Thom's muscles suddenly bulked up— the muscles he had mildly developed thanks to farming immediately started to widen, and his joints felt a lot less stiff. A sudden surge of energy spread across his body, and countless twitches and currents spread across the width of his arms and legs.

Accommodation... Holy sh*t, I'm ripped! I had never had a body this good-looking in my life! Wait, hold on... Is this really because of that thing I ate? I know I should get out as soon as possible from this place, but if I have just gotten something this amazing...

Thom stood up and stretched his body to feel the amazing vitality he had obtained.

Good. My body feels great... But I'm not sure how long will this feeling last. For now... I know I'm the one who did all this. That much isn't an illusion.

He looked around the place, there was nothing but blood and corpses. It wasn't his first time seeing gory scenes, the skirmishes between armies were common even back at his village. But he had never been the one responsible for it before. Could anyone really believe he was the perpetrator? And that voice—

Skill Master?

He had questions about what that meant. But he had no time to think, or anyone to ask about it. Right now his priority was to escape and find a place to hide away. What else could a murderer do in this situation?

He touched the edge of the door, and before stepping out, he looked back in gloomy silence. I'm sorry... He thought without opening his mouth, and stepped out.

Now. What could I do to get out?

Outside the room was a spiral staircase. It seemed to go down for at least a good minute. Torches hung from the sconces and cast a dim light over his body as he pulled out the sword once more, and started a slow but steady descent into an unknown world.

With every second that his fingers skimmed past the cobblestone, the light became brighter, the steps simply guided him towards the exit of this tower, and his escape, or his end.

With yet another step, he found himself in a wide room with a few doors. It had tables at it's sides, chests, a pair of bookshelves and even weapon and armor racks. It was obvious, even more by the two people sitting at that table, that he had arrived at the bottom room of a prison.

"A... A prisoner!"

The two guards stood up while their tramp cards flew away, and unsheathed their swords in an instant. Thom readied the blade at the side of his body, ready for anything that could happen.

"You! Did you kill Frank and Glint?!"

"Dumbass, don't ask! Go for him already!"

Thom glanced nervously at them. He wasn't prepared for more guards to be immediately outside, even when it was an obvious thought in retrospect.

The guards started walking around him with their weapons drawn. They tried to surround him as they moved from side to side, although it was impossible to surround someone with only two men. The best they could do was to flank him, but they were already past that point. Thom moved by following the steps of the guards, moving across the room. One time, two times across the room, until finally, Thom was back to back with the room's biggest door.

"Oh, boy." One of the guards muttered.

"I'm not gonna harm anyone, so just let me go. I'll go through this door, and I won't harm anyone... Else."

The two guards looked at each other while pensive, and smiled. They sheathed their sword and backed down slowly.

"We, we wouldn't want to harm you either! Go, we'll let you go! There is no need for anyone to die!" One of them spoke and lifted his hands in front of his chest. The other one followed.

"Yes, please! We can't fight, we're mere soldiers of the lower battalion! Please..."

Thom opened his eyes wide. Was his appearance really that imponent as to frighten these two soldiers? He wasn't going to stop and think about it, he was way too desperate for that.

He opened the door without turning his back, and slowly stepped back. He finally stepped past the boundary of the room with a clean sigh and closed the door with a clack.

"Huff... I can't believe... Eh?"

However, he found himself in no exit.

In front of him, there was only a small room filled to burst with cleaning assets, loose weaponry, sets of armor, and crates of food and drink. In a stupid mistake, he had not interrogated the guards for information, and assumed that the loneliest door was the one that led towards the exit.

Now he understood the smirk from the guards. How had he ended up leading himself inside the storage room?

Damn, no time to go out!

He rushed towards one of the crates and pushed it to barricade the door. He grabbed a second crate from below, lifted it, and placed it on top of the other to reinforce it. He stepped back, looking around to find something that could be of use, and his eyes fell on the sets of chain mail armor to a side.

I have never used one of those.

He took it out of pure impulse and put the whole set without thinking much about it. Although it was heavy and uncomfortable, it was better than nothing. Wearing the same uniform as the other soldiers could benefit him in the long run as well.

"Now, a way out!"

A blunt sound like a bang came from the door.

"Eek!" He screeched.

"What is it, you trash?! Did the rat barricade itself after it noticed it had walked into a trap? Hahaha! Holy sh*t, this guy actually locked himself inside there!"

"Oh boy, wait till the chief comes by! A barricade? That man will break through the wall if he has no other way inside!"

Assholes... They're just trying to intimidate you, don't worry. The only thing you need to do is search for a way out.

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He immediately looked at the bag hanging from his shoulder. If there was no best option, then he would have to search for a way out inside that bag. He looked back— a stone wall. He looked forward: a door with soldiers waiting at the other side of it.

He could still charge outside the room and kill the two of them, then escape. Of course, that was valid, but then what? If there were four, there might as well be fifty of them. Certainly, he had made a mistake by going inside that room, but going out wasn't the best solution either.

Then, there's only one path.

His hands rummaged through the infinities of the bag, passing through countless objects. His fingers touched a myriad of things, he had heard inside his head the description of a hundred items and more.

Then, his ears perked up when he heard the conversation outside. Another two men came by.

"Oi, what are you guys doing?"

"Check this out, man. A dude killed Frank and Glint and then trapped himself inside the storage room!"

"No way... F*cking Frank, he still owed me fifty copper!"

"Hey, did you call Chamgue already?"

"Well no, of course, I had to watch over the door!"

"You only need one person to watch a door, imbecile! Go, go! You're the ones who saw him, go search for the chief before this becomes worse!"

The outside was starting to feel crowded. It was ten, no, fifteen people in that room. At this point it would have been easy for them to push or break the door, Thom understood it clearly, they were simply toying him. Bastards. He thought. But in the end, maybe he deserved to be cornered just a little if that served to compensate for their mates' deaths, brought by his own hands.

He suddenly grabbed something round at a side of the bag, and his eyes immediately went bright upon hearing the description.

"Found something!"

"Uwah...! Chamgue is here!"

With an extremely loud cracking sound, a metallic boot came crashing through the crates at the door and then was broken into a million pieces by a powerful war-hammer.

Thom quickly started to tremble and took a step back in fear. He hid the stone behind his back, and pressed himself against the wall.

A towering 6'5" man entered through the cloud of dust he had lifted, and placed the Warhammer at his greaves, splintered to pieces the door below his foot.

"A criminal so villainous escaped my hands inside this city... I cannot believe it. Because it was mine such a grievous mistake, I shall kill you myself on this same spot and make a tomb out of the stone surrounding your corpse."

The man put the hammer on his hand, gripping it tightly with a red-hot fiery gaze. The bulging muscles on his arms seemed to be each as wide as Thom's torso, and the weight of the weapon was authentic.

There was no need to doubt. A hit from that would pulverize his bones.

"Wait!" Thom yelled. "It was a misunderstanding! I do not know why I was caged, I must've been wrongly taken into prison!"

"Is that right?" The man scoffed. "Then, is it also a misunderstanding the bodies of my men sprawled on the cells of this fort?"

A tremor ran down Thom's spine. He couldn't talk his way through his. He had made a mistake in the very same moment in which he had decided to escape that cell.

No worries, I still have the stone on my hand!

He pressed it and remembered the words he had heard from the bag:

[Stone Of Destruction. Magic rune-embedded stone with a basic spell: Destruction. It can dissolve structures made of wood, stone, sand, or clay, no larger than 20 cubic feet. To use, insert magic energy into the etchings.]

Right... Magic energy... What was that again?

The warhammer swung towards Thom with a thunderous sound as it crashed against the shelves and skimmed past the stone wall, completely destroying everything in the narrow room.

"Wait, time out!" Thom yelled.

"That's it, turn him to minced meat, chief!"

"How many bones will he break? I bet all of them!"

He swung again, but this time Thom jumped up and avoided the hammer by the grace of his feet.

Again, have I always been this dexterous?! No, I'm pretty sure not!

"Squirmy little rat!"

The towering man pounced forward, his weapon flailing around the room like an aimless limb looking for something, as he smashed armor after armor, and supply after supply while missing his hits on the small and nimble man. His weapon was clearly not made for narrow spaces.

"I'm sorry!" Thom yelled.

"This is nothing but sheer luck, rat!"

The man dropped the warhammer to one hand and extended the other one to signal at Thom.

"Burn, plague!"

Boom!

From the man's hand came surging a bolt of fire, which skimmed directly past Thom's head and blasted the wooden remains of the shelves behind him into oblivion.

"Eek!" Thom's face turned pale.

"The chief used a spell! Magic's f*cking amazing!"

Was that magic?! What in the world just happened?!

Thom couldn't catch his broken breath and rest, however, because now the knight was raising his hand once again, and pointed it towards Thom with eyebrows slanted downwards into his nose—

Right. What did the stone need to activate?

"Magic—!" He yelled, swinging his arm with all he had.

"What if the man throwing fire at him touched the stone that activates with magic while doing some of that magic, then?" Thom thought, and with desperation, threw the stone at the man's hand.

The stone started glowing with an eerie shimmer, and the chief immediately noticed what had happened. He fired his magic against a wall and blasted it to pieces, and then ran back towards the door while dragging his warhammer.

"Get away from him!" He yelled.

"Eh?"

Even Thom's voice resounded with utter confusion.

BOOM!

Every piece of furniture, every wall, and even the floor rapidly started to turn into dust as the stone swallowed everything inside its very core, spinning in place like a mad turnip.

"Wait, is this 20 cubic feet?! I never went to f*cking school!" Thom yelled out as he saw the stone around him crumble into pieces, and then, the world started to rotate.

Right.

The room had started to detach from the main tower. And only then, when he started to feel his organs empty at the effect of gravity, he noticed that maybe this place was higher than what he thought.

The stone crashed against a thick wall, making Thom lose all the air in his lungs. He thought at first that he had landed, until he felt the world declining and shifting, and his eyes were set on the slope on the other side of the wall. Before he could think, the piece he stood on fell down once more, landing on the dirt and rapidly starting his descent.

The loud sound of stone caving trough dirt started to reach his ears as he crashed against the grass, having fallen down over twenty feet, and dragged down the slope another fifty. He tried to get a hold of something, but it was too late.

He started to get dragged down into a precipice, avoiding trees and bushes on his fall, scraping his back and legs on the dirt and stone that dragged him quickly towards a merciless descent—

"Gyaaaaaaah!"

A terrified scream sounded as he fell off the ledge, but was deafened by the noise of a river going downstream, where he dived, hitting his back against the bottom of the river's rock bed. He had suddenly started to regret his decision of putting on a suit of chain mail.

The current thrashed him up and down, avoiding his escape from the water, impeding him taking even a mouthful of air. He was desperate, the despair that welled up at the bottom of his lungs and pulsated asking for air was his body about to give up, his heart was racing so hard that he couldn't hear anything else—

"Buaaagh!"

He poked his head out for a moment and swallowed a mouthful of air, only to be dragged again by the violent current.

Get a hold of something! Grab something, even if your hands fall off, or you'll die!

He fumbled his hands around looking for a loose branch or a particularly big stone, but his hands only caught onto cutting rocks and water.

Sh*t! Is this it?! Is this what losing the world after having it in your hand feels like?! All the wealth inside this bag, and I'll lose it like this together with my life?!

"Brrruab!"

He let go of a pocket of bubbles from his mouth, and just when his conscience was about to fade—

A hand reached for him.

A sturdy, spotted and tanned hand pulled him from the water, and threw him towards the sides of the river into dry air and safety. The figure hurried towards Thom, and putting their hands on his chest, they pressed down— splurt! And a fountain of water exploded from the young man's mouth as it completely drenched his face.

"Ack... Acgh!"

Thom gasped for air as he grabbed the mysterious arm, and panted rapidly waiting for his eyes to clear out.

"Oh dear, by Teus, you alright?! I saw you floating and I, well I, I fished you out! What happened, young one?!"

When the confusion disappeared from his eyes, he saw the figure of a middle-aged, robust woman looking down on him. By the looks of her skin and her clothes, she was with no doubt a farmer.

"Ah... Ah... Haha, hahaha... What luck, really. And... Thank you."

Thom muttered.