‘They are discussing if they should start selling a new drug in the city, worst yet it has been selectively bred to be able to grow in this climate giving them a steady supply of it when they establish farms. I was just going to scare them a little, maybe kill a few of them, and then force them to leave me alone.’ Arthur waited as the ten continued their debate.

“What about the possible side effects of such a drug Kelile? I assume it isn’t quite as incredible as you have been telling us.” Eveline said as she leaned forward on her chair and looked straight towards Kelile. This was a tactic she would often use on those she considered foolish or weak. The idea was to force all eyes on her opposition and make them stutter.

“To answer your question dear Eveline, the drug is only moderately addictive and has very little side effects, none of which are life threatening just like the original strain from the southern swamps. The only difference between this new strain and the original is where it can grow, if you have any problems with that I suggest you bring that up with the swamp weed farmers in Miria who have been the sole suppliers up until now.” Eveline gritted her teeth at Kelile, turning the attention around and drawing support from another who was skeptical, and yet he still continued.

“Since we will be able to supply ourselves with the plant we will be able to sell it for far less than we could have otherwise, this way we can keep it cheap and our customers always buying. This will practically give us a monopoly on the buying and selling of swamp weed in the city, and when we expand outward we will have all the leverage we will need.”

Kelile’s choice of words was quite telling, he wants to expand out into the rest of the kingdom and likely well past that. And now with seven of the ten members nodding along it was practically assured that the Black Eye gang would begin to grow and sell this new strain of swamp weed.

But that assumed that no one was willing to do anything drastic to stop the decision from happening, one person that might be a mage perhaps.

Arthur stood there hidden by the door way, his hand fiddling with a small ball of fire he conjured in a desperate attempt to calm his nerves. But it did little to help, the only way to stop this feeling that was like a lump in his throat was to do the best thing possible at the moment and kill the gang leaders.

The moment he came to the decision he felt the worry and weight on his shoulders was alleviated, if only ever so slightly. But it was enough for him to turn his focus to the ten gang members and raise his hands to cast a spell.

‘What to use, what to use?’ Arthur asked himself as he tried to think of a spell that would be able to quickly take all them out or at least incapacitate them for him to finish them off. His first idea was to use a few fire spells, they had good speed and damage and he even knew of one that would explode on impact. But he quickly discarded that idea, pyromancy can get out of hand rather quickly, he just wanted to kill the gang leaders not burn down the whole tavern.

‘That just leaves air, earth, and water. I also have my sword, but unless I’m just finishing off a few stragglers I should avoid using it in this situation.’ Arthur thought back to all the spells he learnt over the four months of magic learning but ultimately came up blank, as all the proper spells he knew were only tier one and the combat related ones were more focused on quick and accurate projectiles.

Just as Arthur was tempted to leave he heard a loud squeak from the bottom of the stairs, then another and another, someone was coming up the stairs. Arthur nearly panicked as the noise was likely from a large and heavy person, possibly the guard from outside. Arthur gritted his teeth and slowly descended the stairs to meet the person head on and take them out quickly.

Thankfully for Arthur the stairway was technically made up of two separate stairways, the first was just a few steps opposite of the front door and the second turned to the right and continued up to the second floor. The person walking up was still on the first set but was far too close for comfort.

Arthur was practically right up against the corner waiting for the man to appear, it felt like forever but eventually the man did appear and Arthur quickly conjured a thin spike made up of earth on the palm of his hand and put it through his neck as he covered the man's mouth and pushed him into the opposite wall.

The man who Arthur quickly identified as a member of this same gang tried to push him away and shout for help, but was met with little success. What little noise he did manage to make was muffled by the sounds of the patrons downstairs and the gang leader arguing upstairs.

Arthur continued to stab the man in several places including the chest and stomach to try and kill him faster. Eventually the loss of blood made the man weaker and weaker until he stopped struggling and slumped to the floor. Arthur stabbed him through the eye with a second spike he conjured just to be certain he was dead.

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Arthur looked around and frowned, there was quite a bit of blood on the floor that pooled out from the man’s corpse and continued to do so. Left with little choice Arthur pucked up the corpse and slowly but surely forced it in his dimensional bag, but that still left him with the blood on the floor to deal with and odds were it would be noticed by someone.

So Arthur used his hydromancy to conjure water and wipe down all the blood and collect it into a sphere of water and blood. Arthur was quite proud of his work, anyone looking for blood would be forced to look very carefully to find any sign of it and he honestly doubted that anyone would be looking here.

But the fact that the man isn’t coming back was a bit of a problem, if someone was waiting for him then they were likely to come looking sooner than later. ‘And if they find me here, or worse yet I kill them as well someone will eventually figure something out. I need to get out of here for now, I can figure out how to get rid of the gang leaders later.’

Arthur slowly descended the stairs and took a quick peek out past the door frame for anyone watching, luckily no one was and he quickly walked past everyone and out the front door. Once he was outside he quickly began walking in the direction of his home to think about how to deal with the gang.

***********

Within the safety of his open home Arthur emptied out the corpse of the man he killed in the tavern along with the other five corpses belonging to the ones who attempted to shake him down for money. While it did take some time to squeeze the six of them out he did eventually do so, and now that he was away from prying eyes he took his time to look for anything of value on them.

Arthur was very thorough in his search, he checked every pocket and searched for hidden ones, by the end he came up with the meat cleaver from the one and a knife from each of the others. The knives were all quite old and had bits of rust forming along the edges. ‘I guess I’ll have to take these to Burmas and see what he will pay for them.’

Arthur returned the knives and meat cleaver into his bag and turned his attention towards the six bodies now laying on his floor. ‘I don’t really have much use for them, if I knew how to create a proper flesh golem then I would use them for that. But even if I did know how I don’t even have all the materials I would need to make one. Storing them isn’t really an option at the moment since they take up most of the space in my bag, I could barely fit the last one in.’

Arthur began to pace around the room as he tried to think up a solution, eventually he stopped and looked at them before he placed the largest three in his bag. ‘I don’t need to keep all six of them here. I can just hang onto a few and get rid of the rest.’ Arthur thought to himself as he smiled and dragged the smallest three bodies close to the back door to be disposed of later at night.

**********

When nightfall eventually did come around Arthur dragged each body one by one into his back yard and with the use of his geomancy slowly dug a large circular hole into the ground that was about three and a half meters deep at its lowest. Arthur then dropped each body in there and refilled the hole before he double checked that it looked as normal as possible and returned inside.

‘Dam, that was tiring. Who would have known that carrying dead bodies was so difficult, and that they are so flimsy. It's like carrying around a big human sized doll.’ Arthur chucked at the comparison before he changed into more comfortable clothes and went to bed.

But Arthur was having a rather difficult time going to sleep, his mind kept drifting towards what he should have done to the leaders of the gang that were all sitting at that table, he could have very easily stopped them all right there. But one little nobody managed to get in that way and put an end to that.

‘Should I just wait for more to arrive and kill them until they give up? That sounds like the easiest thing to do, but they'll just target other people instead. There has to be something I can do.’ But alas Arthur came up short of any possible solutions, he had no evidence to show anyone and without that he had no way to prove what they were doing.

His mind quickly turned to other things to other things as he continued to draw blanks and eventually found himself thinking about the man he killed on the stairway. Arthur conjured another thin spike on the palm of his hand and looked it up and down. It was rather simple and in some respects crude, but it managed to kill someone with reasonable efficiency.

But then suddenly something clicked in Arthurs mind, everything that had once been bouncing around within his mind was now coming together, and it was from the improvised weapon he created. ‘I could kill each of the gang leaders one by one, I don’t need to kill them all at once. I just need to find where they stay and when night falls I can go in and get rid of them permanently. Yeah, that would be a whole lot easier than killing them all at once.’

Arthur was practically laughing like a child hearing a poop joke with this revelation, he barely contained his joy at the realization and immediately got up out of bed to better think and formulate a new plan.

‘I have so many new options now, I could use some of the poison I have been brewing to kill them or I could look for a newer, more deadly recipe. I could even trap them inside a building and burn it to the ground when they are still inside along with any guards they might have with them. I could even go for the standard assassination with a blade, but I think I will avoid that.’

Arthur was so excited he nearly left his house for a trip to the guilds library to look for new spells or poisons that might help in his endeavors. Only when he let out a deep yawn did he remember that he needed sleep to function and bring his plans to reality. But that did little to sway Arthur’s mood, as he still smiled even as he went to sleep and dreamed of tearing this new gang to the ground.