Everything has a price.

Everything.

My last battle cost more than I expected. I have overused my body, and after that I didn’t rest for quite some time. And because of that, now I am lying on burning hot sand and coughing out dead pieces of my lungs. I try to stop the trembling, but it is useless. The burned and dead tissues are releasing toxins into my body. Too much at the same time to heal. Pain is something I got used to, so it is not a problem. But I am immobilized for few more hours until it stops. Luckily I got some food in the backpack on the horse, so the nutrition requirement part for the healing is solved.

Several hours have passed and I start moving my body again. I slowly crawl to to horse and get on it as I resume the travel, while healing the critical issues in the body.

I should meet the caravan pretty soon.

…

It has been 5 days since I left Kamalesh. I got a bit better, but still, I won’t be able to do anything major for quite some time.

Few days ago because of the sand storm all the traces were lost. I no longer know their exact path.

No caravan, barely any water left and no food at all. Well, at least the food issues is already solved.

A 10 meters sand centipedes attacked from under the sand. Horse died instantly because of the underbelly wound. Actually, even if the cut would be small, the horse still wouldn’t survive. Their poison is extremely toxic. I killed the centipede, but the fact that I didn’t see it coming is bad.

Standing near the corpses I start thinking on the next action. Desert is a dangerous place, that’s why I wanted to travel with caravan. One day late and now I am in this situation.

I butcher the really expensive dead horse and fill my stomach with raw meat, there is absolutely no time to cook it. Even less reason to take any meat with me. It will just get spoiled because of the temperature.

Now. Taking bare necessities I resume the travel in the direction they should have went. I need to travel light.

Dying alone in desert…

Sigh.

…

Earth mages in desert can cause more problems than anyone can imagine. Sand traps, quicksand, earth javelins, earth walls and many more.

Big bandits group in desert usually have at least one.

Three dead earth mages, lying on sand, tell me that I was much more than just unlucky. But I am not sure if it is a good thing I met bandits or bad. Because now there is food, water and a new horse.

Strangely there were no coins. Maybe they hid them somewhere. But I just can’t find them and staying here for much longer is too dangerous in the long run.

“Did you do this?”

Looking back I find a levitating mage few meters above ground with long blond hair.

No.

A wind Wizard. But she can’t maintain levitation for that long. And she for sure didn’t travel through the desert alone. She must be part of caravan, but I don’t see them.

“Yes. I was supposed to be one of the caravan guards. Missed you by a day and got lost in desert.”

She looks down at me as if I am a bug and contemplates whenever I am lying and she should kill me and finish here. Wizards are always arrogant, thinking that everyone is but a pebble under their feet.

I am not sure what exactly pissed me more. But an overwhelming desire to “Rustle her Jimmies” is hard to hold back. Interesting term, which was told to me by even more interesting person.

“Tell your master that I am here. Jitak knows me. Here take the quest paper and show it to him.”

I take out a scroll and throw it at her. She catches the scroll with one hand, opens and reads through the guild contract signed by him. The reluctance with which she does all those operation can be hardly contained.

Her face morphs into rage and I see that thought of killing me becomes stronger. They are prideful and hate being under someones command and calling someone her master should have done the trick. But still, even wizards follow the rules.

“Stay here.”

She flies away and after some time returns with the several bodyguards on horses, which I saw standing with Jitak before.

As they come to stop, the lead bodyguard looks at me for about a minute in silence.

Ah yeah, my skin is still burned, and I look as if I just came out of oven.

“I hate fire mages. Had a small incident with one. Look, the scar is still there.” I point to the red-black scar on the right side of my face. Even in current state it is still visible.

His eyes open wide in shock as if finally recognizing me.

“God Almighty. The fuck happened? You look barely alive.”

I tell him the short version of what happened. That because of a small event I was late by a single day and traveled after them, how I lost their path, horse died and I met bandits.

After some discussion it was decided that all bandits belongings will be taken by caravan and sold. I will receive a ‘share’. Share huh.

Disgust and fear were easily recognizable on the faces of guards and main travelers and it was decided that I will be a guard at the rear. Together with poor and non-humans.

As I said before discrimination exists. At least it is not ‘active’ one. I have seen many dead just because they looked a bit different. But they have no reason to complain, they are alive and are paid the same as humans.

The non-humans looked at me with even more disgust and fear. Some pointed with fingers, some plainly evaded, others looked as if they are thinking how to get rid of me.

You would think because of their experience they would be more accepting, but no.

The funny thing about this whole situation is they may look different, but deep down they are ALL the same.

Absolutely the same.

After people collected the bandits belongings we resumed the travel.

During the evening when we stopped, several non-humans started speaking in Patu, language from the South Continent Paletia. It is not the language, but rather the subject that is an issue.

‘Communism’.

An interesting concept brought by one of the summoned a really long time ago. The basic idea of equality was alien to the people, but after some time it started resonating with many.

At the start, inspired by the concept people were advocating for equal rights for all sentient species. Pretty simple and logical. Right? One place, south east region of Paletia, even implemented it and started developing economically really fast.

With each year people there advocated for more and more ‘equal’ rights. And at one point the original ‘Communism’ concept returned.

Ideas changed from ‘equal’ rights to ‘equality’.

A new, quite aggressive group with ‘equality’ as core slogan appeared, they promised food and riches to every single person.

Promised.

On that wave they ‘collected’ everything and divided it ‘equally’, to be truly ‘equal’.

During that moment I was there.

I have seen how organized militia ‘shared’ the farmers harvest. They did not ask, they took. Leaving many farmers to starve.

It really quickly moved from food to land. From land to property. From property to gold.

But the leaders still, were always more ‘Equal’.

No one cared that some people worked years to buy their land, or they spent generations cleaning the land from forest, plowing the earth, planting seeds, watering them everyday and only then gathering the harvest.

The speakers continued telling people about communism, while representing everything in bright light, and evading critical points, focusing on riches they will get and the oppression they are currently under.

The bewitched eyes of the listeners told me enough.

Great, more fanatics coming. Now political ones.

More war. More death.

Fucking great.

Since I left the north mountain post, more and more it feels as if the world is falling from a cliff into the abyss.

…

It has been 2 weeks since. Travel is slow. During this period my internal organs and muscles got better, therefore I slowly started sending more nutrition into skin.

Even I can get tired of horrified looks. Do they think that it is some kind of disease that they can catch or is it just painful to look at me?

As soon as I started looking more human, few groups started talking with me. Unexpectedly the group I spoke most is the one I saw in the inn. Elf, dwarf and purple skinned ogre. Elf chatted non-stop about their adventures, and dwarf would constantly point out errors or that he made the most important contribution. The ogre was generally silent, but it was apparent that he was the party leader.

We were attacked few times by centipedes and big scorpions, but they were dealt with quickly. The big one were killed instantly by mages in the caravan the smaller ones were task assigned to us, melee guards.

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…

“The swamp smelled like the shitroom in slavehouse.”

“You sure know how it smells.”

“Shut it bearded turd. Anyway we could hardly eat or drink. Hunting that god damn troll tribe was harder than we expected.”

“Ha. I remember you eating like bark maggot in heat.”

“Fuck you cunt. You are not one to talk. You drank nonstop the whole time.”

As they continued their story, we continued to walk.

We heard a scream coming from the front as people were running around and trying to hide.

“DRAGON!! HIDE!!”

Shit. How the FUCK did they attract a dragon. Few took out their weapons and mages started preparing their spells. After few seconds of people screaming and guards giving order, the sound of battle could be heard.

That wind Wizard was flying around and casting spells while other mages fired ice, fire and rock javelins.

Dragon.

As soon as I see the creature confusion creeps on my face. After few seconds of thinking I sigh as I haven’t for a really long time.

Dragon.

Blind idiots. 2 wings and 2 legs. Dragon huh. I am not sure what is more frustrating, the fact that they mixed up wyvern with dragon, or that they are so worked up because of wyvern with 30 meters wingspan.

Pathetic.

Dragons are flying fortresses of death. They wield spells that can demolish cities in a single cast. Their scales are harder than steel, their jaws can crush stones as if it is but a simple apple, they can swallow a carriage in one bite.

While in air they are unkillable, on ground it will take few armies and powerful spells just to wound them.

A fucking wyvern is just and oversized cave bat, barely able to cast a fireball.

As people scream and run around I just feel apathetic at their squabble.

Mages continue to fire spells at its face in horror.

Idiots, most magic creatures have good magic defense. Attack the wings, ground it and it’s dead.

Wyvern opens its jaws wide to gathers mana around in order to cast a fireball. As it lungs inflate I wonder why did they stop the assault now. Cast a fireball in its jaw and it will explode like a balloon.

Wyvern fireball hits the carriages as fire spreads around the caravan.

Absurd. How did they even survive their whole lives.

I take out my sword I walk in the direction of the wyvern. Most of the mages are on their knees heavily breathing. Wasted all their mana more likely.

I can see the wind wizard still levitating and gathering mana to cast another spell but she is interrupted and blown away by a blast of wind from the wyvern wings.

It lands on one of carriages and starts eating the horse while it swings its wings from time to time to maintain balance.

I send mana to legs to get a decent jump. As soon as I get close to its wing my sword cuts its webbeds and I fall down and roll.

Wyvern screeches and tries to take off but falls down on one side. The wyvern cannot fly with damaged wing.

It turns to looks at me after which it charges at me while running on all four. I evade and try to position myself in a way that I can kill it quickly.

But it is useless, I am alone, and no one is helping in the battle. Fucking idiots don’t know how to support.

It is bigger and faster.

Wyvern’s weak points are eyes and area right in the center of its neck.

I won’t be able to evade for much longer and help will not come. I need to do it alone.

It charges at me again as I jump as high as I can, to get on top of it. It jaws closing shut at the place where I was few seconds ago. The moment I land on top of it’s head I plunge the sword into its eye.

Shit. Sword too short, it was not deep enough.

It thrashes around and throws me off.

Because of my velocity I didn’t make a smooth landing, and it took few seconds to stop my rolling and stand up. But it is already too late. Only several meters separate us.

I have few seconds before its teeth close down on my body.

Teeth.

I do one of the stupidest thing that comes into my mind and jump into it’s throat. Jaws close shut as light disappears. At least my legs weren’t damaged. I am inside and still have my sword, but there is not enough space to move. I start stabbing my sword into whatever I can. The creature starts thrashing around in discontent.

Oh, that was painful?

Let me show you that you should not eat random stuff.

I finally fall into some sack and feel as something burns my skin. Stomach acid. Shit. I repeat my stabbing actions with much more vigor. Warm liquid starts flowing into the ‘sack’, but I do not stop. Finally after few minutes the thrashing around me stops.

OK. Now I need to get out as fast as I can. I don’t have much air left here and I don’t want to be digested. I am not sure how big it’s asshole is, but I don’t like that exit. I start carving the flesh to create a new exit. Finally it feels like my sword went out of something. After about a minute more I carve out an exit big enough to squeeze through.

I finally fall down on sand take deep breath of fresh air. After about a dozen breaths I stand up while wobbling. Few people are running around and trying to stop the fire, but most are just standing and staring at me.

Prickling sensation on skin tells me that my clothes are still covered in stomach acid. I quickly take them off and hear a series of gasps. Not understanding the reason for that I look at them. But they are not looking at me, not my face, somewhere lower. I look down and start regretting taking off the shirt. The brotherhood symbol is still there. You can’t get rid of it. It will always return, same as the scar on my face.

I walk to stunned Jitak and ask him for clothes. Few clothes should be left from the bandits I killed.

One of his bodyguards, a dark elf, looks at me in pure hatred.

“Blood Demon.”

Jitak winces, looking at me, hoping his guard didn’t offend me.

Yeah. We killed a lot of them.

Moloch, Baal, Lucifer. Different faces, one… creature.

Dark Elves have ‘dark’ in their names for a reason, blueish color of their skin is not the main. They have done a lot of stuff, really bad stuff. Blood Legion literally decreased their number by nearly half. Several dozens of million souls. Some may say that it was not justified. But with each year dealing with them I believed that less and less.

If your body has affinity for dark spells, will you focus on other, weaker affinities? No. They always return to what they have been doing. All the pretty words worth shit. They were prosecuted and forgiven several times. And they still have returned to their old ways. We were not the first ones who tried to ‘stop’ them.

The person, who came back with clothes, stretches it to me. But I can see as he is shaking in fear.

Blood Legion is general term for Zeronel ‘army’. They wear red and follow god Zeron’s teaching. They are well known and respected.

Blood Brotherhood, is different story. We are not ‘army’. We are hunters. We are marked by the symbol on my chest. People speak about us in hushed tone, and population fears us. There are a lot of scary children stories about us for a reason.

Us. We.

No.

Them. I am alone. I am no longer part of them.

I take the shirt and put it on and walk to the back of caravan. Everyone was trying keep themselves far from me, no one came closer than 5 meters.

Fire was stopped. No dead. But few were severely burned. Not as badly as I was, but still.

After some time the caravan resumed the travel.

…

No one tried to speak with me since the wyvern attack. But everyone has whispered between themselves, while fear was evident in their eyes.

Nothing new.

The wind wizard took several long glances at me but did not speak. Even the prideful wizard looked scared.

We got to Tomalesh. A huge sand stone ‘city’ around 2 major oases in the center of dead desert.

It should have been a pretty silent place. But as we get close to the gates I note that I have never seen it this active and noisy.

After few questions I find the reason.

Caliphate attacked Desert Alliance.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. For centuries these kingdoms had good relationship.

Wait.

Those Lucifer worshipers though I was Caliphate spy. I though that they meant just the usual spy, which caliphate is known to send everywhere.

They thought I was Qaes. Sent to assassinate.

That explains more. But, still. Why? For what reason?

But more importantly. An all out war is coming.

Empire, Northern Kingdom, Qing, Caliphate and now Desert Alliance.

Third Continental War.

FUCK.