approaching from where was supposed to be his blind spot. He did nothing, reacted in no way. The boy was not about to surprise him because they did not have that kind of relationship. If anything, he was sure that Zen was simply now acquainted to approaching people from their blind spots, either that or the boy was always training on it. He couldn’t completely be sure.

“Yes, Zen,” he said calmly, when the boy was close enough. “What can I do for you?”

Zen walked sheepishly into the open, proving that his approach from a suspected blind spot had been something intentional. In a few steps, Zen was in front of him, a nervous hand on the back of his neck.

He stood there for a moment before looking around. The camp not too far from Rometo was not the only campfire with members of the Order. There were a few others littered around this part of the forest. It was an Order training ground after all. And most of those here were either full fledged members or Order recruits that have proven to have levels of talents vastly superior to that of their peers.

Zen’s eyes landed on the campfire and remained there for a while. Those around it were currently laughing after one of them had cracked a joke that Rometo did not find particularly funny. His assumption was that it was some kind of an inside joke.

“It really breaks the immersion,” Zen muttered.

Rometo gave him a curious look. “The immersion?”

“Yeah.” The word slipped out of Zen quietly. “They are all fun and laughs. I’m sorry to say but it doesn’t feel like the Order sometimes.”

“You aren’t in the Order, Zen.”

“I know.” Zen scratched his neck again. This conversation was not why he was here. “I just mean, being surrounded by so many Order members, I thought I would feel the… weight of it. You know, the crashing presence of all of them around me.”

“Crashing presence?” Rometo would’ve chuckled if he found much funny.

Zen pointed at the group. “Look, they are laughing.”

“People laugh.”

“But not people like them. They laugh more than I’ve ever seen Lord Lacheart laugh.”

That much was true. Aiden Lacheart didn’t laugh much. He didn’t crack a lot of jokes either. The only time he was ever remotely normal was when Ted cracked the jokes or when Valdan was involved in the conversation. A part of Rometo always wondered at that. Aiden Lacheart was the kind of person you’d expect an Order member to be when he had gone far in the Order, rising up the ranks. Those are the Order members who didn’t laugh or smile much. Those were the Order members who had seen the true evil of the world, become a part of it, engaged in adding to it.

“What do you want, Zen?” Rometo asked. “You didn’t come here to talk about how the members of the Order are not lifeless undead.”

Zen was silent for what seemed like a long while. Before long, he let out a defeated sigh. “You’re right.”

“Spit it out,” Rometo said, realizing that his patience for the boy had grown since meeting him. “What do you want?”

“Fjord,” Zen answered. “Any news on him?”

“None.”

…

“Do you know what a philosopher’s stone is, young Fjord?”

Rather than try to make an educated guess or some subliminal deduction, Fjord gave the true answer, the correct answer. He shook his head. “No.”

The man sighed. “Me neither, boy. Me neither.”

Then he fell silent, there was something dramatic about the silence. It was almost as if it was a pause for dramatic effect not some simple silence.

It was a moment after before the man smiled and reached into the lower side of his robe. “I’m just joking with you, Fjord. Lighten up. I actually have one right here with me.”

Fjord’s mind went to a thousand things. A philosopher’s stone was something he was only hearing about for the first time in his life. But he could imagine the level of power that came with a philosopher’s stone, a weapon that helped human beings do amazing things in a time when there was no mana of any kind. It would be a powerful item in Nastild now.

Wouldn’t it?

The man brought his hand out, and in his palm rested a blue stone. Fjord blinked at it, visibly confused. It took him a long moment of arranging his thoughts before he looked at the man. “That’s a philosopher’s stone?”

The man remained smiling. “The very thing that kingdoms went to war over. The very thing that sparked a rebellion and corrupted a person that most people call a good man.”

Fjord looked at it again, trying to be sure that it was in fact what he was looking at. It was a simple smooth rock. It would fit in his palm comfortably enough for him to make a fist around it. Its blue reminded him of the ocean and the seas, though he had only ever seen either once. Then, somewhere on its body was a silver line that streaked across it quietly, somehow fitting into the whole beauty of the stone.

A frown of confusion touched his lips and he looked up at the man. “A mana stone?”

“Yep.”

There were mana stones everywhere on Nastild. It wasn’t as if he could just walk around and pick them up from the ground, but mana stones existed. They were definitely not some kind of rare commodity. In fact, a level ten anything was far superior to a mana stone. Yes, there were grades to mana stones, but he didn’t think there was any grade worth fighting over or killing for. Mana stones were only a lucrative commodity when mass produced. They were lucrative on a… What was it Ted Lacheart had called it?

A commercial scale.

Mana stones only made money for guilds and large organizations. It powered simple mana tools. Like a mana bulb, implements you wanted to last for a very long time using enchantments and tools. Mana stones were the friends of the [Artificer] class, sometimes the [Alchemist] class.

Definitely not worth killing people over, he thought.

“Exactly,” the man said. “Such fickle things caused wars before your world even knew what the rising darkness was. Before your world had the concept of classes and the system.” He adjusted on his spine sit. “Would you like to know why mere mortals as they were, one day became gods?”

Fjord nodded. He would be lying if the current discovery did not anger him to some extent. He had come looking for gold and it turned out the philosopher’s stone was nothing but a piece of rock in his shoe.

“They became gods because of the [Magician],” the man answered.

“The gambling god’s brother?”

“Yes, the gambling god’s brother.”

“But before then, they were worshipped for all their strength. Why? Because they could not be controlled. How did you control a man who could make the stone in your hand that gave you power disappear before your next thought? How did you control a man who got stronger every time you lost to him at a game of cards or simply just stood in front of you and got stronger?”

“They feared them,” Fjord muttered.

“Ah, yes. They feared them.” The man stroked a nonexistent beard. “They feared them, but also needed them. Because the monsters rose too. Simple animals hunted everyday became the hunters. And they were far more brutal than anything people could have ever done with the technology they had possessed at the time. It was a grand time, a time when you needed a [Magician] to swap a monster’s heart with a piece of stick while a [Mage] brought lightning down from the skies above and a [Gambler] bet on their successes and failures.”

He got up abruptly from his seat and laughed heartily. Arms wide, he was like a legendary story teller with his entourage of entertainment gone mad, riled up by the stories he told.

“They don’t tell you this in your churches, boy!” he declared. “But the gods were not made gods by their deeds. The gods were not born into Immortality. The gods were made gods because a [Magician] lied to life itself and a [Gambler] gambled on his victory.”

He turned abruptly, rounded on Fjord and snatched him by the jaw. “You, boy, are the stepping stone. You, boy, are a point of nexus. A point of delivery. You, boy, are the lynchpin to the stories of those around you.”

The man’s grip was a little too tight and Fjord was beginning to think that his jaw would break under the weight of it.

“You hold the path. You are the [Gambler] of this time.” The man’s grin was manic. “When the tree sways against you, bet in your favor. When the ground shakes and open up. Bet on it. When the world looks you dead in the eye and asks you to move, bet that it will move. Gamble, Fjord. Gamble. And when the gods ask you to stop, look them in the eyes and bet on everything. You are the [Gambler] of this time.” The man looked back at Aiden for a brief moment. “All you have to do is find your [Magician].”

That said, he released Fjord’s jaw and got up. He turned and looked around at the nothingness around them and the strange creature standing in the corner that had once shared in the pain of Aiden’s transformation.

When he was done looking, he walked over to Aiden and looked at his chest, not into it. Fjord tried to get a good look too, but he could not. However, what he did notice was that the flesh and bones were no longer overlapping on the sides.

Aiden was healing. Maybe a little too quickly.

He hoped that was a good sign while wondering why a being as powerful as the man in front of him thought he was a potential equal to the gods simply because of his class. It was a heavy weight on his shoulders because he believed the man’s words. No. To be more precise, he wanted to believe it—he wanted so desperately to believe it.

All his life he had wanted to be something. All his life he had wanted to be more. Now, here he was, being told that he could be more, that he had the potential to be more. He would be stupid not to bet on it, not to believe it—not to want to.

The man turned his head, looked at Fjord over his shoulder, and said, “Would you like to know why I believe this to be possible?”

“Yes,” Fjord answered, realizing for a moment that he probably sounded like somebody believing a lie, like those who go and grovel and cry at the alters in the churches praying for miracles that others know would not happen.

“Because of the secret of the [Gambler] class, boy,” the man said. “When asked how he’d managed to live so long and be so strong, what a [Gambler] required to stand at the pinnacle of all things—when asked the secret of his class’s success, he said; luck.”

Fjord fought back a sigh. No one commanded luck. His class was cursed because luck was its determining factor, it could be controlled to a certain extent, manipulated, but it could not be reined in.

“But the trick,” the man continued, “is knowing if you are lucky, Fjord.” He walked back over to him, squatted down so that they met eye to eye. “Do you think you are lucky, Fjord?”

Fjord took in where he was and how he had gotten here. He thought of everything in his life and smiled sadly. “No.”

“Ah, but you see, Fjord. You are.” The man got up and walked away. “You are so very lucky, Fjord. And should I prove your luck to you? Should I tell you how I know that you are lucky, child?”

He turned and looked at Fjord all full of smiles.

Fjord couldn’t help but nod. “Tell me.”

The man’s smile became a full and wicked grin. “You are lucky,” he said, “because I have come to realize that you will survive this encounter.”

A loud sound filled the room, and Aiden gasped.