Quills mouth hung open as he stared at Iirilacs body lying dead at his feet. “D-did you just kill him??”
“Obviously. I wasn’t going to let him continue living now that we knew where we needed to go. Plus he would have just taken your experience away with killing the rat king. The whole thing is a win-win if you ask me.” she responded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world
“But! He was our ally! Why did you kill him!? Plus you just broke our contract!” Quill looked at his level but found that it remained the same.
“You signed the contract. I did nothing. And since you didn’t collaborate with me in his death, you technically didn’t break it” She spoke matter of factly
“But you still killed him! He would have helped us complete the rat spawner quest and probably helped with the roaches too!”
“Quill.. I don’t really like this tone you are taking with me here. Please apologies”
“What tone! You just killed an ally who was being nice eno-Mmfmmfm” He tried to speak more but his jaw slammed shut and his entire body suddenly locked. He couldn’t move a single muscle as he fell over to the ground with a soft grunt of pain. Even his eyes were unable to move, being forced to stare up at the ceiling as her voice echoed in his head once again.
“I did this for you. Who knows what that Rat Kin was planning. Sure you signed a contract but so what? If I could find an easy loophole then so could they. You are far FAR too trusting over someone that held a dagger to your throat. I will not have you start back talking to me on something that was done for YOUR benefit.”
He suddenly felt the muscles in his mouth loosen giving him the ability to talk but he remained silent, trying hard not to think of anything to give her something to go off of.
“Are you really throwing a temper tantrum right now? You better start speaking or at least start thinking. Else I am just going to keep you frozen where you are, even if some more rats or roaches show up.”
He didn’t know why but he had a strong gut feeling she was telling the truth so spoke carefully “Why did you kill him? He was going to help us. He Was helping us.”
“I already explained it to you. He threatened your life. That alone forfeited his. I don’t need other reasons even if I do have them. I knew you wouldn’t kill him when the contract was over. So I took it upon myself to do it for you.”
Quill tried to move his body but still couldn’t so spoke again “And you managed to use my skill Pseudo Energy Manifestation by yourself. How?”
He didn’t know why but he felt like she just rolled her eyes “I already told you didn’t I? The energy is as much part of me as it is you. I doubt a typical G rank individual could even use anything more than small claws for a few seconds when using this skill. I am why you can use so much and for so long. You're welcome by the way. Feel free to praise me~”
Quill kept his mouth shut and she took on a serious tone “I said. Feel free to praise me.”
He kept silent which elicited a sigh from her. “Fine, have it your way.”
Grey Energy manifested above him as a small orb with only the tiniest of string leading back to his body before plummeting down into his chest hard causing Quill to cough out in both pain and shock. He couldn’t even bend his torso to help absorb some of the impact.
“Perhaps you don’t need to praise me but you do need to thank me. I don’t have to help you but I do because I love you. Now you need to start showing some better appreciation for all the work I do. Now what do you say?”
“Alright alright.” He coughed once more and got himself collected “Thank you. Genuinely for helping me with using my skill.”
“Good boy. Much better when you are agreeable~”
“But that still doesn’t change what you did!” He countered “Iirilac was on our side. He only put that blade to my throat and threatened my life because he didn’t know if I could be an ally. You should not have killed him!”
“Ugh. It’s a good thing I find your compassion so endearing. Quill, listen to me. You are just too stupid and too naive to realize the actual dangers he held. You really think that wizard wouldn’t have had his little pet rogue sacrifice a few levels to quickly put an end to a potentially serious threat once he wiped out all your other threats. Especially if there was a promise to help regain those levels? See, this is why you need me. He would have betrayed you the moment the opportunity rose, I just ensured he never got that chance. That is why you need me. And frankly it is quite upsetting that you would act so ungrateful for my help.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Quill opened his mouth to argue but didn’t. Instead he slowly shut his mouth as his head seemed to get more fuddled and clouded with various thoughts and emotions. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth but she always seemed to know more than he did. Plus he wasn’t very good at reading people and he knew he had been too trusting at times when he shouldn’t have been. His track record certainly saw to that. If anything, shouldn't he be grateful that he finally had someone looking out for him?
“I-I’m sorry… I think I was just too shocked about what had happened and I lashed out at you which isn’t fair.”
“Well, at least you realized your mistake and apologized. So I forgive you, thank you for seeing reason.”
Quill felt his body unlock and he could finally move about which elicited a deep sigh of relief on his part. Not having control over his body was discerning and he would much rather not have it happen again.
“It won’t happen again so long as you don’t do anything stupid like that again. Deal?”
“Yeah, deal” He jumped up and down trying to get himself moving a bit more. The more he could shake off that feeling of being paralyzed the better. Once he was more comfortable he grabbed the map he had dropped when she killed Iirilac.
Then for good measure he decided to see if Iirilac had anything on his body that could be useful for him in the future. He tried to ignore the nagging guilt as he pawed through the dead rats cloak and actually found 3 health potions.
“See? He didn’t even tell you he had health potions on him. Shows how little he actually trusted you.”
“Well it’s not like I told him I had a stamina, mana, and cleansing potion on me” Quill mumbled back.
“Yes but if he was in trouble you would have given those potions to him. He wouldn’t have if you were in trouble. Trust me.”
He nodded in understanding as he opened up the map and looked it over to try and properly map out the way towards the Rat king's lair which was situated at the Grand station.
He noted that there were a couple of stations marked on the map that belonged to the rat king's territory but he didn’t really have much reason to actually take those stations down.
The contract stated that he needed to help kill the king and his quest stated he needed to destroy what was spawning so many rats which he assumed just meant the spawner that the rat king was using.
Of course there was a good chance that these tunnels were going to not only be heavily patrolled but also just as likely have barricades and maybe even kill zones. He was going to need to be careful.
“Sure would have been nice to have someone who knew these tunnels better than I did and help us navigate through them.” he muttered
“Fine. I will give you that comment. But only cause you said it in jest. You did say it in jest right?”
“Of course. You can tease me, so that means I can tease you. Even if you did it with my… Best… Interest” Quills brows furrowed but he quickly shook his head “Sorry. Stressed. We should probably get going though.”
“We should. Probably should turn on your enhanced touch, smell and taste though. Every single sense you have should be on high alert for when you are going through the tunnels. Don’t want a repeat of Iirilac.”
He saw her point and while he wasn’t entirely sure how useful taste would be, he also didn’t feel like arguing against her. There was a good chance the heavens themselves would come down and make it so taste would absolutely play an important role in his survival somehow.
With that done he started to make his way towards the tunnels that they were going to travel through before this whole ambush thing when she suddenly cleared her throat
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“No?”
“Your unspent class skill doofus!”
Quill facepalmed and quickly pulled up his status and clicked the unspent skill choice and promptly got a ton of different skills. This was… Going to take him a bit.
He spent the next 20 or so minutes going through the skills, throwing away the ones he didn’t like or didn’t have much use for and keeping the ones he thought might be of use.
Finally he narrowed things down to a couple. There was the enhanced toughness that was still there and very tempting but also another one that seemed promising.
Enhanced reflexes (common)
It really shouldn’t be that difficult to catch a bullet if someone throws them at you. But when they are fired out of a gun, suddenly you are just a little too slow. Pick this and you will most certainly be able to catch those bullets eventually!
He was still tempted to pick the enhanced toughness but really, most of his fighting strategy involved not getting hit. And if he was getting hit, well he probably screwed up somewhere. Enhanced reflexes sounded like a great way to ensure he didn’t screw up.
Plus he just didn’t like pain, enhanced toughness probably meant he would take more blows and that meant taking more pain. Yeah, he was going with the option to avoid that.
“You know, I can’t help but feel like you keep taking all the lamest options that you are given.”
“I’ll take the cooler options when I have the luxury to do so” Quill responded and selected enhanced reflexes. He also hoped that the skill would synergise well with survival instincts and dodge. Leading him to hopefully be almost untouchable.
With all that out of the way and with the ‘Go ahead’ from her. Quill started to march down into the tunnels and towards the Rat Kings encampment.
Quill ERROR
Lvl: 16
Race: Human (F rank)
Class: Early Savage warrior
Body: 16.9
Mind: 15.6
Soul: ERROR
Buffs/ailments: Insanity (weak)
Skills: Dirty fighting (lvl 2), Dodge (lvl 5), pseudo energy manifestation (lvl 3), enhanced senses (lvl 2), Identify (lvl 2), survival instincts (lvl 2), Mental focus (lvl 1), split thinking (lvl1), Stealth (lvl 1), Enhanced reflexes (lvl 1)
Achievements: Tutorial Forerunner, First step towards greatness, professional lawyer
traits: ERROR (unique)