Her body was still, pressed against the stone table by thick leather straps. Fear kept her even more rigid, freezing her up and preventing what little physical movement she still had available… but her green eyes pleaded with him. Begged him.
“Find her soul?” Jerome repeated, trying to buy himself time. Or, perhaps more accurately, delay the inevitable.
“I know it’s a hard task,” Rikan said softly. “It doesn’t form into a crystal like ours. But I believe you can do it.”
The crystals, the ones Krystyna had dug out from dead gnolls. The ones he had sold for so much gold. They were souls? The king was buying up souls?
“Why do we need their souls?” Jerome asked weakly.
“Nakat’s gone nuts,” muttered one of the guards. “Can’t even remember his own discoveries.”
Rikan shot the guard a glare, which shut it up. “It’s okay to be nervous.”
“What if they don’t have souls?”
That was what the World Government said. No souls. The theists had been proven wrong, proven dangerous, and then crucified. That’s how much the government disbelieved in souls.
“They respawn,” said Rikan, “just like us. The Great Civilizations, they don’t see it. They kill the humans, thinking they’ll go away, but the humans just keep on respawning. That’s proof enough of souls. Maybe it doesn’t form in a crystal, but it has to form somewhere. And once we find it, we can control it. Harness it. Protect them and keep them from being taken by the Great Civilizations.”
The way Rikan talked he made it seem so innocent, almost like they were helping the humans. Doing them a favor.
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That was why, for one moment, Jerome was able to ignore the girl’s fearful whimpers, her panicked eyes, and press his scalpel down through the sandy dark skin of her stomach.
Screaming, agonized screaming. There was no anesthetic here. In the holding room several prisoners began wailing and crying, leading a guard gnoll to slam the door.
Red blood seeped through the small cut, making the girl’s mortality seem very real. Jerome pulled his hand back.
He couldn’t continue.
Rikan sensed his hesitation. “You’re the one who said we had to try it while they were alive, then while they were conscious. That the soul might be escaping at the moment of death, or of sleep.”
The blood was red.
It was red and seeping slowly from her stomach onto the table.
Her screams turned to whimpers as the sharp pain of the scalpel receded and calmed into the dull ache of a wound.
He couldn’t let this continue.
He had to save them.
Would you like to accept the quest “Save the Gnoll’s Prisoners”?
Conditions: Rescue the prisoners from the Gnoll capital and escort them to safety.
Rewards: 37,000 EXP
This was a powerful purpose, one that welled up deep inside him and touched the core of his being. To not act would deny a part of his humanity.
And yet there was the level 15 guard outside.
There were the two level 9 guards in here.
Rikan’s Leash held him effectively in place.
Then there was an entire town full of gnolls standing between him and the gates, trying to strike down both him and his entourage of twenty helpless prisoners.
Proof of that difficulty was in the reward: 37,000 EXP. Getting all three items for Krystyna was 1,500 EXP and would give him a level. 37,000 EXP… if completing such a quest were possible, it would shoot his level up into the double digits.
He couldn’t do it.
There was no way he could do it.
Yet.
There was no way he could do it yet.
He could do this one surgery. This one murder. He could leave, level up, raise his skills. Come back with Krystyna and a plan.
It wouldn’t be ideal, but it was something he could do. He couldn’t save all of them — he couldn’t save this girl on the table — but he could save some of them.
He accepted the quest.
And then he, once again, put scalpel to skin.