Lucel and her bodyguards had been traveling northeast throughout the night. The day was just breaking as they stopped to rest in a small forest clearing. They had yet to see or hear anything from Ben, and Lucel was starting to get worried.

“Maybe we missed him,” said the male guard.

“Or someone else could have come out here before us,” replied the female guard. “Forced him back into hiding. I heard Desmond left the Lodge pretty soon after you confronted him. I told you that-”

“Then it’s all the more important that we find Ben first,” Lucel cut in.

Lucel didn’t like Ben, but he was far too useful to die now. He was also like a cockroach. She had personally seen Ben revive from a fatal injury like it was nothing to him. Never once did she believe that Ben had died on some stupid hunt. It was far more likely for him to fake his death and try to run off with all the money her father had given him.

“If he has gone to ground, then we are not going to be able to find him,” the male guard stated.

“We should head back. The letter mentioned returning to the Empire,” the female guard said as she tried to convince Lucel. “We could have missed him, and he may have already started his journey back.”

“No, he has to still be out here somewhere,” replied Lucel. Maybe they just haven’t gone far enough, or they missed some sign left by him?

“Continuing this way accomplishes us nothing,” states the male guard. “Let’s head back, we can sweep the area again while looking for clues. Ben has already shown that he can get a letter to us. So maybe there will be a new one by the time we get back.”

“Fine, but let’s have breakfast first,” Lucel said, looking for a spot to sit. “My legs are killing me.” Going further northeast would lead them into dangerous hunting grounds that she and her guards were not prepared for. There is no reason for Ben to be that far from the Lodge. They must have missed something.

“Hold up, someone is approaching,” said the female guard. Both guards got into a fighting stance as they stared at the nearby shrubbery. The clearing was separated from the forest by a thick layer of undergrowth, limiting visibility.

“Ben, is that you? It’s about damn time you showed up,” said Lucel with some anger in her voice.

From the undergrowth emerged a large man, standing more than 7 feet tall with a sturdy build. He was bald with a grisly scar across the top of his head and was wearing simple green clothes. He had hazel eyes with a big toothy grin on his face. Despite his smile and apparent lack of a weapon, he gave off a very bandit-like vibe. As he entered the clearing, Lucel and her guards froze stiff.

“Fancy seeing you here, Lucel,” said the man.

“Desmond!” replied Lucel with hate in her voice.

“Be careful, he is not alone!” said the female guard. “It’s Riki, this is bad. We stepped into a trap.”

Fuck, this was not good. Desmond alone was a massive problem, and if he brought that assassin whore of his then she might really be screwed. Lucel was unable to see Riki much less sense where she was hiding. Does this mean that Desmond wrote that letter? No, this all had to be Riki’s idea. Desmond was too stupid to think this up. What had she done to piss Riki off? No, none of that matters right now, she needed to find a way out of this.

“So, this whole thing. It was you?” Lucel said. She wanted to get him talking. Wait for a chance, or maybe even talk them down.

“Guilty as charged,” replied Desmond while still smiling. “I told you I killed him. You just didn’t believe me.”

“We fight our way out?” The male guard asked the female guard. “There is only the two of them, and we are still relatively close to the Lodge. We could make it back.”

“No, the difference is too big,” Replied the female guard before giving hand signs to the male guard behind Lucel’s back.

“You bastard!” Lucel yelled. It was clear that Desmond had no intentions of letting her live. In that case, she only had one chance left and it was a gamble, but she saw no other way out. “I’m going to kill you! Mac, Rebecca, bring me this insolent bastard’s head.” She would just have to risk it. If her guards could hold off Desmond and Riki, then she should be able to get back to the Lodge. It was only a short run, and there were few to no beasts this near to the Lodge to hinder her. Slowly a plan was forming in her head.

Suddenly, she tasted blood. Looking down, Lucel could see the tip of a dagger sticking out of her chest.

***

Desmond was stunned as he watched the female guard pull her dagger out of Lucel’s upper back. Things weren’t going to plan. Lucel collapsed onto the ground, grabbing at her chest in a hopeless attempt to stop the bleeding.

“They must have been ordered to not let her be taken prisoner,” said Riki while maintaining her stealth. In the light of the clearing, Desmond could barely make out her location nearby. Her shadow magic lost some of its potency in the light of the sun.

“Well, it does make my job easier,” replied Desmond.

Now there were just the two guards. Desmond would have to silence them as well to be sure that news of this wouldn’t leak out. Both guards had forgone the decorative plate mail they wore in the Lodge for more practical armor. The female guard was wearing light gray leather armor with a hood. The male guard had on a full set of silver plate mail with gold detailing. Both sets of armor looked enchanted. Desmond was a little jealous of their nice armor. He didn’t have time to get a new set, after his fight with Ben.

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The two stood across the clearing from him. Suddenly the female guard used a type of stealth magic and dashed into the nearby forest.

“Riki, kill her!” Desmond said.

“Excuse me!” Riki exclaimed from somewhere nearby.

“Oh sorry, Riki if you don’t mind. Could you please murder that bitch for me?”

“My pleasure,” replied Riki sounding amused.

Desmond could see Riki move off into the forest after the runner. Despite the sass, Desmond knew that if the female guard represented a real threat then he wouldn’t have even needed to ask.

This just left him to take care of the heavily armored guard. Taking a closer look, the armor the guard was wearing was quite nice. The gold detailing complemented the shiny silver plate beautifully. The male guard even had a long silver sword that matched the armor. Maybe he should ask for a design like this from Barco next time? But now it was time to put an end to this. There was no point dragging this out any longer.

Desmond dashed forward and punched out at the guard’s chest. The armored man tried to swing his sword to force Desmond back, but the difference in speed was simply too great. Desmond was a whole class above the man and it showed. Desmond fist caved in the chest area of the armor and sent the guard flying backward like a rag doll. The man bounced and cartwheeled off the ground a few times before coming to a stop a few hundred meters away.

Desmond stood there as he closed and opened his fist a few times. The punch had felt weird. The enchantments on the armor had dispersed much of the impact force.

Looking over, Desmond could see the guard slowly get back to his feet. The man had clearly taken damage, but the fact that he was even still alive after that blow was a miracle. Upon closer inspection, Desmond could see the armor was repairing itself. The caved-in chest area was quickly returning to a normal state. Desmond wanted that armor! He could get Barco to resize it for him and hopefully keep the enchantments.

Desmond pushed forward closing the gap again. The guard had lost his sword in the last exchange, so he raised his arms in a cross guard to protect himself. Desmond hit the man with a right hook, going around the guard’s arms to land a blow directly on his temple. This time Desmond used Force Dispersion to try and push some of the power behind the blow through the guard’s helmet. The armor resisted admirably, but the helmet still caved into the guard’s head, killing him on the spot.

Desmond looked down at the dead guard. The damaged chest area had mostly fixed itself, leaving the only real damage to the armor being the smashed-in helmet. The fight as a whole had been anticlimactic, but at least he got a new set of armor out of it.

Slowly the armor surrounding the male guard started to dissolve into yellow partials of light.

“You got to be fucking kidding me,” Desmond cursed. It was summoned armor and was fading back into mana now that the summoner was dead. “Just when I thought I had found something good.”

As the armor slowly returned to mana, a single purple orb left the guard’s chest and came to hover around a meter above the body. This only served to aggravate Desmond further, as he still had a broken soul and was unable to use any more orbs. Or at least he assumed this was the reason why he always got the feeling that consuming another orb would be a bad idea. Suppressing his anger, Desmond reached out to the orb.

[Living Armor](Epic): +1 Earth Affinity. Allows the holder to summon living plate armor.

Desmond’s mood instantly brightened. He finally had a legacy orb that corresponded to one of his elemental affinities. Every person he has come across with an epic orb always had it related to the magic they used. This along with the revulsion he felt while holding [Heart of the Phoenix] led Desmond to believe that one could only use legacy orbs related to their natural affinities. This was something he planned to test out in the future, just not on himself.

Desmond had studied earth magic in the past as it was his main affinity. So he had come across a spell called Living Armor before. It was considered an advanced magic and was an enhanced version of the Metal Armor spell. Both spells were well beyond what he could currently learn and would be mostly useless to him due to the mana cost and the [Giant’s Blood] effect of increasing mana cost. But even if he could only summon a few pieces of the Living Armor it would still be useful to him.

The fact that this legacy was a magic spell he had heard of before was interesting. Did this mean that the effect of all legacies could be imitated by magic? It was something to think about later. For now, Desmond put the orb away, he had learned his lesson on experimenting out in the Expanse.

Learning magic was quite different in this world than in the RPGs Desmond knew. To learn a spell an individual would first have to learn the corresponding runes. They would then have to learn how to use these runes to construct the spell matrix, generally referred to as a magic circle. Once they could do this, they would then have to enter their mana room through meditation and imprint the magic circle directly on the wall of their mana room. This was a very time-consuming process and could take mages months to imprint a single spell. Then one would usually modify the spell to their liking, which would take even more time. The whole process was exceedingly tedious and time-consuming.

Even experienced mages would have limited spell variability due to how annoying it was to learn new magics. The benefit was that once a spell was imprinted, all you would have to do was move mana through the spell matrix inside you to activate the effect. So magic was hard and tedious to learn but very easy to use.

Quite often people would choose to improve one of their existing spells rather than learn a new one. Ben was a good example of this, as the flaming meteor-like spell he had used was simply a heavily modified version of the simple Summon Burning Spear spell. This was possible since the spell matrix was not static, and once created in the mana room it could be adjusted and altered freely.

There were many ways to improve how quickly you could imprint a new spell. The most prominent one would be to simply increase your Intellect. This was just another reason why mages were obsessed with that stat. Another aspect that played a large role was affinity, which was largely considered to be static, but is something Desmond could now alter through the Soul Realm and legacies.

“Hey Dez, we done here?” Riki asked from far closer that she should have been able to get without him noticing. After a small startle, Desmond looked over to see Riki dragging the body of the female guard.

“Yeah, but we should move the bodies a bit further from the Lodge,” Desmond replied trying not to show his surprise. If he gave her a reaction she would never stop sneaking up on him like that. She already seemed to enjoy it far too much.

“Ok, I know just the place,” Riki said in an upbeat tone. “We are near the territory of the biscuit boars.”

“I’m pretty sure there is no species called the biscuit boars,” Desmond replied with some amusement.

“Well, there is a story to that,” Riki said with a smile. “And it’s a very long story at that.”

“Well don’t leave me in suspense. I mean boars will eat anything right?” Desmond asked.

Desmond and Riki dragged the three bodies off into the forest making small talk along the way.