System, are you messing with me?

Ark 4 - What can I do with the Aquamarin?

Shu Ning carefully placed his feet in between the sharp edges of the swords and metal armory as he made his way towards the center of the room. There the tear shaped aquamarine twinkeled from the soft rays of the sun descending from a small opening in the ceiling. He ran his fingers along the transparent case, examining it for any potential traps but even after touching every inch of the podest he did not find any pecularities. Still keeping his guard up, he lifted the glass covering into the air and waited. 

All was silent inside of the cave and only the voices of the other adventurers could be heard from time to time. Shu Ning placed the container next to his feet on the ground..... and then hesitated. He watched enough movies to know that this was the moment everything normally turned south. It was possible that the weight of the treasure plocked off a certain mechanism, like a roling stone or the collapse of the entire cave, so he had to make sure he could leave the place unobstruckted first.

Turning away from the podest, Shu Ning strode through the piles of clutter on the ground and transfered it all into his inventory. Most of it was unusable and would end up in the bin, but he didn't have the time to sort through everything now. Thus he just stuffed it all into his bag to look through later and within minutes the whole place was cleaned up.

Now that that was taken care of, Shu Ning walked back towards the podest and reached for the aquamarin. The surface felt cool and slightly wet to the touch as if it was surrounded by a thin layer of water and the blue light dimmed slightly when his skin touched it. His fingers closed around the stone and he quickly placed it inside of his pocket, waiting for something to happen.

A loud bell started ringing in Shu Ning's head and a screen popped up in front of him. Red, purple and orange twirls danced along it's side and framed the words at it's center

Mission Successful! Congratulation 'black_cat' for completing the special mission and retrieving the aquamarin. 

Shu Ning closed the interface again without looking at his rewards when he heard the comotion from outside. The adventurers must have received the same notification as him since they were all yelling at each other, demanding to know what was going on. None of them knew who the individual was that completed the mission behind their backs and none of them were very happy about being decieved like this. 

As there was no way around it, Shu Ning returned back to the main cave and could just dodge a windblade that flew at him when he left the narrow path. The gold was long gone from the floor and the remaining people stood  close together, weapons drawn and magic at the ready. Their anger was palpable but no one knew who to direct it on and so they mostly stood at an impass. 

Shu Ning drew closer to the group and saw the silver hair of the protagonist peaking out from the crowd, holding her staff defensively in front of her. Her face was pale and she worryingly gnawed on her bottom lip as she watched her friend verbaly battle another magician who had thrown the wind blade at her before. It was him that noticed Shu Ning' presence first 

"Where have you been this entire time. You were suddenly gone. Don't tell me....."

'Springfestival' frowned as he curiously looked at Shu Ning. Hearing his words, Lan Quingyao turned towards him as well and theatralically gasped as her gaze landed on his face. Her eyes widened in shock and her hand grabbed the hem of her friend's shirt. 

"It was you, wasn't it? You are 'black_cat'."

The adventurers immediately fell silent and followed the protagonist's sight. At once, Shu Ning was pierced by the angry stares of about twenty humans seeking blood. He didn't show much of a reaction towards the threat though and just calmly walked over towards 'springfestival' and 'Lan Quingyao'.