The archives were huge. Enormous. Ships departed every day and the place contained centuries of records. I had high hopes that I could find Almond's name in some ledger. In several of them, actually. But we had to rely on the Archivist's memory and abilities to find the scrolls I needed. He didn't live in Mountain View, after all.
The damage from the blight was ticking. 23 every second, seven hundred per minute. Forty-two thousand in an hour but I'd be long dead. Without any recourse, I shifted into my hybrid form without undressing. I wasn't going to fight but I needed the regeneration. To my surprise, it was faster than the blight damage.
If the archivist noticed I was now a were-jaguar, he didn't let me know.
Hours went by. Since I was absorbing some energy from the blight damage and Nenandil to give me water, It was enough to keep me nourished. The archivist continued in his sedated pace. I slept, woke up, practiced some Skill that didn't need space, like meditation and yoga.
> You gained the Meditation (rare) Skill. After a few minutes of concentration, you can clear your mind and control your emotions. During the meditative state, you gain an extra Willpower test modified by the Skill level to resist mental influence and perceiving illusions for what they are.
>
> Your rank in Meditation is Apprentice 20.
>
> You gained the Yoga (unique) Skill. Improve Flexibility and motor control of your body by Rank x Endurance x 0.2%.
>
> Your rank in Yoga is Apprentice 20.
I wish I could gain some sort of Blight Resistance but I suspected that the blight generated by the archivist was too weak. I didn't notice but he went to the trapdoor and brought more scrolls to put on the wall. Strange.
But I needed information on Almond. Given how long it took to retrieve information from here, I understand why the queries from the assassin's guild didn't turn up this place. I kept my martial arts training. It was the only thing to keep me occupied.
> You gained the T'ai chi ch'üan (unique) Skill. Improve body recovery rate, reduce the duration of debuffs, and increase your lifespan by Rank x Willpower x 0,05%.
>
> Your rank in T'ai chi ch'üan is Apprentice 20.
>
> You gained the Karate (unique) Skill. Improve the damage and accuracy of your punches and kicks using humanoid appendages.
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> Your rank in Karate is Apprentice 20.
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> You gained the Judo (unique) Skill. Improve damage and accuracy for grappling and throwing maneuvers.
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> Your rank in Judo is Apprentice 20.
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> You gained the Aikido (unique) Skill. Improve dodge chance, the accuracy of counterattacks, and mobility in combat.
>
> Your rank in Aikido is Apprentice 20.
Just like the {Disease Vector} and the - ridiculous - amebiasis debuff, the System is plucking stuff out of my memories and adding the Skills on the fly. I dabbled in those martial arts as a kid, never staying too long on any of them. The rarity never was an indicator of power. Just how many people have the same Skill. I think some of them are locked but the whole approach is a mess. The ones I got are considered unique because I'm the only one that has them. Maybe with time, someone will be randomly assigned one of them.
I tried other things to stave boredom and after a long time, the archivist came back with a few scrolls.
"I've found what you need. Here, there's a record of one slave named Almond that matches your description. He was assigned as a rower on the Dawn Skimmer, a merchant galley. He did several trips between here and Port Whitecastle to the south. But records about the Dawn Skimmer stopped two years ago. I can't tell what happened to the ship, but nobody listed as a member of the crew appeared anywhere else after that."
My heart sank. Shipwreck, piracy, desertion, a myriad of things could've happened. But now I had a timeframe, a route, and a ship to look for. I could chase after my brother's trail.
"Thank you, archivist. I'll be on my way now."
The zombie sailor stops. "Not so fast, jaguar miss. You need to fulfill your part of the bargain first."
Now comes the creepypasta part. Feed the beast. "And what is it? A bite of my flesh?"
He lacked the ability to make elaborate facial expressions but I could swear I saw disgust. "No. Set me free. Grant me the final death. I can sense the essence of silver in your blood. You can kill me."
Most undead was weak to silver. But I needed one more piece of information before I went. "How did you become the archivist here? Any curse involved?"
I warned Nenandil to stay alert. We planned to freeze the archivist in a block of ice and run for the trapdoor.
"Udiphine, the Goddess of Sea and Storms, she is a capricious mistress. My father was once a captain of a merchant's vessel and I an officer under his command. We were attacked by pirates and he prayed in desperation. She answered his prayers but demanded he sacrificed me. To save his vessel, my father didn't hesitate to pierce my heart with his sword. Resentment brought me back from the void in this wretched existence.
"But the Goddess wasn't done with me yet. Once I woke in the depths, I came here to get my revenge. My father was old and retired from sailing to become the wharfmaster. Udiphine warned him and he prepared a trap. I chased him to this basement where a sorcerer set a spell to bind me and force me to work for the wharfmaster. Once more under his command, my father ordered me to organize and catalog the ledgers. He never came to see me again.
"That was a hundred years ago. The wharfmasters forgot the enchantment. They only know I am here, not what I can do."
Nice story but one thing doesn't match. "How did you become level seventy-five if you were a young officer?"
Note to self. When facing an undead with a level higher than mine, do not confront his lies.
The archivist changed. His face twisted and cracked, his eyes glowed with a blue light. "I WILL have my freedom!"
The water rose from nowhere around me and splashed all around in heavy waves. Seconds later, a blast of cold froze the water in place, trapping the archivist as I ran for the trapdoor.
The archivist was cackling madly, "It only opens from the outside, stupid kitten!" He taunted.
I raised my hands. The fairy summoned her ice shards and fired them at the undead revenant. It accomplished nothing.
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Damn. Something must work. He can't be invulnerable. I doubt he's really vulnerable to silver. The ice cracked around the archivist.
There must be something in here that keeps him invincible. Some sort of ritual, diagram, fetish, phylactery, runes, or a focus. I ran between the shelves of scrolls, looking for something. The place was huge. But not infinite. There was nothing, only the shelves. And scrolls.
An explosion and the sound of ice breaking told me my enemy broke free. I heard him shouting and moaning as he ran after me. I could swear I had run at least two laps around the archives already.
"I will walk the earth once again!" He threatened.
An idea ran through my mind. Maybe if I could find the source of the blight. A quick glance at the notifications showed me that that wasn't going to happen. The damage was a steady value anywhere I stayed.
I was getting winded when I saw something. I was running past one of the older sections of the archives. Nenandil fired more ice shards at the monster. And as the shards hit, some scrolls crumbled into ashes without burning.
Worth a try. I fished inside my backpack for my flint. No steel, we used a zinc-copper-tin alloy heavy on the zinc.
I waited for him to almost reach me on a corner of the massive room and dashed as fast as I could to the far corner. There I dropped a bunch of scrolls on the ground and fired the sparks at the scrolls. The dry parchment quickly caught on fire. I stowed my tools in a pocket and picked two burning scrolls to spread the fire along the shelves.
The archivist's reaction was immediate. He reached the burning scrolls and stomped to stop the fire. Like kindling, the scrolls eagerly burned and I had set a quarter of the room on fire when I noticed one little tidbit.
We were deep underground and airflow was a bygone concept. The air that entered the room came from the trapdoor. I coughed and felt my lungs burn.
Her ability to purify water also kept it oxygenated. It was of no use to clash against truth just because Earth physics and chemistry told that it shouldn't be possible. They didn't have magic.
The worst part of water breathing was to fill and later empty one's lungs with water. Took a lot of time for that change. That's why dual breathing races had both lungs and gills.
The chase didn't stop. He stomped the fires out but more spread until the oxygen in the air was gone. The room was hot, like don't-open-the-trapdoor-or-we'll-explode hot. It didn't bother me at all. With Thor's gift, standing on a bonfire would be less harmful than this blight.
Instead of fire, I used my claws to shred the scrolls as we ran around the room. Any semblance of rationality and control had long departed the undead archivist. Nenandil was still tossing sharp ice at him, diminishing his massive stock of scrolls.
A stroke of luck gave me an edge to end this stupid chase. Just as the archivist was running under the trapdoor, the clerk from the wharfmaster's office opened it to dump a new batch of scrolls. The rush of fresh air caused an explosion and rekindled the flames around the trapdoor, turning that area into an oven. I was thrown down by the blast.
"Freedom!" The archivist shouted.
I couldn't see a thing. And I only heard the cracking of flames when I got back on my feet. The whole room was filled with smoke and floating ashes. Nenandil was busy keeping my water helmet purified. I approached the burning area carefully. These flames did less damage than the blight. I didn't see the archivist but I saw blood dripping down the shaft. I climbed up.
The clerk was dead, his neck twisted like a green twig. Bloody bootprints led away and up the ladder to the next floor. I heard the fire roaring below and the screams coming from above. The archivist was free and busy killing people.
I take a moment to clean myself and shift back to human form. A silver were-jaguar would draw as much hostility as the undead revenant introduced to the world a twisted concept of Halloween. Shit, I'm going to fight him.
Then I'm going to find Sullivan and Salvatore and murder those two crooks.
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The city was utter chaos. The archivist was running around with no opposition. People ran everywhere and some ships were trying to set sail and get away from the pier, causing them to bump into each other and cause a traffic jam. People on the piers were trying to board those ships that didn't move and were repelled by the crew.
I climbed the highest nearby building, a warehouse, to take a look. The brunt of the damage was caused by the inhabitants. People were looting, gang thugs were fighting each other and looting too. The archivist might be strong, but he was a single humanoid entity with only unarmed melee attacks and a normal person's movement speed. The damage he could cause was severely limited.
With that in mind, I changed my target priorities. Get the gangsters first, then the undead. I put a contract on S&S and started to track them. I ran on the roofs and jumped over the narrow streets. {Track Contract} gave me their locations and I went after them like a bloodhound.
I went for the closest one first and found Salvatore. He was commanding his crew to loot some high-profile warehouses. I removed my cloak and dress and drew my daggers. I found a good spot on a wall above him and jumped down, driving both daggers to pierce his cranium.
> Assassination successful. Contract fulfilled.
>
> You killed level 51 Pirate Captain. You gained You gained 3,032,686 Exp (26,010 base x 10,000 perk x 0,0001 curse x 3.05 perk x 7,57 contract x 5.05 favored enemy).
I gave the thugs a warning, "Nobody betrays the Death Princess and lives!"
I shouted as I yanked my daggers free from Salvatore's skull and jumped back to the wall to get out through a skylight while Nenandil shotgunned ice shards to keep them from retaliating.
Back outside, I ran after Sullivan. He was moving fast and going out of the city. I jumped over the wall and climbed a cliff. He was on the road and probably running away on horseback. Smart guy. He figured out that if the archivist was running free after a century of imprisonment, there was a chance I wasn't dead.
Too bad for him that no horse could outrun the were-jaguar matriarch. I took the time to undress and stow away my things on the backpack turned into saddlebags. With Nenandil's help, I secured it over my back and tightened the straps across my belly. I stretched like cats do - a marvelous sensation - and sprinted after my target with the water fairy riding on my back.
The thrill of the hunt. The feeling of dashing after my prey, the anticipation of having my fangs sink on their flesh. Ever since the elves fused me with the jaguar's skin during the ritual, there was this side of my being, this predator lurking within my core. It drove me on, it kept me safe, it made me feel. It would've driven me insane at times if I hadn't bought that Perk to become immune to blind rage.
I became more than myself. I was four-in-one. There was me, the transmigrator from Earth, my current incarnation, the jaguar, and Nenandil. The fairy had a mind of her own but she was, in a sense, part of me.
Whenever I existed, only the second part changed. Great White One, Lily, and now Apricot. Their biology, their proclivities, and mindset shaped me as much as the mold shaped the muffin dough. Terrible analogy, I admit.
The horse carrying my mark was dead ahead. I ran past some intrepid travelers getting away from the city but none was riding as fast as Sullivan. He knew who was coming for him.
An ice ball the size of a football flew toward Sullivan's head. It hit his back and knocked the man from the horse. I pounced and hamstrung his arms and legs with my claws before he could recover.
I needed some privacy to shift and get dressed. I wasn't shy and had no problem doing that in front of people but I had no wish to give him eye candy. I ignored his pleas.
I prepared myself and also cleaned Salvatore's blood from my clothes. When I was ready, I walked around and sat on the ground in front of him.
"Please don't kill me!" He begged.
"You know, Sullivan, you had the right idea. After trapping me in that hole with a deranged revenant, the best course of action was to run away as fast as you could. But you took too long," I said to him in a taunting tone.
"Hey, look--" He stopped when I put a finger on my lips.
"You don't negotiate. You don't plea. You're worth a million and a half Exp for me. A drop in the bucket for me. I do the talking, you do the answering. Understood?"
"Loud and clear, Your Highness."
"My kingmetal coin. Where is it?"
"In my pouch."
"How long was I trapped down there?"
"Four months."
It was hard to tell here in this rocky terrain, but we were in summer.
"What did you tell people?"
"I sold the news about your demise to some interested parties. There were some bounties on your head."
"Did you collect?"
"Yes."
"In the pouch?"
"Yes."
"Get it for me."
"You mangled and froze me in ice, I can't."
"Right. Well, let's strip you bare."
Getting someone out of their clothes is easy when you have a cutting implement and no regard for that person's wellbeing. Sullivan screamed as I shredded his clothes and found the hidden pouches with the money and some strips of parchment with carefully written information in small letters. The bastard had a lot of money on him. Two platinum coins, a few dozen gold.
"I am sure your head holds information more valuable than these coins. If I had the time, I would take you to the Master so he could pick your thoughts. However, I'm in a hurry. I got a lead on my brother and I won't lose much time. I probably need to kill an undead monster on my way out or I won't have a port to sail from. Would you be a sweetheart and {Appraise} me once more?"
I turned on my title display. The face of surprise Sullivan made was priceless.
"You're the demon-slayer {Hero} too. Curse my luck."
I walked around him and drew my dagger. I would make it fast and the least painful. "Goodbye, Sullivan. You should've measured your odds better."