21 - Chapter 20
Tasha didn’t spend too long resting. She used the time to eat and drink. She needed the fuel and still had a long trek in front of her. She also had to deal with her bloody and ripped clothes. Thankfully she always carried a spare set of clothes and a basic first aid kit.
She checked to make sure no one was around then proceeded to strip off her top. Luckily the only injury she had accrued was easy enough to hide. She cleaned the wound and bandaged it up. She then proceeded to change her clothes and pack the bloody clothes in a spare plastic bag. She would not be leaving evidence of her actions for anyone to find, nor dispose of it so near the clearing.
Once she was looking normal again, she ensured she hadn’t left anything behind. She didn’t want anyone to even realise anyone else had been around. She wanted whoever came looking to think that the attacker was a ghost. Once she was sure that she had properly collected all evidence of her activities, and re-packed her bag properly, she started her trek back to the pick up location.
She called the driver once she was well on her way with an estimated time of arrival. She knew she still had a new quest to look at, but she was not taking a look on purpose. She had had an intense day. She needed mental rest. If the quest pushed her towards action, she would find it hard to resist the lure, especially as it would be regarding her family. That could lead to an unacceptable level of risk. If she truly wanted to find out what had happened to her family, she would have to return to her training, and remove emotion from the equation. Even though today had been hard and the attack brutal, she had a feeling the quest system was treating it as training. The real quests that would provide details would be much harder to execute.
The thing that had driven her desperation and depression had been the lack of a path forward. She had found every single attempt coming up against a brick wall. The dead ends had pushed her to take more and more reckless actions, and in hindsight she was surprised that the impact had only been financial. If, as it seemed certain now, that the syndicate was somehow involved in her family’s deaths, then she had been in no position to physically defend herself. Had she actually faced any of the syndicate members, she would have most likely ended up becoming a snack to some monstrosity.
All this realisation drove her to become more focused and rational. With the overbearing emotional impact curtailed, her training and experience were once again taking center stage. She would still use her emotions to drive her forward, but it would be tempered to ensure results not rashness.
She trekked through the woods, ensuring she kept her awareness high. There had already been one group of very dangerous enemies, there was no guarantee that they had been the only group using the wilds for nefarious purposes. About halfway through the trek she found a good location and took out her bloody clothes. She made sure to burn them to ash, and then bury the remains. It should be impossible for any evidence of her deeds to show up. Thankfully she didn’t run into anyone else on the trek back. It was starting to get dark by the time she returned back to pick up point. Her driver was waiting for her.
She knew it would take another 6 hours to get back to her hotel, and she wanted to freshen up first. She asked to be taken to a good local restaurant. It only took about 30 minutes to arrive. She left her bags in the car, and entered the restaurant. It was in the traditional local style, though high end. She ordered food and drink then went off to the restroom. She would not be able to have a shower, but she did use some wet towels to wipe herself down. That made her feel a lot better. By the time she returned from the restroom, her food was just coming out of the kitchen. She sat and enjoyed her meal. It was another 30 minutes later that she returned to the car to restart her journey back to the hotel.
Now she was in a comfortable and somewhat safe place, she decided to check out her new quest. She opened up her system menus and navigated to the quest screen, the quest she had completed had already disappeared from the list. A new quest had appeared.
Quest D1: Avenge your family (Chain Quest)
Investigate the activities of the syndicate and find out which branches were operating in the city when your family’s accident occurred. Now that you know the supernatural world exists, find and cultivate resources in this shadowy world. Remember greed transcends species.
Reward: Quest Points, Knowledge of your family’s fate
Status: In Progress
The quest was illuminating to say the least. The remit was wider in scope than she had anticipated. The quest confirmed that her family’s demise had been caused by something relating to the syndicate, and then been hushed up. That required a level of competence and a level of power. This need to delve deeper into this new world as part of the quest left Tasha feeling like there was more to this quest than met the eye.
She had a feeling that the system already knew the details she was searching for, but was just leading her along a path for its own ends. The tone and content of the quests made that pretty clear. Still, she was happy to go along with the system. So far it had only helped her, and then given her the tools to pass its tests. She felt like the system was preparing her for something, but couldn’t or wouldn't provide more detail. It also felt like the system was testing her suitability for its own agenda. More mysteries relating to the system, she thought, and no way to start answering any of those questions.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Still this quest had given her a starting point to start hunting down the rest of the syndicate. She had clear video footage of a group of people murdering that man. There were so many ways that could be leveraged to push those hidden in the shadows out.
As Tasha was lost in her thoughts, the journey back to the Mandarin Oriental flew by. Soon she was back at the hotel and feeling shattered. She ordered room service, then went off to take a long luxurious shower.
After her shower, she dressed for bed and checked on the room service. It had been delivered and left outside her door as per her request. She pulled in the tray of delicious food and took her time enjoying it while the television ran in the background. She had left the news channel running in the background just as a form of white noise, but when the normal news stories changed to a breaking news item she was pulled from her reverie.
Tasha focused on the news story, it was about the disappearance of a young scion of one of the local business dynasties. While big news in the local region, it was unlikely to be treated as anything more than curiosity in the wider world. As the news reader described the missing person and added colour commentary about their haunts and videos of family members pleading for their safe return, Tasha had flashbacks to the loss of her own family.
She began to focus more on the story, and they finally showed a detailed photo of the person in question. Tasha took a moment to realise who she was looking at. It was none other than the vampire girl she had fought and killed just earlier in the day. Providence indeed. Once she realised that this story was linked to her quest, she was even more glad that she had spent the time to ensure she had removed as much of her trace from the crime site as possible. She was also glad to have the video footage of the vampire in question carrying out her heinous acts. She would have to make sure to splice the video footage together and to scrub any trace of her own actions before letting anyone, even Hanna see it. She trusted Hanna a great deal, but had learned the hard way not to let any incriminating video evidence exist. The risk of a leak was just too high.
She checked the time, and worked out the time back in London, it was still the morning of the long day she had just lived through there. She called Hanna on an encrypted app.
“Hanna, I hope I didn’t wake you.” asked Tasha, “How are things in London.”
“Things are fine here,” replied Hanna. “The team are getting into proper background checks of your new employees and the list keeps getting longer and longer.”
“Bring on more trusted people,” replied Tasha. “We are going to need them in any case. I need you to also look into something else. A young scion has just gone missing here in Malaysia. I need you to do a full work up on the girl and her whole family.”
“Understood, I will get straight on that,” replied Hanna. She knew better than to ask questions on the phone, even if the app was encrypted, it didn’t stop people from being able to listen in.
“Also look at acquiring the entire intelligence firm where you were working before coming to join me,” said Tasha. “I have a feeling we are going to need the additional muscle on top of the intelligence team. Might as well bring them fully in house.”
That alone told Hanna that things were about to get bad. No one needed a private army in times of peace.
After finishing up her call with Hanna and finishing her dinner, Tasha decided to accept the rewards that were offered earlier. She brought up the appropriate message from her system interface.
Apply all rewards?
24 stat points - will require 2.4 hours to assign.
Please ensure you are in a safe space and a comfortable position before proceeding.
Assign now? Yes / No
After making sure she was comfortably ensconced in the comfortable bed, she selected yes on the prompt. The, by now familiar, excruciating pain ripped through her body while locking it up. The pain ramped up until she fell into the sweet embrace of oblivion.
She came to after three hours, and dragged herself out of bed and back into a hot shower. The hot water helped to massage her body, loosening up the tight muscles. As she soaked, she brought the shop option. The cost of 1 single stat had increased from 30 to 90. It seemed like every 10 stats the costs would triple. She would need more and more quest points to buy stats. It would become a lot more economical to add stats through hunting and investing. She pondered whether to add another 8 stat points with her quest points. She wasn’t sure when or even if the shop would start to offer anything apart from quest points. In the end, she decided to spend another 720 quest points to add one more stat to all 8 of her stats raising them all to 43.
As she was only adding 1 stat point to each, the effect was markedly less than adding 3 to each stat point simultaneously. It took under an hour for the change to be complete as she lay back in bed, she had not even bothered to dress after getting out of the shower.
She called down to the concierge to request a full body hot oil massage, the day had left her feeling out of sorts and she decided to pamper herself.
She went down to the spa for her massage, and soon found herself under the tender ministrations of a professional masseuse. She had requested a strong man to work on her, even though it was an unusual choice for a woman due to her need for a much stronger person.
As she lay there enjoying the feeling of her muscles relaxing, she reviewed her full status.
Name: Tasha Andersen
Race: Human (Tier 0) - Level 1
Class: Rouge (Tier 2) - Level 1
Profession: Technocrat (Tier 2) - Level 1
Strength: 43
Dexterity: 43
Proprioception: 43
Constitution: 43
Intellect: 43
Will: 43
Charisma: 43
Soul: 43
Luck: Locked
Quest Points: 320
Open Quests: 4
She had a lot to get done, but tomorrow would be soon enough.