“This isn’t what I agreed to,” Ray said, his voice catching in his throat.
“What did you not agree to?” the guard asked.
He stared at her with a growing scowl. “Don’t act dumb. The deal was that I’d be taken to where you know for sure there were monsters I could take down. I’m not here to kill your infected dinosaurs for you.”
“But I thought the deal was for you to gain Essence. That is what we agreed to. We’ve brought you to where you can avail yourself of the opportunity to gain a great deal of Essence with minimum effort and fuss. Are you going to reject it so off-handedly simply because it offends your sensibilities?”
Ray wondered if she was getting her revenge on him after he had tricked her into revealing that she was indeed missing not being able to join the battle. She certainly seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in taunting him.
“So, what?” Ray asked. “You’re going to tell me this is all you can offer? If I want Essence elsewhere, I need to go find the monsters on my own?”
“Correct.”
Ray looked past the woman to where the infected raptor was lying on the ground. So many of its scales had fallen off its body, flesh pulsing and oozing out at every such location. That the raptor was still breathing looked like a small miracle.
It wasn’t just this dinosaur, of course. He could already see more of them in similar states farther off. No doubt there would be even more once Ray explored the whole area.
The guard continued to look at him expectantly. Challengingly. “Are you going to truly decline?”
There was a new inflection in her voice. She didn’t spell out what exactly Ray would be declining, but he got the gist all the same. He wouldn’t just be declining the wishes of the Everstead. More importantly, he would be declining the mercy he could deliver to these poor, infected beasts.
A mercy only he could deliver with any notion of safety.
Ray looked sharply at the woman. “You lied.”
Her mouth crooked up into a little smile. “It took you that long to figure it out?”
“I tend not to assume most people are lying to my face if I can help it.”
She shook her head. “What’s it going to be, sir?”
Ray looked back at the poor dinosaurs again. They were suffering… needlessly. These were just beasts. Why had the Floor Lord decided to transmit the infection to them too? How had she done so?
Why couldn’t she be satisfied with the havoc she was causing among the citizens of Everstead kingdom?
“Fine.” Ray sighed. “I’ll k—I’ll help them.”
The guard nodded, like she had known that Ray would agree eventually. She led the way forward.
Ray reached and looked down at the first infected raptor. It looked up at him mournfully through exhausted, half-dead eyes. He grimaced. It had done nothing to deserve such a fate. And now, it was up to him to deliver it and the rest of its infected kind from the pain and torture they were living through.
He cast Mottling Spiritguard to make a salvo of chaotic orbs revolve around him. One shot down at the nearest dinosaur, turning into a spear as it pierced through the raptor’s brain through its eye. Killed instantly.
[Enemy Defeated—Dinosaur]
Tier 13 Monster: Greater Raptor [Level 28] x1
Essence: +3,640
Knowledge: +3
True Mana Restored: +280
Essence to Level 36: 20,060/97,600
Knowledge to next Threshold: 1,653/2,000
No, System. Not enemy defeated. These poor creatures, these infected dinosaurs, weren’t any enemy of his.
Ray did note that they were Greater Raptors. A powerful creature. If there were a lot of them in this fenced off compound, then he was going to attain a lot of Essence. Unlike every other time, the prospect of gaining more Essence didn’t excite him one bit.
Huh. Was this the first time he was feeling this way?
The guard nodded. She bent down to murmur some words to the dead raptor, words that almost sounded like a sort of prayer. He didn’t ask what they were. They sounded private.
She led Ray further into the compound. There were indeed more of the infected dinosaurs that Ray was supposed to assist by taking their lives. None of them could be helped in any other way. Not after the infection had taken root.
With how limited Ray’s power was, the Everstead would never consent to him using his Tower Node abilities to try and heal them. Even he knew that he had nowhere near enough gas in the Tower Nodes to take care of the hordes upon hordes of monsters here.
He got to work. Gruesome and depressing though it was, Ray walked over the entire area, going wherever the guard led him, killing the dinosaurs one by one.
Not a single one of them resisted. Not the raptors, not the triceratops or any others, not even those small, birdlike ones that he had seen flitting about in the populated areas of the Cliffs. They definitely weren’t flying around here. Ray killed them all as quickly and mercifully as he could.
“The last of them,” the woman said as they reached the rear of the fenced zone.
Ray ought to have been at least a little amazed at the creature before him. It looked like a T-rex, or perhaps some other large, carnivorous dinosaur that was of a similar build.
It too was infected, just like the rest. Not moving, not even seeming to breathe. Just another one that he had to kill.
There was something quite grave about killing a majestic beast like that. Strangely, he hadn’t ever felt like that when he had faced monsters that were no less majestic. When he had fought that Viledrake, when he had first faced down a Duskshell or a Greater Windbane. None of those creatures had elicited this sort of almost… respectful reaction from him.
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Was it because these weren’t truly aggressive monsters that automatically saw him as their enemy? Or was it because he didn’t bear them any real ill will?
Nevertheless, Ray killed them. It was what he did best, after all.
[Enemy Defeated—Dinosaur]
Tier 13 Monster: Greater Raptor [Level 28] x8
Tier 13 Monster: Greater Triceratops [Level 26] x7
Tier 13 Monster: Greater Diplodocus [Level 29] x2
Tier 12 Monster: Archaeopteryx [Level 23] x11
Tier 14 Monster: Greater Tyrannosaur [Level 30] x1
Essence: +94,880
Knowledge: +87
True Mana Restored: +7,470
[Level Up!]
Reward
* +5 Intellect, +5 Spirit, +2 Vitality +2 Agility, +10 allocatable free stats.
* 1 True Mana Skill Point
Essence to Level 37: 17,340/105,400
Knowledge to next Threshold: 1,740/2,000
Ray was glad for another level up. He hadn’t realized he would so effortlessly kill so many creatures that he really would earn another level, but he wasn’t about to complain. Even if the way he had gained the Essence was ultimately distasteful.
“That was the last of them, I hope,” he said.
The guard got up from where she knelt next to the fallen T-rex. She had taken a bit of extra time to send the huge dinosaur off properly. Ray was once again tempted to find out just what kind of last rites she had performed for the departing dinosaurs, but he kept his mouth shut.
“We are mostly done, yes,” she said. “Except for one last thing.”
Ray tensed as the woman came to stand right before him. She was almost as tall as he was, so didn’t really need to tilt her head to look him square in the eye.
“Three more strikes, sir,” she said. “And you are free to go.”
Ray’s heart turned cold as a stone sinking in a pond. Three more strikes. One each for the woman, her raptor, and the other mount Ray had ridden into the compound on.
They really had planned this pretty well.
“I thought you were only lying about why you couldn’t go and join the rest of your comrades in the war,” Ray said. “I didn’t realize your regret was a lie too.”
Her dark eyes turned fierce. “I do regret that I cannot join them. But it cannot be helped. I am not important enough to undergo healing, and since I have no way of getting better, I do not wish to endanger the kingdom with my continued existence. That I have even been allowed to go on for this long is already a blessing. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
“Except for me to spend effort killing you.” Ray tilted his head questioningly. “When you could very well do it yourself.”
“Are you asking me to kill myself?”
“Isn’t that basically what you’re doing right now?”
She ground her teeth together but had no reply to that.
“Tell me something,” Ray said. “What would you do if you were healed up and good as new?”
“Don’t play games with me. I can’t be healed up. There is no point in considering such foolish fancies.”
“What if I told you that doesn’t have to be a fancy?”
“I refuse. There are far better candidates who deserve healing. I am not deserving of such a blessing. This is why you must kill me, here and now.”
“Why?”
“…why? Because I’m asking you to. Because I want to die, before I become a danger to anyone else. I will be of no use to anyone in my current state. The only good I could do is to permanently get out of everyone’s way.”
“Is that right?” Ray made a show of considering it. “I was feeling bad for the poor animals, which is why I ultimately agreed to free them from their pain. You, on the other hand, are no innocent little beastie. I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy. You really think I’ll spend time and energy killing you just because you asked?”
“Time and—time and energy?” Her voice rose in volume with every word. “Don’t lie. You can kill me with a mere swipe of your hand. It costs you nothing. You are choosing to withhold the mercy you could give me.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“You… you would force me to commit suicide?”
Ray sighed exaggeratedly. “I can’t just kill any random person because they asked me to. I mean, I don’t even have any proof that you’re actually infected. For all I know, this could be some elaborate scheme to trick and trap me.”
The guard blinked at him. Then, with no small amount of anger, she began pulling off her armour. Her arms were free first, revealing angry veins running all over her skin. Then came her legs, mottled and twisted in much the same way they had been for the man whom Ray had healed yesterday.
When she took off her breastplate and lifted her gambeson, Ray had a hard time not grimacing at the tumorous growth bulging on one side of her stomach.
“Is this proof enough for you?” she asked scathingly.
“Fine,” Ray said. “I’ll take care of it.”
She actually looked happy that Ray had supposedly agreed to end her life then and there. Some people really were cooked in the head.
Before dealing with the guard, Ray decided to end the lives of the last two raptors in the area. Neither had shown any signs of the infections yet, but since they had come into the compound where their infected brethren had lain, they had no doubt caught it, if they hadn’t had it simmering within them already.
Ray found himself being a lot less reluctant to kill the raptors. Even though they looked healthier than the ones whose lives he had ended so far, he didn’t hesitate. Perhaps he had gotten a little too used to killing innocent creatures.
As it was, Ray ended their lives with the last of his Spiritguard orbs spearing through their skulls. Not really clean, but quick all the same.
The guard took a deep breath as Ray turned to her. She tensed a bit, then visibly forced herself to relax. Her eyes were closed, her expression fearful for a moment before she forced it to turn calm and accepting. The tremble on her lips didn’t go away, though.
It was nice she had closed her eyes. Ray had no trouble calling up the Tower Node of the Fleshcrafter and getting to work. Not the one he had used yesterday, which he still wasn’t sure if it was ready or not. The one he had called up was the second, newer Tower Node that he held in reserve.
Ray concentrated. He ran through the exact actions he had performed yesterday, the specific ways he had channelled the Fleshcrafter Tower Node’s flesh-manipulating powers.
Next, he healed up the woman before him, all at once.
It took some very precise control to make the Tower Node perform what its counterpart had done yesterday, but all at the same time. He couldn’t have it rip off the corrupted, cancerous growths bit by bit. Otherwise, the guard would become wise to his little trick and start rebelling or doing something else even more profoundly stupid.
So instead, Ray had to focus the Tower Node’s power into multiple pathways, each acting on a different portion of the woman’s body. Each held back from acting until Ray gave the signal.
When he unleashed them all at once, the woman gasped and staggered back. The corrupted veins on her arms and shoulders emerged from beneath her skin. All the twisted flesh on her legs came off at the same time. Her stomach seemed to cave in as the tumour pulled free.
All of it came with blood. Lots of blood. And pain too, no doubt. The woman screamed as she retreated, then fell.
Ray was acting already, though. Knitting her good flesh together to close the wounds, closing up the torn blood vessels from spilling too much of her blood.
“Hold still,” he said.
She actually complied. Despite looking horrified at first—most likely at the fact that Ray had healed her instead of killing her, and not at the fact that she was covered and surrounded by her own blood and corrupted flesh—she remained still. That allowed Ray to move around her and continue using the Tower Node’s power, while still keeping it hidden behind his back.
It took a while, but Ray was eventually done. He had attempted to be a little thorough, especially since the woman wasn’t protesting and he wanted the healing to work.
By that point, the Tower Node had disappeared though. He wouldn’t be able to call upon it for a day at least.
The woman rose to her feet shakily, looking down at her blood-drenched self. “You didn’t kill me.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “Oops. My aim slipped.”
She looked up at him, then laughed. It was tinged a bit with hysteria. “What am I supposed to do now? Especially that I have been healed by a murderer like you?”
“That’s just rude. I was defending myself.”
It did bring up a complexity he couldn’t really grasp then. Ray hadn’t hesitated to kill the soldiers attacking him in the warehouse. It had been life or death then. But he’d harboured qualms about killing this guard, going so far as to trick her and heal her up. A killer. And a healer now, too.
Did that make him some kind of hypocrite? Was he merely bending to the whim of every situation and reacting accordingly, with no real central conviction to guide him other than some vague, everyday sense of morality? What the hell was even controlling him right now?
He shook his head. Pointless considerations. He didn’t regret killing those soldiers in the warehouse, and he didn’t regret helping this soldier either.
“You could do whatever it is you wanted to do,” Ray said. “Before you got so obsessed with dying. But frankly, I don’t care. Fuck off. I’m done with all this. Time for me to get out of here.”
Leaving the woman behind, Ray began heading out of the compound. She’d be fine. The dead would no longer transmit the infection, so she wasn’t in danger of catching it again. For now, Ray went straight Cory’s manor. It was time he headed to Cliff One. Finally.