CHAPTER 13
“A New World”
Kalysto immediately stood up, noticing the sea of bodies surrounding her. They were all wearing the same colors that matched the few red banners with the symbol of a snake piercing a sword in the center, which were strewn across what appeared to be the remains of a battlefield.
All was chaos, filled with death and destruction.
Even the horses lay dead beside their riders.
Shocked by the massacre before her, she took a step back.
What on earth had happened here?
In front of her, about ten meters away, a thick and immense forest full of trees with different colored leaves and thick trunks, seemed to invite her to enter and explore it, and something deep in her soul wanted to accept that invitation and discover its secrets, but she restrained herself. And instead, she turned to her left, where a long, almost endless dirt road surrounded by woods on either side and as wide as a six-lane avenue filled with bodies welcomed her to the new world. Several miles beyond, she could see the peaks of several mountains lining the horizon.
She turned again to her left, only to encounter a stone wall about three floors high and almost twenty meters away, which seemed to encircle a city. With its gates completely closed and no trace of the guards that were supposed to guard it. But two blue flags with a white silhouette of an eagle drawn in the center decorated opposite sides of that wall.
Where are the guards? There was a strange smell in the air that made her nose sting a little. However, it didn’t smell like blood. Strange. They obviously tried to attack the city... But how did they lose?
She lowered her gaze and looked again at the vast collection of bodies decorating the ground. They were all wearing the same type of armor, and the most curious thing of all was that there was not a single bloodstain on the path made of stone, nor on the surrounding ground. And although their bodies were cold and suffered no apparent wounds, the level of rigor mortis in them indicated that no more than a couple of hours had passed since their deaths.
Although their clothes and armor were in perfect condition.
If they weren’t attacked by another army or by monsters, then what killed them?.... None of this made sense, unless it was poisoning, but if they were poisoned, how could they do it to everyone at the same time? There were at least over a thousand bodies on the ground and from the armor they were wearing, aside from the lack of automobiles, you could almost tell that the people of this world were still stuck somewhere near middle age.
Who would go invading another city on horseback and with an army on foot? She looked closely at another body again. The only thing in common between them was that their sunken cheeks made them look as if they had been enduring hunger for months. Is this the result of a magical attack...what kind of magic is capable of doing something like this?
Unfortunately, she didn’t have an answer for that. But the tiny backpack strapped to the waist of most of the bodies and the swords tucked inside their sheaths caught her attention. Moved by curiosity, she approached a body and crouched down beside it, noticing the nice, elegant sword lying unsheathed at its owner’s side.
“Inspect!” she said, and two small windows opened before her.
[Sword. Class: common. Requires 30 points of strength to use.
Strength +10]
Interesting. She thought, and immediately tucked it into her purple inventory.
And inadvertently, while trying to remove the holster from the waistband of its previous owner, her hand pushed a small bag tied to the waistband of the body, the sound of glass bottles clinking against each other caught her attention. And upon opening the brown leather bag, she noticed seven glass vials. Two blue, three red and three violet. Two of the vials were plain and unadorned, but two of the others had a silver line near the cork. The red ones, however, had two copper-colored lines.
“What the heck is this?” she whispered. And to her surprise, two windows, one violet and one blue, opened before her. Each asking the same question:
[Do you wish to use the ‘inspect’ skill to find out the statistics of this object?]
“Yes,” she answered immediately. And both systems obeyed the order, showing her the statistics of the purple bottle she held in her hand.
[Revitalizing potion of grade I. Quality: low. Consumable. Subtracts 20 points of fatigue]
Kalysto took the next purple-colored potion, the one with a silver-colored trim on the top.
[Inspect] She exclaimed aloud. And immediately the two systems gave her the same information:
[Revitalizing potion grade I. Quality: medium. Consumable. Subtracts 30 points of fatigue]
Kalysto, excited with her new discovery, drank the last of the potion she had prepared and immediately, she felt how all the fatigue she was feeling diminished a little, she wanted to check her stats but decided to leave it for later and then she put the other potion in her purple inventory. Then she thought better of it and exclaimed:
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[Inventory] Both windows opened, and she took her backpack out of the blue inventory and placed it inside the purple one, along with the holster she had just obtained.
“That’s better. Considering all the times you’ve failed me before, it’s better if I don’t place the important things in you,” she said to the blue one. Then she took out the two blue vials and, taking the simplest of them in her right hand, exclaimed:
[Inspect]
And again, both systems gave her the same information.
[Grade I mana potion. Quality: low. Consumable. Restores 40 mana points]
Instead, the bottle with a silver-colored line at the top said:
[Grade I mana potion. Quality: medium. Consumable. Restores 50 mana points]
Then she looked at the missing ones, and remembering everything she had heard Natasha, her landlady’s daughter, say, she guessed that the red ones helped restore health.
[Inspect] She exclaimed.
Again, both windows showed her exactly the same information.
[Grade I health potion. Quality: medium. Use: consume or apply directly to the wound. Restores 80 health points]
“Oh, these potions will definitely come in handy,” she got excited, as she looked at the blue and red potions. They could make the difference between me living or dying in this new world. She immediately put them inside the purple inventory.
And it was at that moment that Kalysto realized an important detail she had forgotten.
She never talked to her new boss about receiving monetary compensation in exchange for working for him, just as she never made arrangements to work out where she would live or whether she would be delivered at least two meals a day... or how dangerous the third mission was and what it was all about.
“Darn it! I knew I was forgetting something important.” She didn’t think the first two missions put her life in danger, but there was a small chance that maybe, the reason it was never made clear what the third mission was about, was because she was at risk of dying while doing it. And Kalysto closed her eyes, wanting to berate herself for how foolish she had been. She had been so exhausted after spending the last few weeks with barely four hours of sleep, added to the hard training thanks to the competition the previous weekend, her work, and her classes, that the accumulated fatigue added to the pain of her wounds had not let her think clearly.
How could I forget that? She scolded herself for several minutes until she finally let out a long sigh of resignation.
Well... at least I’m still alive. She tried to console herself. Although now that she was safe, working for her boss for three years while performing those three missions seemed too great a price to pay in exchange for getting her out of there. This is no time for me to cry over spilled milk. What was done was done.
She was alive, and that was all that mattered. Later, I would find a way to safely face that third test. Other than that, she would find a way to earn her livelihood and secure a roof over her head while not starving in this world.
First, I need to show him how useful I can be, and once I do that I can start asking him for things... besides there are many things I need to find out, but for now... When she opened her eyes again and observed the battlefield, if it could be called that, and all the bodies in front of her, she saw everything with different eyes. A delicate and mischievous smile was drawn on her tanned face.
“I feel bad for you guys and all that. And I really apologize for what I’m about to do... But you won’t need anything you have with you, but I will.” Even though a small part of her felt bad for suddenly becoming a thief, her survival was at stake. “It’s time to loot!”
Besides, I can sell their swords and get some money. And with an excuse formed, she set about looting all the bodies around her while keeping low, so as not to attract the attention of the sudden group of hooded men who emerged from the forest across the long road and diagonal to her. And who seemed to be surrounding a couple of people, almost three blocks away from where she was.
Those first few bags of potions were easy to take, but as she began to move away from the edge of the forest, moving deeper into the group of bodies, it became increasingly difficult, and she had to pull the knife she had stolen from the goblin from her backpack and cut the leather strings with which the bags were tied to their owners’ waists. She also removed their swords, trying to get their sheaths as well, but seeing that she was wasting too much time removing their straps, she decided to simply unsheathe them and put them away in her inventories, leaving the potions in their respective leather pouches and stuffing them into the outside pockets and the small spaces still inside her backpack, which she finished filling quickly, so she put it away again.
Curiously, almost all the swords of those who were near the entrance to the forest were of exactly the same design, and when she accidentally put a sword in the same inventory box where there was another one like it, both were stored inside the same box and the number two appeared underneath them. So she immediately set about taking out the other twenty she had already looted and put them in the same box. And she was relieved to see that again she had plenty of free space, so she turned around and picked up a heavy shield which she had left behind, and which she could barely put in the inventory.
Now that she discovered that she could group objects of the same type, she began to sort the potions by color and number of lines near the cork. As she got closer towards the center of the sea of bodies, the quality of the swords and potions seemed to increase.
Kalysto couldn’t wait to inspect each one, but the noise that the small group of hooded men began to make began to unnerve her. Who now stopped surrounding the small group of people and relocated them to the back of the group, while they peered into the forest on the other side of where Kalysto was.
Ignoring her completely.
They sure are prisoners of war. I’d better finish quickly and get out of here before I’m discovered. She thought. But as soon as she saw an old man with a huge staff next to six archers, she ran over. What appeared to be a wand rested on the older man’s belt and she didn’t hesitate to take it from him, as well as the beautiful staff still in his hand and his huge collection of potions. Four other leather pouches were tied to his waist which she did not hesitate to take off and when the roar of a dragon echoed loudly making the ground tremble under her feet, Kalysto ran to plunder the group of archers and placing the lightest bow around her torso and tucked the rest of them, together with the quivers full of arrows inside her violet inventory.
Just at the same moment, the gigantic shadow of a black dragon was cast over her.
Kalysto looked up just in time to notice a bloodstain on his neck, exactly in the same place as the dragon she had seen during her summoning.
Don’t tell me he was transported to this world, too? She thought fearfully. That means that orc and his whole army must also be around here somewhere.