Once the excitement of the new card faded slightly and Rowan no longer felt like he was over the moon, he realized that he had messed up.
Fusing the card on the spot was an impulsive decision made out of his desire to avoid delaying the moment. It also meant that each and every one of the soldiers and recruits now knew that the hero had a brand new, epic card added to his deck.
Put simply? The baroness was probably going to kill him when she heard about this.
Well, she’d try, Rowan thought smugly as they approached the ruined town gates, whose repair still hadn’t started. My new card is going to make dying a whole lot more difficult.
The fact that his new card actually drew partially on mana, not to mention ambient mana, was a game changer. If he could master the use of the card, he could still boost his regeneration while sparing its draw on his own mana and bodily resources.
It would be nowhere near the full extent of what the card could do, of course. Still, in a battle? Especially a prolonged one? Any amount of completely free regeneration was invaluable. And with Rowan’s build? He could keep a low-level sacrifice running near indefinitely with Blood for Blood while using Natural Renewal‘s ambient mana regeneration to restore his body without dipping into Lavish Feasting.
Once he was inside the town, Rowan caught sight of the rest of his party and their respective groups. Out in the waste, he had pushed a little harder and stayed a bit longer, just so that the last of the recruits could hit uncommon.
He sped up, leaving the soldiers a short distance behind him, as he went to rejoin his Olivia and the rest of his party.
Rowan was so caught up in his happiness and desire to brag about his new card that he never even saw the attack coming. There was no warning, no sudden dramatic surge of bloodlust that would alert the hero and allow him to react.
One second, he was happy, healthy and whole. The next, Olivia’s eyes had widened and a long, wickedly curved blade was sticking out of Rowan’s chest.
The next second, the blade’s twin flashed in front of the hero, and dug deep into his throat, opening it up with ridiculous ease.
Blood burst from both wounds as Rowan gasped, the instinctive reaction doing nothing but filling his lungs with blood. If he wasn’t so used to pain, Rowan would probably have collapsed there and then. His throat and chest were gushing blood that his ravaged heart, with a blade in it, pumped through his body.
Instead, with a near-silent hiss replacing the roar Rowan wanted to make, the hero spun around with his spear.
His refusal to drop dead and the sudden movement forced the assassin to let go of the weapon in Rowan’s chest, but the hero was far more thankful for the way his assailant instinctively backed up, creating some distance between them.
It would have been tricky to skewer the assassin with a spear if the man had chosen to stick close to him. As it was, fueled by his anger and his sacrificial card, Rowan drove his spear towards the man’s left arm that still gripped a weapon.
Even in his trance, Rowan knew to not fuel Blood for Blood with that much energy. He could feel the majority of his reserves plummeting as they struggled to repair his body. Still, what energy he did use was more than enough to cause a miniature explosion that blew the man’s arm off at the elbow.
The assassin screamed, eyes wide with pain and fear as he backpedaled further. Rowan snarled out of his healed throat and took a determined step forward, only to falter when the blade in his heart sliced new wounds.
His regeneration was doing its best, but the blade hadn’t been removed, and when the flesh tried to seal over it, the weapon reacted.
Rowan wasn’t sure what the exact enchantments on the thing were, but it was apparently sharp enough that it was slowly sliding its way down his body by sheer virtue of its honed edge.
He fumbled at his back, but his hands were too slicked with blood and the blade’s handle was at too awkward of an angle for him to grip it.
The assassin took the distraction for the opportunity that it was. The masked man dashed for one of the alleys that went between relatively intact houses. Rowan’s soldiers and the twins gave chase, but the man was far too swift, managing to keep ahead of them even with a bleeding stump of an arm.
“Rowan!” Olivia’s voice let Rowan smile in spite of everything, and the relief that followed when she gripped the blade and ripped it out of his chest was indescribable.
He tried to take a deep breath, but broke into a coughing fit instead. Each heaving cough was accompanied by flecks of blood as his body purged the liquid that was never meant to find its way into his lungs.
A part of Rowan found the whole thing humorous. There he was, in another world, coughing blood like a cultivation protagonist.
The weary chuckle must have worried Olivia because she clasped her hands around his cheeks roughly and forced him to look her in the eye. She obviously never had first aid training. “What’s wrong? Are you not healing right? He didn’t even hit you in the head.”
Rowan flinched before he realized that she was joking. There was an undercurrent of worry and fear in her voice. He leaned back in and dragged her into a short hug. Olivia hissed something about getting blood all over her, but judging how hard she hugged him back, she didn’t mind. Probably.
“We need to catch him. We need him alive,” Rowan grunted after a second, letting go and bending down to pick up the spear he dropped in favor of holding her without even meaning to.
Cool swept through him, and he pointed at one of the recruits that had lingered, horrified and confused.
“You. I want you to take these blades and get them to the mayor’s manor as quickly as you can. The rest of you follow and protect him.” Rowan gave his orders swiftly, eying the hand and part of an arm still gripping one of the blades. “Take the arm too.”
Rowan swirled around and stared at the commotion in the distance. The assassin and the soldiers chasing had moved surprisingly far from them in the time for him to fully recover. Without thinking more about it, Rowan sprinted.
It was exhilarating to draw on his dexterity for the first time since his second class evolution, and Rowan realized with a start that he wasn’t nearly as limited in his options to pursue as he thought he was.
Instead of heading for one of the alleys that zigzagged between the crumbling buildings, Rowan ran straight at one of the ruins.
One of the walls had partially collapsed, leaving a jagged splinter of stone that resembled a very dangerous set of stairs. But when Rowan’s feet landed on the stone, they did so with surety and balance the hero still marveled at.
He ran right up to the peak of the collapsed wall, then leapt. He came down on the partially collapsed roof of the next house, and the chase was on.
It was glorious.
Rowan had done exactly zero parkour in either of his worlds. He was sprinting off pure instinct and the keenness of movement afforded to him by his stats and body awareness.
He vaulted over a collapsed portion of a roof. He slid down the cracking shingles, leaving them clattering in his wake, then launched himself off the roof’s edge and onto the next in a move that caused the wall of the ruined building to shudder and collapse.
It was an obstacle course straight out of a video game, and Rowan loved it. What he loved even more was the speed at which he was gaining on the fleeing assassin.
Finally, he was just a few rows of houses away from the action, and he even caught a glimpse of the battle through the breaks between them.
The assassin was faster, better trained, and clearly at the high end of rare. Rowan’s soldiers and the twins weren’t missing an arm and losing a ton of blood though.
Rowan took a special kind of vindictive pleasure at the sight of the damage. And when the assassin reached in one of his pouches and pulled out a potion, Rayne’s whip cracked through the air.
It struck the potion perfectly, sending the liquid and glass shards down on the road.
The assassin tried to retaliate by drawing a throwing dagger from somewhere, but the blow was effortlessly stopped by Marcus’ aura of protection, and the delay allowed the cloud of miasma pursuing the man to finally catch up, clinging to his clothes and further sealing his fate.
That’s when the angry hero made his final leap, eating the impact damage and the havoc it would wreak on his knees in favor of dramatically appearing just a short-distance away from the fight.
Rowan had to admit he loved the flare of fear he saw in his assailant’s eyes and the way even his soldiers flinched. Marcus just grinned, of course, and Milena rolled her eyes.
“You’re trapped and without a weapon. If you value your life at all, you will surrender now and be taken into custody,” Rowan declared, rubbing his neck as he did. The regenerated skin was still a little tender, even if the tingling feeling was rapidly fading.
The reminder of the assassination attempt did make him wish the assassin refused to comply though. Even with Keen Spear, anger was blazing through Rowan. He would have been dead if it weren’t for his card combination. There was going to be a price that had to be paid.
For some reason, the assassin just stood there, his eyes slowly scanning over the hero party and their arrayed troops. Olivia caught up to them.
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” Rowan growled. “Surrender now.”
The man must have reached the exact same conclusion as Rowan because his shoulders slumped. Relief was just about to enter Rowan’s body when the assassin suddenly collapsed, face buried in the ground.
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Olivia cursed as she rushed forward, and shoved the assassin onto his back. She didn’t even hesitate as she quickly ripped the mask off his face, but by then, it was too late.
The man’s face was melting.
His features were far too damaged to ever make out what he used to look like, and the copious amounts of blood leaking out of his mouth would have been reassurance enough that he was dead all on its own. Its black color and sludge-like quality was only further confirmation.
“Poison,” Olivia spat, looking incredibly angry. “Potent and fast acting. He was dead before he even hit the ground. Probably had a suicide pill in his mouth the entire time.”
Rowan didn’t respond.
What was there to say after someone had stabbed him in the back, slit his throat, and then committed suicide?
The man was clearly a professional instead of some opportunistic idiot who got paid a couple gold coins to take out the annoying new mayor. That only left one question. Who?
Rowan assisted Olivia with trying to find the assassin’s identity. The man’s skin was spotless, his pockets empty of everything but the tools of his trade, and even those were rather nondescript.
Hells, even the potions were bog-common, the only hint that there was something special about the man being the fact that he had them at all. Since not even the town’s apothecary had them, that cast suspicion in the direction of the mercenary companies. But this could have just as well been an outsider sent by some noble to carry out the assassination mission.
The final clue were the blades, but those had been sent ahead. Still, no matter how useless the corpse was, Rowan wasn’t about to leave it behind.
—
“There’s very little useful information I can offer you about these weapons,” Camilla Sutton said, handling the two short swords gently.
“Nothing at all? There’s no assassin order who uses blades like it exclusively or something?” Rowan sighed, knowing that it was absolutely a ridiculous long shot after how prepared the assassin had been.
That coaxed a smile out of Olivia’s mother, but she shook her head nonetheless. “I’m afraid not. They’re obviously enchanted, and enchanted well. Honestly? These are nearly on par with blades I’d feel comfortable using myself. And I’m at epic.”
“Isn’t there a chance we could use that to learn more? People capable of crafting weapons like that aren’t common,” Olivia pointed out, somehow angrier over the assassination than Rowan himself was.
“They might not be common, but every serious noble house has one in their employ. The only thing this tells us is that your would-be assassin was well-connected. The weapons don’t have a crafter’s mark, for obvious reasons, so hunting down the person who made them is very much a bust,” Camilla said.
“What about finding the person who sent this guy? I mean, I know that security hasn’t been the best in the town since its near destruction, but I don’t think someone this powerful and high level can just operate out of town without being noticed,” Rowan asked.
“What makes you so sure he was unnoticed or that he wasn’t a native?” the baroness countered, sounding tired. “I am unfortunately fairly certain that he was both known and a local.”
Rowan leaned forward immediately, eyes glowing hungrily. “You know him?”
“Know him? Hardly. However, you might remember that I’ve mentioned a ton of problems in the town, mostly in the form of illegal activity. This place is rife with it. Frontier towns are prone to the problem as it were, but this… I honestly don’t know what the previous mayor was doing.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s that bad. Managing this town has been a headache. Black markets operating in open air, contraband that was kingdom-wide banned, disregarding of laws, including protection of commoners and lower tier individuals, and so, so much more.”
Olivia went around the desk and offered her mom a hug.
“I apologize,” the baroness sighed. “It feels like a lifetime since I came to Rest’s Remorse. Anyway, for your question, Rowan, I’m pretty sure there are underground guilds and a couple black companies operating in this town.”
Rowan had no clue what she was talking about, but judging by the gasps and concerned faces, it was pretty important.
“Care to clue in the guy who’s not from your world?” Rowan asked.
“Right, sorry. Underground guilds and black companies are, as their names imply, illegal gatherings of people who cannot afford to appear openly in view of both local and international laws.”
Camilla paused there, but Olivia was thankfully ready to fill in. “They have banned classes. Some of their members are also wanted criminals, traitors, and fugitives. But the biggest problem is definitely the banned classes.”
With a flicker of unease, Rowan recalled what Olivia had said when she reassured him that no one would try to kill him just because his class name sounded edgy. “What are those, exactly? I’ve already seen some classes that sound… sketchy. Including my own.”
“Oh, not yours,” Olivia said as a look of understanding dawned on her face. “Banned classes are those who are either outright malignant or whose unlocking requirements are so vile no one will tolerate their holders. The most relevant of those, for you, are demonic classes. They belong to those who accept demonic heart cards and use them to replace their own.”
While Olivia explained things, the baroness moved off to one of the cabinets that lined the walls of her temporary office and pulled out a tall bottle of wine and five cups. Rowan raised an eyebrow as Camilla distributed the drinks before collapsing back into her chair with a weary sigh.
“What Olivia is missing is that once a corrupted or demonic heart card is accepted, the process warps the user’s class too. These classes are often extremely powerful but come at the cost of the person’s sanity or humanity. All of the people who use them either go mad or gradually transform into demons themselves. Any time we find one, they’re immediately placed on cross-kingdom bounty lists and hunted on sight.”
Rowan nodded. “Checks out. What about examples of banned classes? Is it stuff like [Necromancer] and the like?”
It was Milena that made a noise of disgust, rolling her eyes so hard that Rowan swore she almost lost them. “Oh please. People always say stuff like that, but necromancy is a perfectly valid and innocent profession. Just because they handle corpses doesn’t make them evil.”
“True,” the baroness interceded. “The classes I’m talking about are much, much worse. [Plague Adherent], for example. To unlock that particular evolution of [Apothecary], you need to purposefully infect at least two hundred people with a deathly illness. Then, there’s the other vile classes, like those that let their users steal stats through torture and other depraved rituals.”
Rowan shuddered, suddenly realizing that he definitely didn’t know as much about his new world as he likely should have. But his mind made the connection to something more immediate. “What about [Blood Reaver]? That definitely doesn’t sound like something you’d get for behaving lawfully.”
Unfortunately, the baroness just shook her head. “The class has had negative connotations historically. Most earned it through pillage, rape and slaughter. However, it is possible to unlock it through particularly vicious culling of monsters, which Florin claims he’s done.”
“I doubt that,” Marcus muttered, wrinkling his nose. “He smells like he takes regular baths in blood and then rolls around in the corpses afterwards.”
“There have been aspersions as to the veracity of his claims, but nothing was ever proven,” Camilla said. Rowan had noticed some time back that the baroness had a tendency to fall back on formal language when upset.
“So what’s our best option?” Rowan asked. “Is there anything that we can do? I mean, I’m the mayor, and he’s in my town.”
“Florin is a man not many like, but whose services many rely on. He’s been building connections to various nobles for decades. The only reason he isn’t at epic already is because, even for him, paying or earning access to an epic ranked dungeon under noble management is highly improbable. That’s the safer option, and he’s enough of a coward to continue working towards it instead of looking for a proper fight out in the wastes. Too risky for him.”
The answer was clear. Florin, whether he was a monster or not, was out of their reach.
“What is he even doing here then?” Rowan asked. “The wastes are right next to us, and this place was recently invaded by an army of demons. If he hates risk so much, why stay? Why come here in the first place?”
“Good question. The simple answer is, I don’t know. I’ve written to my husband and some of my contacts, but it will take time for any replies to get to us. This is highly unusual, however. I thought the Mercenary King was the only major player in town, only to find Florin and Tamara, of all people.”
Rowan noticed the slight emphasis that Camilla put on the name Tamara. He snuck a glance at Olivia, but his friend’s face betrayed nothing but concern for her mother. The baroness had history with the mage. But Rowan wasn’t about to go poking his nose into her business, seeing as he had no interest in losing it.
“So what do we do?” Rowan asked.
No one had any answers. Thankfully, the silence was interrupted by a knock at the door. The chamberlain strolled into the room, looking unflappable as ever.
“Please tell me you have some good news for us,” Rowan said, as he searched for some kind of good news.
“I’m afraid not, Lord Rowan. I’ve done as you asked and checked the body after organizing a search in the area where you were attacked. The results, though, are less than ideal,” the chamberlain said.
“Let me guess, no discernible proof of affiliation on the body, and absolutely no clues on where this guy came from?”
“Well, that is close enough my lord, yes.” The chamberlain hesitated. “However, it appears that the man who attacked you was spotted before.”
Instantly, the old man became the center of undivided attention in the room. “Don’t keep us in suspense,” Olivia said tensely, and Rowan didn’t like the way her hand twitched towards her potion bag.
“The assassin was seen hanging around the city gate you were regularly using for the last few days. He did nothing of note, loitering around and occasionally purchasing some food. He never spoke, never took off his mask, and would vanish every time after purchasing a meal.”
Rowan cursed quietly and paced in the confines of the room. The information made him feel stupid.
He knew there were people unhappy with his presence in the town. He also knew that they might eventually try to do something about it.
In spite of that, he’d happily traipsed his way into the wastes and back on the same route every single day. Frankly, it was a bit of a wonder that he hadn’t been attacked earlier.
It wasn’t that Rowan was still angry over the fact that he was attacked. That was unpleasant and it hurt. Still, out of the entirety of their party, he was uniquely suited to surviving the ordeal. Even Marcus, if he was caught off guard and the right weapon and poison combo was used, would die more easily than him.
It was the thought that others could have gotten caught up in the mess that got to him.
What if Olivia had been right next to him and the assassin decided to slit her throat instead of his? After all, most of the time, stabbing someone through the heart was more than enough to keep them down.
I haven’t taken enough precautions. I haven’t organized the army right. I even broke them all up into groups, increasing the odds of an attack. I —
“Rowan!” Olivia’s voice snapped Rowan out of his daze, and he froze, rooted to the spot. “Are you back with us now?” Olivia was standing right in front of him and looking him in the eye.
Rowan swallowed thickly and looked away. “Yes. Sorry. Did you say something?”
“We were just talking about increasing patrols and boosting the numbers of guards and soldiers traveling together at the same time. It might not do much, but it might discourage something as blatant as this.”
“I also believe it would be a good idea to have them on the lookout for anyone suspicious,” the chamberlain supplied. “If we’d known about someone watching the gate, then we could have acted earlier.”
The baroness disagreed. “No. That would be a waste of time and manpower. How do we even define suspicious? With the number of homeless and destitute in this town, we’d be shaking down every poor soul that dares loiter in place for too long. They don’t deserve that, and it would be pointless besides.”
“We should offer a reward,” Rowan said, eyes sparkling as he happened upon the perfect idea.
“A reward? For reporting suspicious activity?” The doubt and disapproval in the baroness’s voice was more than enough to communicate her opinion on the matter.
“Not that. We should offer a reward for every actionable piece of information people can give us on the assassin. Even if he’s been loitering around the gate for the last few days, where was he before that? He’s not a wraith. He must have traveled through the town to get there. He lived here.”
“That… could work, but, my lord, I’m afraid we don’t exactly have a lot of resources to pull on for this,” Henry said, sounding more than a little apologetic.
“Then don’t. Offer a meal to everyone who comes to report something, and tell them that they’ll get an uncommon card if their words lead to anything. I have more than enough of those, for now. I bet we get something useful out of all the reports before I run out.”
“You might just get a bunch of fake reports,” Camilla said.
“But it could also work,” Rowan insisted.
“True. Do it, Henry. Leave the cards you are planning to use for that with me, Rowan,” Camilla said.
Rowan turned over the stack of cards he’d earned that way and looked at the chamberlain again, he had been so absorbed with his own problems that he didn’t even realize that the man had a name. Rowan had always known then man as the chamberlain instead of his real name.
“This will certainly be helpful. Any cards that you’re not planning to use, scrap, or trade them, I suggest handing over to me. Not just as rewards but in general,” the baroness addressed them all. Then, apparently losing patience with them, she motioned towards the door. “Go rest. There’s nothing else we can do today.”
They complied.
Rowan headed straight for his room, having taken a quick bath to get rid of all the blood when they arrived. On the way there, however, he had his hand stolen by a certain alchemist.
When she followed him into his room and cuddled up into him, he didn’t protest. That had stopped back when her parents arrived at Felton’s Mill, but that night, Rowan slept better than he had in weeks.