The Sakarkan Empire was a nation that, at its height, ruled over twenty-four billion sentient beings and over fifty-thousand Territories. However, after the founding Emperor – a Shadow Elf who lived twelve thousand years before his body failed him – died of old age, the Empire began a slow decline.
Bits and pieces of Sakarkan culture can be found in hundreds of smaller nations, usually in central buildings, bathhouses, and the occasional inn. Sakarkan culture is – and was – extremely focused on personal freedom that was protected in exchange for the fulfillment of obligations to civil society. It was also a culture that was brutally harsh on those who would or could not fulfill those obligations.
The most common forms of debt and criminal slavery were put into place first by the Sakarkan Empire then inherited by the smaller nations that were born as the Empire withdrew into its core territories. The attitude toward those same slaves has remained the same, with a callous and often brutal disregard for them being the most common.
That disregard, however, is only for their position. Sakarkan law was very clear about what could and could not be done with each type of slaves. Criminal slaves could be worked to death and sent into dangerous situations without restriction, and that remains the case to this day. However, debt slaves must be properly fed and housed, lest the owner be punished and the slaves resold.
In both cases, it is both possible and encouraged for the slave to buy their freedom. Debt slaves merely need pay their debt (depending on the slave contract, this can be done either purely through a set period of labor or credits earned through that labor), whereas criminal slaves must often fulfill a condition set by the Magistrate or Judge who condemned them.
Oddly, one thing that did not survive the decline of the Empire was their attitude toward prostitution. In Sakarka, even today, prostitutes are thought to have a great calling and are treated as equal with capable craftsmen. However, in the nations that have left the fold, prostitutes and courtesans have been reduced to a ‘tainted’ profession and often are forced to live in conditions even slaves wouldn’t have to endure.
It is thought by many scholars that this is due to the differences in Sakarkan views of relationships and marriage vs those of the minor nations that were never truly subdued during the Empire’s rule. In Sakarka, relationships and marriages are seen to benefit from occasional experience with other partners, and polyamorous love affairs are both accepted and honored. However, in the more ‘prudish’ nations that gained their independence, such relationships are often seen as dirty or immoral.
This can also be seen in the treatment of mongrels, the descendants of multiple races that maintain traits of all of them. In Sakarka, a mongrel was merely another citizen, but in most of the other nations of this particular world, mongrels are seen as abominations or aberrations, the result of perversion and racial impurity.
Those from Sakarka, such as myself, are often bemused at this attitude, particularly because those same people who despise mongrels are perfectly accepting of their own half-blooded children with other races. The intellectual dissonance of these individuals is often thought to be sourced in how assessment and analysis skills cause visceral reactions when used on mongrels, and since most individuals gain such a skill as a matter of course, the contempt and hatred for these poor beings is almost universal on our world outside Sakarka…
~From a Study of the Lands of Old Sakarka in the Modern Era
The Mongrel grunted as he swung the lead mock bastard sword downward, sweat soaking his body from head to toe, his muscles standing out against his skin as he endured the immense weight of the weapon. The sword, save for the hilt, which was made out of reinforced steel, was a thick bar of lead made to test the very limits of what his body could handle.
With every practice swing, muscles tore, ligaments stretched, and bones fractured. With every practice swing, he repaired them, making his body just a little more resilient as he accelerated the natural processes of healing and System growth. Simply strengthening his body with his magic was only temporarily effective. He had to actually work for it if he wanted permanent enhancements.
This kind of training was great for growing the body stat at level up, but since he was usually on the job when he gained levels, it was usually only good for a fraction of a point per level. Nonetheless, he continued whenever he could, pushing his body to its limits and beyond while using his magic to put it back together.
Like all Flesh Magic users, he was accustomed to pain. It was an old friend that he only acknowledged because it was telling him what he was doing was effective. To his mind, if it wasn’t hurting, it wasn’t training.
A tendon his shoulder ripped apart from his latest swing, and before he could repair it, the weapon slipped out of his hands, digging deep into the dirt at his feet. He repaired the tendon, but he could feel his body starving for nutrients, the need to eat now overwhelming after five hundred swings. Healing with Flesh Magic had a cost, and it was usually paid in meat, sugar, and bread.
With a sigh, he touched the small coin-sized pendant that served as an exclusive storage artifact for his practice sword, and the lead bar vanished, leaving a deep impression in the soil of the courtyard. Thankfully, there were no valuable plants there, the grass having withered in the autumn cold.
He headed for the small cafeteria next door, which turned into a bar at night. A young rabbit therianthrope female, probably half-elf from how little fur there was on her arms and legs – took his order of two large plates of fried bread and a plate of grilled meat scraps. A few minutes later, the three plates – more like platters meant for multiple people – came out of the kitchen on a tray in the hands of the same girl and were dropped on the table with a thump. He signaled his approval by running his hand over the band on her wrist, transferring five credits to her as a tip.
She gave him a bright smile and ran her hand over his bare shoulder appreciatively with a wink before moving on to the next table. If it were night, he probably would have been able to take advantage of ‘extra services’ as part of a private transaction, but during the day, she probably had no such intentions.
His bare head earned disgust from some of the other people eating – mostly humans and a few elves, but most people in this part of town weren’t the religious type, so fewer stares locked on his dual pairs of ears and scaled hands than usual. He quickly shoveled the dripping greasy meat into his mouth, uncaring of the taste (given that it was basically made from the parts that would be discarded in richer parts of town, the flavor was unlikely to be worth savoring), chewing with a speed that someone without dragonian teeth wouldn’t have been able to manage.
He’d shifted several of his teeth over into that form in anticipation of the tough meat being a challenge to chew and swallow, and it was paying dividends now, allowing him to eat more quickly than would have been possible otherwise. When he was done with the platter of meat scraps, he chugged the wooden pitcher of water on his table, washing it down even as his enhanced metabolism began to burn it rapidly for protein and calories.
He then moved on to the platters of fried bread, which were sprinkled with beat sugar and cinnamon, both of which were grown in plenty within the Territory. The beat sugar had a slight bitter aftertaste, but years of poor eating had beaten any pickiness he might once have had out of him long ago.
He took deeper gulps of the water with each piece of bread, until both platters were empty and he sat back, closing his eyes to wait for his body to do its job. Once he felt he could move again, he rose to his feet and headed back to the courtyard, where he called in his training suit from his ring.
The training suit appeared on his body, basically a bunch of leather straps with heavy slaps of lead inserted between them at calculated points to put weight on different groups of muscles as moved. He got into the horse stance, the thick muscles in his legs bulging with strain as he began to punch slowly, gradually increasing the force and speed of each blow until the air seemed to pop with each punch.
Sweat dripped from his body, and he was constantly doing small repairs with his magic to his muscles and bones. Even his toughened body wasn’t meant to endure the strain of more than two hundred kilograms of lead slabs strapped to his body. The pain of separating muscles and torn ligaments caused his lips to tighten, but he was truly accustomed to the suffering that went hand-in-hand with effective training.
It was difficult to utilize ambient energy to wield Flesh Magic, but the Mongrel had trained to do so in his early childhood, so he wouldn’t run out of energy at the wrong time. The downside was that it was difficult to do in the heat of battle, though simple enough to do so during training.
Soon he added kicks to his punches, fighting against shadows of his teacher and fellow students from long ago, occasionally throwing in enemies who had shown skills in barehanded fighting. The dirt of the courtyard was badly disturbed by the time he stopped, almost five hours later, and his skin was flushed and crimson from the strain and from constantly repairing his flesh as it tore and ripped internally.
He sighed with satisfaction and returned the training suit to his ring before wiping himself off with a rag and putting on a loose set of gray wool robes he tied with a sash and left open across his chest. Though there was a chill in afternoon air, it wasn’t that noticeable to him, given his resistances.
He headed over to the cafeteria, entering and heading to the same table he sat at earlier. The type of crowd had already changed over, most of the people inside being adventurers or mercenaries, still wearing armor and carrying sheathed weapons at their sides. Most of them were poor beginners, as was evidenced by the fact that none of them had a spatial storage for their equipment.
The rabbit therianthrope from earlier gave him a bright smile as she approached, that barely hid the tired light in her eyes.
“About to get off?” He asked casually.
“Yes. I’m on the day crew this week. Why? Do you want to take me home after dinner?” She smiled suggestively.
“As attractive as that sounds, I think your friend in the corner wouldn’t appreciate me butting in,” He said dryly, indicating the massive wolf therianthrope sitting in the corner, glaring at him while trimming his claws with an adamantine dagger.
“Ah, Vernae… he’d early. Yeah though… I don’t do that kind of thing anymore,” She said with a happy smile.
“Good for you. Hope he makes you happy,” He said with a good-natured smile of his own, nodding to the wolf, who gave him a surprised look before returning it.
Therianthrope races in old Sakarkan lands were so interbred that it seemed to be entirely random what traits were passed down with each generation. It wasn’t uncommon for a bear therianthrope to be born from two wolves or a rabbit to be born from two lizards. He wondered idly what their kids would look like as he ordered an orc steak, a bowl of the mutton stew, and two loaves of dark bread along with a pitcher of dark lager.
The entire meal cost him fifty credits, which was pretty expensive. However, considering the calories and protein he needed to keep his body going when he was training, it was a good deal. He polished off his meal in record time, giving the rabbit girl another tip before getting up and heading back to the inn.
He looked at his credit balance on his detailed status page and sighed, Five thousand, four hundred and sixty-two credits… not enough to refill my expendables or have the wind sword recharged. I need to take on some Adventurer work while I wait for the Mercenaries Guild to find me more work.
He hated the idea, as local Adventurer work at his rank was mostly drudge work like killing goblins or giant rats or miscellaneous small tasks for the locals. He sucked at gathering jobs, unless it was for edibles (time in the field had taught him what was edible and what was not, usually through having to heal his body of food poisoning afterward). However, it was one of the few ways he could earn coin locally while he waited for the Guild to clear his name and retrieve credits from the Baron’s accounts to cover for the broken contract… if that even happened.
If he’d spent more time raising his Adventurer rank, he wouldn’t have this problem, as his raw skill with a blade made him the equivalent of a C rank. Unfortunately, his aversion to doing adventurer work when he had mercenary work available had kept his rank low (at D), as he never did enough jobs in a short enough period to earn a promotion.
Moreover, fighting more powerful monsters required partying up, which was a problem with Adventurers, since most had the local prejudices against Mongrels, making it difficult for him to form even a temporary one without worrying about being stabbed in the back.
After taking a bath (eating up yet more credits from his limited store of money) and washing the sweat off his body, he returned to his room and went to bed, hoping things would be in order soon.
___________________________________________________________________________
The Mercenaries Guild was in an uproar as indentures and slaves pasted a large-scale recruitment drive for a war with Narshstadt, the city-state Territory to the far east, four Territories away. The basic pay was forty credits a day, with a combat bonus of forty credits per skirmish and five hundred credits for a full-on battle.
It was decent pay considering the scale of the mission. Most of the time, jobs like that one were slightly cheaper, though it made sense since it had a no-looting clause in the contract. Without the right to loot any settlements taken along the way, some mercenaries would grumble about losing out on the extra funds. It also showed that the Kingdom intended to take the city and its holdings intact, instead of wiping out the native population and resettling the area.
Unfortunately for the Mongrel, he was currently on temporary suspension as the investigation into what had happened on his last job was finished. Considering the recruitment deadline was only a week out, he was unlikely to make it.
“Hey Mongrel, the Guildmaster wants to see you in his office!” A gruff-looking mercenary with fox ears and a bushy tail said from the stairs to the second floor. He was one of the regular trainers for the second floor rooms, primarily focusing on energy control and light weapons like rapiers, short spears, and daggers. Before he half-retired, he had had a great reputation as a scout and skirmisher, leading a mercenary band that specialized in being irregulars for large campaigns. Unfortunately, his band had been half-exterminated during a particularly nasty loss, and they had had to disband afterward.
Guildmaster Zerag was smoking a cigar when the Mongrel entered his office this time, looking a bit wrung-out. Crows feet with a slight bluish tinge were visible under his eyes, and he was a bit slumped over his desk.
“Ah, Mongrel, you’re here. Before we do anything else… take this,” The daemon said, flicking his wrist sharply. A moment later, a blue screen appeared in front of the mercenary’s eyes, listing an amount that was more than he’d dared to hope.
Four thousand three hundred credits… less than I would have gotten if the Baron had paid out, more than I expected given the fact that estate was probably looted after I escaped, He thought.
“That’s mostly from us selling Iruf’s men into slavery. Unfortunately, that bastard burned the entire fief to the ground with his Fire Magic after you managed to escape. When we sent the hunters in, Iruf had already escaped and his men were sifting through the ashes. We picked them up and drew this out after estimating how much they are worth. There is a bounty of forty thousand on Iruf’s head now, to both the Mercenaries and Adventurers Guilds. His father and uncles finally cut ties with him after I sent in my report,” He said with some satisfaction.
“What about Drayd and the necromancer?” He asked curiously.
“I kicked him in the ass until he agreed to up the bounty to a little above the standard fee. The Wolf Pack is currently recruiting C and D ranks to take on the zombies while they go after the necro,” He replied, seeming satisfied with his own work.
“I guess I’ll take that job while I wait for the Guild to undo my suspension,” He said, already considering what weapon would be best for the sewers.
“Sorry about that, but the rules are the rules. Since you got the kids out and one of the maids who managed to escape vouched for you, they’ll probably undo it in another week or two. Until then, I’m sorry but you’d be best off training and working small jobs at the Adventurers Guild,” The daemon said apologetically.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s better than being imprisoned while I wait,” The Mongrel said dismissively. That had happened to him on three separate occasions, in regions where the prejudice against mongrels was even worse. Sometimes, people didn’t care about innocence or guilt when it came to their personal prejudices.
“I’ve thought this before, but maybe you should move to the old Empire. Prejudice against mongrels is almost nonexistent there,” Zerag suggested.
“And get involved in the perpetual civil war between the Southern and Northern Emperors? I’m not interested in throwing my life away in a pointless battle about matters that will never be resolved,” He replied in an acidic tone.
“If you survive, it is a good way to get rich enough to start your own band, though…” Zerag replied in a leading manner.
“If I was interested in starting a band, I would have already been looking for comrades, Guildmaster. Even people who don’t hate mongrels don’t want anything to do with us if they can help it,” The mercenary shot back wearily.
“I get that assessing you makes them feel nauseous, but System Church followers are just too superstitious sometimes…” Zerag said in a derisive manner.
“For every compassionate, good-hearted follower, there are three fanatic zealots who think I should be sent to a church for ‘purification’ by fire or use my Flesh Magic to purge my other bloodlines,” He said with more than a little disgust.
“… I’ve heard that has nasty side-effects,” Zerag said quietly.
“Yeah, it does. I once took on a commission to remove the human bloodline from an elf/human/wolf therianthrope mongrel, and he spent three months in bed afterward, having constant waking nightmares about his body melting around him,” The Mongrel said with a shiver of remembered horror. That particular commission had been lucrative, but it was not worth having to constantly repair the self-inflicted wounds and suppress the hormonal imbalances caused as he adjusted to his body.
Zerag made a disgusted face, “Urgh, that sounds awful. I guess if you hate your situation that much it might be fine, but I wouldn’t go through with it.”
“I could probably manage it, since I’m used to messing with my own body, but I’d probably still have some negative effects. I would need to be able to pay someone to care for me while I was down and a place to stay… probably around thirty thousand credits if I wanted to be sure,” The Mongrel said, considering. He sometimes thought about it, though most of the time he came to the conclusion that it just wouldn’t be worth it. He was used to his body’s shape and unique qualities, and he had no desire to change it just to escape the nasty gazes of a bunch of bigoted zealots.
He continued to converse with Zerag for another half-hour, until the fox-therianthrope from earlier informed them that the daemon’s appointment with the Governor was coming up. The Mongrel made his apologies and departed, heading for the Adventurers Guild.
The Adventurer’s Guild was identical to the Mercenaries from the outside, but on the inside it began with a bar and cafeteria, with jobs on the far wall and a receptionist behind a cage near the rear of the room. The Mongrel looked through the jobs until he found the recruitment from the Wolf Pack for zombie-hunting in the sewers and noted the work number and requirements.
Client: The Wolf Pack
Job: Zombie Hunting
Rank Requirement: D or higher
Details: The Wolf Pack requests up to thirty D rank or higher Adventurers to participate in the hunt for the unnamed necromancer in the sewers by hunting the risen undead within. For every undead slain, the Guild will put out twenty-five credits and the Wolf Pack five. For every Death Stone retrieved from an undead, the Guild will pay ten credits. Higher undead will grant greater rewards, but the necromancer must be left for the Wolf Pack. Meet the clan guide at the entrance to the sewers inside the slums and you will be directed to your assigned position.
Much better than the original offer I heard from Gillie… which reminds me, I need to get my money back for the room I didn’t use the other day… He thought idly as he headed for the receptionist.
The receptionist was a pretty human girl in her late teens, her red hair held away from her face by a length of string. Her red eyes were dead and lifeless, a common trait in those who had been misused in the past. As he approached, her eyes focused on him, but there was no sign of interest in them.
He presented his membership card – a bronze slip imprinted with his moniker and blood-bound to his energy pattern. She took it and used a small crystal to verify the information before handing it back and asking him the number of the job request. After he told her, she tapped it into the same device using the crystal board next to it, and it printed out a thick wooden card that would serve as confirmation that he had, indeed, taken on the job. He placed it against his guild card and they adhered to one another, thus becoming proof he’d taken the job.
He departed, ignoring the stares coming from the adventurers in the room. There was no point in bothering with them, in any case.
__________________________________________________________________________
The town of Tonarre’s water was provided by half-underground canals that were mostly built over in such a way that they only had access at certain points. These points generally lay at the borders between districts, and each had an access to the sewers connected to them near the output leading into the river going out. This was to prevent sewage-tainted water from causing illness inside the city.
The one nearest to the slums was left unguarded, unlike the others, mostly because guards who got assigned to the slums either went dirty or ended up dead. As such, save for the occasional random patrols and undercover guards, the slums were mostly left to themselves.
A young wolf therianthrope of maybe eleven years in a ragged set of cheap hardened leathers with a short spear in hand stood at the entrance to the sewers, his eyes wide and frightened. This was no surprise, as the Wolf Pack were known for taking in orphaned therianthropes and putting them to work as F rank adventurers, usually as messengers and herb gatherers. In another year or two, the boy would probably be put to work killing rats and goblins like most of the others who had made it past their first few years in the clan.
As he approached, the Mongrel was careful to keep his hands away from his bastard sword, holding his guild card out where it could be seen. The boy was wary at first but his shoulders sagged with relief when he saw the wooden tag connected to the card.
“Let me see your card so I can tell you where the Chief wants you,” He said, his human face showing no sign of the usual aversion young people felt for mongrels.
He narrowed his eyes as he examined the wooden tag, then checked it against a wax tablet set against the wall behind him. Such wax tablets were often used in place of paper for this kind of thing, as paper was just too expensive for daily use by adventurer teams, unless they were map-making or doing accounts.
“You have been assigned to the teams taking care of the southern junction. You are the last one in, so there might not be much left for you,” The boy said as he handed the guild card and the tag back to him.
The Mongrel shrugged, “Credits are credits… even if I only kill two and collect their Death Stones, that’ll still pay for a couple of days at the inn I’m staying at and food to fill my belly.”
That was if he he continued his training routine. If he went back to his normal daily schedule, he could probably half his expenses by cutting down on his food intake.
The kid nodded hesitantly, and the Mongrel stopped for a second, hesitating over what he was thinking of saying for a moment before going ahead, “I know they probably shoved that spear into your hand rather than letting you pick your own weapon, but with your build, you’d be better off using your claws or twin daggers.”
It was rare for the Mongrel to meet someone who didn’t look at him like he was a stain on their favorite shirt, so, on a whim, he pulled out a cheap belt with two curved iron daggers on it and tossed it to the kid. It was loot from one of the enemy corpses from his last job, but he’d kept it because the daggers were good quality and he had considered getting serious about mastering the weapons.
The young therianthrope fumbled with the belt before unsheathing one of the daggers, his eyes widening in surprise when he got a look at the blade. It was a simple weapon with a leather-bound hilt, an iron pommel, and a wide guard meant for parrying blows. The blade itself was thick and wide, with a wicked curve at the end. It was not a thrusting weapon. Instead, it was a heavy dagger meant to rip through exposed flesh and leave ragged wounds behind.
The spine of the weapon was softer iron, with the edge being of black steel. It didn’t have any enchantments, but an enchanted weapon would just draw the wrong sort of attention for the young adventurer.
“Get someone to teach you how to use it… preferably a wolf that isn’t with the Pack. Until you can use them, I wouldn’t be surprised if they confiscated it rather than teach you,” The Mongrel explained before heading into the sewers, barely hearing the whispered thanks of the young boy.
If the boy survived, he had a chance to be a decent adventurer, but that survival was far from guaranteed, given wolf therianthropes’ beliefs about obedience to the strong.
The stench of the sewers immediately hit him once he was inside, and he could see bits of food, feces, and unidentifiable fluids floating atop the water. The flow of the water was directed to run parallel to the canal until it grew near the wall, so if he wanted he could make it almost to the edge of the city just walking the sewers. However, his assignment had him heading in the opposite direction, toward a junction that would lead deeper into the sewers under the slums.
The sewers were traversable without bending over because they were originally the roads of an older city, from before the Sakarkan Empire. Tonarre’s original Governor had arranged for the old roads to be modified to carry sewer water while leaving an intact walkway to either side. The stone was covered in old dirt and filth from storms overfilling the sewers, but the cleanup crews regularly cleaned out any snags and nests that might cause the waters to back up, usually guarded by newbie adventurers.
A half hour after he began walking the sewers, his cat-like ears twitched as he heard the clash of steel and the familiar groans of undead in the distance, That must be the team I was assigned to, he thought as he began jogging toward the sound, switching out his bastard sword for a short sword made out of spirit steel. For various reasons, he didn’t make use of many enchanted weapons, so he had picked the only weapon in his spatial storage that was extra effective against undead.
He came upon the fight just as a young man – probably a newbie D-rank by the look of the shoddy leather armor and bronze club he was wielding – went down under a pile of zombies as two young women in similar armor shrieked in horror. With a sigh, he ran forward and slashed the falchion through the mass covering the younger adventurer, slicing limbs off and severing the head of one zombie. He kicked two others off the boy and slammed his heel through the back of another’s skull on the way back before quickly beheading the last two piled on top.
The young man was covered in bites, but he was still alive… for the moment.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Girls, keep them off me while I heal him,” He barked at the two younger adventurers, who looked like they wanted to argue before they nodded, getting between them and the small horde of undead moving down the corridor of the sewer.
The Mongrel quickly finished the last two zombies from the pile with the sword, then he knelt next to the boy, ripping his glove off so he could touch bare skin.
He winced at what he felt once his senses entered the boy’s body, Fuck, three sources of infection… I’ll have to move them out then smooth things out with flesh from elsewhere. This kid will be weeks regaining the lost muscle mass, but it is better than turning into a zombie
He concentrated, and a moment later the bites all bulged like tumors were growing straight out of his skin, slowly pushing outward until they dropped out with a plop. He quickly drew on some spots where the boy had excess muscle mass from poor training methods and replaced the flesh he’d been forced to purge.
He readjusted a few of the boy’s glands to prevent him from going into shock, then he rose to his feet, summoning a phial of energy potion, which he downed with a grimace for the bitter taste. Healing others wasn’t one of his specialties, and he hadn’t had time to gather ambient energy before he began.
The girls were holding off the zombies just fine for the moment, though neither of them was likely to last for more than a few minutes given what he could vaguely sense from them. Flesh Magic wasn’t that effective at reading people’s bodies from a distance. If his skill level wasn’t so high, he probably wouldn’t have been able to do that much.
The zombies looked to be mostly of the flesh golem type, animal corpses melded together into a humanoid form with fangs and claws for rending and biting. Most necromancers heavily relied on the techniques used to create such creatures, as only higher undead could function without some kind of flesh on their bones. A small portion wore the armor and carried the weapons of adventurers. If given time to mature and kill the living, these would eventually become death warriors or death mages, making them a serious threat even without a necromancer to direct them. At the moment, they just swung them with the force only a dead body could produce, their movements slow and clumsy, only the barest memory of how to use weapons allowing them to hold them at all.
Fortunately, the necromancer controlling them seemed to be something of a perfectionist. None of them retained death wounds or had missing limbs. As such, the visual horror was reduced significantly, lessening the stress on those fighting them… as long as you didn’t recognize who they used to be.
This necro must have been killing adventurers for weeks if he has this many adventurer zombies… the Guilds really fucked up this time, He thought calmly as he focused his Flesh Magic into his muscles and bones to give himself a temporary buff.
He swept past the young women and sliced through nine zombies in less than twelve seconds, his spirit steel falchion chopping through spines, crunching through skulls, and blazing silver through arms and legs. He didn’t like to use this technique, as it put a lot of strain on his metabolism, but he needed to give the girls some room to rest and recover, as well as see to their sleeping boyfriend.
Once he felt he’d cleared enough of the zombies to give them that room, he summoned his round shield out of his ring and began fighting more conservatively, chopping a limb here, a skull there, while focusing on preventing the undead from getting their teeth and claws into him.
The stench of rotten flesh overwhelmed the scents of feces and urine that usually dominated the sewers, and if he werne’t so accustomed to the scents of death, he might have vomited. The spirit steel falchion was doing a good job of re-killing the zombies, leaving silver fire burning in those he merely wounded until it consumed their flesh, leaving bleached skeletons to clatter to the ground after. Spirit steel’s life alignment was highly effective on undead, and the metal’s relative fragility compared to conventional iron and steel made it leave a little bit of itself in each wound.
Zombies are really only dangerous once they hit the surface… in confined spaces like this, as long as you don’t get surrounded, they are easy to slaughter, He thought to himself as he got into the rhythm… until a few minutes later when the battered falchion snapped near the hilt, leaving him without a weapon for a moment.
With a curse, he took a step back, smashing the zombie in front of him with the shield so that it was pushed back into those behind it, earning a moment to draw his bastard sword from his ring. He glanced behind him, only to find the younger adventurers had run off at some point.
Guess I shouldn’t have expected better, He thought, a faint smile creasing his face. The loss of his falchion would be compensated by the pay from the job, if he got back alive. He’d already destroyed seventy of the undead (which was more than he’d expected to be in the sewers in the first place), and all those kills were recorded by the wooden tab on his guild card. Even if he retreated now, he’d earned enough to replace the weapon… though just barely (without digging into his existing funds).
His bastard sword wasn’t as effective at destroying the undead, though mithril disrupted necromantic energies fairly well. The problem was, the weapon was only edged with the rare metal, so he didn’t get the full effects a pure mithril weapon would have had.
The numbers aren’t decreasing at all… the necro must have found an access to the old city’s catacombs and used a summoning ritual to call fleshlings. I can’t see any other way this many zombies could be raised so quickly, He thought grimly. His Flesh Magic made it easy to keep his body going where others would fail, but using ambient energy to substitute for calories and internal reserves only went so far. He was no magic master who could live without food or drink for decades on end.
Fleshlings were demonic creatures that could be called by necromancers and eldritch sorcerers to provide raw flesh for various projects. In the case of necromancers, they usually served as a way to provide meat for the undead they raised. The cost for summoning them was negligible as long as you didn’t mind signing your soul over to interdimensional beings.
The Mongrel soon grew bored of chopping up zombies. It would be one thing if he were proceeding forward with each kill, but it was an endless wave of undead. Moreover, now that the falchion was gone, he was having to behead or cave in the skulls of any undead he struck down.
If I use my Gift, the necro will see it through his undead, but if I don’t use it, I’ll be stuck here for who knows how long, He thought as he summoned a nutrition pill into his mouth from his ring, swallowing it with a grimace as the bitter flavor filled his mouth and made him want to vomit. His body immediately broke down the pill, his hyper-accelerated metabolism taking in the necessary minerals and other nutrients needed to keep his body running while using his Flesh Magic on himself constantly.
Still, it was only a stopgap. The pill didn’t do anything for his need for protein, and his internal energy reserves were only barely staying even as he continued to draw upon the ambient energy in the air around him. The miasma from the undead was filtered by an organ he’d added years ago that specifically purged those toxins, one he’d copied from a unicorn after he had a bad experience with a ghoul bite.
The extra organ was attached to both his kidneys and filtered toxins more efficiently than his enhanced liver. It also made it annoyingly difficult to get drunk, though.
He grunted as a ghoul (a seven-foot tall, gangly white-skinned undead with an unhinged jaw full of yellow fangs) came out of nowhere and tried to bite his head off, pancaking a half-dozen zombies beneath its weight as it came down from above. Apparently, it had been crawling along the ceiling.
… I don’t think D-rank adventurers could handle this. Hell, this ghoul is barely within the limitations of a C-rank fighting solo, He thought as he lashed out, his bastard sword sticking in the ghoul’s left elbow with a wooden thunk. Instinctively, he released the blade and summoned a broadsword to replace it, grimacing despite the fact that the limb began to smolder due to continuous contact with mithril.
The broadsword was edged in black steel, plunder from a battlefield two years before. It was one of the favorites from his collection, but it wasn’t terribly useful against undead, black steel not being particularly effective against them. Nonetheless, black steel was a tough metal that could take a beating, so he began smashing it into the creature’s body from various angles, avoiding the grasp of its abnormally long limbs and the snapping of its jaws.
Tears appeared in the ghoul’s skin, leaking the black fluid that served to conduct the death energies that kept it animated. With every strike it unleashed, it smashed zombies by accident, the unwieldy creature seemingly uncaring of how it damaged its master’s servants.
He was whittling it down, but he didn’t carry blunt weapons or axes, so he didn’t really have a weapon that would be effective against a ghoul. Normally, the best way to deal with a ghoul was smash its bones with a club or mace, then cave in its skull, or to use an axe to amputate its limbs one by one before removing the head. Unfortunately, the Mongrel wasn’t expecting a ghoul, so he only brought his sword collection, which was coming back to bite him.
I really need to stop selling every weapon that isn’t a sword I pick up on the battlefield, He thought, a self-mocking smile on his face as he parried a heavy claw so that it went past his left hip instead of gutting him. He slashed out with the sharpened edge of his shield and opened another long oozing cut on the ghoul’s arm.
He eyed his sword with a sigh, hesitating, then spoke the activation word for one of his two Arts, but it was impossible to hear.
An aura of many colors, including deep violets, oranges, reds, blacks, and yellows appeared around the edge of his sword as he lunged forward, sweeping the blade around in a slash that bisected the ghoul from the top of its skull to its crotch. It was as if the ghoul’s tough body was suddenly made out of paper, and a spray of thick black gore threatened to soak him before he leapt backwards with abnormal speed.
Guess I have to go after the necro myself, then, He thought, a slight smile on his face as he retrieved the pieces of his falchion and his bastard sword into his ring.
The strange aura spread out to his body as he said the activation word for his gift, a word that was
He had a necromancer to kill, since the client wasn’t getting the job done.
__________________________________________________________________________
The Mongrel ran through the tunnels for almost an hour, slamming his way through hundreds of zombies. Some of them dissolved from contact with the aura given off by his Gift, but most simply became immobile for a time. He didn’t bother attacking them, as he had a feeling that there was no end to the zombies as long as their master was alive.
He occasionally came across zombies wearing armor with the Wolf Pack’s team patch on the shoulder, which told him that things hadn’t gone well for his clients. The clan had over two hundred members in total, but he’d already seen twenty zombies wearing the patch.
His expression became grim when he came to a breach in the sewer wall, leading downward into the darkness. The zombies were emerging from the hole, and half a dozen Wolf Pack members were struggling to stay alive behind a barricade on the other side of the sewer canal. Several headless bodies lay behind them, telling the Mongrel that they’d had to put down some of their own when they turned already.
He sensed the sickness in all the frontline members, and he calculated he didn’t have the energy to save them, even if he thought it would be worth it. His Gift wasn’t particularly demanding on energy, as it mostly just enhanced his aura with its particular properties when he didn’t focus it on something. However, it was still tiring to keep it up due to the strain on his body from constantly processing and manipulating ambient energy.
He abandoned them without a word, chopping his way through the zombies nearest the hole before pushing his way in, his aura disabling the undead that tried to block his way.
I hope they are dead before I come back. I’d hate to have to cut them down with my own hands, He thought absently as he plowed through the crowd of undead at the base of the stairs. At the bottom, brick construction gave way to carved stone. To either side, biers set into the walls that had once served as places of rest for the dead now lay empty.
Fuck, I guess I was right… the old necropolis, He thought with an internal sigh of annoyance. It was no wonder the miasma was so thick, if the necromancer had so many skeletons to serve as ingredients for his undead.
The existence of the old city’s necropolis was reasonably well-known in the local adventuring community, but it was notoriously hard to reach. To get to it, one had to pass through the Abyssal City, a demon-themed dungeon that was set at A-rank difficulty. The necropolis was the resting place for millions of the dead of the now-disappeared civilization that predated the Empire, and numerous artifacts and ancient temples could be found within its depths.
It was also a lair for dozens of higher undead that had existed for thousands of years, so no one with sense willingly entered the necropolis if they could avoid it.
The Death Knight, the Lich Overlord, Corpse King, Ghoul Emperor… Just thinking about all the nightmares that lay in the depths of the necropolis was enough to make the Mongrel go into a cold sweat. His Gift was incredibly effective against undead and magical constructs, but that couldn’t make up for the kind of level and stat differences there would be between him and them.
The worst case scenario would be if the necromancer had contracted with the Lich Overlord and become a lich. Normal liches could be destroyed by severing their spirit link to their phylactery or destroying it. However, in the case of those contracted to the Lich Overlord, the Overlord had their phylacteries and protected their souls against spiritual attacks.
Despite his Gift, he seriously doubted he could destroy a contracted lich.
He burst out of the catcombs and into a large plaza, where a ziggurat of obsidian with gold veins sat in the middle. Atop it, five wolf therianthropes fought a dozen wolf therianthrope zombies, while a human in black robes sat on the altar, watching with amusement on his face. Given the fact that the zombies all had the patch somewhere on their armor, the Mongrel could see how it had played out.
Most likely, the necromancer had used lich dust. The stuff was made by grinding up the bones of undead and mixing them with miasma-tainted water before letting it dry into hardened cakes, then breaking it up into dust once more. If it was breathed in, it acted like the zombie infection, save that it spread many times faster. It was a common self-defense technique that necromancers used in case they had to get up close and personal with melee fighters.
Poor bastards… if they’d managed to take him down, I wouldn’t have to do this… He thought sadly as he raised a hand and used one of his redacted skills, the hand pointed straight at the necromancer as he edged his way around the ziggurat.
It was like his aura had turned into lightning, flashing outward to strike the necromancer in the back in an instant. The necromancer’s shriek was horrifying, the lightning branched out to everyone atop the ziggurat, even the undead screaming as the power of his spell slammed into them.
He maintained the spell, the purple, orange, crimson, and black mottled lightning continuing to channel through their bodies. The undead fell to dust – not ashes – within seconds, their skeletons dissolving into nothingness. The necromancer and surviving members of the Wolf Pack withered like mummies, aging decades within seconds as the Mongrel used his second, hidden magic skill for the first time in months.
After almost thirty seconds, he stopped the spell, and those atop the zigurrat clattered to the ground. Their clothing and armor, their weapons – enchanted or not – had all turned to dust. Their flesh was twisted around the remnants of their bones, completely devoid of moisture and fragile as paper. The bones themselves had turned yellow, as if they had been exposed to the air for decades, and the edges were crumbling into dust.
Ugh, that takes a lot out of me… my skill level is way too low for this, He grumbled internally as he tromped up to the top of the ziggurat to see if any loot had survived his attack.
He also felt the nausea of utilizing his redacted Art and Gift, the System’s price extracted for using them despite them remaining redacted. It would be days before he managed to get his hormonal balance back, as his Flesh Magic was temporarily reduced in functionality.
He sifted through the dust and clattering bones until he found the spatial devices of the dead. All the Wolf Pack members had had one, as did the necromancer. He tossed them inside his own ring, destroying them in the process while adding a small amount of space to his blood-linked device, Two bows, one battle-ax, a glaive, two short swords made out of a mithril/iron alloy, three sets of full-body leathers marked with the Wolf Pack patch, about a month’s worth of travel food for one, a dozen or so daggers of various shapes and sizes, fishing line, rope, twenty-thousand credits or so in raw gems, a pouch of lich powder, and one ring enchanted with protection against life magic…
It was an excellent haul. It was just too bad that the armor was trouble in the making. He removed the suits of armor and tossed them to the side, feeling some of the pressure on his finger from the weight and volume in excess of the space inside of the ring ease. He looked at them with a frown for a moment before setting fire to them with a bottle of oil from his ring. As the flames flickered, he examined the knick-knacks he hadn’t been able to recognize at a glance.
Loaded dice… toss that away. Enchanted firestarter… I don’t have a use for that. Energy crystal with the rune for ice imprinted in its structure… I’ll keep that, he ended up tossing out most of the knick-knacks, as they were either too identifiable or were of little or no value. The necromancer’s fetishes, for instance, would attract the wrong sort of attention on the surface, and several pieces of jewelry were obviously distinctive pieces that would be recognized on sight.
In the end, he estimated he would be up sixty thousand credits or so if he sold it all, though he didn’t intend to do so. For one thing, selling equipment so soon would give away that he’d looted the rings of the Wolf Pack members. For another, he felt the need to learn a weapon other than swords. His bastard sword skill gave bonuses to all sword weapons as well, just not as much as a bastard sword. He figured he would pay one of the local dwarves to teach him the battle-ax.
My ring is full though… I’ll need to stash some of the extra loot before my next merc job, or I’ll have to buy and blood-bind another spatial device, He thought. While ‘feeding’ spatial devices to an existing one expanded the space within, it was a difference of about one in ten of the space in the destroyed devices. Sometimes it was just better to have a second one. Due to energy fluctuations in the body, it was only possible to blood-bind three spatial devices, and he already had two, the ring and the pendant that contained his training equipment.
He searched the area around the ziggurat, but he didn’t find anything of interest, so he headed back up to the catacombs. Most of the zombies had rotted away already, unable to maintain their existence without their master. However, the recently-turned Wolf Pack members were wandering the catacombs, moaning with the peculiar empty sorrow of the undead. As he passed, he quickly beheaded them, removing the Death Stones that had begun to form in their throats and tossing them into his pendant, which had a little room left. The lesser members didn’t have spatial devices, and their weapons were battered iron and cheap steel instead of ‘higher’ metals, so he chose to leave them where they were.
Upon reaching the sewer levels, he found three undead Wolf Pack members wandering around their broken barricade. He quickly eliminated them and looted their bodies, finding a slightly better selection of weapons (an adamantine mace and two mithril daggers), as well as a few enchanted rings he couldn’t use. The bodies of the others lay beheaded behind the barricade, most likely finished off by their friends before those friends turned as well. The mushy mess of the ‘normal’ zombies stained practically every inch of the sewer, mucking up his boots further with every squelch of a step.
He made sure to retrieve their guild cards, slipping them under his battered and torn brigandine. He would hand them over to the Guild when he got back.
He took a different route along the way back, eliminating the adventurer zombies along the way and retrieving their guild cards, until he came to a junction, where a large party of newbies were desperately fending off half a dozen adventurer zombies and a lesser ghoul. He attacked from behind, caving in the skull of the ghoul with his bastard sword before it could turn to him, then removed the limbs of the remaining zombies so that the young adventurers could take them out safely. They needed the credits more than he did.
When it was over, a young halfling adventurer with a sorrowful expression on his face approached the Mongrel, “Is it over? Randolf and the other Wolf Pack leaders haven’t come back yet…”
The Mongrel shook his head, his face mostly expressionless, “Rudolf was already a zombie when I found the necromancer.”
This was the truth. The leader of the Wolf Pack, Rudolf, was one of the zombies atop the ziggurat. He simply failed to mention that he’d also killed the remaining living members of the party to eliminate any witnesses to his skill use.
“Fuck… well, the Guild will ensure we are paid, but I guess we’ll have to give up on the extra from the clan,” He said bitterly.
“Better than working for nothing, and at least you are alive. From what I saw, most of the Wolf Pack got turned,” The Mongrel encouraged.
“Yeah, a dozen or so Wolf Pack members fled this way an hour ago, saying the defense team got overwhelmed, so we figured that was the case… the wolves are going to be prickly for a while,” The halfling said glumly, his party members and the other adventurers having a similar depressed looks on their faces.
“I’m going to go see if the last junction’s people are still alive, then I’ll head back to the guild. Could you take these back with you?” He asked, handing the halfling the four dozen or so guild cards he’d retrieved along the way.
The halfling’s eyes widened with surprise before he nodded somberly, “We’ll take care of it.”
Returning the guild cards of dead members would earn them ten credits each, which would make up for some of the lost pay.
His trip to the final junction found two fox therianthrope sisters desperately holding off two wolf therianthrope zombies who were moving far too well for recently-turned undead. Both of them had burning green flames in their eye sockets, and he could see another burning in their throats.
Fuck, the Corpse King took notice! He thought grimly. Those were death warriors, zombies upraised by a Corpse King’s racial magic into semi-intelligent undead fighters. Given two or three years in that state, they would evolve into death knights, able to kill weak individuals with a command word and weaken the living by their presence alone.
“Concentrate on the one to the right! I’ll take the one on the left!” He yelled as he plunged into the battle, taking a terrifyingly strong thrust of a spear on his round shield, only barely able to deflect it past his shoulder.
The girls looked startled for a moment, then nodded, concentrating on the other undead.
That strength… this guy must have been level 40 or so in life. If I match blades with him, he’ll break my arm, even with enhancements, He thought as he redirected two quick jabs of the spear and stepped back to avoid a smashing blow of the undead’s kite shield.
The undead was a muscular man, who had probably been handsome in life. However, the zombie bites on his right arm were swollen and purple, his skin lined with ugly green veins, and his eyes empty pits full of eldritch flame.
The Mongrel was forced to fight conservatively, waiting for the girls to finish the other death warrior as he made small cuts to the undead’s weapon arm and legs in an attempt to sever something important and give him a real opening to attack. Unfortunately, the skill the undead had regained was significant enough to make its defense impossible to break one-on-one, though its attacks were too slow to be a real threat as long as he didn’t get too tired.
Thankfully, the other death warrior only had a broadsword, and soon it was down an arm, whereupon the sister closest to the mercenary drew a stiletto from her sleeve and punched it through the creature’s forehead. The flames in its skull went out, and it toppled to the ground. Once the last death warrior was surrounded, it took only a few seconds for it to be hamstrung then beheaded.
The girls were both young, probably in their early twenties given fox therianthropes’ slower growth compared to humans. Both of them wagged their bushy tails happily as they dug the green Higher Death Stones out of the creature’s skulls. Each one was worth two hundred credits due to their usefulness in anti-curse charms.
They gave him the puppy dog look, their ears twitching, and he chuckled with exasperation, “Keep it. I’ll take the shield and the broadsword though.”
He picked up the shield and strapped it over his shoulders, sticking the sword through his belt. He really didn’t have any space left in his ring or pendant now.
“Thanks old man. If it was just us, one would have to hold them off while the other ran away,” One of the sisters, the one who had been facing off with the shield warrior, said thankfully. A sly look was in her eye, one he recognized from the last time he made the mistake of falling for a fox. Fox females were very devoted to their mates… until they decided the mates weren’t worthy of them. Moreover, the decision was often made for reasons that made absolutely no sense to anyone other than the fox maiden herself.
Though it usually had something to do with money.
He shook his head and patted her head without touching the ears, “If you are serious about it, ask me without the act. I like fox maidens, but I’m not stupid.”
She laughed freely, “Aw, you saw through me?”
“I’ve been burnt before,” He replied dryly.
“Must’ve been an idiot if she left you bitter. Mama always said that when the time comes to leave, you should leave a man with good memories and maybe a daughter or two,” She said with a chuckle. Fox maidens always bore fox maidens, regardless of who the father was. As such, they didn’t have any of the racial hangups other species had about mongrels.
Which was probably why he’d fallen for one… and then a lamia… and even an arachne. His gaze became distant as he remembered all the times he’d been fooled by members of female-only races. For some reason, they always seemed to know he was a great pigeon.
Fox therianthropes were one of the more benign ones, in his experience. They were honestly loving, worked hard to support the family unit (while it existed), and a great deal of fun to be around. The problem was that they didn’t believe in permanent relationships, and all their normal relationships were about producing daughters.
It made parting inevitable, since he didn’t want children.
Not yet at least. He was fairly confident that if he’d gotten a daughter with his first girlfriend, he would have settled down quite nicely… until disaster found him.
“Let’s get out of here. We can leave the cleanup to the Guild,” He said, heading off with the girls trailing behind him.
“Yeah, considering how tired we are after this disaster, staying down here will just get us killed,” The other sister said in an exhausted tone. Unlike her sister, she had wielded a rapier and hand-ax rather than a short hacking sword. Both were covered in the smelly black ooze. As she walked, she used an oily cloth to remove the stuff before tossing it into the sewer canal, sheathing the rapier and sliding the ax’s handle into the loop on her belt. The rapier was battered and cracked in several places, probably because she’d been using it to parry blows from the zombies, and the axe was badly notched. Both would need repairs… and possibly replacement. For an adventurer of her youth, that might be beyond her means, depending on how many zombie kills they’d managed.
Her sister’s sword was in better shape, but two of her dagger sheaths were empty, most likely lost during the battle. Her leathers were also ragged from the battering of zombie claws and the death warriors’ assault.
With a sigh, he pulled two iron daggers out of his inventory and tossed them to the sister, selecting one of the pair of mithril short swords in its sheath for the other, “Don’t mention where you got it.”
Their eyes were wide with surprise, but they nodded with understanding. When he turned his attention back to the path in his head, he missed them giving one another sly glances, and both of them had calculating looks on their faces, their tails wagging slightly, their ears perking and at attention.
As usual, the Mongrel had dug his own grave without even realizing it.
____________________________________________________________________________
When they exited the sewers, he saw the slumped shoulders of the wolf boy from earlier, “Still here, kid?”
The boy looked up, tears in his eyes, “Everyone… everyone is gone…”
The Mongrel sighed, even as the girls looked on with expressionless faces. Apparently they had no intention of leaving.
He put his hand on the boy’s head, ruffling his hair but careful not to touch the ears. He didn’t bother trying to comfort him further. For one thing, anything he said would be a lie. He was benefiting from the Wolf Pack’s deaths, and he had even killed several of their leaders. What he had done wasn’t a crime in the System’s eyes, because they were doomed to die in any case. However, morally speaking…
The daggers he gave the boy were sheathed at his hips, and his spear lay against the stone outside the gate to the sewers. On some level, the boy had known the Pack was using him, but his instincts made him look up to them, so it still hurt that they were gone. Wolf therianthropes valued associations and groups more than most races, and it was not uncommon for one to go a bit unhinged if they spent too much time alone.
He stood there for several minutes before he turned to leave, heading for the Adventurers’ Guild.
_____________________________________________________________________
“So why are you two still following me?” He asked the younger of the two sisters, Kaede as her older sister, Fururu, paid for a night at the same inn he was using.
Getting his money from the Adventurers Guild had only taken a few minutes. Apparently, of the total of four hundred adventurers that had gone into the sewers, less than seventy had returned alive. The necromancer was reclassified as an A-rank threat halfway through, so the base reward for that kill had netted him forty thousand credits on its own, though he admitted to only taking the bastard by surprise. His zombie kills had earned him six thousand credits (give or take a few dozen) and the ghouls had earned him two hundred each, with his part of the death warrior kills counting for another three hundred in total.
That left him with a lot more money than he’d expected to get out of the job, but it also had resulted in a lot of resentment from the survivors of the Wolf Pack and suspicion from the Guildmaster. Unfortunately for the Guildmaster, he was quite good at telling the truth without saying anything incriminating, so the Truthstone he’d been forced to hold hadn’t gotten him arrested.
I’m going to need to leave this town soon. I’ve grabbed too much attention this time… I need a caravan job to another Territory… He thought, indulging in a bit of escapism as the girls went into the female side of the baths while he went to the male side.
The attendant inside helped him undress, and he absently tipped forty credits, earning a surprised look as the young man helped him wash his body before he settled into the hottest of the pools of water. He really didn’t want to move yet, but in his experience, it was best to leave the moment he gained the wrong sort of attention. There were Mercenaries Guilds and Adventurers Guilds in most countries and on most worlds, so it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of places for him to go to find work.
It took months and sometimes years to settle into a new town, though. Tonarre was one of the better ones he had used as a base of operations, even if bad luck had followed bad luck recently when it came to his work. If he hadn’t taken initiative in all three cases, he would already be dead or in prison. Unfortunately, that also led to him gaining the wrong sort of attention, which meant that information on his location was probably already heading for the wrong ears.
Maybe I should restore my tail and disappear my elf ears… if I did that I would be able to pass for a panther therianthrope for a while, as long as no one used assessment skills on me, He mused. That kind of semi-permanent change was difficult and took weeks, but it was well-within his abilities. It would also serve as a cover to keep certain individuals from pursuing him… but he decided against it. In the end, he would be found again, as he always was. It was exhausting, but he figured in twenty or thirty years, his pursuers would give up.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have the time.
There were issues with vanishing his elf ears, in any case. At present, his two sets of ears made his head look smaller than it was. In order to hide certain alterations he made to the structure of his head, he’d rearranged how his ears were placed a few years before. Those alterations had saved his life three times in the past, so he considered it entirely worth it. If he got rid of the elven ears, it would be too obvious that his head was over-sized, possibly giving away his advantages.
Altering my face isn’t really an option, either… the last time I did that, I vomited from looking at myself in the mirror, He reflected. Even Flesh Mages were effected by body dysphoria from shape-changing, though he could suppress it with his magic if he had to.
In the end, though, he decided to just go as he was. He would miss Gillie and some of the others he’d befriended, but that was the case for all the other places he’d fled from over the years, as well.
After an hour, he got out of the baths and dressed himself in a loincloth and a simple robe from his ring, tying it at his waist while leaving his chest exposed. He made his way to his room, only to find the two fox maiden sisters sitting on the balcony nearby, dressed in similar robes that clung to their surprisingly ample forms. They looked at him with mischievous smiles, but he ignored them, heading straight for his room. His instincts screamed at him to avoid looking at them, so he stripped the robe off, uncaring of their stares, and lay down under the fur, closing his eyes.
____________________________________________________________________________
The sisters looked at one another with disappointed expressions, “Sis, he didn’t take the bait.”
“I didn’t expect him to, but I thought he’d at least take a good long look,” The older sister said with a sigh.
“The fox who bit him must have left a scar,” Kaede said, nodding to herself.
Fururu’s cheeks puffed out irritably, “Males like him are hard to find. My nose tells me he is a good choice.”
“I think we can learn from him. He is probably more powerful than what he showed in the sewers, especially since he killed the necromancer,” Kaede observed. Despite appearances to the contrary, the younger sister was the more clever of the two.
“His skills are all at high levels. He should be a B-rank, not a D-rank,” Fururu replied with a nod.
“His primary guild is the Mercenaries. It is unsurprising he hasn’t bothered go for promotion at the Adventurers Guild,” Kaede observed.
“He’s only C-rank there. His level probably isn’t more than forty, but his skill levels are high enough he can match people at level 60 for a time if he has to,” Fururu said. They both had used their assessment and analysis skills on him several times, gaining fragments of information, sharing them with one another, and they had managed to build a fairly accurate picture of his capabilities.
Fox maidens had a good instinct for males, but only a fool trusted instinct without checking with other methods. Their mother had made that mistake only a decade after they were born, and her end had been less than gentle as a result.
“When he flees, we follow,” Kaede said decisively.
“How? He will try to drive us away,” Fururu asked curiously.
“The Mercenaries Guild. We are D-rank. We take the C-rank test tomorrow and join him on whatever job he uses to get away,” She said with determination.
“Is he worth it?” Fururu inquired.
“I think so. It will take time to make something of this, though,” She admitted.
“We have time. As long as we don’t get stupid like Mama,” Fururu said, choosing to agree with her sister’s choice.
“Things are going to get busy tomorrow,” Kaede muttered, an eager smile on her face.