“Y’know, I think you’re right Doc,” Mel said, crouching down low and staring at the moss on the rock beside the babbling brook. “I’ve had an unhealthy fixation on work, I guess you could call it. Really got ‘lost in the sauce’ if you know what I mean. What with all the murdering and killing of people.”
Mel took a deep breath of the cold mist. It reinvigorated her. “My hands were so stained with blood I didn’t think they’ve ever come clean, but you know what? A little bit of magical soap and some water and the blood just comes right off like it never was there. Weird, huh? Do you think that’s an allegory for my flippant behavior toward taking another human life?”
Despite the chilly weather, Doc was sweating profusely. He stared at her speechlessly through his big round glasses.
He tried to talk, but no sound left his mouth.
When his gaze slid away, as if he was searching for help, she snapped her fingers in front of his nose.
That got his attention again.
“My time isn’t up yet, Doc!” Mel chided. “Now, where was I?”
The older man tried to talk, but the gag made it hard. Mel rolled her eyes and hooked part of the tied gag and dragged it away.
“I’m not a doctor! Stop calling me that!” he shrieked.
Mel looked at him intently.
[Doc Adkins (Stolst Gang)]
“Says Doc on your nameplate.”
“That’s my name,” he went on a bit calmer, taking note of the sharp gleam in her eyes. “Not my profession.”
“Tomato, tomahtoe.”
Doc looked like he was going to say something but stopped himself. He swallowed convulsively. “You were…uh, saying that you were sorry for killing innocent officers of the Stolst gang.”
Mel shook her head. She summoned her twinblade and gently, almost playfully, patted his cheek with the flat of the cold blade. His pupils grew so wide she could hardly see any hazel left in them.
“Now, Doc, that doesn’t sound like you were listening one bit! What am I paying you for?”
“You’re not paying me,” he said softly.
“What was that?” Mel asked, her tone coming out sharp and acrid.
“I said you’re right, my mistake.”
Mel nodded. “Now, if you persist in these delusions of ‘innocents’ I’m afraid I’ll need a referral to a different shrink because you clearly don’t understand these people like I do. Did you know that the system has identification for people who are wholly in the Stolst gang? I’m not talking about the recruits who get press ganged into joining. No, I mean the people who have taken another human life. The ones who enjoy hurting other people.”
Doc shook his head.
“You learn something new every day, huh?” Mel said with a grin. “If you were being hunted like an animal for getting revenge on a few outposts, would you interrogate every single person coming for your life?”
“Aren’t you doing that now?” Doc asked.
Mel stood and looked around the ruined clearing. Trees were toppled, and the ground was scorched in places. Mel had been completely surprised when the ambush sprung on her. She had taken care of it, but she was curious about the change.
She laughed and pointed her twinblade at him accusingly. “Hah, good one, Doc. None of that reverse psychology for me, thanks. Let’s stick to me talking and you listening.”
“That wasn’t–”
“Ah!” Mel said, inching the blade closer to his nose. The man’s eyes crossed, watching the point anxiously. “Bup-bup-bup.”
He sighed in relief when Mel pulled the weapon away. “What do you want to know?”
Mel shrugged. “I mean, I’d like to know why you tried to kill me,” she said honestly. “That’s the sort of thing to make a girl think you don’t want her around.”
“You’ve killed dozens of our officers! Captains, Lieutenants! All the elite men and women who kept order. What you did was no better than anarchy!”
Her twinblade shot out, nearly taking his nose off. “ You started this. If you didn’t want to get involved, you’ve had your chance to leave. Everybody makes a choice. Your people wanted war when you attacked innocents. I warned your boss what would happen. And you have the audacity to blame ME?!”
Mel’s arm trembled with rage. She hadn’t been joking. She had let herself get too deep in her lust for revenge. She was getting sloppy. Emotional.
It was a good driver, a reminder of what she was doing and why, but going too deep clouded judgment and objectivity alike. She would never have gotten caught off guard like this if she was thinking straight.
Whenever she saw somebody with the Stolst gang identification, she lost it. Before she knew what was going on, she was standing over the surprised headless corpse of another murderer.
It wasn’t that she mourned the loss of a killer. Each and every one had been “initiated” and deserved their end, but she had lost the forest for the trees.
Shameful.
Such sloppiness was unbefitting a Magi. Worse, it had let the Stolst gang get the drop on her. She had gotten sidetracked from her true mission.
Killing peons and common soldiers when they were in her way was one thing, but she had to remind herself that her focus should be the remaining name on her list. The sole name out of 13 killers: Jimmy. Then, and only then, would she go after Warren and finally cut the head off the snake.
After he sees the ruins of ash I’ve made out of his little kingdom.
Going after every single person with the Stolst gang tag was exhausting and inefficient. After the first week of slaughtering officers, they seemed to give the title to anybody who hadn’t run off into the woods. It was self-aggrandizing. Nothing more. It served no purpose other than to make herself feel better.
And fill my pockets, Mel thought to herself. She had a stash of potions and money that made her wonder why more people didn’t turn into full-blown murderhobos.
Because you’re killing the other murderhobos, she reminded herself. “Oh, yeah.”
Doc looked at her nervously. People talking to themselves was never a good sign, and he wasn’t an idiot.
Mel had marked him out as an OG officer immediately. Not only because he clearly had aspect skills than the other Coppers, but because he hung back, ready to flee the moment the battle turned.
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And it had turned. Much faster than Doc could have prepared for. Before he had any chance to flee, Mel was already done with the others.
Sometimes ideas come from the most unlikely of places. Mel should have realized sooner. In hindsight, it was so obvious. Painfully obvious.
Still, Mel wasn’t about to ignore a good idea, even if it came from a weird dream. A talking wolf extolling the benefits of greed.
Yes, she crooned mentally, why shouldn’t I take their points?
The truth was, she didn’t need to know how the Stolst gang found her. She knew her sloppiness had led to this. She looted maps and orders from the others, enough that she could piece together what was going on.
Unlike the others that had ambushed her, however, Doc wore proper armor. His “elite” insignia was proudly displayed on his leather jerkin.
“I have valuable–” Doc began, when he saw the inevitable shift in Mel’s disposition.
Mel gently touched the tip of the twinblade to his lips to silence him. “Hush. This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to spend all your Battle Points. I’ll tell you what to buy.”
She removed the blade to let him speak.
“I don’t have–”
Mel silenced him with a finger held in front of his face. “If you don’t have any Battle Points, then I have no need for you.”
Drenched in sweat despite the cold, Doc nodded. “What do you want me to buy?”
“What do you have available?”
“Just the core items,” Doc said, his eyes watching the tip of her blade with an intensity that had Mel worried he might try to leap on top of it.
Mel nodded. She only received access to “Chromatic Items” in the Emporium shop a week after she hit Copper, but the cost was so high she was still saving up for it. A whopping 6,000 BP wasn’t easy to come by.
“As many [Elemental Petrified Branches] as you can buy,” Mel instructed.
Doc shut his eyes. Mel always found it strange when people did that. As if they couldn’t peruse the system and look through their eyes at the same time.
She guessed it made it easier to pay attention, but it still seemed odd. A thought came to Mel. She snapped her fingers to catch his attention. “I’ve killed enough of you idiots to know how much BP you have accrued. I know that Stolst doesn’t want you spending your BP unless it can be used to stockpile goods for the VIPs. You screw me, and you’ll regret it.”
Doc swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut. A faint pop was smothered by the fog around them as a pile of [Elemental Petrified Branches] fell into his lap.
Mel nodded to herself and scooped them up.
Really should have thought of this earlier. She put four away into her inventory, the fifth she kept in her hand.
[Elemental Petrified Branch]
(Copper Rank, Item)
(Common)
A wooden branch fossilized in ambient Fire, Thunder, Earth, Wind, Ice, and Water elemental mana, suffusing it with the combined power of all attributes. Inherently unstable, this item’s potency diminishes rapidly when exposed to the environment.
Imprint: Use to temporarily accelerate the natural growth of all attributes through training, battle, and meditation. Somewhat effective for Copper Rankers and below.
They weren’t as effective as the ones for individual stats, but Mel wanted to be more economical with her dwindling inventory. Besides, she figured that building all five stats would increase her progress to Iron more than simply pumping up one stat.
As she used the branch, it shattered into a thousand motes of color and light. Every hue of the spectrum swirled around her, filled her up, and sent a searing pain into her gut.
Aspect Skill: [Flash Step]
Stupid! Mel chided as she snapped her eyes open to find Doc in front of her, his knuckles white as he gripped the dagger in his hand. The dagger he had just stabbed into her stomach.
Should’ve seen this coming, Mel told herself. He has more aspect skills than you realized.
Mel gritted her teeth into a rictus of a smile. “What’s your plan now, Doc?”
The pain was intense, but it was warring with the euphoria of the petrified branch, filling her with greater power, blunting the sensation.
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Doc’s terror locked up every muscle in his body. The Emerald-eyed Demoness hardly batted an eye. She should be writhing in pain, or at the very least bent over and incapacitated.
Why was she just staring at him like he was a naughty puppy who just went to the bathroom on the rug?!
As the fear began to thaw, Doc realized he still held the advantage here. She was bluffing. She had to be. He tensed his shoulder, aiming to wrench and twist the knife in her stomach, then flee as fast as he could while she was incapable of giving chase.
He had to tell the others about this.
Faster than he could command his own limb, the woman’s hand snapped down and braceleted his wrist. He struggled with all of his Copper strength, but his hand wouldn’t respond to him.
The delicate sound of several small bones snapping beneath her grip sounded oddly like somebody popping bubble wrap. The pain flowed in a second later, wrenching a shrill scream from his throat.
He had been beaten, burned, stabbed, and cut to within an inch of his life. Nothing hurt like this.
She’s a monster!
Any desire to hold on to the blade flew from his thoughts. Doc’s mind whited out with agony. When the world snapped back into focus, he was on his knees, cradling his shattered wrist.
The Emerald-eyed Demoness looked down at him without anger or rage. If anything, he would have called it pity or disappointment.
She shook her head, her blonde locks flowing back and forth as she casually took the blade out of her own stomach. Doc watched the blood-soaked dagger as if it was his entire world.
Everything else fell away as he stared at it. He wondered if this feeling of inescapable, captivating dread was what the dinosaurs felt when they looked up at the burning sky.
He couldn’t even muster the strength to move out of the way as the knife came for his eye.
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Mel took out a [Small Health Potion] and chugged the drink down. This one tasted faintly like Fanta Strawberry soda, fizzy and pleasant, and almost too sweet to handle.
That was her favorite thing about the multiverse’s health potions. Whether it was the specific batch or some lingering magic of potions, each one tasted different than the last. The only consistency was that they all tasted of flavors associated with their color.
Health potions tasted like strawberries, cherries, pomegranates, whatever. If it was red, it could taste like it. Mana potions came in blue, blue raspberry (not a real flavor, but she liked it anyway) and even acai.
Mel had been recalcitrant to test any of her stamina potions. Not only because she usually didn’t need to worry about her stamina, but because the only tasty green things she could think of were kiwis and sour apples. She hoped they didn’t taste like kale or broccoli.
Glancing at her health bar, Mel watched as the wound marker began to burn. The potion was working its magic. That bastard had taken off a full quarter of her health!
He had moved so fast that she didn’t even detect it until it was too late.
Wish I had an aspect skill like that.
With the wound knitting back together as if nothing ever happened, Mel knelt beside the corpse. She drew blood that he wouldn’t need anymore to repair the damage done to her [Heathen’s Cuirass] until it too was good as new.
Checking her status, Mel smiled at the change to her rating. The strange prophetic dream wolf had been right. Forcing people to spend their BP had no bearing on the points she gained from killing them. Doc’s death had moved her a handful of places ahead. If spending his BP meant she gained less, then she wouldn’t have moved an inch.
Their unspent BP was simply wasted.
A waste that Mel was determined to take advantage of.