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World: MSS - Loading...
"Speech"
"Thoughts"
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“If you are willing of course.” His hissing manner of speech made me shudder involuntarily.
“Don’t show weakness.”
Without even knowing, I had grabbed my sword.
The lizardman smirked, though whether it was at my expense or the situation it was hard to tell due to the reptilian eyes. “As you wish. But I come in peace. We may dance another time.”
“Speak.” I kept my words short.
“Privately.” He frowned.
Though it wasn’t blatant, some of the slaves were looking this way. They were pretending not to, but many were whispering and giving us the side eye.
“It’s not about me. It’s about L’teya.” I put two and two together, figuring out why the lizard has approached me.
“If you’re asking me to join you, it’s a no.”
His frown deepened. “Why?”
Organizing my thoughts, I released my sword and shield. I didn’t want him to get the wrong message that I was hostile towards him. Far from it, logically speaking I shouldn’t be hostile with any group except the pro-human faction because of the duel and I assumed that soon enough, that’d be forgotten as well. The choice I was making was based on logic alone.
“L’teya is stronger than you.” As soon as the words were out in the open, I saw his eye twitch.
“How so?”
It was true.
From what I could see, this beastman was weaker than her. For the moment at least. While the beastman toyed with the other slaves using his long reach in combination with the spear, I just couldn’t see him defeating L’teya. One would think that he could give L’teya a fight for her money but…
“Years of dealing with forming the best party through trial and error are telling me that she’s stronger.” But it wasn’t something I could say out loud, so I opted for a one-sided shrug instead.
“Hm.” He stared at me, his reptilian eyes unblinking.
Abruptly he reached out with his hand.
I flinched.
Amused, he introduced himself. “Skaris of Clan Deepeater.”
“Lock Slaveborn.” I clasped his forearm, exchanging grips.
“Interesting name.” He commented, then turned around without further ado, adding. “I wish you luck on the battlefield.”
It took me a while for sleep to come. But it did come, and even if it was made out of rock, I slept on a bed for the first time since I awoke in this body.
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Day 25.
In the morning, all the slaves were gathered in the mess hall beneath the barracks. Just like the beds, the tables were carved out of stone and so were the chairs. Some of us were too weak to move the chairs to a comfortable position, mostly the humans and elves. The stronger races such as dwarves and certain beastman had no problem. Lety was an exception to the elves of course. I usually sat with L’teya and Clover. It was a meaningless gesture in my opinion since there weren’t enough tables for all the groups to sit separately. But L’teya insisted.
“Haha! Eat more Clover! Or you will collapse again during training today!”
More than three weeks had passed since we arrived at the orc’s city. My daily routine consisted of breakfast, group training and then sneaking away into the alleyways with Arrosh to practice how to ‘stand still’. But I had learned some tricks from the drills that we always did in the morning, learning how to thrust and slashwhile still keeping my shield ready to defend myself with. I was getting increasingly better at manipulating each arm.
“Again! Fate clings heavily to you! Your sword arm must move with enough force to throw off the fingers of destiny that clings to you, young star!” Though most of Arrosh’s speech was still too cryptic for me to fully understand, he had finally grown satisfied enough to let me swing the sword for the last few minutes of our training sessions.
Skaris had never approached me again, but I did see him eyeing me here and there. I tended to avoid him and the other slaves that I wasn’t close with. If I had to mention one small thing that happened in the barracks, it was that the scarred man in charge of the human faction tried to monopolize the breakfast and dinner portions. Skaris and L’teya put a stop to it immediately along with help from other slaves.
From what I could see, in the last three weeks most of the slaves had thrown away the air of inexperience around weaponry. Most of us could pick up weapons without being afraid of it now, and the awkwardness disappeared from our movements. Even Clover had developed a hard edge, throwing away her oversized spear in favor of a bow and throwing knives that she kept hidden throughout her person at all times. From what I had heard she’d been having problems with certain slaves leering at her and passing off-handed comments. But she seemed to handle herself just fine. Even I felt confident enough that if I saw a [Lesser Dokkaebi] again, I’d be able to take it in single combat.
Comparing myself to a grade-10 monster wasn’t the proudest moment but a win for me nonetheless.
“Damn am I getting used to being a slave?” I slapped myself on the face. “Wake up. It wouldn’t be weird for you to die at any second.”
Just because I was behind city walls and was steadily making progress wasn’t a sign that I was safe. A grade-1 monster could decide to attack and level half this city. Some wandering adventurers could summon a grade-S boss monster and create a catastrophe comparable to a natural disaster. Or our orc masters could decide we weren’t worth the effort or get their mystery situation handled and have us all executed.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
That was the type of world I was in.
So from that day on, I took to carrying around a kitchen knife. Whenever I would have time, I’d sharpen it or try to carve small figures out of branches that were lying around.
“Are you bored? That’s a strange hobby you picked up. It doesn’t suit you.” Clover Weinport commented one day, watching me carve wood while eating dinner.
“...It helps me relax.” It was a lie, but it wasn’t like I could tell her that I was trying to unlock the skill [Cut] or raise my [Handicraft] stat.
So the days went on.
Eating. Training. Practicing. Talking. Sleeping.
One morning after our group training, the glasses-wearing elf stood at the front and cleared his throat. Some of the slaves who had taken to practicing with daggers and had been receiving lessons from him gathered immediately, Clover included. From hearsay, his personality was just as I had surmised, cunning, paranoid and dangerous. The rest of us gathered soon after grabbing our drinks.
“Tomorrow you will be allowed to go outside the city walls and hunt in one of two areas at a time of your choosing.”
There were excited murmurings.
“Outside the city walls, if you head east you will find a field called the Desolate Sands. You are free to hunt there the entire day. If you head North, you will find the Samak Bluffs. You may also hunt there if you wish.”
He finished off with this.
“Any Core you find, you may choose to keep. But if you are not back by the next morning, we will send out a search party.” His eyes gleamed with delight, just screaming ‘please escape’ to all of us.
I recognized both fields as monster zones populated with grade-10 and grade-9 monsters.
“Not the best hunting grounds but we can keep the Cores… hm…” I started going through the list of monsters that spawned in those fields.
“Tomorrow instead of heading here, you can follow whichever warrior is heading towards the one of the two fields you prefer.” He shrugged. “Alright, that’s it. Carry on as usual.”
“Desolate Sands or the Samak Bluffs. Hm. Which one would be better…” My thoughts were preoccupied with monster names so that I hadn’t noticed that I was already in front of Arrosh.
“Young dream, do you dare to carry plans of grandeur, in this holy hour wherein we hold the sacred sword?
“God, I swear this guy’s getting worse.” Ignoring my annoyance, I answered him. “No, I dream of the sword and the sword alone for only its blade song is the music I answer.”
Lately, I had been answering Arrosh in the same cryptic way that he spoke, hoping to annoy him enough to drop his ‘act’. Yet Arrosh had taken a liking to my new style of speech and that was exactly the day when he started letting me swing the sword. So now, whenever I had a chance to talk with Arrosh I spoke in his fashion, hoping that he might eke out some more teachings as I got on his good side. The downside was that Arrosh was the one person I spoke the most with. So at breakfast or dinner when I had to speak to either Lety or Clover, it slipped out without me meaning to.
“Come. The awaited hour approaches.” Arrosh stood from his seat and entered the maze composed of alleyways and I followed suit.
Once again, we practiced standing still or as Arroash called it, ‘Basic Stance’. I held the shield with my left arm, right above my heart ready to cover my face at a moment’s notice. My swordarm slightly behind my torso, almost covered by the sword.
“As all roads lead to one ending, so one beginning leads to many roads.” He muttered, correcting my posture.
But the instances where he had to correct my posture were decreasing everyday, sometimes he even ended the training session early and allowed me to practice swinging the sword. Today the aged orc nodded to himself and walked over to the stool he always sat at, facing me. Sometimes I wondered if he could see, his blindness did not seem to hinder him the least.
“Where will you be heading tomorrow, young branch?”
I didn’t have to ask him to explain what he was talking about, there was only one thing he could be referring to.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I muttered.
“Beware the shadows that appear in the Desolate Sands on a cloudless day, for there lies a six legged snake that you are not yet ready to face. In the Samak Bluffs, run back towards the city when you hear the scream of a maiden and her lover combined into one, for it signals the beginning of the hunt.” He advised.
I frowned, though my concentration did not slip.
For the first time, I half understood what he was talking about. He was referring to the boss monsters of each respective zone. The Desolate Fields was basically a barren wasteland, a shadow would surely signal a flying monster. The ‘scream of a maiden and her lover’ was referring to the boss monster in the Samak Cliffs. This was the most normal advice he had given me yet.
“I shall etch the words of your teachings into the walls of my heart.” I replied in kind.
I thought I saw the hint of a smile at his lips.
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The next morning L’teya, Clover and I readied ourselves and got ready to leave. It wasn’t a verbal agreement or contract that we devised, but a silent agreement of sorts. At least until one of us said otherwise, us three would move together as one unit. On one hand, it gave me a sense of security that I wouldn’t be hunting alone. On the other, I was terribly aware of how unbalanced we were.
“Three people without cores, all focused on melee combat. Not a single one of us is specialized enough to take on any of the traditional roles.” Parties in World: MSS were usually comprised of members who specialized in one or two things but all three of us shared similar traits.
Clover with her daggers, would need to get up close to the enemy. The same could be said for L’teya and I. If I had to choose one positive aspect, it was that at least one of us had a shield. Namely me.
“But in MSS just a shield isn’t good enough. Core settings, Skills and the stats to back it all up. Those are all required to be a real [Shielder]. Not that I would want to be one, that’d be wasting my potential as a human.”
There was nothing worse in MSS than becoming a jack of all trades.
“Come Lock Slaveborn! You are thinking too much!” L’teya led me by the arm to the front of the barracks, where two groups of orc warriors were waiting.
One group would escort the slaves to the Desolate Sands and the other to the Samak Bluffs. Clover was waiting for us there. We had all been given ill-fitting leather or metal armor, depending on our preference. However I felt that everyone but me had managed to find something that fit them perfectly. My breastplate was a bit too tight, which was better than it being loose L’teya told me. My leather boots were the same way.
L’teya exchanged a greeting with Clover and started walking towards the group that would lead us to the Samak Bluffs.
“Damn.” That wasn’t the field I wanted to go to.
“L’teya. Clover.” I said after much deliberation.
Both the elf-barbarian and the sheep-beastwoman turned to look at me, wondering why I had stopped them.
“Would it be alright if I got to chose where we hunt?” I was fully prepared to go alone if they said no.
Lety laughed and spread her arms wide open, clapping Clover and me on the back. “Anywhere is fine my friends! But where did you want to go?”
Clover pushed Lety’s arm off, not because she didn’t like the elf barbarian but most likely because she didn’t like being under the barbarian’s arm at the same time as me.
“Is there a reason you chose the Desolate Sands?” She asked directly.
I just shrugged. “Gut feeling.”
“He has good instincts!” Lety added.
One night, I had filled her in on how I had managed to figure out that the Dokkaebi Dagger was crucial in mining the magic stones from the tunnels we were trapped in. Since then, Lety had often been more than willing to listen to me when I said I had a gut feeling. She almost treated me like a barbarian witch doctor, often asking me how the skies looked today.
“But it looks like today it’s working in my favor.” The two listened to me without resistance, it seemed both had no real preference about where to hunt.
“I simply chose the cliffs because I thought we’d be able to get a better look at our surroundings.” Clover said.
Just as Clover finished speaking, Skaris, the lizard beastman, approached us.
“Greetings, to my fellow cousin.” He greeted Clover, putting a fist in the palm of his hand and bowing slightly.
Clover did not return the gesture and said simply. “I’m afraid my family is not one of the martial clans.”
“Ah, pity.” He turned his attention to Lety and me. “May I ask you which field you plan to hunt on this fine day?”
He already knew, judging by the fact that we were standing near the orc warriors who’d head to the Desolate Sands but asked anyways, probably out of politeness.
“Desolate Sands.” I replied simply.
“So it seems, might it be too presumptuous to travel together just for a short while?” His forked tongue flickered.
“Ahaha! A strong warrior such as you is always welcome!” Lety said good naturedly.
But I knew better. Something was afoot.
Whatever happened on this hunt, things would change for the Slaves. Especially for me.
Because one way or another, I planned to return with a Core.