Chapter: 11
Len finished penning the list on his bedroom’s table, handing it to Rick. The room was opulent, a full bed, with a mattress, clean sheet and could fit two people sprawled out, a separate room with a bathtub and hearth to warm ready water.
“Yeah that should work,” Rick handed the list to Lydia.
“One boulder, one high grade piece of parchment, two bandages, spices, butter and eggs, five chickens or pigeons each. They should be equipped with a weapon they are familiar with, including a rifle and fifty rounds. You’ll also need at least five chisels, pens with ink, pans, axes and a knife set.” She looked up with a perplex look.
“Should have rations, canteen and armor of course,” Rick said.
Lydia folded up the paper and slipped it into a pocket. “I’ll pass it onto Everett.” She half-stepped forward toward Rick.
“So you’re like really old then?”
“Thank you for pointing out my age,” Rick rolled his eyes.
Lydia snorted and shook her head.
Rick hugged her. “I did miss you though.”
She squeezed him back before he released her. “Now go and get our materials messenger!”
“As it pleases your lordship,” She flipped him the middle finger and snuck out the door.
“Wonder where she picked that up from,” Len stood and stretched.
“Not a clue. Now we can’t skill up to increase our levels quick, it’d draw too much attention. So,” Rick’s face split into a terrible grin. “Temperin’ time! Now there’s the slow way… push-ups, sit-ups, squats and using weights, or…” He picked up the hammer.
Len’s eye twitched, Rick’s smile taking on a crazy edge. Resonating Strike.
“Rock paper scissors?” Len tried to make it not come out pitiful. Rick’s smile only widened as he held out his hand.
“Rock paper, shoot.” They said together.
Shit, paper.
“Guess you’re going first,” Rick said.
Fuck. It sounded pitiful even to Len.
Rick moved closer. “This’ll gimme a workout.” He punched the vibrating force radiating through Len’s shoulder, making it go numb, it ran through his entire arm, Len’s body fighting back and chasing it.
Rick landed hit after hit his strikes sounded like someone hitting a hollow tree. His vibrating power tore him apart from skull down to his toes.
Rick’s application was becoming more skillful, less in the muscles and more in the harder bones. Len tried to focus on these things, to distract himself from the sheer pain running through his body.
Rick’s hits struck with more force, throwing Len forward.
Len held up a hand and lay on his belly.
Rick hit him without a single bit of the force transmitting to the ground beneath Len.
Len spit blood out to the side as Rick hit his leg, his muscles clenching protectively as his mana raced to bring it back from the edge.
What would have taken months or years worth of effort they completed in just minutes. Len started to recover as fast as Rick could hit his techniques getting better at repairing the damage through their continuous tempering.
Rick used more of his cultivation, reaching his full strength, each blow ringing out like hammer on iron.
Len’s world focused in on healing himself, though driven from him as Rick used his hammer, the bones throughout his body cracked and damage radiated out of them through the rest of his body.
“Breathe dammit,” Rick said.
Len hissed out breath, pushing stone and grit away and breathed in, some of the darkness pushing away. It closed in again slowly and surely even as he forced his breath.
Pain was a constant as he reinforced his body with mana and utilized journeyman healing spells. The damage piked up as his body had to use more and more mana and spells to recover, overcoming his natural regeneration and eating into his stored mana pool.
Len’s mana pool dropped to half his bones a flick away from breaking, his muscles torn, his veins strained, tendons stretched. Blood and impurities covered him as Rick beat him.
It reached a quarter, then less. It was pain, it was triage, spells utilized out of more reaction than conscious thought.
A healing spell ran through him, bringing back clarity and relief as his healing spells pulled from his mana pool, reforming him stronger than before.
Len opened his mouth and let out a shuddering breath that ran through his entire being.
===
Skill: Spell casting
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Level: Journeyman (142)
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Or
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Skill: Spell Casting
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Level: 140 🡪142
Journeyman
===
===
Skill: Healing
===
Level: 140 🡪142
Journeyman
===
===
Level 1
5% to level 2
===
===
You have increased your Body Stat!
===
+4 to Body
===
===
Len
===
Level: 51
===
Body: 51
Mana: 51/51
===
Len blinked away the screens as he slowly started to move, adjusting to his increased body stat.
“Increasing skill and getting enlightenment is like compressing all of ths into a few minutes, though at least its just a few minutes. How long was that?” Len asked.
“Three hours, took it slower, didn’t want to go overboard. Train ride to Warwick is four hours, figure we can sleep then,” Rick said.
Len stood up and held out his hand. “Hammer?”
Rick pulled it out and gave it to Len like meeting an executioner.
He opened his mouth, closed it and then sat on the ground. “Fuck.”
Len punched Rick, controlling his strength, resonating strike running through his body. With his mana sight he could see what each resonating strike was doing.
Len lost himself to the tempering. Rick had been nice enough to break down his body completely four times and help him rebuild it. What kind of friend would he be if he didn’t return the favor?
***
The forest was dark, damp with the fog that had filled it through the day. Adrian stalked through the wet undergrowth, squinting in the dark.
Too spread out. Every other man held a flaming torch to bring light to the forest. The Hunter’s Bureau had taken all day getting all they could from the local noble and then the villagers.
Once the contract was made one shouldn’t play with the terms again. The Hunter’s didn’t care, the extra coin slipping into the pockets of their leaders.
Adrian rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.
There was a hiss of undergrowth against something.
He drew his sword and angled it down, driving it through the chest of the wolf jumping at him. The beast took his blade with it.
Another came from his right side he turned, putting his right arm up in the path of the wolf’s teeth, it clamped down, he could feel the bones snap in its jaws as he fell, the beast’s claws raking his side, its back legs digging into his leg leaving bloody furrows as he grabbed his dagger with his left hand.
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He drove it into the beast’s neck again and again. The beast clawed his face, half his sight gone. He kept stabbing its pace slowed before hit something vital and the beast dropped on him.
He coughed blood in his lung, wet and heavy.
Adrian startled awake, sweat pouring from him, his blanket twisted around him. The room had the damp smell of mold, sweaty men and not enough air or cleaning.
His bed was one of two stacked atop one another in the bunkhouse, a pillow of straw and canvas, a field blanket to keep himself warm.
His face stiffened against the heartbreak and loss. Maria’s father had been the one to sit him down and tell him that the engagement was off. He’d learned later that she was looking for other suitors before he’d been discharged from the hospital.
He pushed the blankets, his right leg missing above the knee, the infection took that in his fever dreams before he regained consciousness. His right arm, his sword arm ended just below the elbow.
Adrian sat on the side of the bed, taking the cloth he’d laid out the night before and dipping it into the wash basin.
He gave himself a wash as others started to wake up. At least most of them were mercenaries so Adrian was left to himself.
Finished with his wash, Adrian dressed and slung across himself, lifting himself with his good arm over to his crutch. He stood up on his good leg, holding the bunk above with his good arm, getting his sword arm over his crutch, pushing what remained of his arm into a brace along the crutch to hold it easier.
He tightened up the laces holding it to his arm. His breathing heavy already, his stomach growling for food while his body craved more sleep.
Adrian picked up his washbowl and cloth in his good hand walking with his crutch through the bunkhouse, other ex-fighters making room for him as he passed through.
Some had been wounded, others were drinkers, others didn’t have anything after they’d left fighting behind, others just didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Adrian reached the bathhouse attached to the bunkhouse, pouring his bowl into the grate that would take it out of the city.
He put the bowl and cloth to the side, taking a canteen from his bag. He drained it and hooked his crutch on the water pump, holding his canteen under the spout to fill it. He drained it two more times, suppressing the hunger within him for now.
“Bowl of water and cloth by your bed?” A young lad asked, picking up his bowl and cloth.
“Thanks Ivan,” Adrian passed a copper. The boy gave a big smile. “Have a good day mister Adrian!”
Adrian nodded and started on his trek to the outskirts of Goran.
The brickworks was a massive compound, with raw materials coming in one side, being hand molded into shape, then passed to kilns that dried them out before they went onto firing kilns.
Adrian moved around to the end of the compound, the sorting yard. He nodded to the time keeper in his hut. He put his name on the page and the time.
“You won’t get extra pay even if you are here for longer,” the timekeeper said.
Adrian shrugged. He was slower than others, getting in early he could do more before they arrived and by the time they left for the day he’d have the same amount done as the others.
Adrian moved to his row. Laborers wheeled over carts with trays of bricks atop. They brought them level to the table row and pushed the bricks off their metal tray onto the metal topped tables, before they carted the tray back to the kiln to get more.
Adrian grabbed a wheeled cart and started to walk down the row, lining up the bricks, checking them for cracks or deformities. Anything that wasn’t good enough he tossed into the wheeled cart, continuing down the line.
People filed in as his shift started properly. He drank from his canteen and ate half the meal he’d left himself from the day before.
His lead over his coworkers drained away as the day continued. Laborers started behind him, clearing away the bricks he’d okayed, ready to be sent off to build more homes.
The day churned on into afternoon and then night.
“Adrian.” A voice pulled him from the monotony, he’d noticed someone moving closer but disregarded them.
Adrian threw a bad brick into his cart and peered at the other man. “Everett, sir?” He tried to straighten for the older man, one who’d taken him under his wing years before.
“Interested in a different line of employment?” Everett asked.
“This works good for me,” Adrian said. He didn’t need no charity, he’d work this out on his own.
“Needs workers.”
“Usually they have to be a bit more able.” Adrian chuckled. He glanced at the man’s sword. “I don’t know you to be the type to put down the blade.”
Everett seemed to mull over his words. “I can’t promise anything, but I can offer you a chance.” Everett looked at the brickworks.
“I got a job here.”
Everett didn’t argue with him. “Sometimes we have to take risks.”
Adrian grit his teeth, anger flaring before it deflated. “Not like I have much more to lose.”
He saw the flare of recognition in Everett’s eyes.
“Lady Carolyn needs those who are loyal and capable. I picked you. You know the Rackson Coal yard?”
“Yes.”
“Meet there tomorrow for dawn. At the very least you’ll get to eat as much as you want and meet up with some of the lads.”
Everett didn’t give him any pity, he gave it direct. Adrian was thankful for that. “Tomorrow morning sergeant.”
He walked off through the brickworks, nodding to others among the workers.
Adrian continued working on his row. Tomorrow morning.
***
Len woke as a yell tore through the manor. He grabbed his armor, pulling it on and shoving his feet into his boots, stuffing the laces inside as he snatched up his sword belt, looping it on as he ran for the door, plowing through it with his shoulder.
Rick crashed through his door opposite, the two sharing a nod as Rick took off at a run, more doors opening as Rick darted into the room the yelling was coming from.
Len ran behind him with enough room so he could draw his weapons, stepping into the kitchen.
The cooking staff were starting to get up from where they were cowered around the room.
One woman was scrambling to get up off of the blackened floor while a man was next to her with burns on his body.
She launched herself upwards with a push. Rick kept her to the ground, holding her there.
“You’ve just got a lot stronger miss, you’re going to have to move slowly so you don’t injure yourself.”
Skill up.
“What happened?” Rick asked, moving to the injured man.
Len moved closer to her as she started to move careful
“I was cooking food for breakfast, then these screens started appearing, said something about cooking and then there was pain, so much pain, it just ran through me. A flash of light hit me and I started seeing all of these people cooking, seeing how I cook and when I woke up Phillip was on the floor with his arm all burnt up!” She turned and nearly threw herself across the room. Len held her in place.
“Lightning, silent as the wind fell through the ceiling. My cousin said he saw it at a bar yesterday. Thought that he’d jus had too many drinks at the games,” One of the other cooks said.
Len glanced over to the wounded man. Rick was talking to him, healing him up.
“What’s going on?” Oscar asked, wearing his breastplate, helmet and boots.
“System recognized the cook’s level of skill with cooking friend tried to help her out and got hit with a bit of the enlightenment,” Len said.
“Best thing I can suggest is making the best breakfast you can with the best ingredients possible. You’ll get hit with a skill-up.”
“How do you know this?” One of the cooks asked.
“We heard about it happening in Eskon,” Rick supplied.
“Yeah,” Len said.
“Does it hurt?” Oscar asked.
“For a little bit, but its worth it,” Len tried to assure.
“Might be best to cook outside for today, though,” Rick said, looking up at the hole through the ceiling.
Might be good to get some food on the way to the train station. Len stood up.
***
Adrian was a sweaty mess. Of all the days to sleep in. He hobbled across the city, his arm chafing from the crutch harness, he didn’t dare to take the time to fix it.
He reached the coal yard, the man at the gate looked him over and waved him through the gate. “Down that way on the left, hurry, cart just showed up.”
“Thanks.”
The man saluted. “Lady Carolyn.” He returned back to the gate.
Adrian hobbled on, a bit stunned at the salute. It’s also to the Isendia, not just Lady Carolyn.
Though he could understand the change. Since Lady Particia and Major George died and Tyrus took over, things hadn’t been the same.
A group of men were loading up into a covered coal cart, several with canes and other visible injuries. Adrian picked up his pace as the last three were getting aboard, those already up, helping them.
Adrian reached them, puffing as the last man was hauled up.
“Well, sergeant, what you call this time?”
“Corporal Gibson?” he asked the stout man, an odd bump in his pant leg.
“Was a lance before the old leg decided to snap itself.” Gibson reached down, another man on the other side with scars across his face and a painted mask covering most of it, reached down as well.
“Well they must be scraping the bottom of the well to find you.” Adrian grinned as he took the help of both men, planting his good leg on the back of the cart, letting himself be levered up into the back.
He dropped onto the bench seat as the two men brought up the wooden back of the cart and threw down the tarp, agitating the coal dust in the back of the cart.
A man at the front thumped on the wooden backing behind the driver.
Hooves clopped on the ground and the cart pulled forward.
“So what’s this all about?” Adrian asked. Gibson was always one for chatter.
“Don’t rightly know, but this lot here were all loyal to the old family, and we’re various levels of fucked up,” Gibson said. “Everett recruited us all.”
The Lady’s own knight leading it.
Adrian coughed from the coal dust and leaned back against the cart. Sometime later they stopped.
Two guards wearing the red edged armor of the Isendia family guard threw up the tarp, revealing Everett. “Hope you enjoy travel lads, you’re heading to Warwick now get out of the coal cart will you?”
The tailgate was dropped and the guards helped them down to the ground.
They were in a yard near the train station. Warwick? Isn’t that some backwater town?
There was another group of men off to the side helping to carry crates, loading up a train carriage. Two young men were talking to one another off to the side, using their hands to cover what they were saying as they appraised the group getting down from the cart.
They had the bearing of training staff even though they looked like they were just old enough to join the Isendia mercenaries.
“Adrian you’re second in command, Gibson you’ll have your own squad, Mackie and Edwin will be the other squad leaders. You’re going to be reporting to Rick Isendia and Len.” Everett turned to the two young men talking to one another.
They stopped their conversation and walked up to the group.
Rick’s the name of Lady Patricia and George’s kid?
"Mornin' everyone," Rick said, stepping forward receiving grumbled and hesitant replies. Each of them quietly judged and understood the others.
Who the hell is this kid?
The one that must’ve been Rick by his familiar features pulled out a map.
"Today we're going to be solving a few problems. Lady Carolyn has commissioned us to get you back to work," Rick announced.
There were some chuckles to that. His friend pulled his messenger bag around and took out pieces of paper and handed them out with pencils.
“Len is handing out contracts to join her service once again.”
Adrian read the contract, it was nearly the same as what he’d signed when joining the Isendia Mercenaries.
I, [Name], hereby swear and affirm my allegiance to Len, son of Edward and Rick Isendia, pledging my sword and service in their cause. My Shield to the defense of their families and interests. I commit to uphold the following tenets as a faithful servant:
1. Secrecy: I shall guard all knowledge and secrets entrusted to me by my leaders, Len and Rick, with unwavering diligence. I vow never to disclose any information that could undermine their authority or endanger their pursuits.
2. Honesty: I shall always speak the truth to Len and Rick, withholding nothing that could affect the fulfillment of my duties. My words shall be as steadfast as my loyalty.
3. Obedience: I shall execute all legal orders given by my lords, or their designated representatives, with promptness and precision. I understand that my role is to follow and not to question the lawfulness of commands within the bounds of my service.
In exchange for my unwavering loyalty and service, I am promised the following by Len, son of Edward, and Rick Isendia:
1. Training: I will be provided with rigorous training to strengthen my body and sharpen my mind, preparing me for the challenges of our endeavors.
2. Healing: Should I fall ill or sustain injury in the line of duty, I will be tended to and healed, ensuring my swift return to service.
3. Sustenance: I will be adequately fed and watered, maintaining my health and vigor, as befits a warrior under their command.
4. Pay: I will be paid standard rates equivalent to the Isendia Family Guard and my rank. Pay will be issued at the beginning and middle of the month when funds are available, or they will be issued at soonest convenience.
This oath I take freely and without reservation. May my service be honorable, and my conduct be worthy of the trust placed in me. If I fail to be deserving of that trust, may my voice be taken from me, my eyes become blind to the world, my skills be no longer useful to me. If I carry out treason may my life be forfeit. If Len, Rick or their representatives do not fulfill their promises I will be released from my service.
Signed,
To Rick and Len first, but Everret would not turn on Lady Isendia for anything.
“Woah!” Someone yelled, dancing away as their contract went up in flames.
“Binding on the contract is powerful so that it’ll burn up the paper once you sign. Don’t worry,” Len said.
Adrian signed the paper, lines and letters appeared through the paper and burnt it up as he felt something sink into his being.
One by one the others completed their contracts.
“Alright, good,” Rick
“We will be heading to Warwick, once there you will disembark in separate groups. Mackie will collect the crates that are being loaded up.” Len squatted down as Rick opened the map, markings showing where the train-line was and the surroundings.
“We will meet up at this location,” Rick pointed to a secondary position along a road. “We’ll decide what to do next there, based on information gathered in town.”
“Most of us ain’t exactly fighting fit,” someone said.
Rick rolled the map away and stood. “Each of you will file past us, we’ll open your mana gates which will allow you to start healing.”
They shuffled up to Rick, by his position Adrian was one of the first.
He held out his hands to Len, resting on his crutch.
Len held his hands and pressed his thumbs into Adrian’s palms. There was a feeling of pressure, then it broke like water through a mud dam.
Adrian felt power flow through his body, invigorating him.
“Breath in and draw the mana flowing through your body to your bones.”
Adrian did so, the mana flowed into his bones, most the mana just continued on, others drank it in.
“Focus on where the mana is going, circulate your mana and drive it to those places,” Len said, his voice raised for others to hear.
Adrian did so.
“Make sure you get rations of food and a canteen to drink from Mackie you’ll need it as you heal. Eat as much as you can, the more you eat the faster you’ll heal.” Len took out a piece of paper from his messenger bag and clapped Adrian on his shoulder. “This tells people how to heal passively with mana, its not spells, but it’ll help out.”
Adrian nodded and moved to the side.