Chapter 27: Murder, She Wrote

[50 EXP gained for your first premeditated kill!

Level up!

Title gained - Murderer: Death comes easy, murder is hard. It requires a certain resolve, to take up a weapon and kill in cold blood, far from the battlefield where emotions run high. You are recognised by certain dark powers. It would be unwise to wear this Title in public.]

“Thanks for the warning,” I couldn’t help but scoff as I crawled out from under the table, because really?

[Really. The first person to earn that Title was executed after showing it off to impress his girlfriend.]

“Oh.”

There was a lot I could say about that particular can of worms, but I still had much to do that night, too much to waste an hour on a diatribe against human stupidity. The System was being talkative again, too, volunteering information beyond the Level up itself, knowledge so old I doubted anyone still remembered it. I was grateful, of course, though I couldn’t help wondering if everyone got the same treatment, or if this was another quirk of my particular Class.

“Hold on, you can’t eat that,” I exclaimed, brought back to reality by Pumpkin hopping down next to the body. “I’ll treat you later, but we can’t leave evidence of any foul play.”

[9 Gilt stored.]

That was why I’d gone with the coins, after all: with them back in my inventory, by all outward appearances, old Chip Norton had died from a sudden loss of oxygen in his brain, the traditional symptoms of a stroke. Unfortunate, yes, but a simple fact of life that could happen to anyone of any age, but particularly trended towards the elderly. Even the bruising to his throat could be explained by his own hands wrapping around them, to try and restart his breathing: I doubted anyone would be able to tell what actually happened, short of a proper autopsy or magical interference, neither of which were likely, here.

To further sell the deception, I spent a few moments taking random bits of clothing into my inventory, before tossing them out haphazardly, covering the corpse and also generally making a mess of the room. Clearly, all of this was down to the last flailing of a dying man, and there was no need to look into the exact contents of the shop. I couldn’t help but smile at that, the System was correct when it bestowed my new achievement, premeditated murder was different. I’d killed a man by accident before, the combination of a bit of speeding and an incautious pedestrian, but there’d be no thought to that: just a sudden surge of panic that I’d stamped down upon, continuing along the road to my intended destination.

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One of the first signs investigators looked for in such cases was odd behaviour, so I made sure to stick to my habits even after the crash, and if one particularly greedy associate took him a year’s salary to testify that I’d been in a performance review with him at the time of death, as well as to clean my car? Well, that was neither here nor there.

“Let’s go, Pumpkin, off to the grocers next.”

—

I’d always been a fan of multi-tasking while walking, as a way to maximise efficiency, and had no intention to break that trend in my new life. Letting Pumpkin take the lead again, since he’d apparently memorised the layout of the town when I wasn’t looking, I took the opportunity to finally make use of the new prompt that was now visible in the System.

[Level Up? Y/N]

With nothing else to occupy my time, I selected yes.

[Congratulations! In reaching Level 2, you have made it into the top 90% of the human population by Level.]

“Excuse me?” I couldn’t help blurting out. “No way you’re telling me a tenth of humanity dies before earning a single level up.”

[Or even earlier, before they ever reach their Class Day. Magic can account for a lot, but this is still a feudal society, and not all monsters are mindless things, throwing themselves against the great walls.]

“You know what? Fair point,” I acknowledged, chastised.

Infant mortality was an issue even back on Earth, in parts of the world, where diseases like Malaria thrived through to the twenty-first century, killing over a million people a year, many of them being children under five.

[Moving on now, ahem.

You have earned one automatic upgrade, to be applied to Masquerade: You may choose the Level of your displayed Public Class, up to a maximum of your True Level.]

“Cool,” I murmured, immediately bringing up my status sheet.

[Will Swindell

Class (True): Level 2 Soldier of Fortune

Class (Public): Level 2 Merchant

Title: [Empty]

Experience: 111/300]

I left the Title slot well alone, as that would be staying empty until I got something less offensive than Murderer, whilst exerting my will upon the third line and watching it change in real time.

[Class (Public): Level 1 Merchant]

That was better, and very convenient too: I’d be meeting up with Damien again within the day, and he would surely have questions if I’d levelled up in the meantime when I was supposed to be taking it easy at the inn.

[Furthermore, you may select one of the two options below.

1) Wrath and Ruin: As a Soldier, once per day, break the limits of your body to deliver a devastating blow. As a Merchant, you will know when someone is trying to cheat you.

2) Death and Taxes: As a Soldier, wounds you inflict cause rapid decay. As a Merchant, curses you inflict last twice as long.]

Well then, that was quite the choice, I thought to myself. Indeed, I’d already gained valuable knowledge before even making my choice, because if the trend on these options held, then it meant I had a good idea of the blueprint for my future skills. Two options intertwined, one for each side of my Class, and only usable when the correct public Class was equipped. A limitation, yes, but also a helpful guardrail, ensuring that I only ever displayed skills that would be appropriate to my disguise, rather than blowing my cover with something ridiculous. Good to have, as a beginner, certainly, but irrelevant to the more important question just now: what to take?