Book 2 Reader’s Digest (Spoilers, Obviously)

JEBEDIAH HAS BEEN KICKING UP HIS HEELS AND ENJOYING THE SLOW LIFE OF AN AIMLESS BUM WHILE RECEIVING WIZARDING LESSONS FROM SMARTASS ON THE SIDE, A TRAINING REGIME DESIGNED TO REHABILITATE HIMSELF AFTER THE LOSS OF HIS SYSTEM AFTER IT WAS STRIPPED AWAY BY THE GODS.

Jeb’s normal life of begging gets screwed over when a rich jerkoff steals a silver coin out of his hat. When Jeb tries to get it back, he is put in jail for a time, until the jerkoff’s daughter clears his name and pays him back twenty-fold.

Subject to that wake-up-call, Jeb is determined to fix his deplorable conditions and buy himself a bath with the only skillset he excels at, (murdering things) Jeb heads over to the bounty shack looking to kill something that deserves it.

While perusing the easier monster-based murder-missions, Jeb overhears that his young benefactor has been kidnapped by local sand-pirates.

Jeb gets into a fight with the pirate’s supply runner and flushes out their local informant, following the young man back to the mountains where they are hiding, denying the Jerkoff’s men the ability to work a particularly valuable Lens mine.

Jeb murders the pirates and takes their stuff.

After returning the jerkoff’s daughter, Jeb reveals that the kidnapping was arranged by the jerkoff as collateral so the pirates would allow his men to continue mining, then he sucks the Impact right out of the jerkoff using his newfound honesty. Honestly.

Sadly, the jerkoff is still rich and powerful, and the pirates stopping him from getting richer and more powerful are dead, so the local sheriff advises Jeb skip town.

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While he’s packing, a local Judge-Dredd type Imperial Enforcer is impressed with Jeb’s detective/pirate-murdering skills, and commissions him to swing by Solmnath to the south, where children have been disappearing at an alarming rate, and murder whoever’s responsible.

The pay? Not ratting Jeb out to the emperor, and a deputy plate.

Jeb accepts, and begins a road trip down to the south, picking up a few more Lenses and meeting some locals. Some get murdered, others don’t.

Solmnath is an overcrowded metropolis that has been physically stitched together with L.A, and law and order have suffered drastically due to the influx of human refugees.

Finding a child-killer in a city full to the brim with orphans fighting for scraps of food would be a herculean task, so Jeb simplifies the problem by starting an orphanage, pulling as many children off the streets as he can and using them as bait.

It doesn’t take long before the secret cabal of child traffickers comes sniffing at Jeb’s door. But they are more well-connected than Jeb had hoped, sending the law after him and trying to break apart the orphanage.

Jeb identifies the person who lodged the initial complaint against the orphanage and pins him down, socially speaking. He then explores the judge’s connections, discovering exactly who and where the children are being held.

The children are being made biologically immortal by stuffing them full of levels and Body before they reach puberty, allowing their body’s natural regeneration to exceed the effect of aging. This act makes them worth a huge amount of XP to the noble who then purchases the right to kill them.

They nearly trap the guy at the heart of the conspiracy, but he escapes by the skin of his teeth, Without the main culprit, the nobles involved in the plot are racing to get rid of Jeb. Jeb has to turtle up, tighten the defenses of the orphanage and send out a letter to his friends for assistance.

The letter about the noble’s corruption makes its way into the hands of the emperor himself, who brings a handful of Jeb’s former crew to Solmnath, Where he uses his powerful magic to gather all the bad apples into one ballroom before slaughtering them.

Jeb nearly dies, nearly loses a finger, and gets to shake hands on national television with their god-king.

A few days later, the storm has passed and everything is calming down, but outside the walls of Solmnath, dungeons are misbehaving...