Chương 86: The Believer

Marcus I'd been driving for two hours in my favorite raccoon shirt covered in raccoon fur. Besides that, I had a hidden GoPro in my jacket and five planar crystals that I'd triple-wrapped in bubble wrap. I'd paid five thousand for the crystals, which was cheap for what we thought they were worth. But it was still five grand that I was carrying in a backpack. Tyler was in the passenger seat, checking his camera battery for the third time.

He had his Cryptid Chasers Ozarks channel running on his phone, monitoring the chat. We had about two hundred live viewers.

"Chat wants to know if we're going to find the raccoon god," Tyler said.

"Tell them we're going to find something," I said.

"I don't know if it's the raccoon god."

"Dude, you're wearing the shirt." I looked down at my chest. The shirt had a silhouette of a raccoon with glowing eyes and the text "I want to believe" underneath. I'd ordered it from a guy on Etsy who was making a killing off Noyasunai merchandise.

"The shirt is cringe," Tyler said, but he was grinning. Jenny was in the back seat, not talking. She'd been quiet since we'd left Little Rock. She got quiet when she was focused, and right now she was focused on her phone. She was reading everything she could find about the Ozarks mana concentration zones. She'd printed out geological surveys, overlaid them with satellite thermal data, and cross-referenced them with reported incursion sites. Jenny didn't believe in the raccoon god. Instead, she believed in data.

But she'd paid for the crystals anyway because she also believed in being prepared. If there was even a chance that the planar crystals could unlock supernatural abilities, she wanted to be first in line to offer them to the raccoon god in return for his blessings. That was the difference between us. I wanted to believe. Jenny wanted to be ready. Tyler wanted content. Together, we made a terrible adventuring party but an excellent startup team.

We'd bought twenty planar crystals from a guy in Jonesboro who'd found them in a field after an incursion. He'd posted them on Facebook Marketplace listed as "weird glowing rocks" and to "make an offer." Tyler had spotted the listing at two in the morning. Then he shook me awake. After that, we drove two hours to buy them before anyone else figured out what they were. The going rate usually jumped from between two and eight thousand dollars depending. Nobody really knew what crystals were worth yet.

Some people hoarded them while others got rid of them immediately. That was where Crystal Trading came in. Tyler and I had been building the platform from the minute the global announcement was made. It was basically an exchange site for planar crystals. Buyers and sellers could list, bid, and trade, with us taking a small percentage of each transaction. We hadn't launched yet because we were still working out verification.

We needed some way to confirm that someone actually had physical crystals and wasn't just selling pictures of glowing rocks. But once it went live, we'd be the first movers in what I was pretty sure was going to be the biggest thing since Bitcoin. The crystals were real. They were scarce and they could apparently do things that no amount of money could do through the system. We registered at the Class Registration Office in Little Rock two days ago.

The office was in a converted DMV building on Markham Street, which felt appropriate because the experience was about as fun as getting a driver's license. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. We filled out forms with name, address, social security number, emergency contact, medical history, and then a whole section about "supernatural aptitude" that nobody at the office seemed to understand. The class selection was the only interesting part.

The Gaia System presented options based on what seemed to be a mix of personality, physical ability, and some other factor. So basically, random, I thought. Jenny got the Specialist class with the subclass Professional. Needless to say, she was disappointed. I had to console her that at least she didn't have one of the Support classes. Tyler got Ranger, from the Primal class. It was probably because he was always out looking for proof of Bigfoot. He'd been thrilled, which he should.

Most people ended up with Support classes. As for me, I ended up being a Divine class Shaman. How, I had no idea. Maybe it was because of my pet raccoon, which was driving Tyler crazy. Then again, that wasn't my fault. He'd been the one who suggested staying at my place while we worked out the bugs on the program. I'd thought about Beastmaster because of Bandit. I loved him, but he was a menace. This was definitely true for Tyler who Bandit seemed to view as some type of interloper who needed to be shown his place.

Beastmaster would have let me communicate with him better, but the more I'd read about it, the more it felt wrong. I didn't want to command animals. I didn't want to be in charge. Bandit wasn't my servant and he'd be the first to tell me that, probably by biting me. Shaman felt right with its emphasis on connection instead of control. Shamans were part of something instead of being on top of it.

The Gaia System had described it as "one who bridges the gap between the mortal and the divine," which sounded like exactly what I wanted to be. I'd watched Abe's videos dozens of times. I'd read every scrap of information about the Church of Reincarnation. I'd even found the Moon-Eyed People's Order of the Sacred Raccoon online. When they started posting on forums and Discord servers, I'd talked to every single one who'd answer my messages. What they'd told me had only made me believe more.

The raccoon was a god who hadn't asked to be a god. He was a raccoon who'd started a religion by accident. He'd resurrected the dead and fought cannibalistic dwarves and won. There was even supposedly a baby planet growing in a pocket dimension, fed by a kleptomaniac opossum. It sounded insane. All of it. Every single part, but the Gaia System was real. Mana was real. Incursions were real. People were developing classes and abilities that would have been science fiction six months ago.

If all of that was real, why not a raccoon god? I was still thinking about this when we parked at a trailhead and hiked in. The Ozarks were different now. I could feel it the moment we stepped off the road. It was from mana saturation, at least that was according to what I had read online. The Class Registration Office had warned us about it. High-mana zones could cause headaches, disorientation, and what the pamphlet had called "spontaneous biological enhancement" in wildlife.

Basically, the closer you got to a mana source, the weirder things got. We were getting closer to something. I could feel it in my bones. A guy in a vest appeared on the trail about half a mile in. He was big, friendly, and walked like he belonged here. He nodded at us.

"Hikers?" he asked.

"Adventurers," Tyler said, which was technically true and mostly embarrassing.

"You guys might want to turn back. It can be dangerous up here. Plague rats are headed this direction." The guy shrugged like he wasn't sure whether we would believe him or not. He also didn't seem to particularly care either. Tyler's eyes went wide and he looked at me. I looked at Jenny. Jenny just said, "Thanks. We'll be fine." Twenty minutes later, we stepped into the clearing. It was easy. All we had to do was follow the coordinates Abe had given everyone in the video. He hadn't lied. I knew he wouldn't.

He looked like an honest man. A less honest-looking man sat on a fallen log in front of us. He was tall, lean, dark-haired, with green eyes that were a little too bright to be normal. Next to him was a wooden sign. It looked like it had been grown rather than built because the edges were still alive, with tiny green leaves sprouting from the corners. TRICKSTER'S TEACHINGS Shapeshifting Instruction — Beginner to Advanced Planar Crystal Payment Only No Refunds. No Insects. No Complaints. Tyler grabbed my arm.

"Dude," he whispered.

"Is that an NPC?" I couldn't believe it. I was about to get trained by an actual NPC. I couldn't help but do a fist pump, YES!