The implication that the author of this journal was able to acquire a steady supply to corpses let alone fresh corpses was a bit disturbing to think about, but it left Arthur with several questions on how he could do the same and what exactly would be fresh enough for the enchantments to work properly. But before tackling those questions Arthur disassembled the flesh golem piece by piece and dumped its corpse several feet below the surface in his backyard along with the other two corpses he kept in his bag.
With all the human body parts hidden away Arthur could now focus his attention towards how he would acquire fresh human corpses for his experiments. Bandits were an unlikely solution as with the destruction of the Rusted Daggers bandit activity has significantly dropped. Without anyone or anything to support their activities the bandits left for easier and safer targets or died trying.
The only other possible source of fresh human bodies Arthur could think of that didn’t involve straight up murder of someone innocent was killing criminals. With the recent activities of the criminal gang that attempted to extort money from him and that were likely responsible for the death of his former teacher Arthur now knew that the criminal underworld wasn’t quite so defeated as everyone thought it was.
‘Not a bad idea if I do say so myself. I can kill these awful people and take their valuables as well as their dead bodies and see if the freshness of the corpse was the problem with my flesh golem, but now I need to decide where exactly I get them from. I could stick with the gang that has been harassing me that I also just killed the leadership of and slowly crush them one by one, or I could find another gang and alleviate them of the burden that is living.’ Arthur ended up taking a seat as he continued thinking about his next moves.
‘On one hand targeting this one singular gang would be a whole lot easier than finding a whole new one, I could also help keep the area a lot safer by removing them permanently. Finding a second gang to target would be a whole lot more work and depending on whatever gang I find it could be way more dangerous than this one was even with its leadership. Perhaps in the future I might move onto different gangs, but for now I will stick with this one until I am done with what they can provide me with.’
Arthur was very tempted to just walk out and cut down that gang member that was standing just across the street but stopped himself, it was getting quite late and just like everyone else he needed to sleep to stay healthy. So Arthur quickly changed into more comfortable clothing and went to sleep thinking about what he could do differently next time he created a flesh golem.
*********
Arthur awoke at eight o’clock like he normally did and quickly dressed himself with his alchemist attire. Once he was looking like a real alchemist. He took a quick peek outside to take a look at the gang member stationed outside his home and across the street, but surprisingly no one was there. The suspicious man that would normally stand a few houses down was also missing. ‘Well this was unexpected.’ Arthur even rubbed his eyes just to be certain that he wasn’t seeing things wrong, but no matter how long he looked the gang members never showed up.
Arthur walked over to his kitchen/living area and heated up a bowl of soup to try and take his mind off the situation to very little success. Something in the back of his mind was telling him that his actions did a lot more damage than he expected they would. ‘I assumed killing their leaders would splinter them up and divide them up into smaller pieces, looks like I assumed wrong. Based on the fact that they recalled even these low ranking members is telling of either a restructuring of the gang or inner conflict.’
When Arthur was done with his soup he just sat at the table thinking about what might end up happening if either outcome were to happen. Neither would be good for the surrounding areas and the large spike in the number of hurt people that went to Calavia’s place of work echoed in his mind as he tried to think of what to do.
‘The city guard can’t do anything about this unless it reaches a much larger scale and I highly doubt that anyone else is going to willingly try and stop them. Anyone sensible would just say this is a good thing with criminals killing each other for us. That just leaves me, one mage against an entire gang with whoever is the last standing being the victor.’ Suddenly Arthur wasn’t so concerned about getting fresh human corpses for his golem experiments.
Taking a few minutes to collect everything he might need for dealing with any possible gang members Arthur placed the three talismans that he expected would be useful in his pocket for quick access. But he chose not to put his plate armor on to not so easily give away who he is so quickly.
Arthur didn’t leave right away though, he waited for Gaelin to arrive to collect his ingredients and to avoid inconveniencing Gaelin for a second day in a row. He worked hard after all and he deserved to be paid for his work.
Once Gaelin left and was far enough down the street Arthur exited through his front door and turned down the opposite direction towards the territory of the gang. For the most part the area was filled with simple houses not unlike his own, but soon it changed into warehouses and other more commercial buildings that the gang had taken over after being abandoned for quite some time now.
A few gang members stood on guard with spears and other similar weapons just outside the doorways. A few gave him curious looks but didn’t move or say anything to or about him. Arthur carefully looked at each building trying to determine if it belonged to the gang or if it was under the ‘protection’ of it. Most of the buildings and store did end up being just that, but a few of them, specifically several unmarked warehouses, were not and were perfect for what Arthur intended to do.
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One warehouse at the very edge of the gang's territory was roughly the same size as his house and had several guards. But that raised the question of what they were guarding, since it was a criminal gang they were likely making or storing something that was a crime to do, so Arthur decided that it would be a good idea to eliminate all these gang members and destroy whatever is inside.
The first obstacle were the two guards standing outside the large double doors and the nearby single person door. From an angle on their far right Arthur quickly casted the Tri Earth Bolts spell twice and struck each of them in the head three times to be certain that they would die. Though this left their heads as unusable for Arthur flesh golem experiments given that there was a giant hole in each of their heads. With audible thumps the two collapsed to the ground, Arthur waited a moment to see if anyone inside heard anything but after a minute of waiting nothing happened.
Before entering the warehouse Arthur dragged the two bodies off to the side and out of sight from the road just in case someone shows up and sees the two dead bodies. Slowly Arthur pushed open the side door and slipped inside, he carefully closed the door behind him careful not to create any noise.
Inside a few voices could he heard, three to be exact. They were talking about whatever it was they were guarding that was stored in nearby crates. “Do you think anyone would notice if we popped one open and took a small sample for ourselves?” A young male voice asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn’t risk it though, even since the boss and the rest of the leadership was killed off things have been getting rather hectic. If you were found out they will probably kill you either because they think you are a spy or to set an example.” An older male voice responded to the young man.
“For the time being we need to keep our heads down, until we have a new leader and things stabilize nothing here will be getting sold. On top of that everyone is expected to check the inventory and report any changes even the smallest amount. Taking even a small amount would immediately be reported and we would all likely be executed for betrayal.” A voice of a middle aged woman rang through the warehouse.
Everyone went silent at that until the young man spoke up again. “So who do you think is going to take charge?”
“Definitely Yufur, he's practically been running the show since Kelile died along with everyone else. I'm not so certain about the other groups though, Verona might end up replacing Eveline since her best two died with her. The other groups I honestly couldn’t tell you anything about, they are far too distant and secretive to allow anyone to know, and that was before the assassination.” The older man said as Arthur slowly crept around the boxes and crates that half filled the warehouse.
The crates were at least stacked up two boxes at once with a few towards the back stacked up to three, that was also where the three voices were coming from. Arthur held a handful of dirt ready to conjure up something as he slowly approached the voices.
“How bad is it, you know, regarding the boss's death?” The young man asked, the worry now far more apparent and possibly why he wanted whatever was in the crates.
“Worse than anyone is letting on, Yufur has kept a lid on everything but it's only a matter of time before conflict and infighting start up. Three of the smaller groups have practically dissolved and were integrated into others and we were lucky to have some of them, but the other three groups were not so happy.” The woman said as her voice steadily rose up as if she was climbing something.
“Did anyone figure out who it was that took out our leadership?”
“No, whoever it was didn’t leave very much behind to give away who they were. But it was definitely a mage, and they used geomancy. We found small amounts of dirt that had been solidified sticking out of several of their corpses and wounds on a few others that matched with geomancy projectiles” The woman gave the other two gang members details on the assassination of their leadership.
“And how exactly do you know this? No offence but I highly doubt that Yufur would just give away details like those you just told us to every grunt we have in the gang.” The older man said to the woman in an accusatory way, indicating he didn’t exactly trust her.
“That's because I’m not just any grunt in the gang, I easily out rank the both of you by at least 2 ranks. The reason I am telling you this is because the information has been conveniently getting out through rumors and I see no reason to hide it from you two, you would end up finding out regardless.” Something else happened on the other side because the two men suddenly went silent, perhaps she showed them an emblem or other identifying mark that proved who she was.
Arthur continued his slow walk down the right side of the stacked crates as the conversation the gang members were involved in moved onto less intense subjects. Based on where the voices were coming from the three gang members were right on the edge of the far left side of the stacked crates. Arthur moved the dirt to his left hand and slowly drew his sword from his sheath that was on his left hip and slowly walked to the top right corner. When he was there he peeked around the corner and saw a human man that was around his age leaning against the wall while looking down the left side of the crates, likely where the other two gang members were.
Arthur raised his left hand containing the dirt towards the man in his sight aiming directly towards the head, but just before he was about to create a projectile he lowered his target towards the chest area. ‘I still need a human corpse in good condition for my experiments, I see no reason to waste another one.’ Arthur inwardly slapped his own forehead in embarrassment as he realised he could have just done the same thing with the two guards outside.
Arthur pushed those thoughts to the side and he took a deep breath and casted the Tri Earth Bolts spell and created three bolts of earth from the handful of dirt he held and mentally commanded them to strike the man he could see in the chest. With a small woosh the older man and woman turned to look for the source of the sound they heard, just when they were about to go back to their conversation the older man noticed three brown things sticking out of his allies chest.
The younger man also noticed it and collapsed to the floor as the wounds began to burn with pain. He began to breathe heavily as that was all he could bring himself to do, the pain taking all his focus and his attention from anything. The older man quickly grabbed his ally by the arms and dragged him behind the crates and away from whatever attacked him.
“Hey! Hey! Stay with me!” The older man practically shouted in the face of the young man and he lay on the floor, his thoughts a jumbled mess as he didn’t even register what his ally said.
The woman on the other dropped down from the crate she was sitting on and looked at the wound and what the brown thing was, to her horror it was something akin to a dart or crossbow bolt that was made up of solidified dirt. Their assailant was a geomancer, just like the one that killed their boss.