This chapter was freaking hard to write and it is one of the very few that I found myself wondering how much to write/edit/remove and especially where to stop, so I hope I did it justice, but I am not sure… Regardless: if you are not prepared for darkness and borderline cannibalism in that darkness, I am sorry in advance.
Chapter 23: Eye of The Guilt
Bastard!
The stranger rushed us while firing off a variety of both death and stun spells. The shear mass of spells was impressive, but the fact that they were all aimed almost directly at me was nearly terrifying. Some of the spells were also deliberately aimed wide and were curving around our back to hit us from behind.
I had Bella concentrate on our third eye to warn me of any homing spells as I used my internal energy to push us off to the side to try and avoid the majority of spells. I did not kick off so hard that I flew into the air though, I pushed just hard enough to glide just above the ground.
Too many young fools thought that using internal energy was just about accessing the energy you stored to make you stronger. While it was an understandable use of the energy, the power, that you could use, but there were other ways to use it. An average mage who cultivated for a few days could use his internal energy to causally throw large rocks or chunks of iron that even 10 men would find hard to lift off the ground. It was impressive to see, but few realized that in a fight that type of use of the energy would be a complete waste.
A master did not use large amounts of his internal energy if he could avoid it, he used only the precise amount required. The only reason I qualified as a master of manipulating it was the precise control I had gotten familiar with as I used it in my everyday life. No one had taught me how to use my internal energy and I had too little mana to gather it quickly, so I had learned to ration it.
Being able to leap tall trees in a single bound was fun, but only when no one was trying to kill you, as you would be almost helpless in the air.
Following that same logic, if you were fighting in a forest and you made large leaps you would likely be blinded by the branches and leaves hitting your face if you jumped too high. Or, in my case, I might have jumped to the side and heard Bella say ‘watch out for that-’ right before I managed to hit a tree.
So instead, I kicked off the ground, just lightly enough to distance me from the charging stranger. He followed me, each step seeming to cause a small crater as he used his internal energy in a more conventional way, namely, to make him faster and let him try to close the distance.
I had a little trouble keeping my distance from him as I had to move in almost random directions to try and keep him from catching me, while he only had to rush forward, slinging spells. I also had the trees to deal with as they could be very annoying obstacles – especially as I occasionally had to dodge my opponent without looking at the direction I was jumping.
Sparing half of a thought to it, I was more skipping or dancing than actually jumping, with my internal energy being concentrated on my feet, brain, and nervous system. I was very familiar with this type of fighting from my previous life and it was almost instinctual to dodge his attacks while I tried to gain distance efficiently.
After about 7 of my smaller skips, I managed to land next to a particularly large tree and I spotted a small trail that had been warn away just behind it. As the stranger lunged at me yet again, firing several variants of death spells I decided to put some serious distance between us.
I like up close fighting against a stronger opponent, but I needed time to think and analyze first. Right now I was just reacting to his movements and trying to stay alive. I had won fights like that before, but it was almost always a close thing and I disliked even the idea of an ‘equal’ or ‘fair’ fight.
As he charged towards me I concentrated my internal energy into my lower body and braced myself before turning my whole body off at an angle towards the trail and really let loose.
In the briefest of moments later, I was planting both of my heels into the ground as I tried to bleed off momentum. Next to the tree I had jumped from was the, now very surprised looking, young man who had been trying to kill me.
Or at least he now seemed very young to me, in his mid-twenties, as he was not directing a massive amount of killing intent.
Not normally one to take unnecessary chances, I took this advantage of his confusion to push off the part of the trail I had landed by and shot back into the woods. This time I did not aim at the ground though and took aim at the base of a large tree instead.
A moment later, my body, despite the upgrades I made over the past few years, was being pushed to its limits to as I barely managed to turn it around in time to brace against the tree. I heard a loud crack at my landing and I barely noted that it was the tree. I did push a little more internal energy into my limbs to compensate, but the landing was still brutal and I was not done yet.
The tree – if it could feel pain – would have screamed at me for the landing alone, but the loud crack that I made on impact was made even more evident after I change directions and launch again, blowing away a large part of its bark.
I shot off again, this time landing on some large tree roots before I used them to gain more traction and launch again. Bella told me that a few homing spells had just disappeared and I realized that our opponent had changed tactics to tracking me instead of attacking.
I kept up the pace to get some more distance between us, but I knew that I could spare more time to actually processing my surroundings now.
Any mage who uses combat orientated spells falls typically into two strategic categories in single combat.
The more common of these two methods was to identify who was stronger, magically speaking. After you discovered that, the stronger mage usually tried to push through the weaker mage’s spells and make them back down or force a confrontation early. The weaker mage then tried to trick the more powerful mage into making a mistake so that they could take advantage in the heat of the moment. This type of fighting allowed everyone to avoid the protracted fight that could literally continue until using magic started to cannibalize someone’s body before their eyes.
The second method – naturally frowned upon by the nobility – was to keep your distance and try and trick you opponent into making a grave mistake. I preferred this method because I liked the idea and the practice of using iron javelins and throwing knives to kill without magic. It also had the occasional effect of driving the practitioners of the other method into rages as they tried to close and finish the fight as soon as possible.
The major reason the second method was less popular though was not the short sightedness of the nobility, but instead the tendency of the winner to be determined by the person who cultivated the most. With either internal energy or mana compression, the person who kept their distance could use their cultivation time to change how much mana they used in the fight.
My opponent had rushed me and kept up the attack to try and finish me quickly, for whatever reason he attacked me, he had judged me as an enemy that would be more easily defeated with a surprise attack than a drawn out conflict. He was correct of course, but I had to wonder how he knew that.
I stopped moving and scanned my surroundings before I dispelled my illusion and suppressed any trace of my mana. I then doubled back to one of my previous launch points. If he knew that I could not risk the other two being discovered in the woods, he would likely wake them up and use them to trap me. He could also put up a magic lighthouse spell, which would create a beacon to call the fort mages out here to investigate.
Although given the lack of a beacon so far I was inclined to believe that he was more interested in the two I was questioning than…
I was only halfway back to the point where I thought he would be when saw movement in the distance. After hiding in a small group of bushes just out of sight, I closed my eyes to concentrate on both my ears and my magical senses.
I realized that he was following me. Not a terribly shocking conclusion, but given the distances I covered, I was honestly surprised how close he was. In order to cover that much distance he would have had to completely ignore the two I left behind and come straight after me as fast as he could.
Also, he was leaking next to no mana, which meant he was trained and he made almost no sound, which suggested that he was familiar with hunting, but what I could not believe was the idea that my luck was that good.
Did he have a helper watching from a distance? Or was there some reason that he felt that I needed to be eliminated before someone else discovered us? Or was he just trying to press an advantage without realizing that he had already lost it? Why was he targeting me? No wait…
The correct question would be: Why was he chasing a random man through the woods?
Illusion spells gave off next to no mana, it was the nature of the spell to be hard to detect, but this one was targeting me
…Or did he think we were too dangerous to let go? We had seen his face, but that would assume that someone had sent him directly after us and yet…
I quietly monitored what little mana he gave off and waited for him to start searching in a direction opposite to where I was hiding before risking trying to see him.
At just over 100 meters away he would have been impossible to see by normal eyes and I thought that he might only be giving off any sense of mana because he was clearly using a small amount of magic to sense my tracks in the dark.
We also took the time to examine him as best we could at a distance, although even with magically enhanced eyesight it was difficult to see through some of the thicker foliage. Our opponent was a young enough man, although perhaps more into his years than we originally thought, he would not likely be older than thirty and was well fed.
Too well fed, he was clearly a man who practiced a fairly rigorous lifestyle, yet his body had a thin layer of what was likely well-maintained fat. Given the sheer number of spells he had cast at me, it seemed to suggest that he had deliberately built up his gut in spite of his regular activity. That usually meant money and when combined with training, it suggested a combat mage.
Which was a painful realization to make as now we had to determine why he was coming after us.
We watched him examine some of the less noticeable signs of our passage, an area where a group of tree roots had served as our launch point, and we felt both impressed and confused. Our ears were sharp and our magical sense was even sharper in quite a few ways, yet we had to strain to catch any sign of the strange mage existing.
Quietly withdrawing from sight, we tried to figure out why this one was attacking us.
Maybe it had something to do with your little torture session?
I doubt it, if interrogating those nobodies bothered anyone it might be a naive ‘adventurer’ who did not know the way of the world, or Mathalaus himself, if he wanted to take care of them personally.
Not everyone is as okay with causing pain as you are DeMorte.
No, but they would try call attention to our actions before demanding an answer from us. They would not slowly infiltrate my wards and then attack us out of nowhere.
His actions after his poorly conceived ambush made less sense than the ambush itself.
Trying to hunt someone after a failed ambush was odd in the extreme from my point of view. Especially given how I had not cast any spells of my own other than erecting my wards, casting my illusion spell and mana roots.
Someone who had just used magic would find it incredibly hard to hide their presence afterwards. I was of course, but if it was not for the fact that I spent a couple decades doing just that, I would not be. I was also used to looking for people suppressing their magical abilities as too many of them had tried coming for my head.
Of course, his initial attack was also poorly conceived as his follow through. Pressing the attack was one thing, but now he was just being foolish, despite what seemed to be a high amount of training too.
Why was this one so determined? It almost felt like I was being hunted again by royal assassins or those self-righteous mercenaries…
Wait… this could not possibly be related to Lady Rapier could it? My pursuer certainly had the skills to be a royal combat mage, but they were supposed to be a patient, supremely competent, representative of the crown itself.
Someone like that would not carry out some half-baked ambush unless…
Unless he thought I might be a Soul Mage.
Suddenly it made much more sense, I was near the fear runes and the crown would have a vested interest in such an unnatural formation.
Over 3000 years after the Elves had been declared exterminated and the whole world still had to deal with the terrors of leftovers from that horrible memory. If they knew the age of the runes it would likely provoke a strong reaction from the churches, but if they were still investigating the area it was actually more likely that they thought a Soul Mage was responsible.
Rapier could have been sent up here for an informal investigation, but had been delayed in reporting back because of her duty to test me.
That would explain why he was out here in the middle of nowhere trying to hunt me down as fast as possible. He clearly believed that I was a powerful danger that would only grow with time and had likely only known that my mana roots spell had been designed to suck out something unidentified from some military soldiers.
Attaining military information prior to rushing back over towards the fear runes and into an area very few people could follow me? I could actually understand why he was after me then, he had likely thought that I would be rushing to get back to my tower after being discovered prematurely.
With ‘prematurely’ referring to whatever evil plans he thought I might have in mind.
…It made as much sense as any other explanation I could think of, including Nalks, I was just a little girl in this world and there would be little to no reason for a full combat mage to chase me.
So, once he realized that I had doubled back to hunt him, the mage would likely set off a lighthouse spell and deal with the consequences of ruining his quiet investigation at some later date. Ironically, the only 2 good solutions I could think of were to talk it out, or to rush him before he realized the truth.
Iron knives and distance would not work in this case, it would have to be up close work…
How are you going to talk to someone who thinks that we are a Soul Mage?
I thought about it, keeping track of the stranger as I felt him locate another of my jump locations. He only had a few more to go before he reached where I turned back.
DeMorte? Could we just head back to the other two and then return them? Once he realizes that we have doubled back we will likely have a few minutes where he is trying to look for an ambush.
No, he would have had time to study the faces of those 2 fools while he was between my wards. He will find them back at the fort or track them down once word starts to spread about their trial. He might even recognize our magic through our wards and the mana root spell.
I felt him move towards my next jump spot and I quietly slipped out to follow him. Given that the only tracks for him to follow being the spots where I jumped from, he was showing a remarkable pace.
How do you know that he saw their faces? He managed to sneak up on us, which means that he might not have been using mana at all!
Not quite Bella, he could have cast a spell to adapt his eyes at the beginning of the night. That would give him enough time to reseal and suppress any mana that would otherwise give him away. Besides, internally or directly cast spells are both harder to sense and invisible to the third eye.
I had already reached the conclusion that Bella seemed to be increasingly desperate to avoid. A conclusion that reminded me how we were still two separate entities with only occasional overlaps in knowledge and thoughts.
We were being hunted though, hunted by a trained killer who I would take a big risk trying to talk to. Especially as the only logical reason that I could come up with for that hunt was so dangerous that we could end up with a massive following out to kill us. While I was sure that I could change our body – and perhaps even our blood – enough to prevent anyone from recognizing us, the results of the hunt for ‘Bella’ would not just inconvenience us, but everyone around or related to us.
Janeen was the one who would most affected at first as she and her clan would be forced to leave the area before they were able to let the law pass judgment. A judgment that would not be in Nathan’s hands as he would likely be stripped of his power, rank, and property. His only hope would be to publically abandon me and ask one of the churches to hide them. Loco and Luna would be investigated and ostracized.
You do not know that. We are talking about killing someone! Someone who MAY or MAY NOT be a royal mage! How is it not at least worth trying to talk it out? Especially when you still do not know if he has friends waiting out there for us.
Everyone is someone’s child. I let you and your anger drive us to action, but our actions have led us here. You were ready to kill the other 2 – the rapists – in righteous anger, but you are hesitating when it comes to someone who actually attacked us? You are right Bella, we do not even know if this one would do any of the things I am worried about, but I do not think that we can take that chance.
Please… Please… There has to be another way.
I went through all the possible plans I could think of to try and avoid conflict, but they all took chances or assumptions that I could not reasonably risk because of the considerable blowback that could affect everyone in the Entrials area.
Our decisions had brought us here and honestly, I thought as I matched pace with the stranger, I had killed for less.
I was guessing and making judgments based off of partial information and extrapolation, but it all fit in my head. We did not live in a world of absolutes and people could only react based on what was in front of them at the time. If the Nalks had somehow set this up, I would likely regret my actions, but they would still be my actions.
In case he had a friend in the area who, for whatever reason, had not charged in to support him, I would just cast another illusion spell and pretend to be… someone else.
After I killed this one, I would need to deal with the Guilt before taking the other 2 back to the fort.
I already had an iron knife in each hand when I focused my internal energy on my legs again. I could go for speed or stealth, so I opted for stealth.
I prepared the one spell that would guarantee his silence, but did not actually cast it. I then kicked off the ground perfectly in time with his steps and closed to just a few meters away when, just before I landed I threw one of my knives at his back.
Not that it would have made a difference, but the iron knife would have shredded or ‘purified’ any wards that he had created. Unfortunately, Bella was still freaking out and shook my concentration as I threw the knife.
I was still on target, but when I got distracted, the mana that I had been holding in like a great breathe slipped just a little. If there was any doubt about his training, the stranger dispelled it by instantly rolling to the side.
I only just managed to speed up my perception enough to throw my second dagger at his now slowly tumbling body. He was just coming upright and was doubtlessly about to send a spell my way when the iron pierced his back.
There were only a handful of methods to get a mage to stop or refrain from casting magic. The first 2 methods are obvious, either convince them not to of their own free will, or make sure that their survival depends on them not doing so. Imprisoned mages were often starved on a diet of water and bread to make sure that any magic they could cast would be limited. If they were thinned out enough, it would be physically impossible for them to use magic.
The other methods were less polite and somewhat less convenient. In this case, I primarily used one of the more direct ways to interfere with my opponent. The first was iron, or more specifically, an iron weapon actually piercing the body. In the almost unheard of cases of a Soul Mage being captured by poison, their bodies had iron spikes driven through each of their hands and into their backs.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Not even the most powerful and dangerous mages in history could cast a spell while there were in such a position and I gave the stranger around 4 cm of iron to help him out.
Then I used one of the more indirect methods as well – disrupting a mage’s concentration – by casting Gorith’s Shroud. It was a risk as I did not know if it was classified under the same category of magic here as it was back home, but if it was, then any nearby friends of this one would soon be on their way.
Ironically, Gorith’s Shroud was not a combat technique, but a research one. It was used in the far past by a researcher whose notes I more or less discovered in my previous life. Still, while the shroud was meant to simply control an area, it was known in legend as the death god’s shroud. The few combat uses of it included disrupting someone’s senses, cutting someone off from the mana around them, and, if the shroud was large enough, it could bend or catch spells in its area of influence.
The color of the miasma varied based on the mage, (according to certain notes at least, no one wanted to be caught using it) but the shroud still interfered with someone’s sight, as well as dampening sounds, and cutting off everyone except the caster from feeling mana.
Most, if not all, mages naturally drew on the mana around them to one extent or another. We could control it to some extent, but most of our power came from within us. Still, to be cut off from mana apparently felt like suddenly losing your sense of direction to the point where you forget which way is down. It was unnatural and disturbed someone’s state of mind, making it much harder to cast spells.
Not impossible, but hard enough that I was surprised when the stranger managed to pull up his mana into mana armor. The thick layer of mana would stop any less powerful spell, but not another iron knife though so I was not too worried.
I did not bother with a full landing and simply kicked the ground hard to change directions while still mostly in midair. It would have been impossible if not for two reasons, first, was my internal energy flowing exactly as I needed it to and second was the original benefit of the shroud.
It was named for a specific reason, but the main function of the shroud, according to the notes I found was to completely claim and control the area. While the notes I found indicated that it had been created to disprove non-magical spontaneous generation and combustion, the shroud let me know exactly what was inside of my area of control.
I knew and could feel every root, tree, branch, the one very confused bird, the army of ants currently devouring what felt like a dead squirrel, and my opponent as he tried to use his internal energy to speed up his perception of time. He was not a master though, I could speed up my perception selectively after decades of practice, but this youngling did not have a chance.
I did not even have to keep my perception sped up to this level to finish him at this point. During the whole night of running around and carrying off rapist in the middle of the night, I had barely used a quarter of my stored internal energy, but I did so anyways to try and minimize the chance of being surprised.
Fool.
I threw my second dagger into his leg and felt his scream reverberate in the shroud. With my internal energy pulsing through me, the dagger had likely pierced the bone.
Arrogant.
I allowed the shroud to let his screams escape and echoed in the forest. I was not a nice person, I was a king. Any king weak enough to be called nice, kind, or pious, was the type I fed on.
Weaklings!
If he had a friend out there, they would try and rush in soon. I buried him deeper into my shroud and walked around him. I was right next to him, but he could not tell. He pulled the dagger out of his leg so I took out one of my last daggers and slashed his Achilles tendon on his uninjured leg.
As he yelled again he sent a pulse of mana into the shroud around him. I was already out of the way though and his mind was so full of disruptions that I doubted he could even manage a suicide spell.
Of course I still watched for any magical device that would have the same effect, but there seemed to be nothing.
Monster.
He had chosen to investigate me… chosen to do so, it appeared, without any help, as no one had yet to enter my shroud. No mana had impacted it either, meaning that no one had attacked it or directly tried to analyze it – like illusion spells, the nature of the shroud made it almost impossible to distinguish with the third eye.
I sneered at him from the safety of the shroud, now I was going to kill someone, someone who might not even deserve to die, just for me to make sure I was safe.
He likely did not even know who I was…
His breath was rattling too.
For non-mages, mana was even in the air they breathed, meaning I could even deliberately suffocate them if I wanted, but unless I was fighting one person at a time, they could just run in one direction and eventually get out. My maximum range for the shroud in my previous life was 30 meters or so, but I should be able to make it much larger in this life, if I chose…
Another experiment for the future – stop trying to distract me Bella, it could get us killed.
I was about to speed up our perception of time again when I felt the shroud quiver. “How can… Soul Mage be… Gía master?” He was wheezing, looking out into the darkness of the shroud for a moment before I decided it was time.
He had come here alone and he would die alone. I ignored a scream as my dagger stabbed into the back of his head. I twisted it to thoroughly destroy his brainstem and then left it there while I reshaped part of my bone armor into a small sword, which I used to decapitate him.
I felt a brief pulse of mana leave his body and impact the shroud, but I smothered it. The pulse had been similar to a lighthouse spell so I presumed that he had some magical device I did not know about.
Bell had frozen in mute silence and horror as I did this. She thought she knew what was coming, but no one else in either world I had lived in could truly know. She also seemed even more horrified that I was already planning my next experiment using his corpse.
I felt the Guilt flare up in my soul. Its call reaching out to call the soul of my dead foe to me. It did not have to search hard, Gorith’s Shroud was called a ‘Soul’ technique in my previous world because it claimed the area around me as totally mine to the point of heresy. Nothing nonphysical that I did not allow out could get through, even a person’s soul, or the eyes of the gods.
I returned my bone sword to my armor and created a helmet that would somewhat protect me if I lost control. It had been a long time since I felt the Guilt and I knew that it would be somewhat worse because of Bella. It would be nowhere near as bad as after a big battle, but the last one of those I had been in I managed to pass out.
Regrettably, I could not put myself to sleep or deliberately knock myself out, or the Guilt would wait. It would wait on the edge of my conscious for me to wake up before it made me pay. The Guilt always seemed to have a mind of its own like that, even waiting until I was physically safe from possible attack before affecting me.
I swallowed. I chose my actions, he chose his, and now I would deal with the consequences. I felt Bella’s anger and fear burn silently in the back of my head. She knew that she was partially to blame too, but I could distantly sense how much she was blaming me.
We would find out if she was right to in a moment.
The Guilt, having apparently determined it was safe, hit me.
His name was Zotra. He had been born into a distant branch of the royal family itself and had grown up knowing that he would be strictly watched for signs of disloyalty.
This was made all the more clear to him when the current king, Miles, decided to discreetly discredit and disinherit the branch families. He was king and he had only become king after killing dozens of other people with stronger claims to the throne than his.
Zotra grew up being told to be thankful that he had not been forcibly sterilized – only by the grace of the King’s mercy.
He had been an averaged aristocratic boy in his youth and had gotten in the average amount of trouble. When he hit puberty a few of his friends introduced him to a high class madam and her scantily clad professionals. After a few trips he ‘graduated’ their ‘training’ and was left to try and crack the walls that made up a young noblewoman’s sensibilities.
He even had some successes in that area until he came into his magic. He was a late bloomer like that, knowing he would have magic, but without a specific talent or ability to manipulate his mana before then.
He was promptly swept away from his life in court to be tested much more thoroughly than I ever was. Being forced to train in iron cages for days at a time, fighting a verity of animals and monsters while learning the hunger of being a mage.
Where his life up until his magic was spend learning the rules of society – and how much he loved breaking them – the months after he came into his magic were spent learning that his talents were geared towards fighting.
Eventually, a mage from the Royal Magician’s Corps came to take a look at him. They dropped him in the woods and told him to survive – which he did and very well at that.
He had been taken in by them after that, taken in and initiated into the Royal Magician’s Corps as the lowest of probationary candidates until he had both proven his own skill as well as his family influence.
Then he met Rapier. She was only a brief fascination to Zotra at first and he had tried to express his interest – only to be rejected. What was shocking to him was the reason though, sincerity.
She gave him a different reason of course, but he found out the truth and felt vaguely insulted. She certainly did not have the reputation of caring about sincerity. Elves, the rumors around her suggested that she did not even care if her partner was competent!
Then he realized that the rumors were baseless and asked to work with her for a time.
He did not regret a single second until they had to part and even then he did not leave her alone, making sure that her ‘suggestion’ for the removal of ‘private’ debriefings was pushed through.
Eventually she started to change the way she talked to him, gradually seeming to start believing that he was serious. Then she asked him for something that seemed like a simple favor and he jumped at it, pressing her for the opportunity to prove that he was indeed completely serious about her in return.
Part of him even thought that she was just using the favor as an excuse to finally give him a chance, but he did not care.
All he had to do was to watch a little girl named Bella.
…
That was the Guilt, it was knowing the weight of the life that you had just removed from the world. Knowing their parents, their children, their loves, and feeling all of it for yourself for the briefest of moments.
The Guilt was 100% perfect empathy and it made you understand who and what your victim was before it ripped itself from your memory and left you with nothing, except a sense of loss.
Bella screamed and I wrestled with her to try and keep us from hurting ourselves as the memories passed and the sense of loss, of guilt, caused by our actions left us to grieve for the fallen.
Tears were shed, a child died, and I felt the pain of killing again.
DeMorte meant ‘from death’ and I sometimes felt that some unknown prophet had named me.
We cried.
…
Eventually there were no more tears to shed. The hangover was more or less over and I only felt the occasional tremble.
Bella was too shaken to talk to me and simple hid away.
In the meantime, I still felt no interference with the shroud, meaning no one else was interacting with it.
I wondered if he had any friends in the area and felt an instinctual no. I could not remember what I felt when the Guilt was passing through me, but I did have ‘instinctual’ remnants that could give me an idea of what the person knew.
I turned to the corpse, sensing it with the shroud instead of seeing it, and cast mana roots again. This time, the spell ripped apart his body fairly easily and I confirmed that living humans could somehow resist the spell. I also realized the dead humans were a most convenient source of nutrients… once I mentally accepted that the act was dangerously close to cannibalism that was.
It did cost a surprising high amount of mana to absorb him through the air though, so I quickly canceled the spell to try a different experiment.
I felt a flicker of disgust from the back of my mind, but I paid it no heed as I tapped my bone helmet with my finger. Using my mana I reformed it into a stinger like shape, which I slowly extended from my finger as I pulled my hand away from my head. After it was fully formed I used it to pierce the corpse’s chest and used it with the mana roots spell.
I tried a few more experiments as I used absorbed what I could from his corpse. I did not touch his head though, the thought of using mana roots on his brain reminded me too much of a Soul absorption technique that I had the great misfortune to witness.
After I was done I searched his body and – after I found nothing – kicked the head over near the corpse. There was no point in showing respect to something that was about to burn, the soul was the only thing worth respecting and that was likely long gone – having slipped away when after the Guilt made it pass through me.
I cast the flesh fire spell and pulled out my trackers. The spell created a magical fire that was a standard spell designed to only burn corpses and reduce them to ashes. After reorienting myself, I cast a cloaking spell and waited a moment for the fire to burn away.
The sure sign of magical fire was the lack of smell and I felt nothing save for a cold emptiness where a once happy Bella had provided some source of light and constant entertainment for the past few years.
…She would get over it.
I reallocated a small amount of my internal energy, Gía, as the mage seemed to call it, and set off at a deliberate pace.
The fight with my opponent had taken next to no time, but I only had so much to start with, so I went ahead and sped myself up a small amount.
I needed to return those 2 to their fort and then get back ho- get back to the village.
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I got back just before dawn and was treated to an already awake and angry Mathalaus, who was at the head of a small group of very well armed river stalkers.
They seemed to be ready to snap at the first sign of an excuse and cause physical violence.
Nathan was there, trying to calm them down, but he stopped talking when he saw me. They all stopped talking.
I handed them the trackers without a word and went to small area to wash up.
Loco had it built next to the house to make sure that he did not accidently ingest any chemicals or remnants of alchemic potions.
As I heard the others gather up a few horses, I thought about what I would do next…
First, I would sleep for a bit and see what happened with the trial.
If those 3 were not found guilty and dealt with properly, I would end the matter myself. Since the last of the 3 was this Terrick person and did not have my ‘failsafe’ in him, I would end him at a different point.
In the back of my head I felt the hollow Bella shiver. She had not done well in the face of the Guilt, but she would grow used to it. The Guilt was a wondrous deterrent, but once I decided to kill someone, it was nothing more than a hangover afterwards.
One of the few priests I told about the Guilt in my previous life had declared it a spiritual cleansing after I killed someone, but I never thought of it as anything except a burden. Some people needed to die and it was annoying that I would hesitate as much as I did.
Now, for the first time, I knew for a fact that someone – that Bella – could truly empathize with the feelings that came with the Guilt and yet…
Bella was just a different version of me, she was not even a shadow that would follow my existence with the light.
In the end I was alone with my thought, my life, and my Guilt.
[The third person POV messes with the mood of this chapter a bit so I am actually going to keep it shorter than I originally intended, the main take away is still that John is growing up a bit as he is now training to understand his own magic – It is also meant to contrast with Zotra’s upbringing, – but I am freaking tired so I am going to leave it at its current length.
I promise that DeMorte will be heading this way soon enough though, so I might revisit it]
* * *
Inside the Zootrofian dungeon of Tartarus:
John moved along with the class, a group of 11 other moderately strong mages like himself.
They were all ranks 5 to 9, with each rank representing a complete circle of magic that they could establish on their own. John himself was actually a rank 8, but he was more infamous than anyone here, including the 9th rankers because of his actions.
The ranks established both their power and an easily noticeable hierarchy as no mage wanted to oppose someone of a higher rank. John was one of the few exceptions as someone had heard him talking about Bella once and informed the 9th rankers.
They had called him an ‘elf lover’ and tried to harass him until he managed to fight back.
He had used something that the instructors called Gía – the life energy of the world – to throw himself at the people harassing him while they threw petrification spells at him.
Since they were more experienced at magical pranks, he decided to use their favorite spells against them by letting them turn time to stone after he had already jumped at them.
The instructors had been furious, claiming that he could have killed them, or have been broken into hundreds of shards, effectively killing him. He was ashamed that he tried something so stupid, but looking at the state of the ones he hit, who were forced to have their ribs mended, left him feeling slightly better.
Right now however, they were exploring a rare dungeon. John and most of the others here would likely become adventurers, so being able to actually walk around the first few floors had been incredibly exciting – until they realized that only the senior students would actually get to go down to the ‘monster floors.’
So John instead spent the time talking to a nice young woman named Aran while they waited for the instructor to finally tell them where they were going.
So far he had explained the adventurer ranking systems, which was basically the same as the aristocratic ranks – A being the lowest and K being the highest – and that the dungeon was over 80 floors in depth, although no one had gotten past the 80th floor.
It was said that the 80th floor seemed to drain the mana from the your very soul and that no one who went down there came back alive, although, John had joked to Aran, that was probably just the senior adventurers too tired to walk back up 80 floors worth of stairs.
“Can anyone tell me what the importance of a dungeon is?” It was their teacher.
Obediently, one of the others replied. “They give us a place to practice our magic on magic resistant creatures?”
The teacher shook his head and looked around.
John took the opportunity to speak up. “They provide a steady supply of otherwise rare potion ingredients.”
The teacher nodded, “Although I would not use the word ‘provide’ as we must take the ingredients from deep inside the dungeon or from the creatures themselves, that is indeed correct.”
He kept speaking, but John toned him out for a moment, as he smiled to himself and found himself admitting that, despite knowing that they would not actually be fighting anything, he was enjoying the trip.
Though he did find himself wondering what was happening back in Entrials.