It was when we met Rik three days later that things truly started.
Previously, we had continued hunting but hadn’t been successful even once.
We did mistakenly kill a bear, a normal one albeit it had red fur and was slightly smaller than I expected, and had gained no experience, because apparently the system didn’t reward the death of animals.
We would need to handle things with my meagre level 90 and Gaëlle’s not so much better level 91, as well as my level 6 [Berserker]. In other words, if it came to a fight, we had no chance to win.
When we arrived at the river that day, Rik was already waiting for us.
If he had looked angry before, this time he was inexpressive with all his muscles clenched. His bow wasn’t drawn, but that didn’t really reassure me.
He hadn’t spotted us yet.
“I see him.” I told my sister. “Be ready to run. Bonnie, how long would it need to create a temporary door in front of us?”
“Temporary door in front would require traversing your spinal cord. It is not recommended.” She answered mechanically.
“…What about behind us?”
“A temporary door in a five-meter radius one-eighty-degrees in relation to your torso would take approximatively 0.2 milliseconds to be created.”
I nodded before turning to relay it to my sister.
“No need.” She stopped me. “I asked her to always talk to the both of us at the same time yesterday. I was getting jealous of you hogging all our AI’s attention to yourself.”
I grinned. “Sure, can’t stomach to share me, right?”
“Ew. No.” She gave me the most disgusted look ever.
I refrained a laugh, then looked back at Rik. “He seems unhinged.”
“In a good or bad way?”
“…in an unhinged way?”
L sighed. “No, but is he unhinged because he thinks we told him a lie or because he found out about the [Dark Crow]’s nest?”
“No idea.” I responded.
“Well then, I’ll be ready to run.”
“Good.”
We walked towards the [Wood Elf], our nerves on edge.
He immediately rose to his feet when he spotted us.
I tensed, but he walked towards us in a frenzy.
“This…This monster. How did you know? How!? It’s been years, you understand? Years. He massacred my entire clan, because we didn’t want to trade with him. Because we wanted to keep close to our traditions. He tried to exterminate us until we buckled and joined him.” He was speaking so fast I was starting to find it difficult to differentiate between the English-made translation and his Common Overworld language.
“We used a…skill. When I saw its shackles and we started having our doubts, it let us…well, verify things.” I started trying to find a lie as close to the truth as possible.
“A skill you say?” He clearly didn’t believe us. “Scrap that, it doesn’t matter. No, I need to murder this man. In honour of my clan, Grognar and Torgal. Sam and his family, the Red’s, and so, so many others.” He clenched his teeth in a ferocious expression. “I would have done it myself. I saw him yesterday and oh…oh I wanted to shoot him so badly. I couldn’t. I knew I would have lost my life. An Ascensus like Henry is not someone a classless like us can beat in a straight fight. You had a plan, didn’t you? Tell me.” He looked back at us; his eyes resolute.
Me and my sister shared a look, we had gained an ally. The first step of our scheme was already a success.
“As we told you three days ago…” I began. “…we want to blow up the nest, so the top of the tower. To do that, me and my sister need to get there with our backpacks. We don’t want to fight, we…me and my sister are not fighters.” I didn’t want to reveal anything about our weaknesses to a quasi-stranger like Rik, but the aforementioned only gave me a smirk. “I knew that already. How do you plan to blow up the nest?” He was calm now, already trying to find holes in our plan.
I smiled; this was the best help we could have gotten. Someone with fighting and trapping experience to fill up our extreme lack of it.
“It is a trade secret, a family heirloom.” I used the excuse me and my sister had found to not have to disclose the existence of heavy ordnance explosives.
He rose an eyebrow, Rik showing once again how curious he could be. “Some sort of oil?”
“…Something like that.”
“That’ll be a lot of oil to carry on top of the tower.”
I stared him down. “We won’t tell you what it is, Rik, but no, it won’t be especially heavy or cumbersome.”
He sighed. “Sorry, but I need to be sure. Would it really kill the [Dark Crow]?”
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“Without a doubt. We killed a blue [Tooth-Bear] with it.”
“A blue…” He repeated in shock. He then nodded, regaining his composure. “I see, will you let me identify your levels then?”
My sister disapproved with a grunt. “What? You have the [Identify] skill? Didn’t it require us to drink the Blue water for it to work? You want us to poison ourselves.”
He shook his head. “Of course not, just having some Blue water inside your mouth is enough. Then you can purify it as soon as I’m done, as I will only look at your levels it shall be very quick. If we work together to kill Henry, I need to trust you. If you really did kill a [Tooth-Bear] as your pretend, you should have gained ten levels.”
“Gorgnar told you our levels before?” Gaëlle asked.
He shook his head. “Not exactly. He never would have disclosed such private information without your approval. But we were supposed to protect you, and he did give us a rough idea. If you’re above eighty-five, I’ll know you’re telling the truth, I’ll trust you, and I won’t ask about your oil.”
It didn’t seem like he was lying, but it could have been a ploy.
I hesitated. “Fine. But you give your bow to Gaëlle and you only look at my stats, and no more than two seconds.”
“Nielle?” My sister asked, appalled. “We can’t…”
“We’ll need trust to work together, Rik. And I’ll accept making the first step. But my sister won’t hesitate to shoot an arrow between your eyes if you try and hurt me, you can be certain of that.”
The [Wood Elf] simply nodded. “That is fine with me, here, be careful with it, please. It has been in my family for generations.”
Gaëlle picked the bow and took a step back.
I watched Rik come closer to the river.
“Could you show me first?” I asked him.
“Of course.” He took a gulp of the deadly water, kept it in his cheeks, then spew it out and his lips moved in a weird way. I saw a brief and weak light over his mouth, then he waited a bit. “See?” He said.
I sighed, and went back to the spot where I had almost died weeks before.
I took a gulp and kept it in my mouth.
“[Identify].” Chanted the elf.
I didn’t feel anything, and the was no visual cue about the skill being used. I waited two seconds, spew out the water, and [Purified] myself.
My sister went back to my side: “[Purify].” She mouthed out without making a noise.
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“…Better be sure it worked, remember your hydrology control…” She explained.
I gave her a weak smile and patted her head. I had completely forgotten about that.
“…Impressive.” Rik said. “That [Tooth-Bear] had to be level 300 at least, you received a three times bonus. I only managed to get one of those, when I was eighteen.”
“So, you trust us?” I asked.
“I suppose I must. I won’t forgive what you did to Grognar, Nielle, but I understand. And for all this…Henry needs to pay. Grognar died as much because of you as it was the mad Ascensus’ fault. I shall give my aid to you.” He gave me a short bow, before sitting down on a flat rock. Gaëlle gave him back his bow, and we sat in front of him.
He began. “You need to get into the tower and enter the [Dark Crow]’s nest. Because you can blow it up. So Henry needs to be out of the tower at the moment, but the [Dark Crow] needs to be there. How do you expect to…”
“It has to be during the night, when the [Dark Crow] is hunting.” L stopped him.
“…But how do you plan to blow it up, then?”
“Once we have deposited the…oil in the nest, we can use a special method to blow it up from far away anytime we want.”
“From far away anytime you want!? That is…Wait, did you really break the [Trapping] standard?”
“We did.” I confessed.
He gave us a very ambiguous stare, not quite sure of himself.
“I put a lot of trust into you Rik, I expect you to give it back.” I told him.
“Fine. So this trap of yours is the greatest trap ever conceived. How the two of you got it is of no importance to me right now. At least it’ll make this much easier. Getting you in Canvas will be as easy as going from one to two.”
“Canvas?” I asked.
“The name of our village.”
“Oh…” I hadn’t realized it had a name. I then looked to the side with a glare, of course it had a name, how dumb could I get?
“You can get us inside?” Elle checked if she had heard it right.
“Yes. Henry invited the members of a clan he massacred to his city. To protect his walls. One of the two [Soldiers] is my father.”
Me and Elle blinked. “Holy…yeah, I can guess how it makes things easier.” My sister said.
Rik grinned. “Next week, on [Mountain Dragon] day, that’s when it’ll be best. My father is on guard with some other survivors.”
“Will you tell them what Henry has done?” I asked.
“I will have to yes, but I shall wait until then. I don’t want them to seek revenge by mistake before we’re ready. I can attest how hard it was to hide my hatred.”
I nodded. So, part of the village would help us.
“What then?” Rik asked.
“We blow up the nest during the day, when the [Dark Crow] sleeps.”
“Won’t it smell the oil?”
That was a good point, but I shook my head. “No, our oil has no smell.”
“A truly terrifying family heirloom you have.”
My sister couldn’t refrain a laugh. “If only he knew.” She told me in English only.
“You understand what evil men would be able to accomplish with something like this, do you?” I asked the [Wood Elf].
“I do. But what about Ascensus Henry? Will the explosion kill him?”
“Maybe.” I pursed my lips. “With the remains of the [Dark Crow] blown all over the village centre, we hoped it would suffice to be judged for his crimes.”
His eyes opened wide. “You…you probably underestimate Henry. But you are right, if I gather some of the men around the plaza…”
“Not too close, I don’t want anyone to die because of falling rocks.” I interrupted him.
“Of course. But if we do that…Yes, Henry would face justice.” But Rik gave a complicated expression.
“Do you have a problem with this…”
“No. No I don’t. It is necessary. Maybe he’ll blow up with his monstrous pet, but I hope he barely survives, just so me and my own can end him ourselves.”
I had never felt real bloodthirst in a man before, but that was definitely it.
“Your plan is sound. But it lacks the details. Let me go through everything with you. We will need to regroup here every day so that I can train you, teach you which streets to take and avoid. You can leave entering the city and making Henry go out of the tower to me.”
“Doesn’t he sleep in the tower? How will you do that?” Gaëlle asked.
Rik shook his head in disgust. “Oh, it will be costly, but not for you. I will have a heavy debt to repay. Henry often leaves his tower to…enjoy some of the benefits of his position.”
Me and my sister froze. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“I shall not discuss it in more detail.” He closed himself off. “But know that I never went beyond the second story of the tower, and there are eight. You will need to move fast and quietly through the floors. You will also need to avoid his assistant.”
“His assistant?” Me and Gaëlle asked at the same time.
“Yes, he arrived from the Upperseas one or two years ago. You probably met him, it’s the scribe?”
“Oh, him. He looked harmless, if a bit weird.” Gaëlle said out loud.
“I agree, I don’t even know if he reached level 100 yet, he looks too young for that, but he always gave me the creeps. In all this time, I never spoke to him. I never even saw him outside the tower.” Rik warned us.
“That’s it though? No guards? No traps?”
“No. No one would dare steal from the Ascensus.” Rik explained.
“Ok. Ok then, what do you propose we do then?”
“Let’s start with the village. I’ll try to walk with you, but at night, the three of us together may be too suspicious, so I’ll teach you the roads and less used ways to reach the plaza unseen.”
One week later, we were ready.