“Anna …” Leo softly murmured.
He was back in Dreadlands with the most beautiful girl he had ever met. They lay near the river where he saw her for the first time and he held her in his arms, tightly hugging her close. The strange thing was that he remembered her being taller, and not so skinny … and wrinkled …
“Arhh!” Leo finally woke up with a shout and realized it was lord Swan he was hugging and not Anna. The instinctive reaction to push the immortal away reminded him of the multitude broken and fractured bones as the piercing pain almost made him faint again.
He lied on the floor for few moments and inspected his condition, but, truth to be said, it was not as bad as one would expect after a struggle with an immortal. Judging from the state of his injuries Leo hadn’t been out for too long – the darkness outside the window meant it was definitely the same night.
For a split moment he tried to understand how exactly he survived, but nothing made sense other than a silly guess that the immortal died of a heart attack or the old age. Since it was useless to think about it, Leo slowly tried to stand up only to realize that every movement brought such agony one could wish they would simply die.
Then he changed the tactics. He slowly levitated upwards and changed his position in the air. Sure, it was painful, but the pain was not as excruciating and at least he was finally in a vertical position. Then he moved over to the immortal’s lifeless body and tried to put him in the amulet.
The plan was simple – hide lord Swan along with his goodies and get back to the inn where the guys were waiting for him. The problem was – no matter how he tried, the body refused to be stored. He tried different ways and even pondered about chopping the old creep in pieces, but then had another idea – the immortal was a genius runemaster – what if he had something on him that interfered with the storing process?
The next part made Leo nauseated, but there was no way for him to carry a body through the streets of the capital even though it was dark outside. He striped the old man naked, took off all the jewelry and the body was instantly stored in the amulet as if it was a piece of meat. Afterwards Leo gathered all immortal’s belongings in a pillowcase and stealthily flew out the window.
Obviously there was the no-flying law, thus he couldn’t soar to the skies and fly to the inn. And there was no way to actually walk for him either – the pain of putting feet to the ground was unbearable. Thus Leo quickly thought of a solution, albeit an annoying one. He still flew, but only hair’s width above the ground while moving his legs as if he was walking.
Needless to say he couldn’t actually imitate a regular person walking and the wobbly steps made him look as if he was completely wasted. Fortunately there were plentiful people like that on the streets, trying to find their way from brothels and taverns back home, this he didn’t stand out too much.
It was before the sunrise when Leo arrived back to their room in the inn, threw the pillowcase with the immortal’s belongings towards the two pairs of worried eyes, carefully lied down on the bed and focused on recovering. A wide smile did bloom on his face when he heard Jack’s shout, “Heavens! We’re rich!”, but he wasn’t needed for next part of the plan and could enjoy the well deserved rest.
Musa and Jack, of course, saw how terrible Leo’s shape was, thus they left him alone and quickly searched lord Swan’s belongings. The fourteen different spacial treasures, of course, were the reason for the Jack’s earlier exclamation, but for now they looked for one particular item.
Fortunately it didn’t take too long to realize that all the official necessities were stored in one particular ring and one of those was the Blood lord’s seal they were looking for. The moment they found it, Jack quickly used it to seal a piece of parchment they had previously prepared, quickly checked the result one last time and departed. The next part was fully on him.
Musa, a bit sad he had to play a humble secondary role in the downfall of the two Blood lords, gathered the immortal’s treasures and threw them under the bed. Then he sat on it and began to cultivate since there was nothing else he could do for now.
“Master! It’s urgent!” Jack dashed in the Blood lord Goodman’s laboratory where the fat immortal currently experimented.
“No shouting in the lab!” Goodman hissed in return and didn’t even look at his underling.
“Sorry, master!” Jack apologized and knelt, “I’m sure you’ll want to see this!”
Lord Goodman threw an annoyed glance at Jack’s stretched out hand that held a couple pieces of paper and his attention was instantly drawn by the seal on one of them.
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He instantly arrived in front of Jack and asked with a frown, “Where did you get these?”
“In the ‘Gentleman’s club’.” Jack said, “One of the boy-toys found them and offered me for a price. Probably madam Wright is not as generous as it might seem.”
“You didn’t open the sealed one?” Goodman asked in a surprised voice.
“It has the Blood lord’s seal! I wouldn’t dare.” Jack seriously said, “Only you can, Sir! But I believe the other one is more important.”
“Mhm! Let’s go!” The immortal said without a second thought and Jack felt he was grabbed by the armpit and carried away. It was hard to believe the fat giant could move at the speed that made Jack’s vision blur.
It seemed that the less lucky scenario was about to unfold, but it was also fine since Jack knew there was a chance that the immortal might grab him along. For some reason the fatty always had to patronize someone and for the past months that someone usually had been him.
When they arrived at the Goodman’s teleportation platform, Jack asked pretending to be confused, “Master, where are we going?”
“For a stroll!” The immortal didn’t try to hide the lascivious smile on his fat face.
“Don’t you need to read the other letter?” Jack asked.
“I don’t need to. I know what’s written there.” Goodman snorted in return, “The bastard knows me too well and wants to trade those quadruplets for either the mines in the north or something else, maybe my mountain next to the capital. Those obviously are orders to bring them to him.”
“Trade?” Jack pretended to be clueless.
“Obviously!” The immortal threw a disappointed look at his underling, “You read the intelligence report! Besides the unimportant stuff like in which cities the Immortal Alliance has set up new detection formations, Swan’s spies have discovered identical twelve year old quadruplets … blue eyed blondes …”
The last part the immortal barely managed to voice through the excessive swallowing. It wasn’t hard for Jack to think of what buttons to push since his boss’s weakness was too easy to read and as the result to fake the ‘intelligence report’. The risk was whether Goodman will believe Blood lord Swan wrote the sealed orders, but either he was reluctant to break the seal or simply didn’t care – the sealed letter remained unread.
“Sir! But is it worth the risk?” Jack slowly got to his feet, “It’s the enemy territory!”
“… a village seventy miles to the east from the town called Sibiu. Judging by they coordinates it’s clearly in the Savage immortal realm, so it’s not that big of a deal.” Blood lord Goodman might be horny, but he was not suicidal, “If it was either the Golden or the Crescent immortal realm I might be worried, but Savage … nothing of importance is there ...”
After a short deduction the immortal ordered one of the Nascent soul stage cultivators that guarded the platform put in the immortal spirit stones in the sockets, set the coordinates himself, grabbed Jack by the armpit and happily positioned himself in the middle of the platform. His wide smile was still there when the effect of the bright flash disappeared, but the instant it vanished Jack shot out a red signal flare that was given to him by Musa earlier.
With a sad smile Goodman looked around and saw how the plaza with several teleportation platforms quickly became void of the dozens of young men and women which were replaced by stern looking old-timers, many of which he knew well. Even the damned Li was here and Harris as well, except he was called headmaster Harris these days.
Jack of course didn’t recognize any of the people surrounding them, but he was all pumped up by how easy it turned out to scam the fat immortal. There was one more thing he had to do to ensure he would not die, so he said, “Welcome to the War Academy, Blood lord Goodman!”
Goodman looked at him and snickered, “Identical quadruplets, huh? Nice touch, boy!”
And then he smacked Jack’s head and his body exploded, covering the surroundings in gore. His nascent soul though was picked up by one of the academy elders to which the Blood lord could only sigh and mumble under his nose something that sounded like ‘ungrateful bastard!’. Few months ago he artificially advanced Jack to the Nascent soul stage – a level the mediocre talented guy could’ve never reached on his own and now it became his saving grace. Of course, this was Jack’s plan ‘b’ from the very beginning, although he really didn’t want things to come to this after hearing Leo’s story on how long it took him to rebuild the physical body.
After venting his anger, Blood lord Goodman forced a smile and, rubbing his palms together, said “Well? What’s for breakfast?”
Obviously he didn’t intend to get in the fight with these monsters since it was clear his six hundred pounds were about to become the main bargaining chip for the return of the Hubert family.
When Jack didn’t show up during the next several days it probably meant good news – at least it was what Leo told himself. Of course, not knowing for sure was annoying, but since there was nothing they could do, the only thing left was to hope for the best.
After Leo was fully recovered, he and Musa went back to the earlier ways of information gathering – hanging around taverns and brothels. Thanks to Blood lord Swan’s ‘heritage’ they were filthy rich and couldn’t spent all the spirit stones in one lifetime even if they wanted to, but unfortunately no money could buy the news they were looking for. From time to time Musa suggested they would return, see how the things were in the academy, but Leo always managed to persuade him to stay for few more days.
After an uneventful month passed, they decided to change tactics and began to stalk the Blood lord Raynolds’s residence, but after monitoring it for several days they still didn’t find any evidence that the Hubert family members were held there. As the result it was Musa who made a guess that it was a likely possibility they were hidden somewhere outside the capital, in a more inconspicuous place.
From that day on things became a bit more interesting. They began to split up and follow people who departed from the Raynolds’s residence in hopes to get a clue or a lead on the Hubert family whereabouts. And on the sixth day they finally got lucky.
Several wagons full of supplies were escorted to a remote place in mountains, around fifty miles from the capital. At the first look it seemed to be a large estate, almost a village, but the fact that it was hidden behind a tall wall pointed that there were things inside worth to keep secret.