Chapter 303 - The Bell Tolls II
Claire pursed her lips into a frown as she drove her blade through an orcaped’s face. His brain pulverized by her dagger-shaped lizard, her third kill of the night collapsed, twitching his final moments away in a growing pool of blood. The assassin’s hands were still unblemished. Her vectors had kept his fluids from staining her fingers, but she wiped them on a nearby couch regardless.
The dark green sofa had looked clean at a glance, but the lyrkress grumbled when she found her digits covered in dust. Somewhat annoyed, she rubbed them on her cloak before reaching inside it and retrieving a paper card. Sylvia had technically delivered an identical item, but believing that it was through the card that his death would be dealt, the silly merchant had gone ahead and torn it up. Naturally, that was simply not allowed. There had to be evidence of her mark at the scene, so Claire borrowed one of the corpse’s quills, scribbled a sketch of a qiligon in the bottom corner, and listed the time and date. The sketch was haphazard, but she made sure to detail all the relevant parts before placing it atop her victim’s corpse and leaving the way she came.
As per the usual routine, Sylvia fixed the building as she stepped away. Her bardic song was not quite powerful enough to turn back time, but it could easily deconstruct the scene into its base components and remake them exactly as they had been before. Only alchemical reactions and the like could not be easily undone.
Claire looked up at the moon as she paced away from the scene of the crime. Griselda was not always consistent; her fairly loose schedule made it difficult to tell the exact time from her position in the sky. The stars served as far better tools, but Claire lacked the knowledge to read them. The only thing she could remember from astronomy class was the fact that they were technically not a part of the sky.
Casting the pointless tidbit from her mind, she pulled a wooden watch from her belt and glanced at its hands. It was just past midnight. The first target of the day had caused too much trouble and stalled her following kills. She had always known that some of the locals were particularly fast in the water, but she had never expected a portly, middle-aged marlin to outrun her. Even worse than that was his resistance to her magic. The ship-sized fish had spent a ludicrous amount of money on an amulet so powerful that it had resisted all the vectors she was willing to use. She could have overpowered it with a more potent storm, or perhaps a spine-numbing glare, but the damage to her circuits had ultimately stayed her hand. In the end, she had chased him until he tired himself out, some two hours and fifty lost pounds later.
Still, the watch indicated that the final target had fallen a few minutes late. He was scheduled to die as the day ticked over, and she had murdered him an unacceptable five minutes past the hour. With everything done, she should have been due to go home and climb into bed, but there was too much work and little time to lose. She immediately set out for another destination.
The man she was visiting had seven hits on his head, all from other merchants in the area on account of poisoning their children. The investigations, however, were still in progress. Despite the number of claims, there was little to no evidence of any wrongdoing. At worst, a few people had spotted him interacting with his competitors’ successors, but that alone did not suffice to prove her clients’ claims. Hoping to solve the problem sooner rather than later, she hopped onto the rooftops to avoid the twisting roads.
The merchant’s home was located on the opposite side of town. Like many other Vel’khanese businessmen, he lived inside his store. It was a fairly impressive shop. It had only a single story, but it was as tall as a building with three. The reason was simple. It was equal parts workshop and showroom; a place where the craftsmen he had on site could interface directly with customers and sell their most prized creations in the exact circumstances that they were best presented.
According to their investigations, there were five subsections in all, two of which were vacant and serving as storage. The others belonged to a smith, a woodworker, and a tailor, each of whom had come with a set of underlings and disciples. There were other employees as well—a full team of salesmen, a couple of labourers to help transport supplies, and even a handful of bouncers to ensure that the guests remained well-behaved.
It was that last group that had Claire surveying the building from afar. Had she been slated to kill the man outright, she would have happily stormed through the front, but investigations were more covert. She made note of their positions and paths, as to not alert them, before sneaking onto the premises and through the front door.
According to the seven that were asking for his head, the man was a maniac. He had already harmed their children once, and had threatened to do it again lest they fell in line with his demands.
“Sylvia, give me a headcount.”
She whispered the words into the wind, which responded after a brief delay.
“Mmmnnn… It looks like there’s twelve people. Three of them are walking around and everyone else is in the annex.”
“Same as what I hear then.” Claire mumbled under her breath as she stepped through the shop.
Taking full advantage of the night, she carefully explored the property but found no clear signs of wrongdoing. There weren’t any secret rooms, nor any condemning plans. Though she did find a few vials of arsenic lying around, they were located in sensible places. Namely, the tailors were using them in their dyes, and the smiths were using them to glue their metal. It didn’t make him any more suspicious, but neither did it necessarily clear his name.
Claire decided that there was nothing to be gleaned from further observation and marched out the way she came. She could have asked the man himself, of course, as she had interrogated the tax collector just the previous night. The lyrkress was confident in her ability to see through his lies and evaluate his character, but doing so would be akin to admitting defeat. Rhetoric was the least interesting approach, reserved only for the times when she otherwise failed to unravel the puzzle at hand.
She lowered her ears to a more natural position as she slipped past the guards again. They seemed like they were roughly halfway through their first ascensions. They were strong enough to outmuscle most of the rabble, but their detection skills were still subpar. Even with her roguish abilities gone, Claire had no trouble sneaking past them.
In the month since her witch class’s acquisition, she had found it equal parts useful and annoying. Her grievances lay first and foremost with its impossible rate of growth. It was gaining less experience than her racial class, even when her vectors were used as her primary means of combat. She had visited the old lyrkrian lady and spent a few days ripping apart the leviathan at her door to confirm, just to find caldriess at level 504 and her titular class at level 2. Granted, that single level had come with an eye-popping 2500 ability points, so all was not quite as lackluster as it may have otherwise appeared. By contrast, each of her supposedly absurd racial class’ levels had granted 777 a piece.
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The ludicrous stat gain, however, was readily offset by a lack of functionality. The only new skill that her primary class had gained saw a strict restriction on the terms of its use. The rest of her abilities had certainly seen an improvement—the limit on her active spirit guardian count had been removed and her vectors were more powerful than ever—but it was not so great that she was happy with the cost, especially when most of her more mage-like functions were masked.
Her racial class provided a similar experience overall. She was much stronger; the catalyst that was her horn had greatly improved her magical proficiency, and by that same token, manipulating her divinity had finally gone from a chore to a natural behaviour. Alas, the same restriction applied. She could leverage none of her more potent abilities without writhing in pain. She hadn’t even been able to test her upgraded realm.
She landed on one of her clients’ businesses as she continued grumbling internally. It wasn’t very far, only a few rooftops away. In fact, all eight of the parties involved did business on the same street, and the rumour mill suggested that the supposed poisoner was well aware of the others’ distaste. And yet, for whatever reason, he still felt the need to involve himself with their children.
Sneaking into the room of one such child, a young jellyfish with two wings and a beak, Claire carefully inspected her for any signs of harm. The poison and its aftereffects surely would have been long fought off by the system, but that wasn't to say that all traces were gone. The easiest to track was the child's mental state. Anyone that had suffered from such a traumatic event would likely recall it under duress.
She focused on precisely that trail as she commanded her magical robe to take the form of the supposed poisoner’s garments. The only part that differed was the headpiece. Rather than the shark’s dumb-looking tiny hat, she opted for a hood that obscured her face. She positioned herself at the windowsill once the transformation was complete and magically shook the child awake. She only stayed long enough to watch her initial reaction, slipping away from the window as soon as the kid rubbed her eyes.
She could have very easily been mistaken for the man in question through the bleary veil of awakening, but the child offered no obvious reaction. Instead she only muttered something to herself and went right back to sleep. The complete lack of fear was a sentiment echoed in the other children. None of them seemed to have any particularly negative reactions to the other merchant’s form, suggesting that they at least did not think that he had a role in any potential poisonings.
As far as Claire was concerned, that alone was enough to clear the man’s name. It was unlikely that none of the children’s parents would have warned them against the man that had supposedly offered them poison, and yet, none had reacted with any fear or distrust. In fact, one of the sleepy children had even calmly asked the man what was wrong, as if his presence was not entirely unexplained. Of course, speaking would have immediately given her away, so Claire put the kid back to sleep with a floating chair before she could be made to talk.
All of her interactions culminated in a pair of conclusions. Either the man was a highly skilled pedophile, or the parents were lying. In either scenario, she was going to need to call her clients to the shop so they could justify their positions. She was starting to suspect that the whole thing was a load of nonsense that demanded none of her involvement.
___
Despite the previous night’s headache, Claire was early to wake the next morning. She rose with the sun, lifting her face from her bed right as its rays peeked over the horizon. Perhaps because she had slept in her true form, her head and her tail were the only parts of her situated on the bed. The rest was curled around the room, loosely forming a ring that ran around its perimeter.
She slowly moved her head over to the window, taking care not to disturb the fox resting between her ears as she caught a breath of the early morning air. That, however, was the only part she paid any attention. Her tail was allowed to flick from left to right as she maneuvered her way out the window and into the sky. The spider that had camped out in the fluffy appendage was sent flying off in some random direction, discarded and summarily ignored.
Boris, who had unfortunately shared the pest’s post, was shaken off as well, but the lizard was too busy napping to make note of his sacrificial role. He didn’t wake, even as he hit the ground hard enough to visibly dent the already downtrodden path.
She didn’t have any particular destinations in mind, so Claire began by heading away from the sea. The salty breeze was more likely to wake her companion than the gentler land-locked air. Her concern, however, quickly proved needless. Sylvia started to stir as soon as she turned, waking with a melodic yawn that echoed through the sky.
“Good morning,” she mumbled, as she rubbed her face against the qiligon’s hair. It was one of her foxier behaviours, but perhaps because she was only half awake, she performed it in her humanoid form.
“Good morning, Sleepyhead,” said Claire.
“Oh, shush. It’s not my fault. Some of us actually need sleep, you know!” She stretched her back as she spoke, straightening it in a four-legged pose.
“I need sleep,” said Claire. “Probably.”
“Sure you do.” Her joints finally loosened, she returned to her previous position with her arms wrapped around the flying serpent’s neck. “Just like how you need to breathe.” She tightened her grip just a bit and sealed her mount’s throat.
“Stop that.” The moose prodded the fox with her tail. “It makes it hard to talk.”
“You’re just mad I’m right.” Sylvia buried her face in Claire’s mane again, rubbing her cheeks against it to her satisfaction.
“You weren’t right,” pouted Claire. “Just not entirely wrong.”
“Really?” The fox’s gaze turned skeptical.
“Really. I still need air to use my breath attack.”
“That doesn’t count!” barked the foxgirl. “And you can’t even use it right now!”
“Yes, I can. It just hurts when I do.”
“That’s like someone with a broken leg saying that they can still walk!”
“They still can. It just hurts when they do.” Claire turned humanoid, wrapping her tail around the foxgirl’s hand in the air as she flashed her smuggest smile.
“Now you’re just being stubborn.” Sylvia puffed up her cheeks.
“Technically correct is still correct.”
“Not really.”
“Well, if you want to prove me wrong that badly, then you’re going to have to catch me.” Sticking out a tongue, the willful princess released her favourite pet and dove right through the sky, initiating a game of tag that lasted until it was time for the shop to open.
___
Claire Augustus
Health: 477562/477562
Mana: 8855702/8855702
Divinity: 102765/102765
Health Regen: 97.9/second
Mana Regen: 2302.4/second
Divinity Regen: 2.8/second
Ability Scores - 29150 Points Available
- Agility: 10269
- Dexterity: 6668
- Spirit: 9609
- Strength: 69006
- Vitality: 18448
- Wisdom: 83471
Racial Class: Caldriess - Level 504.46
- Cataclysm Convergence - Level 135.10
- Realm of Eternal Frost
- True Ice Manipulation - Level 167.07
Titular Class: Witch of the Seventh Tempest - Level 2.91
- Catgirl Affinity - Level 25
- Detect Vector Magic - Level 37.99
- Essence Manipulation - 150.96
- Heavenly Annihilation
- Spirit Sorcery - Level 92.74
- Vector Mastery - Level 673.59
- Vector Resistance - Level 42.10
Unclassed Skills
- Artifact Manipulation - Level 15
- Cadrian Court Etiquette - Level 25
- Digging - Level 7.14
- English - Level 25
- Fishing - Level 12.06
- Llystletein Authority++ - Level 31.41
- Marish - Level 19.76
- Napping - Level 19.58
- Singing - Level 19.40
- Sneaking - Level 25.86
- Weapon Mastery - Level 125.41