This is seriously unrealistic

"Cupronickel coils...Invar casing...it's beautiful." A grin flickered onto our physicist's face.

A moment of surprise passes over the villager's face, but it quickly passed. "It truly is..."he started. "oh and there was this"

He handed our physicist a crate half the size of that with the alumite. Upon opening it, the grin on his face grew even further.

"Damascus Steel...." he confirmed, tapping the material with his armor. "Hey old man, how would you like to work with me...I'll-"

"I was gonna follow you whether you liked it or not." the old villager replied in a deadpan manner, 

"Well I suppose this is the better option then." chuckled our physicist "By the way, what was your name?"

"Ah my name is Cross. You?"

"I'm G...."

________________________________________________________________________________________________

[???, 94, ???]

[The Ringed Child]

At the edge of a dark forest sat a young child with a grey ring that emanated purple particles.

The child whimpers in fear and confusion, the events of the past few days no doubt scarring it for life. 

Suddenly, a strange message flashes before the child's eyes

[Malum Is Satisfied] 

"Hm-hmm?" the child sniffled. 

[Malum Has Granted You [Progenitor]]

[Malum Has Granted You [The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend]]

"w-what..?"

The air around the child trembled as strange purple particles shot into the sky like a beacon.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

[-253, -3000]

[Our dear physicist]

After helping Cross gather some necessities in a cart and scrounging up enough bronze to buy a cart and 2 horses, our two friends decide to walk around the city one more time, looking for more potentially useful things before departing.

"You're really wasting time-nothing in this city will have much use to a man like you.." yelled Cross, showing a particularly nosy businessman out of his way.

"Be that as it may, I'm not intent on walking all the way to this city again. Besides, you miss all the shots you don't take!" yelled our physicist over the noisy crowd. 

"You walked here??? From where???" 

Our physicist pretended not to hear Cross and continued to scan the city with his eyes. 

"Florist, mason, arcanist, weaponsmith..." he muttered, narrowing his eyes at shady corners "Wait...arcanist???" he turned to Cross, with an inquiring expression. 

Cross mirrored his expression. "What? It's an arcanist what's so surprising?"

With a "tch.", our physicist dragged Cross by the arm into the arcanist's store. It was substantially less crowded than any other store, with a measly two customers browsing shelves filled with wooden wands and ragged tomes. 

"HELLO DEAR CUSTOMERS!!!" A jubilant voice boomed from the other side of the store, startling Cross and our physicist. 

"hi I'-" started our physicist, only to immediately get interrupted by the overzealous salesman. 

"ARE YOU LOOKIN FOR SOMETHIN IN PARTICULAR, SIRS? I MUST SAY WE DON'T SEE MUCH OF YOU SCIENC-Y KIND 'ROUN-"

"We're just here to browse, thanks. We'll tell you if we find something we want to purchase." interrupted Cross. 

The emerald eyes of the storekeeper fell as he adjusted his monocle and smoothed his amethyst colored robes. "ahh...very well then...enjoy your stay sirs."

Cross whispered something about arcane nutjobs to our physicist, and that they should get out quick. Our physicist paid no heed to his words. 

The two customers in the store chuckled and sigh as though this was a daily occurrence. 

quickly recovering from the strange exchange, our physicist and cross move around the store swiftly, our physicist scanning the shelves using the akashic records for anything remotely useful or interesting. 

"...Sirs..." the now silenced voice of the storekeeper snaked into the ears of our duo. 

"Like I said," started Cross, slightly annoyed "We're only here to browse."

"Be that as it may..." Strange purple particles flashed through the eyes of the storekeeper. "A man such as you-" he gestured to our physicist. "Will not find anything of use here that I am willing to part with."

"What do you mean a man like hi-" started Cross.

"You know exactly what I mean" snapped the storekeeper. "Now take this." He shoved a strange black-blue compass into the armored hands of our physicist. "And leave. Quickly. Hide if you can."

An ominous chill went down the spine of our physicist. "Why's that...?"

"You see-us arcanists aren't like ordinary folk, who might be fooled by that clunky set of armor you have there...we can see what lies underneath. Underneath everything."

Our physicist opened his inventory. 

The arcanist smiled eerily "You'll do well not to do that here." 

Panic entered our physicist's mind. "Let's go Cross." he said hurriedly, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him out to the streets of the city. 

"Hey! What're you doing? Don't tell me you're scared of a little arcanist..."

Our physicist didn't answer, dragging Cross through the crowd all the way to the cart and horses. "Go. Quick." He said, his voice clearly laced with panic. 

Noticing this, and considering the mysteries that surrounded our physicist, Cross decided it was probably a better idea to listen to him rather than potentially meet whatever fate it was he dreaded so much. 

Without so much as a murmur, Cross started, and our physicist huddled in the back of the shadows, making his heavily armored body as inconspicuous as possible. 

Giving Cross directions to exit the city as quickly as possible and rush in the direction of his house, our physicist takes the compass out of his inventory once more, examining it with great care. 

It was a compass made of strange fluctuating black and blue materials. It was lined with silver inscriptions and had a small black skull adorning its center. 

Most peculiar of all was the direction the compass was pointing. Not north, but a random angle south west. 

Of course, our physicist used the Akashic record to attempt to find information on it. 

[Malum Covers Your Eyes.]

A searing pain shot through the head of our physicist, causing him to groan and clutch his armored head, squeezing his eyes shut and curling up even further in the shadows. Cross looked back, concerned. 

The pain passed as quick as it came and when our physicist opened his eyes once more, a prompt from DT-018 passed over his eyes.

[Item Name Unknown]

[Curse Of Soulful Binding]

[Item Details Unknown]

"Shit."