Returning to his bedroom, Desmond found Riki already lying under the blankets. He maneuvered around the bed, lifting the blankets to lay down beside her. Riki rolled over and cuddled up next to him.
“You’re going to have to do something about her,” Riki said, looking up into Desmond’s eyes. “Hiring assassins is no different than a declaration of war.”
“Yeah, I know,” Desmond replied. It was clear that Lucel was behind this attack and that she would be more of a problem in the future if he didn’t deal with her. “I just wish it didn’t come to this. I have nothing against her personally.”
“You murdered her fiance,” Riki said. “You can’t just expect her to take that lying down.”
Desmond had in fact, expected just that. From his experience, Ben and Lucel were not very close despite being engaged. In truth, being engaged seemed to make them hate each other all the more. Ben hated that Lucel was a dark, but he needed her for her connection to the Duke. Lucel hated that she had to cater to Ben’s whims, but she needed him for his power and the position it would offer her in the Valmesh family. It was a real match made in hell, signed by the devil himself. Desmond hadn’t expected Lucel to like the fact that he had killed Ben, but he also didn’t anticipate a retaliation like this.
“Not that they were much of a threat,” Riki continued. “A bunch of tier 4 assassins aren’t going to be able to accomplish anything against us.”
“Yeah, but if you weren’t here, I probably would have just slept through the whole attack,” Desmond joked.
Desmond expected that the reason the assailants were so weak wasn’t because of him. But because no self-respecting assassin would put themselves up against Riki for any amount of money Lucel could offer. Riki was on paper, a peak disaster class hunter, but in practice, she was at least early calamity class. In order to go up a rank in the Lodge, you needed both the skill and the hunt record. Riki had the skill, she just needed a calamity class hunt to rank up. But after the incident a year ago, Riki had stopped hunting altogether.
Desmond found himself tracing his hand along the four scars that marred her otherwise perfect skin. It was a claw mark that went from shoulder to shoulder across the top of her chest. They were massive scars, and Desmond could still clearly remember when he stitched them up. It had taken hundreds of stitches and the better part of an afternoon. Despite the scar’s prominence on her pale skin, Desmond found it only added an exotic sense of beauty.
“I’m not sure any of them would have even been able to wake you up,” Riki joked back before she turned more somber. “Hey Dez, if you want, I could just go deal with her.”
“There is no need for that,” Desmond replied firmly. “I already have a plan to deal with her, and trying to kill someone within the Lodge is not worth the risk. But you’re welcome to help if you want?”
As tempting as it was to just let Riki make this problem go away for him. This was Desmond’s mess to clean up, and he was hesitant about how much to get Riki involved.
Desmond knew things about the Lodge that most didn’t because of his friendship with a certain talkative staff member. He knew trying to kill someone on the Lodge’s grounds would be a stupid idea. After what happened to Ben, Desmond was already on Richard’s shit list and he didn’t want to give the man any more reason to kick him out. No, he would have to be more subtle with how he got rid of Lucel. He needed to find a way to get her out of the Lodge, then make her disappear. A dark vanishing in the Expanse would be nothing out of the ordinary.
“Oh, and here I thought you were going to forbid me from getting involved again,” Riki said with some angry sarcasm in her voice.
“Sorry about that,” Desmond said with all sincerity. “There are just some things men must do on their own.”
“Stupid masculinity,” Riki replied, still sounding peeved. “It’s going to get you killed one of these days Dez.”
“Ok, I promise I will always ask for your permission before I do something incredibly stupid next time,” Desmond said, trying to lighten the mood.
“And the time after that?” Riki replied before smirking. “But don’t you worry. I’ll pull you out of the fire before you get too burnt. I wouldn’t want you to lose those eyebrows, now would I?”
“Hey, these eyebrows are lucky I tell ya,” Desmond stated in a jovial tone. “It’s been four and a half years since I last had them burnt off. Or melted off, I suppose.”
Riki chuckled. “So then, what’s this big plan to get at Lucel?”
“Alright, hear me out here. I’m going to need some parchment, an envelope, some ink, a trusted informant, three pieces of cheese, and a very fat chicken.”
“Oh? What’s the chicken got to do with anything?” Riki said, trying to hide her amusement.
“Well, the chicken’s lunch. But the rest of it is very important. I just need to sleep on the finishing touches.” Desmond replied.
“You got no plan, do you?” Riki asked, still seeming amused.
“I very specifically said I had a plan,” Desmond said with a smile. “You just have no patience. Good night!”
Desmond closed his eyes and warped his arm around Riki. Pulling her in against him, she came to rest her head on his arm as they both slowly fell asleep. He did in fact, have a plan worked out in his head, but talking about murdering someone before bed would just ruin their good night’s sleep.
***
Desmond slowly woke up and looked out the window. It was late afternoon, which was a regular time to get up after a long night with Riki. Before Desmond even moved, he could feel Riki stir beside him. For some reason, she would always wake up right when he did.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Desmond said.
“Morning,” Riki said as she slowly sat up and looked outside. “What do you mean by morning? It’s at least afternoon, maybe even evening.”
“Morning is when you wake up,” Desmond replied with confidence. “It’s not about where the sun is.”
“I think the whole world would consider that wrong,” Riki replied. “But I’m not about to get into another argument with an idiot. So what are your plans for today, or what’s left of today?”
“Hmmm, you have grown wise,” Desmond vocalized as he stood up. “Well, to start with, I have some loot to look through,” Desmond said as he found the spatial ring in the pocket of his trousers that he had slept in. He pulled the ring out and put it on his pinky finger.
“Ohhh, can I help?” Riki asked. “That was Ben’s right? He is sure to have had some good stuff in there.”
“Sure, I could use some help identifying a few things,” Desmond replied. Even though he had only known Riki for a little more than a year, he already fully trusted her and was even excited to show her the spatial ring. After all, every hunter loved loot. “After that, I have a hot date in the library planned.”
“A hot date, and you didn’t invite me? How could you?” Riki replied in a joking tone.
“Of course, they can’t compare to you Riki. You truly are the most beautiful in the world,” Desmond replied with sincerity, before unnecessarily adding. “They are just a close runner-up.”
“Oh, and who is this beautiful woman?” Riki said in mock outrage.
“I never said they were a woman,” Desmond said in a joking tone. “My date is with Garrick.”
“Pffft, you mean that old librarian?” Riki said while trying to stop herself from laughing. “I can see it, you two go so well together.”
Desmond put on a shirt and sat on the end of the bed. He patted the bed next to him so Riki would come over to look at the ring’s contents with him.
“Now, he might not know we have a date yet,” Desmond continued. “But he is going to figure it out.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Garrick was the smartest person Desmond knew. His recent trip to the Soul Realm had left Desmond with many questions. Question, that he could scour the library for, or he could just ask Garrick. The old scholar did love questions, after all.
“Right, it’s loot time,” Desmond said as he pushed his mana into the ring. “Let’s see how much money I made.”
Desmond started by talking out the things he understood and placing them on the bed. There were 7 tier 5 beast cores alongside another 10 tier 4 beast cores. There were 13 red Greater Healing Pots and a whole 27 blue Greater Mana Pots. He also pulled out the 2 amber Revival Pots, which was a tentative name he had given them as he still had no idea what they actually did. He then placed beside all this an assortment of notes and books that seemed to contain Ben’s magical research. Next, he pulled out the last thing he recognized in the storage space, which was 33 hand-sized silver plates that seemed to be made of a rare metal with enchantments on them.
Desmond knew that each of the tier 5 beast cores would go for about 5000 LP in the Lodge. The tier 4 cores were worth about one-tenth that at around 500 LP. Each greater potion would be worth around 1000 LP, so in total, this would be worth around 80K LP. Desmond had no idea how to price the amber potions, and selling Ben’s notes was probably not a good idea for the moment. The last thing was the silver plates. Desmond recognized them as a type of banknote, but since he always worked with the Lodge and LP, he did not know how much gold the notes were worth.
“Well, that’s all the stuff I recognize,” Desmond said.
“Holy fuck, Ben was rich,” Riki exclaimed. “What’s that amber potion?”
“Hmmmm, I was kinda hoping you could tell me,” Desmond replied. “I think it’s some kinda super healing potion.”
“If it was a healing potion, it should be red,” Riki said matter of factly. “I have seen the Superior Healing Potion, and that’s not it.”
Healing and mana potions worked a little differently here than they did in the RPGs from Desmond’s last life. The effects were not instant but would instead supply an increase to the regeneration of either health or mana over about 30 minutes. Desmond only had a use for the health pots, and even then, he found their effects very underwhelming. But most hunters still carried one or two, as you never know when that little bit of health regen could save your life. Also, the pots had a sort of diminishing return, so taking another one was mostly pointless until the effect of the first ended. They were in no way a substitute for having a proper healer in your party.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that,” Desmond said while scratching his chin. “Either way, since this was Ben’s go-to potion, I’m planning to keep them as life-saving treasures.” Desmond then brought out 3 crystal blue potions from the spatial ring. “I’m guessing these are Superior Mana Potions then?”
“Yeah, they are even harder to get your hands on than the healing type,” Riki said while she stared at the pots. “They normally sell for around 10K LP each, but nobles love to buy up the stock and then raise the price. So quite often, you can’t even find them on the market.”
“How about these?” Desmond remarked as he indicated towards the silver plates. “How much LP are they worth?”
“Hmmmm, given the current exchange rate,” Riki said with a thoughtful expression. “Around 870 Lodge Points each.”
That was a nice little extra sum. So that brought Desmonds current stolen wealth at just under 140k LP. This was far more wealth than Desmond had ever had in his life. Most of his previous wealth had been spent on getting Barco to build him some burden armor for training, and that had only cost him around 30k LP.
Desmond then took out an array pillar that was about 3 feet tall and covered in different enchantments. The runes used on the pillar seemed familiar but at the same time were not any runic language he could recognize. Where had he seen these runes before?
“You know anything-” Desmond was cut off in the middle of his sentence.
“Nope, no idea. If it’s not shadow magic, there is no point in asking me,” Riki said.
Desmond stared intently at the array pillar. There were 7 more like it in the ring, and together, they would make a full array to cover a large area. The runes on the pillar seemed ominous somehow. Wait, he had seen these same runes in the Soul Realm when he was looking at his memories. These were the same runes that were used on the magic circle he had found in the middle of his burned village. Was Ben practicing some type of forbidden magic?
Magic was generally broken down into 4 different layers. The first base layer was just pure elemental mana. The 8 different prime types of mana were water, fire, earth, air, nature, arcane, light, and dark. There were many subprime types of mana like ice and metal, but they all fell under one of the prime types of mana.
The second layer of magic was runes. You could think of this layer as a magic language of sorts. Each element had its own runic language that one would have to learn if they wanted to cast spells in that element. Subprime elements would also possess their own set of unique runes, but they would be similar to the prime elemental runes that they fell under.
The third layer of magic was where most things happened. This is where people would use runes and construction elements like circles to make different magic spells and enchantments. Spells were what people cast, and enchantments were just spells that were placed on objects. And the circles were just because that was a great shape for magic pathing.
The final layer of magic was arrays. This layer was for when people wanted to cover a much wider area in a magical effect, where a single enchantment couldn’t cut it. It involved making several pillars with enchantments on them that could work together, and then placing them around the area you wanted to effect. Desmond knew the whole Lodge was surrounded by massive obfuscation and detection arrays. To make this place hard to find and give the Lodge forewarning of attacks respectively. It was also common knowledge that the hunter plates provided by the Lodge, would interact with these arrays in some way.
Desmond’s attention was then drawn to a series of different rings inside the storage space. They each had a different enchantment on them, and from what Desmond could tell, they were all convenience-based items. Desmond only recognized a few of them, such as the one to make fresh water, the climate control one for extreme environments, the one that tests your magic affinities, and the one that acted as a male contraceptive. They were handy to have but not particularly valuable.
Moving on, Desmond looked at the last item. It was a bright green glowing apple that kind of looked like it was radioactive. Desmond was unsure if it was a treasure or just some souped-up road ration. Either way, it was giving off a poison apple vibe, and he didn’t want to touch it.
“Do you have any idea what a green glowing apple does?” Desmond asked.
“Don’t know,” Riki replied. “Magic shit, probably. Is that everything then?”
“Yup, that’s all of it,” Desmond said as he put everything back inside the spatial ring.
“Well, you’re rich now,” Riki said as she jumped to her feet and started to get dressed. “You’re buying the drinks next time.”
“Sure, drink anything you want on my tab,” Desmond said as he leaned back, feeling very satisfied with his newfound wealth.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Riki said as she came over and planted a kiss on his lips. “I have some stuff to look into today, so I’ll see you tonight. You have fun on your date now. I won’t wait up for you if you’re coming home late.”
Rike laughed as she walked out of the door to the bedroom. Desmond found himself chuckling as well as he placed the spatial ring back into his pocket. It was still best if no one saw him with it. Desmond got to his feet. It was time to go annoy Garrick.