The room was rather plain. It had a large bed at the center of the room and a desk off to the left side, beneath a dirty window. The wood creaked slightly underfoot as Elijah walked over to the bed and sat down. With a thought, he brought up his status page.
Elijah (Dove) Fleet !
Human [Level 5]
Class: Spellblade [MODIFIED]
Strength: 13
Agility: 15
Endurance: 12
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 17
Charisma: 19
Luck:3
ABILITIES
Shadow Step [MODIFIED]
Spellblade: Bind
Spellblade: Infuse (Lvl 1)
He turned over and laid back on the bed with a sigh. This was the first time in a long time that he’d been in an actual bed. His body was still covered in small cuts from the stones and sticks that covered the forest floor.
Elijah smacked his lips and adjusted the pillow under his head. Then he frowned and pulled back up the status screen.
“I wonder what else you can show me,” Elijah muttered to himself. “Can I see what abilities I’ll learn as I level up?”
The screen didn’t respond. Elijah poked the ability section, but all it did was bring up the descriptions of the ones he already knew.
“Bah. Piece of shit,” Elijah grumbled. He squinted at the table, something was different. At the upper right corner of the it, in the same line as his name, was a small exclamation point. He reached out and tapped it.
SYSTEM LEVEL UP!
You’ve committed a Heroic Act. System Level 2 unlocked.
Advance UI? [Y/N]
“New stuff. Cool,” Elijah said, tapping the yes option with a finger. “Not sure I like the idea that the all powerful system thingie is making moral judgments about my actions, but I like goodies.”
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His table shimmered as a haze passed over it. When it came back into view, there didn’t seem to be much of a difference. However, his class was shimmering with a faint golden light. Elijah tapped it. A new table ballooned up before his eyes.
“Well isn’t that something,” Elijah said, scanning over the table. It was structured like a tree, showing a progression of possible classes down from his current one, Spellblade. He tried to tap the new class names, but they remained stubbornly dark. “Well how am I supposed to know which one to choose if I don’t know what they do?”
Unsurprisingly, nothing answered his question. Elijah screwed his nose up and waved the table away, sitting up and getting out of bed. He strode over to the desk and sat down, drumming his fingers on the hard wood.
Elijah peered out the window into the town below him. The dirt covering it made it hard to make out any details, but he could see several forms standing in front of the inn. He found himself wishing for Avery’s abilities so he could hear what they were talking about.
He rubbed at some of the dirt, doing little more than smudging it around as he tried to make out who was speaking. They didn’t look familiar. At least, he didn’t think they did.
Avery would doubtless be detailing every single nook and cranny of the town. She’d never been one to sleep in an area with unknown variables if she could avoid it. Elijah’s lip curled as he rose from the desk. That was the biggest difference between them. Avery despised the unknown. Elijah reveled in it.
He stepped out of the room and locked the door behind him before dropping the key into his pocket — Avery could pick the lock if she wanted to get in. Elijah walked down the hallway, adjusting his weight so that the wood barely made a noise as he slipped over it.
There was a large window at the far end of the hall that pointed towards the back of the tavern. Instead of glass, it was simply a hole in the wall. Elijah glanced outside. Nobody was there. He slipped through it, holding onto the windowsill for a moment before dropping to the ground soundlessly.
The assassin kept to the shadows cast by the large building as he turned the corner and crept towards the edge of town. He suspected that there weren’t generally many people out at this time of day, and even less so after an attempted robbery.
He reached the alley where Kat had been attacked and hopped up, clambering onto the roof of the house soundlessly. Elijah crept over to the edge and peered over it. The bodies were still there. A grin flickered across his face and he settled down to wait.
It took a little under half an hour before the last traces of light had faded beyond the horizon. Aside from the slight light cast from a few torches around the wall, the town was completely dark.
Only a few minutes later, something moved in the corner of Elijah’s vision. A man slipped from building to building, trying and failing to hide himself in the shadows as he made his way towards the three corpses in the alley beneath Elijah.
The assassin watched with an amused smirk as the man made a shuffle-dash across the last open space before the alley and then slipped inside it. He walked over to the nearest corpse and knelt beside it, rooting around for something - presumably the bag of money that Elijah currently had hanging from his waist.
Elijah drew his dagger and activated Shadow Step. He rose up from the ground behind the man without a noise. In a single motion, he wrapped his arm around the man’s back and held the edge of the dagger to his neck.
“No sharp motions,” Elijah breathed. “My hand doesn’t feel very steady today.”
The man stiffened and let out a tiny gasp, but Elijah’s hand clasped over his mouth before he could scream.
“Scream and they find a fourth corpse.”
He waited a moment before removing his hand. The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple pressing against the edge of the blade.
“Who are you?” The man whispered.
“You’re one of Ralph’s men, are you not?” Elijah asked, ignoring his question. “Nod if you agree.”
The man hesitated. Elijah’s blade pressed closer against his throat. He nodded.
“Good. I have a message for Ralph. You have been chosen as my messenger. Do you understand?”
The man nodded.
“Tell Ralph that I am inviting him to stay out of my way. His plans for this town, whatever they are, do not need to involve me. I don’t care what happens here. All he has to do is wait until I’m gone. I think he’ll find that he’d much prefer not to have me as an enemy.”