Chapter 7: The Missing Daughter.
We went up above, Merillax leading me as I numbly clutched the sword and kept replaying the rage in the eyes of the man I’d killed, he’d done something to those eyes. All of the hunters I’d seen so far had a strange colour to their iris, almost a glow. I guessed that was why they could see in the dark. Merillax put a hand on her hip and leaned back against a large, bare rock at the cave's entrance.
“My name is Jack, by the way, Jack Wells” I kicked myself for giving my full name to a demon but didn’t immediately smell brimstone or feel any different so I just ignored the potential fuck up and waited for the demoness to respond.
“Well, well, you have more backbone than I thought Jack. I didn’t even have to make you kill that guy. You just did it.”
I wanted to be angry, but it had been him or me and he had no qualms about putting me down. I remembered the way it felt to be helpless as the blade came down and felt a little better about the horrible death he got. Still not great, but better.
“We got sidetracked earlier, the hunter coming in and all. I had a question about Classes?”
Merillax raised an eyebrow at the change of conversation but waited expectantly, corners of her lips quirked up in obvious amusement.
“Look Merri I’m going to be straight with you here. If I accidentally picked a class could I change it later? If I didn’t want to be a Spell Candler for instance?” Her lips turned up all the way into a radiant smile and then worst of all she giggled at me.
“Spell Candler? Is that what you did to the hunter before? I thought you were a wizard of some sort. You're saying you wield a school of candle-based magic?”
I hung my head theatrically. “I’m afraid so, is that bad?”
Merri shrugged. “Maybe, where did you learn the discipline from exactly?”
“I just opened a kind of menu inside my head and it gave me tons of choices to look at, I was able to filter it by aptitude and apparently a hobby I took as a kid and sort of honed throughout my life made me eligible for this class. I didn’t mean to pick it, but here I am”
Merri looked nonplussed for a moment. “A menu in your head?” understanding dawned on her face. “You don’t mean the Akashic Record do you?” she asked.
I shrugged oafishly. “It was a long list of classes, hundreds, maybe thousands of them even after I started filtering them down, but once I clicked on one to see what it was. Well, I got stuck with Spell-Chandler”
Merri bit her lip before she spoke again; sounding almost awed. “Oh, wow. Normally only trained scholars can access the record and using it always carries a price. Most of the time you can mix and match as many classes as you want, as long as you're eligible for them anyway. Theres a lot of classes no one is eligible for though, as well as classes that can’t be combined with others. It's very difficult to bypass those eligibility requirements, very difficult in fact. But if someone can access the Akashic record, well they can pick any class, including those they shouldn’t be eligible for.”
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I got the picture, the price wouldn’t be something I liked though.
“In addition to accessing normally unavailable or lost classes a scholar who accesses the Akashic learns at an accelerated rate without strictly needing a trainer or study. The information should just appear in your mind as you exercise and train your power. Should work out to about double the levelling speed”
Merrilax was still talking but my mind was stuck all the way back at the start of her exposition. “What was the price you mentioned?”
Merri hesitated, trying not to laugh at me. “You can’t choose another class and the Akashic will likely burn your mind to ashes if you access it again.”
Jack Wells, Spell Chandler Level: 3
I sat by the fire examining my character sheet and kicking myself for my mistakes. I had a goal now though Merri had explained a few things about the world, including about the nearest settlement, the mountain village I’d seen earlier was apparently home to 400 people and run by a family called the Delacrofts.
“The Lady Delacroft has two daughters, real beauties I’ve heard, although according to the gossip I’ve been hearing lately the Lady is at a loss on what to do with them. Apparently one of those daughters is rather too bookish and shy for her own good while the other is an absolute hellion, sneaking out at night, carrying a sword, and picking fights wherever she can”
I cocked an eyebrow. “How did you get this gossip” Merri blushed and shot me a very quick glare that melted back into a smile, she was certainly cute.
“It wasn’t pillow talk if that’s what you were implying! I haven’t fucked any of you mortals since I got up here, I don’t even know if I would enjoy it or not yet.”
She batted her eyelashes at me and I shook my head with a smile of my own. “Knock it off Merri”
She had huffed but acquiesced and continued to fill me in on the situation.
The more rambunctious of the daughters had her mother apoplectic with fury. She had signed up with a band of adventurers and left town the day before. The leader of the band was a half-elf rogue named Ruthax who had discovered a cave full of monsters and Lady Selena Delacroft’s younger daughter Luna had signed on under a false identity and disappeared with these adventurers.
Merri had gotten this information by spying on the noble’s estate and decided to hunt the missing lady down and return her to her mother in hopes of proving herself to the noblewoman and receiving sanctuary from any demon hunters still on her tail.
This had been the second cave she had explored on the hunt for the missing lady and of course the demon hunters had cornered her, I knew the gory end of that tale.
“Ok Merri, what’s the plan then? I’m happy to help hunt down the daughter and vouch for you if you want to work together but I won’t be much help against any more of those demon hunters and I’ll probably get killed if I try to fight a cave full of monsters” Merri had been ecstatic to hear that and waved away my reservations about getting torn to pieces in a cave.
As I’ve mentioned, she was pretty convincing for a sadistic, demonic killer and the two of us agreed to split up and hunt for Luna, she gave me directions to some unexplored caves she’d read about and told me she would contact me if she found the lady first.
The plan had some huge flaws. The biggest flaw besides my ineptitude was that if I found the girl but couldn’t save her by myself I wouldn’t be able to contact Merri. Merri pointed out that I could make a fire very easily and she could find me that way, no telepathy, no teleportation. Just smoke signals.
I didn’t have a better plan so I agreed and Merri embraced me in a sweet, clinging hug. I could smell incense-like perfume, I felt her small breasts against my chest and had to resist the temptation to smack the perfect bubble butt sticking out behind her. “Thank you, Jack, thank you for trusting me, I swear I won’t make you regret it”
Then the murderous demoness had disappeared in a puff of black flames leaving me blue-balled as all hell. I deserved it for not eagerly accepting her advances in the charnel-chamber but I still felt like shit as I trudged through the woods with a looted longsword in my trolley-wagon, scabbard tied through the mesh so that I could easily draw the weapon if I needed it and a new runic coat over my torso.