Loot. The true goal of every RPG. Gather items, no matter how strong or weak, how rare or common. As long as it fits in your inventory, you would pick it up. And most of the time, never use it. So I made sure not to waste the little space I had. It took me another hour to make my rounds through the thaumaturge camp and look for strong magic. That was my criterium to pick, what to take along. I had four rings from the Idiot ork to compare anything else to, as well as his wand and the foci. Sadly, there was nothing really worth a mention. Instead, I was distracted by the bloodshed I had caused.

It was near impossible to figure out how many orks had died. Only, I could see everyone’s Thaumonomicon like a magical beacon. I counted 70. Not one of them had survived the madness. And while the blood and guts and body parts spread everywhere did not appal me, the fact I had no control besides that very first attack did. I was an [Assassin], not a serial killer. This was all wrong. I should have taken every single life myself, not one of them seeing my attack before it was too late. No wonder I had gained no experience. This was the opposite of what my Class should do, at least in the spectrum of murderous Classes.

At last, I decided to take my leave. There was nothing more to gain for me in this place. Only the eventual moving in of the other orks would be a problem. On that note, was it possible to destroy a Thaumonomicon? I was not keen on returning to this area but Roguk and his folk lived not too far from here. If I could get rid of thaumaturges as a whole, why would I not do so? And it turned out to be really easy. My new Skill upgrade turned into devouring mode destroyed a book in seconds. Another round through the trees and I was finally ready to leave. One Thaumonomicon in my storage space as well as the wand, four rings and three foci. Everything I needed for now. The best part of my new Skill was the storage and devouring functions could be used simultaneously. That meant, eating something would not destroy what I had stored.

I used the dark of night in combination with my stealth Skills to escape unseen. It was really easy. The camp next to the forest was lit up by torches and guarded diligently, but they simply could not see me as far away as I was nor hear me through my [Soundless Flight].

It took me a moment to orientate myself before I was off to the mansion I had spent almost a week in. I still had some things to do there, especially now that I had a storage space.

As I approached the building, I took out the ork’s rings. I was confident at least one of them was related to his security system. This time, instead of shifting past the barrier, I just flew straight through. One of the rings immediately gave off a warning pulse that would have shook a bear from its hibernation. So, this one was useless. I arrived at the door and stayed a few steps away. There were runes active all around it. I looked at the other three rings. One of them should be used to disable the defences in the building. And sure enough, pushing my mana in the correct ring shot out a small charge of it and turned off the traps.

I had tried the other two as well and one of them did not react at all. That one went back into my storage, for now, I would read up on it in a moment. The last ring, however, did what I usually just did myself. It pushed mana outwards into the world. I realized what it was used for when I opened the door. It could send a signal to activate a magical mechanism, such as this lock. Only, with my mana enrichment, there was no need for me to keep it.

I stepped into the building and took a deep breath. The owner was dead. I could do whatever I wanted. I could take everything interesting. And so I did. A search through the mansion left me with a pile of interesting gadgets I quickly discarded. None of them really helped me. Next, the ork’s research. I looked through the pages and skimmed the clean and tiny handwriting. He had been working on vis enrichment. More specifically on how to accelerate the process. There were some experiments lined out he had planned to start soon. I was now very glad I had killed him. Some of the things he wanted to do did not sound very healthy to me. And most of the experiments involved me as a subject. How could I not see it? He had been working on this right there next to me for almost a week. I needed to be much more careful who to associate with in the future.

Anyway, this research was useless to me. I had enrichment down with my instinct bearing the brunt of the work. Just to make sure, however, I devoured it. This was evidence of my presence. He had even mentioned me a few times as the ‘genius owl’ or similar. Too incriminating.

I looked around. Was there really nothing to bring along with me? The infusion altar stood there, taunting me with its presence. It was way too large to bring along. I could maybe fit the central structure into my storage but without the pedestals, it was kind of useless. At least I knew the pillars and pedestals were somewhat easy to make in comparison to the floating cube above it, the runic matrix. If I found nothing else, I would at least take that thing with me. I could always just drop it on someone.

The alchemical furnace and the jars and pipes were much more feasible. At least if I left out the pipes. And most of the jars. It was, however, primarily a tool used to prepare for activating the infusion altar. Thus, it was useless to me. If only my storage was larger. My sight went up. The second and third levels. Books. Lots of books. That might be just perfect. Though looking through the shelves once more, I realized most of them were somewhat useless to me. Ork culture, ork history, ork politics. I wanted to move on. No more orks. They were not a very friendly people. In the end, I decided on a selection of legends to form a maybe pile and took off to the third floor. A lot of the titles here still eluded me. Their bindings old and letters different made me think I was in some sort of forbidden library. I took out my Thaumonomicon and finally got to learn these words.

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When I had figured out the ancient letters, the sun was already setting once more. I had once again lost track of time while reading. At least it was fun. The titles up here seemed to be not very fitting to a mage’s library. They sounded like cliche romance novels or collected diaries. I paged through a few of them. They were very boring. Something did not add up here, but I was not able to figure it out. I took along a random selection and put them on my pile.

Last, but not least, it was time to pilfer the storage. There had to be some useful items here, right? Although I remembered from my first visit most of the stuff in this building seemed weak, like apprentice work. Which it probably was. At least I ended up with a cauldron. I could use this to do alchemy. It was far better than Roguk’s pot. If there was a second, I might have gone and given it to him, but I only had this one. I also piled up some of the still useful materials. A bit of magical cloth, a few pieces of wood, also magical and some metal, mostly mundane. There was the delivery that had arrived shortly before I was captured, which held something very useful. A small bar of thaumium. A magical metal I had considered for my storage item. I did not need it for that anymore so I could find some other use for it.

Then it was time to decide. What to bring along. The pile of books alone was twice the size of my storage, so I decided to look at it last. The materials all came with, they were the most generally useful and took up only a quarter of my storage in total. There really was not much quality stuff left in this building. The cauldron also came along. After putting it in, I found I could move items within my storage freely when I thought about moving the materials inside the large metal pot. With that, it was time for books. I sorted through them and made two new piles, one to discard, one to bring along. The second one was still too large so I split it again. And again. And again. Then, finally, I had only thirty books left. A few legends that sounded interesting and some of the books from the third floor. I wanted a few of them to figure out if there was anything special.

In the end, my storage was almost completely filled. A bit of space was left, just about enough to squeeze in something my own size. That would be two more books at most but none of the ones left over caught my eye. I decided to keep a bit of space. Maybe I would run into something I really wanted to take along.

I discarded two of the rings. The one disabling the traps and the one giving the warning when someone broke the barrier. But I left them on the top floor, where nobody would easily find them. Then it was time to leave. I closed up the door behind me and spread my wings. Breaking straight through the barrier, I heard the runes activate behind me. Now all the secrets would be difficult to get to. I hooted into the night and drew a large circle. Now I only needed to figure out where I wanted to go from here.

Species: Great Eagle Owl (fledgeling)

Age: 0

Name: Fio

Gender: female

Status: sapient, healthy, mana enriched (major)

Level: 18

Class: [Assassin lvl 50], -

Strength: 17

Constitution: 13

Dexterity: 24

Perception: 23

Intelligence: 31

Wisdom: 30

AP: 0

Skills:

Racial:

Utility: [Owl Senses lvl 5], [Preening lvl 3], [Owl Stomach lvl 5], [Soundless Flight lvl 4]

Offensive: [Solid Grip lvl 4], [Intimidating Screech lvl 4], [Owl’s Shadow lvl 6], [Aerial Combat lvl 4]

General:

[Maths lvl 4], [Identify lvl 4]

Assassin:

[Sneak lvl 5], [Surprise Attack lvl 4], [Mingling lvl 3], [Eldritch Shift lvl 5], [Winged Death lvl 2]