Proper Procedure

I sighed, examining a broken board while deciding if, philosophically speaking, a broken board counted as a "spike" for the purposes of semi-ritualistic impalement. The symbolism of impaling someone on a pike is quite poignant and important; if I wanted to do this right, I needed to be sure a mere board would suffice!

On the other hand, I didn't care nearly enough to go looking for a proper pike even if it wasn't sufficiently symbolic.

I had already gathered up all the drugs and money I could find; the sheer amount of both rather impressively hidden in small amounts around the entire alley was far more than I had expected for a bunch of idiots like these. The moderate pile of drugs and money I had thrown together would look rather impressive, if the money wasn't all small denominations soaked in blood and filth and the drugs weren't visibly cut with what looked like flour.

Seriously, what kinda dipshit thinks they can mix bright orange or pitch black with fucking white and no one will notice?

Worse still was the fact that, given the sizable pile of money I had gathered, these morons actually managed to find people even dumber than themselves who actually did fall for their bullshit. I glanced at the pile of wealth and drugs once more and sighed; I wasn't sure I even wanted money so tainted by stupidity, and the drugs were all but useless. The Burnpikes could never sell drugs so blatantly and ineptly cut like this without obliterating their reputation and I have no idea who I'd even sell it to if I had any interest.

That, and I can't discount the possibility of the sheer idiocy that led all that money to be here having literally magically tainted it. I don't know enough about magic to discount much of anything at this point, though given the gang's lack of concern with drugs and murder I suppose that suggests they aren't worried about any sort of taint.

Then again, their initiation ritual is a literal demonic sacrifice, so maybe they just don't care.

Still, putting concerns about potentially tainted money and definitely tainted drugs aside for the moment, I had managed to find something roughly approximating a pike to impale these idiots on. I spared the corpses a withering glance, not particularly enthused by the idea of rooting around in their guts and getting blood in my fur just to spell out a message; even so, I was hardly about to let my very first job be anything other than complete success. You only get one first mission, one chance to catch the boss’s eye and make yourself important in that eye; or, perhaps more importantly, to prove you were worth the time and resources to train.

A glance at the bodies brought a whole new issue to mind, one I had been deliberately ignoring while I considered the equivalency of stakes and boards; how the bloody fuck am I gonna get these big bastards up on even a makeshift stake?

Now, I like to think I'm quite strong for a tiny humanoid rat stuffed to the gills with maggots and oil, but these fuckers have to be at least two or three hundred pounds each! Not to mention they were both more than thrice my height; which, of course, brought the issue of how I was going to lift them up high enough to properly impale them when even raising them up over my head as high as I could would barely get them three feet off the ground.

I sneered irritably at my first contracted kills for a moment before releasing a long breath through my nose. With a shake of my head I decided to put the problem off until I had used my delicious new points. While I was tempted to dump them all into Strength in the hopes the boost would actually allow me to lift the bastards, I quickly brushed the idea off; I didn’t want my stats to become even more unbalanced than they already are with my Endurance so completely overwhelming everything else.

Of course, before I would even consider adding so many delightfully debilitating points, I made sure to once more hide where I wouldn’t be found even if I was rendered totally insensate for a moderate period; namely, beneath the same dumpster I had watched these fuckwits from, now accompanied by a significantly larger amount of cheap drugs and soiled coins.

The very first thing I did was redress the imbalance that had formed between my Strength and Agility, adding fifty seven points to the former and forty five to the later: it would have been fifty six and forty four, but I wanted an even one eighty more than I wanted to spend exactly half of my points on these stats. As always, the experience was like white flames of pleasure remaking me into something more glorious on more than a physical level, running across my veins, my muscles, my tendons, my very skin and bone like the softest touch of fluffy pink lightning, leaving me breathless but wanting more with all my heart.

When I recovered enough for relatively rational thought to resume, I brought my Wisdom up to seventy five and raised my Intelligence to match. The thought of putting all of them into my Strength and Agility as I had done before flited through my mind, but as I learned more about this world I found myself prioritizing magic (or at least defense from it) more and more; well, that and it had been weeks since I’d leveled and I wanted to feel that burning change in every part I could. With that in mind I put twelve points into my Will to bring it up to fifty and added forty four points to my Perception to bring it to an even hundred. When the decision sank in, my mind vanished into blazing light as I felt my very being change, from the neurons of my physical brain to whatever metaphysical self the soul's existence in this world implied.

For attaining one hundred Perception, you have gained the Perk: Squirming eyes

I knew as soon as the ability kicked in what it did even without reading its description; it isn’t particularly difficult to guess why I was suddenly able to see the inside of my own body through innumerable alien eyes. It was different from Paranoia, more personal and all the more horrid for it; I was always peripherally aware of what was going on, but being able to feel my own flesh sliding down the gullets of the uncountable maggots squirming inside me had to be the single most disturbing thing I had ever felt. I shuddered uncontrollably, dearly wishing to bath myself in fire every second as my new sense settled in.

Squirming Eyes: You can share the senses of insects and larvae, borrowing their sensations and seeing through their eyes effortlessly.

I spent a long moment just adjusting to my new ability, trying very hard to not think of it as a curse all the while. I took a series of shuddering breaths through my teeth, consciously fighting to keep from scratching away at my suddenly intensely itchy skin; the constant awareness of so many vile, verminous insects around and within me made me want to use my twitching fingers to peel my skin off. I have no idea how long I simply sat beneath that dumpster, trying to get used to seeing through the foreign senses of the flesh automatons within it and around me before I eventually got a handle on it enough that I didn’t think I’d set myself on fire if I moved.

I slowly calmed down, crawling out from under the dumpster to lean my back against the grimy wall next to it. I scrubbed my scent more out of a comforting habit than true necessity, using it as a poor substitute for a proper shower. I shook my head, lightly jabbing my forehead with the base of my palm a few times to try and clear thoughts of wriggling and chewing and the disgustingly appetizing scent of rotting flesh through the olfactory senses of the flies buzzing cheerfully around me.

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With the intent of distracting myself from my vile new senses, I put three points into my Charisma to bring it up to five and, very hesitantly, put the last two I was willing to spend into Fortune. I could have put them in something more useful or less unnerving respectively, but I felt the urge to increase everything after going so long without increasing anything.

Charisma swept over me like a wave of shiny, but thin and watery wax. Unlike the other stats it didn't seem to target anything in particular, flowing over me like a tide of platinum fire and altering every part of me; even, much to my suspicious surprise, my mind. In retrospect it didn't surprise me that much; being charismatic is more than just a purely physical thing, after all. What was far more curious was why I hadn’t felt this the last time I had added points to my Charisma; the only tentative conclusions I came to was that either adding three points had a more noticeable effect or reaching five points was a sort of mini landmark for this particular stat. I had zero evidence for either, but a large part of me also didn’t much care why it felt better than last time, only that it did.

I quietly strangled that incautious part of me as I felt Fortune once more increase my metaphysical weight, stretching the increasingly thin feeling film of reality over the strange and possibly imaginary plain it influenced ever so slightly more. It wasn’t like the others, even the most esoteric of which had at least some physical effect; Fortune seemed to be an entirely mystical trait, a feature that had no physical component at all that I could detect. While this made it much less attractive to increase compared to the fiery pleasure of my physical stats, I knew that a stat that may or may not be influencing the course of reality around me to some extent was something I simply couldn’t afford to miss out on for as petty a reason as it not feeling as good as the others.

Trading mind-searing pleasure for potentially swaying causality and literal fate in my favour was a harder choice than I would ever like to admit, but I knew just how important luck could be; wars had been won and lost over a single bit of luck on either side, thousands had lived or died through pure chance going one way or another. For as much as the concept would infuriate any tactician you asked, the pure and simple sways of fortune can turn the tide of a close battle more than any amount of planning could account for. Of course, I have no idea if my Fortune stat is actually doing that; for all I know, it could be entirely unrelated to probability.

I released a sigh, struggling to ignore the flies that flowed out with the breath to buzz happily around me as their sense interfaced with mine. I took a few deep breaths, enjoying the aftershocks of raising my stats for a moment before patting myself down and standing up. I leveled disdainful, half lidded eyes on the two corpses I still needed to properly arrange, considering how to deal with the issue.

Well, Markus did tell me to splash some gore around and make it look like it hurt, I suppose hollowing them out and sawing off some limbs would make them lighter. With a mildly irritated grunt I drew my blade once more, checking around to be sure no one had arrived in the time I was insensate before darting back over to the corpses. First thing first, I grabbed the orange one by the arm, dragging him off his buddy’s legs with a series of sharp tugs.

Despite assuredly weighing more than thrice my body weight, it wasn’t all that hard to pull him off his friend’s legs, no harder than lifting heavy furniture anyway. Though, once I did get him down I was met by the new issue of him being face down and thus having the easiest access to his organs pressed against the ground. I tried to flip them over but found that dragging dead weight was much easier than actually lifting it. Not that I was going to let that get in my way; if the Vikings could bloody well do it, so can I!

I was about to start cutting before deciding that it would be easier to get the “stake” into the ground before I got up to my elbows in slippery blood. With my Paranoia, it wasn’t hard to find a large enough loose stone that I could pry out with my blade to get access to the relatively soft earth beneath. From there it was a simple matter of deciding which end to stick into the earth, digging a shallow hole, putting the broken board in, and filling the hole back in to the best of my ability. I gave the stick a swift kick to ensure it was stable, then got down to setting up the gruesome display Markus wanted.

I started by slicing from their shoulders to where their sternum would be on the front of their body, then carved down to the pelvis in much the same manner as a coroner performing some sort of backwards autopsy. Orange blood drizzled out sluggishly as I peeled their skin back, their lack of a beating heart and already mostly empty veins contributing to them thankfully not spraying me in the face. After a moment spent futilely trying to fold their skin out of the way I decided to just cut each flap off entirely, tossing the scraps to the side and giving a grunt of amusement when they stuck to the grimy walls.

I roughly carved out the muscles in their back, taking no care to keep them in any way intact and growing increasingly irritated as blood coated my hands. I couldn’t keep a disgusted sneer from my face as I struck their exposed ribs with the pommel of my blade, breaking them one by one and tossing them into a pile when they were weakened enough to pull free. From there it was simple to pull their organs out by the fist full, hack at any connections that got in my way, and toss the mangled and crushed globes of watery flesh into a rough pile.

By the time I was finished, I was up to my elbows in gore and struggling to keep from flipping out over it; a potent mix of discomfort and disgust swirling together into something not unlike anger. If it weren’t for a constant mantra of necessity and a near constant litany of expletives, I’m decently certain I would have scratched the skin off my arms from the sheer discomfort by now. I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands literally dirty, being soaked in foul smelling offal certainly wasn’t on my list of desirable activities.

Now mostly hollowed out, the body was still too heavy to comfortably lift over my head and throw into the air. With an angry grunt I drove my blade into the ball of his shoulder, activating Death Roll for the first time since I got it and watching in fascination as vibrations shuddered down my blade rapidly and caused the wound I’d inflicted to noticeably widen. It didn’t take me long to scrape my blade along the humoral head and separate it from its socket; from there carving through the remaining flesh to fully remove the limb was relatively easy, if time consuming and annoying. I repeated the process on their other arm before moving on to their legs, severing them at the hip in much the same manner.

With that done the body was finally light enough for me to lift them, though certainly not comfortably so. I buried my arms up to the elbows in their opened chest cavity to grab them by the inside of their shoulders, hauling them up with a grunt of exertion and irritation before bodily throwing the hollowed out torso over my head and onto the jagged top of my improvised spike. I spent a moment admiring my work, noting how the thin light of dawn glinted off what little blood they still had as it sluggishly dripped down the board from where it roughly pierced what remained of their spine and skin through the gap in their back.

Of course, realizing the sun was rising told me I had been here far too long already, and an exasperated glare at the remaining corpse reminded me I still had work to do. With a sigh, I jumped up and pulled the body further down the stake to make room for their fellow and set about repeating the process on the black veined one. Already knowing what I needed to do and having access to the front of the body made the process somewhat faster, though the sun was high enough in the sky by the time I got their ruined body impaled atop their former friend’s equally mangled corpse.

Of course, it was only then that it hit me that I needed some manner of actually setting this whole display alight. I sent a withering glaring at the corpses, idly taking in how their black and orange blood swirled together like some sort of morbid Halloween themed drink beneath them for only a moment before the solution became obvious. I could have simply carved the rune of fire into the pole and been done with it, but a dramatic flare I couldn’t deny had me almost artfully arranging the organs, bones, and limbs I had formerly discarded in a rough pile into two symbols. First I arranged their ribs around a severed arm into the shape of the Burnpike logo to make sure everyone knew who had done this as the boss ordered, then I arranged their guts around the impaled duo into a massive rune of fire.

Which, as it turned out, may have been a bit overzealous of me if the titanic eruption of flame that soared over the rooftops around me the moment I finished was anything to go by.