Mel finished bandaging his hands up with some thin cloth strips. He had pinched himself so many times with the small metal poles that he was certain his hands would never be the same. And he was fairly certain he still hadn’t set it up properly. That was mostly because the top was drooping down to the point that he had almost no room to even sit up fully. Well, he was fairly tall, so it wasn’t like it was all his fault. Heh yeah. That was a perfect excuse. It didn’t cure his hands, but it certainly soothed his ego. That was the most injured part of himself. He leaned back onto his floor mat and munched on a piece of bread. It would probably be stale in a couple days, so he planned on going through it and the fruits for the first couple days. He shouldn’t have to eat his dry tack unless something side tracked him severely. Once at Langston he could stock up on some more food and figure out his next destination.
He was pretty sure there were some interesting places to visit up there. Maybe look at the dye yards, or pursue the fine clothes of the city. There were also some oddities outside the city that he could check out. There were a few old and mostly abandoned dwarf settlements that weren’t too far under the surface. He could check a few of those out, see if he couldn’t find his way into an actual dwarf fortress city. That would be amazing. He slowly drifted off to sleep thinking about what he was going to do tomorrow.
Mel woke up lazily, before packing up everything, struggling to fit the tent back into its compact roll. He started marching out towards the North, eating a quick breakfast of a couple rolls and a fist full of Atlas fruit. It was a strangely hard fruit, but it was quite nice to gnaw on. It was just sweet enough to qualify as a treat, but not so juicy that he had to worry about it dripping out of his mouth and making a mess.
Traveler Class Level Up! Traveler Level Two!
It was a nice reminder that he was doing well enough to level up. He wasn’t a total failure for being totally unequipped to set up a tent. No skill, but then again, people generally only got one or two in between every increment of five. Every ten levels though would see them receiving a significantly higher quality skill for their level. Some considered it to be an omen, foreshadowing what kind of skills you would get till the next increment of ten.
Mel wasn’t so sure he bought that explanation, personally finding it more likely that a person would get similar levels while in a similar situation. Given that most people's lives wouldn’t be changing too drastically in a period of a few months or years, it made sense that they would get skills aimed towards similar needs. Mel liked the idea that skills were based on the individual and their usage of their class than the skills being randomly chosen from a pool of possibilities. But those who stringently followed the Scholars of Ralisten book, How To Exceed Your Level did tend to be stronger than others at the same level.
While he hadn’t ever read the book personally, he had heard that the gist of it was to simply to perform feats beyond what you should be able to do at your current level. This in turn would give you a better chance of gaining a good skill. But the reasoning behind it, Mel simply couldn’t agree with. They believed that doing the greater feats would confuse whatever decided levels and skills into believing you were. Mel thought it was much more likely that you got skills related to a person's needs and actions. If they were great, then so would the skills that followed be.
Introspection was set aside as the day dragged on. He had just been trudging alongside the road the entire time, and he was starting to grow bored of it. Nothing new ever happened on the road other than him plucking the occasional stone out of the way of carts. He hadn’t even seen a single wagon go down the road this entire trip. Now that he thought about, he really hadn’t seen anyone else throughout the entire trip. Carston and Langston were quite close together, relatively speaking, and the fact that he hadn’t seen a single person going either way was odd. There was a crossroads up ahead where Merchants would often stop to refill their water supplies.
Mel arrived at the scene of a stopped wagon, no horses in sight. The wagon had a deceptive covering, it resembled wood at a first glance, but as he approached closer, he noticed that it had sheets of metal covering it. He couldn’t fathom why a merchant wagon would need armor though. He got to the other side, curiosity banished as the grim truth became apparent. A single poor man stood over a man in much finer clothes, and although Mel couldn’t see the wounds through the blood, he assumed they were made by the blood covered knife in the murderer's hands. It seemed as though the fight had only happened minutes ago.
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“Hey kid, uh let's not be hasty. I had to kill him! He has piles and piles of gold in the back of this wagon, I’ll split it fifty fifty with you.”
“Why would you have to kill a man?” Mel asked quietly. He rubbed his thumb uncomfortably over the metal ring. He was going to have to end the life of another person wasn’t he? Because it wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right for someone to get a reward for a terrible crime. But why would he have to be the one to set things right?
“I didn’t have any money. I was going to starve if I didn’t kill this guy. Come on, don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same if you saw an idiot with a massive wallet. The Merchant didn’t even think twice before letting me ride along with him, so if anything, I was just lucky I was the first one to have a chance” The man madly tried to justify it. Murdering a man.
That was all the confirmation he needed of the situation. Mel fired the first bolt of magic into the man's face. The man went down screaming, far from dead. Another bolt rendered the poor man’s face unrecognizable. The final bolt silenced the horrible gurgling that would haunt him, undoubtedly.
There wasn’t much of a struggle. The poverty stricken murderer hadn’t put up any resistance, and clearly didn’t have a class that aided in combat. His ring wouldn’t hurt any combatant over level twenty or so, but could probably kill anything short of that. If not, it would still probably hurt them. Mel tried not to look at the corpse he had made, concerned for the Merchant. He had blonde hair that matched Mel’s own, and clear skin with a trustworthy look about him. Probably some sort of Merchant skill. That would be, if he was still alive.
Mel lowered his head down to the blood drenched chest of the merchant, while pulling out his medicine kit. He felt a pulse, and the man was still breathing, so clearly the attack had happened recently. Mel started measuring out a portion of blood powder. He used the average portion for an adult male, rather than trying to guesstimate the man’s weight. He had a pretty safe margin of error, but if he slipped up and gave the man significantly too much, it would just be an even more gruesome end.
He mixed the powder with a bit of water from his canteen in a small flask before propping the man's head up on his leg. He poured the medicine into his mouth, beforing cutting off the injured Merchant’s shirt. He considered taking it off, but remembered that he wasn’t supposed to move wounded people around. Ah, a bit late for that he realized looking down at where he had moved the man’s head.
There were five wild stab wounds covering his torso. Mel sanitized and cleaned every wound with a bit of ethanol, which was quite expensive considering how much he had to use and how rare it was in the South. The United Cities produced quite a bit of the stuff though. Such a pleasant and civilized name for such a savage place. Mel finished dressing the wounds and then finally poured a single drop of a Wake Up potion into the mouth of the Merchant.
Moments later the man woke up spluttering. He immediately tried to sit up, before all but screaming in pain. “You're probably going to want to avoid moving for a bit. You're running on empty, got no blood in you.” He carefully informed his impromptu patient.
“What are you doing?” The man asked. Or gurgled really. Which was a very unnerving sign. A couple of those stab wounds were pretty close to his lungs.
“Right now I'm putting away all the tools I just used to save your life. Then I'm gonna walk a safe distance and probably vomit or cry.” Mel stood up, carefully laid the man back down on the ground before he really let his nerves run wild. It definitely felt more like a vomiting situation. He grabbed onto a tree with one hand and desperately tried to make sense of things.
Mel stood there, on the verge of vomiting, knees shaking for a while. The only reason he really snapped out of it was because a horse was staring at him. It was a beautiful horse, it’s coat was black and white with an almost artful contrast. It was at the very verge of looking designed, while still maintaining some sort of odd natural appearance. It was clearly the horse, or one of the horses that belonged to the Merchant. It walked up to him, and Mel clung unto the massive animal. He stayed like that for a bit longer, just hugging some stranger's horse.
He let go of the beast of burden, and took it’s lead. “Let’s get you put up alright? Then I’ll see about helping out your owner.”