“I don’t see any reason why the kingdom or the empire would bring him up, the whole rivalry between the two is mostly about politics rather than history. There is also the fact that this was literally in the last era when king Arthur still walked the earth, so any claim regarding him would be long gone along with any evidence of it existing.”
The room went silent for a moment as Arthur thought about what Henry just said, and to be honest with himself he admitted he was pretty much right on target with his explanation.
“Now enough about history and politics, we should move back to magic and those lessons you paid for. Now conjure up another sphere with the same mass and density as before.”
The two continued on for another hour before the lessons Arthur paid for were up. He didn’t remain long after that and the two quickly said their goodbyes. While he walked back to his home Arthur decided to take a look at his HUD just for the sake of it.
/- - - - - -\
Aeromancy Level 19
\- - - - - -/
With all the training and effort Arthur had been putting into over the last two weeks he managed to raise his aeromancy skill by four levels. He could feel his control over the air currents was far greater than before even without seeing the number, from what he could tell it was some sort of compounding improvement where each number represented slightly more power gained than the last one leaving Arthur feeling like he gained 30% more power.
As Arthur walked home he took notice of the people walking around him as well, since it was only around three o’clock in the afternoon people were still walking around and working.
Arthur also made sure to walk past the mages guild on his way, it was something that he enjoyed doing whenever he got the chance, seeing how long the line was throughout the day was something that he looked forward to. It made him wonder why people rush to the guild in the morning if they could just wait until later when the lines have died down.
Eventually he arrived at his front door, but on his front deck was Gaelin waiting for him looking a little worried as shown by him fiddling with his hands like a nervous child.
“Um, hello again sir. Uh, something happened in the market today that is really important. We should probably talk about it inside where we won't be heard.” While it wasn’t obvious from far away as Arthur got closer he could see that Gaelin was looking around nervously, almost like he was being watched by someone.
“Sure thing, please come inside.” Arthur said as he unlocked and opened the door.
Gaelin closely followed Arthur and quickly closed the door behind himself before taking off his jacket and placing it on the hanger alongside the thick and warm overcoat that Arthur recently bought from his tailor along with some warmer clothes for the upcoming winter.
Once his coat was off he walked over to the table and took a seat, then and only then did he let out a sigh of relief like the whole world rested on his shoulders for some time. Arthur was both worried and suspicious on Gaelin’s behaviour, the only time he had even been suspicious was when he tried breaking into his house.
“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Arthur asked as he took the chair on the opposite side of the table and looked right at him leaving no place to avoid the question.
Gaelin nervously fiddled with his hands for a moment avoiding eye contact before he took a deep breath and answered. “There were some real shady looking people at the market today, and they would go up to each stall when the city guards weren't looking and take large amounts of money. I slipped away before they got the chance to walk up to the stall I was borrowing, but everyone else who was there had their money taken.”
Arthur could feel the nervousness in his voice as he spoke of these shady individuals, they were likely another gang or criminal organization that sprouted up like a weed. ‘Dear gods, you would think that Captain Tasius would have this under control by now. Does he not have enough personnel to stomp these criminal gangs like insects under a boot?’
“Well, you did well leaving when you did. Those were likely gang members of another gang that has decided the market is their territory, they were likely collecting ‘taxes’ or whatever they want to refer to the money they are taking. From now on I will be going with you to the market and I will deal with these gang members. I will need to reschedule my meetings with Henry but that shouldn’t be that much of a problem.”
*********
“Are you alright sir? You look worried about something.” Gaelin asked as he stepped back from his alchemy set, Arthur was recently working on the two pounds of spark powder for the day but stopped once he was done and just looked at what was on the table like he was in a trance of some sort.
“Hmm, yeah I'm fine. Just a few things on my mind.” Arthur lazily looked to Gaelin as he spoke and then back to his things before putting them away in his bag.
‘I really hope this gang or criminal group or whatever they want to call themselves isn’t related to the big group that I eliminated the leadership of a while back. The one group that I burned the warehouses of definitely was but they seemed to split off once their leader died. Knowing my luck this is an action taken by the remaining group all together.’ Arthur rubbed his temples as he walked back into the kitchen/living room and sat down in a chair.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Since he agreed to keep Gaelin and all the other people at the market safe from these thieves the young elf had perked up a little. He seemed quite confident that Arthur was more than powerful enough to take them all out or at least those that showed up to the market to steal from everyone there. He didn’t know much about them but Gaelin did recall seeing about five or six of them the last time he was there, not great but enough to have a rough plan of how to deal with them.
Arthur waited as noon drew nearer and nearer, the only thing he could hear was his heart beating within his chest. It was like a drum in his ear, even though he was just sitting there he felt like he was in the middle of a fight. ‘I need to relax, I need to take a longer break from fighting than just two weeks. Like a vacation or something, but only rich people take vacations, and I am nowhere close to being rich enough for that.’
Suddenly Arthur’s train of thought was interrupted by a happy Gaelin walking out of the alchemy room and rushing over to the door to put his jacket on. “Come on sir, it's almost time when these goons will show up. We need to be there to stop them.”
“Yeah, just give me a moment.” Arthur said as he stood up from his chair and reached into his bag pulling out his longsword. Once he attached it to his hip he walked over to Gaelin and put on his thicker overcoat and followed his eager apprentice out the front door.
********
The market wasn’t all that far from Arthur’s home, taking only around ten minutes of walking to get there, even less if they chose to run. Like he remembered the market was quite a bustling place with all sorts of people walking around looking at what the merchants had on sale, Arthur followed Gaelin towards a stall towards the middle rim of this market where a well off dwarven man was selling copper and bronze accessories.
“Hello Jofami, how much longer do you think you are going to be?” Gaelin asked all innocently, though he sounded quite rude while doing so.
Jofami however just laughed and smiled. “Not much longer lad, I will be going for lunch soon so you can take over when I go.” Jofami seemed like a real nice and honest person, but Arthur suspected that he knew of the goons and was trying to avoid them with Gaelin.
Instead of engaging in conversation with the dwarf Arthur instead decided to take a look around for these goons that Gaelin described. Taking a few laps around the circle that the market formed into he didn’t see any sign of them, or he didn’t until Jofami left for lunch and Gaelin was in his place.
Once Jofami was gone like it was a schedule, six rough looking criminals suddenly walked up to their nearest stall with their weapons drawn and ‘asked’ for half the money the poor woman had. The woman with shaking hands handed over a handful of copper coins to the criminal and he had her place it into a large bag that could easily fit a thousand coins.
Arthur quickly rushed over while everyone else looked on with worry and fear in their eyes, some looked for the city guards who were nowhere to be seen while the rest tried to remain unnoticed or sneak away. Gaelin was the one outlier where he looked on intently waiting for Arthur to deal with the criminals like he was some sort of folk hero.
Standing just a few meters behind the smiling criminals with his left hand on the hilt of his sword while his right hand rested at his side Arthur shouted at the criminals. “Just what do you think you are doing?” The criminals froze and slowly turned like little children caught stealing candy, once they caught sight of their lone opponent they seemed to calm down somewhat and relaxed their posture.
“And just who do you think you are out here and from what I can tell alone. If you want to take us out I would recommend that you have some armor to keep us from cutting you into little pieces.” The criminal who was most likely the leader of this group grinned widely as he brandished a meat cleaver towards Arthur who remained still as he studied his opponents.
The leader of the group was also the largest of the group being a human and standing at around 5’10”. The others who were also human stood no taller than 5’8” with a few being around 5’6”. Arthur slowly unsheathed his longsword and held it with his right hand while his right was used to cast the Tri Earth Bolts spell four times in quick succession. With his skill and practice in both geomancy and this spell in particular he could drastically shorten the cast time at the cost of slightly more mana.
The leader of the group took a step back in shock at what he just saw, while what he did know about magic was public knowledge he knew that casting spells wasn’t something just anybody could do. Manipulating fire or water was quite simple as magic went, but actual spells were something far more difficult and a sign of a true mage.
“Shit, get bac- Ahh!” The leader tried to shout out a warning when Arthur propelled the twelve earth bolts towards each of the criminals before him. The leader along with his closest subordinate managed to partly dodge out of the way, resulting in only one bolt hitting the both of them. The leader was hit in the forearm while his smartest subordinate was hit in the hand leaving the both of them with light wounds.
The other criminals on the other hand weren’t quite as quick, they all were hit directly where Arthur wanted to hit them, in the shoulders. He aimed specifically for the area where the shoulder bone connects to the rest of the torso to try and prevent them from moving their arms properly, some were wounded like he intended, but several managed to just deal with a bolt stick into their shoulder and the pain with it.
With most of his enemies out of the way for the time being Arthur gripped his longsword with both his hands and rushed forwards with it pointed towards the leader who was probably hurt the most by the earth bolts. In response the other partly wounded criminal rushed forwards and swung his hand axe towards the sword and partly deflected it away, instead it grazed the leader's good arm and drew some blood.
Arthur quickly pulled back while the many shoppers and merchants around him stepped back leaving himself outside their attack range of their weapons. The leader clutched his wound with his still good hand even with the cut to try and stem the bleeding from the earth bolt stuck in his forearm. The subordinate on the other hand was using the adrenalin in his veins to push through the pain from his off hand and swung his axe towards Arthur with several strikes from as many directions as he could, this resulted in a flurry of sloppy yet powerful attacks that kept Arthur from striking back.
Arthur was certain to keep his distance from his current opponent as he blocked as many strikes as he could and dodge wherever he could. Eventually the criminal slowed just for a second and Arthur’s sword was pointed in the general direction of his chest, with quick thinking and precision Arthur thrusted his blade forwards and stabbed the criminal in the stomach.
The sound of metal piercing through flesh sounded throughout the entire market like a dropped pin in a massive metal room. For a moment everything seemed to slow as the criminal looked down to the blade sticking into his stomach, he felt his strength slipping away and blood leaked like a river. Eventually his grip on his weapon was lost and it fell to the ground and hit the dirt road.
Arthur slowly removed the blade from the criminal's chest and he fell like a puppet cut from his strings, on the ground he clutched at the bleeding stab wound in a desperate attempt to stop the blood. Arthur took a step over him towards the remaining criminals, the top few inches covered with blood.