The five adventurers turned assassins had met up once more, and were on their way to report to the monster king.
“Look,” Aesh said. “Who are the greatest known wizards of all time?”
He answered his own question before anyone else had a chance to.
“Merlin and Gandalf.”
“So,” Rell said, “You’re saying you want to be an old man?”
“No! I’m saying that neither of them ever did anything. Nothing magical at least, and nothing big.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gandalf… huh.”
“There was the fight with Saruman,” Paella helpfully added.
“Which occurred in private, and he lost. My point is that when I become powerful, I won’t be able to do anything helpful anymore.”
“So you want us to finish off all the enemies we fight.”
“Exactly.”
Dali cleared his throat.
“Who is ‘Gandalf’?”
[p=center]* * *[/p]
They stood before the king of monsters.
“Well, it seems you have all done your jobs. Your next targets are-”
“No.” Rell said.
“What?”
“No more assassinations.”
“Hmm, it seems that the boy doesn’t have the stomach.”
Aesh looked at Rell.
From what he had heard, Rell’s target’s kid had showed up at the scene.
“I wouldn’t recommend asking me to test my stomach, but if you do, I can guarantee you a great seat.”
“Really, then why no more assassinations?”
“We betrayed our last army because they put us in situations where we couldn’t use our talents to the full. We won’t take more assassinations because none of us are assassins.”
“You are part of my army. And as long as you are part of my army you are whatever I say you are.”
“Do you really want to go there?”
Dali stepped forward.
“We joined our last army so we could see what we could do. And show each other. Assassinations require solitude we don’t want.”
“Very well then, I give you a month. You will get us a town.”
“A month!?”
“I also,” the king ignored them, “give you these broaches.”
Servants entered, and handed the five of them each a broach.
They were blood red bands, and at the front each one had a large diamond shaped gem, equally red.
“They respond to your relationship with my kingdom, so treat us well.”
Band of the Killer
Durability 50/50
Armor: 2
The diamond at the front obscures the player killer’s mark.
Prevents the knowledge of a player killer’s username.
Killing a player gives slight increase in health regeneration for short periods of time.
Increases in power with relationship with monster kingdom.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
They spent a while discussing their new items.
None of them liked them.
For one thing, it presumed they would be killing other players.
For another, the power of the items depended on their relationship with the kingdom.
The purpose of this was to make them reliant on the kingdom.
They made an agreement to never take the items into account when deciding their actions.
Then Rell made a map.
[p=center]* * *[/p]
“Okay, so we have two options.”
“Take it or leave it?” asked Aurora
“So we have three options.”
“I’ll bite, what are they?”
“The first one is abandon the quest.”
“I think we’ve put too much energy in it for that.”
“No use throwing good after bad.”
“True.”
“The second option is that we conquer a town.”
“Advantages being that it’s already there and we get to do a lot of fighting.”
“The third is that we found a town.”
“Which has no advantages at all, but makes up for it with copious amounts of disadvantages.” said Aurora
Rell glared at her.
“I was thinking we should vote.”
“No use throwing good after bad.”
Paella repeated what he said earlier.
“I vote for the first option,” said Rell, ignoring her.
“Take the town.” voted Aurora.
Paella agreed.
Dali voted to create a new town.
Surprisingly, Aesh agreed with him.
“You seemed more the type to be all gung ho about this.”
“You know, my mentor taught me a lot. One of the things he taught me is that if you always do something, avoid it at all costs.”
“Yeah,” Dali agreed, “my mentor hit me a lot too.”
“It would be kind of nice to learn how to build anyway.”
“Yeah, another skill which I can’t use in combat, and can hardly use out of it.”
“We’ve got a tie,” Rell interrupted before that changed, “so I think we should hold off on deciding for a while.”
“Maybe we should go on an adventure.”
“As a matter a fact, while waiting for you, I heard about some undead spotted a little bit south of here.”
“Did you, by any chance, organise this voting in the hopes of a tie?”
“Why would I do that?”
“So we would follow this lead of yours.”
“Well, I did expect Paella and Aesh to be on opposite sides, but yes.”
“Sounds okay to me.”
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