The four adventurers sat at a wooden bench overlooking the ocean. Nearby a lighthouse stood in amongst a small forest of flax and manuka. The sun crept low in the sky, wisps of orange and pink glowed on the horizon fading to purple behind them.

  “That's the stuff.” Gavin groaned as he skulled half the bottle in one swig, slamming it down on the table.

  “Are we going to talk about today?”

  “What about it?” Gavin said nonchalantly, “the sword? I think that's going to need quite a bit of unpacking. If we can figure out how to break it, and I think we should, it's going to make magic to return to this world, that would be an extremely bad thing.”

  “Gods Gavin, not the sword, are you okay?”

  “I'm fine.” Gavin said toying with the green bottle in his hand.

  “You're not fine, why didn't you tell us?” Judy said, hurt in her voice.

  “I- It's a lot, ya know?”

  “We understand,” Val said, shooting her friends a look that said ‘drop it' in no uncertain terms.

  “We need to work on controlling this energy leakage. We can't go around everywhere holding a sword so we dont die, even if we do put an illusion over it, it's going to chop off the first kid's hand who tries to pinch it.”

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  “It is rather obvious, especially right now.” Judy said inspecting her arm, there was a dull haze of light evaporating off her skin like mist.

  “It's probably fine if we just go hang out in EDM raves while we’re here.” Gavin suggested.

  “What are you going to do now we're here?” Sam asked, ignoring the comment.

  “Not sure, dealing with this sword is way out of my pay grade. We should try find out if there are any portal anchors here so we can get back.” Gavin Said

  “No Gavin. what you are going to do. You have friends and family here that think you're dead, what are you going to do about them?”

  “Oh, ahh, nothing.” Gavin said evasively.

  “You bloody well are” Judy said her eyes boring holes into him “they think you're dead, don't be cruel.”

  “Fine. One more thing, I think Sam should have the sword.” Gavin said.

  “Why me?”

  “Well, it's a big sword, and you're obviously the main character here.”

  “Gavin, you're using it to feed us mana because if you don't we die. I can't do that, you're holding onto it. Also its too small for me.” Sam said.

  “Not the first time he's been told that.” Val mumbled beneath her breath.

  “This is your show Gavin, you wanted to take on this mission, you wanted the sword, you're the one that wants to destroy it.”

  “Okay, fine. We also need to figure out what to do with this thing too.” Gavin said, taking the smokey grey crystal from his inventory.

  [Item: Human soul]

  [Type: Soul, Human]

  [Rarity: Level 20, unique]

  [Description: Contains the soul of a human.]