Duncan was lying on his bed and thinking about what Wazsh said to him as they parted.
“Bastard. Yeah, I really want to flirt with a woman who almost got raped a few hours ago… and even if things turned out to be fine what happens when this show is over? I will probably never get to see her again. This whole thing could last another 100 years or be over tomorrow. Who knows what his employers are thinking?” he thought as he lulled himself to sleep.
As morning came Duncan rose from the bed and washed up. He took the books he borrowed and dumped them into his inventory before going downstairs. Seeing Wazsh at the kitchen counter whistling to himself did not improve his mood.
“Morning,” he said briefly as he passed by and without giving Wazsh a chance to respond went through the bar to the outside.
He passed Bolgar’s without stopping and soon reached the barracks. Petris appeared in front of him like a ghost and he almost bleeped him before recognizing him.
“Morning. Is Fenris here,” Duncan asked.
Petris nodded, “ Yeah. Captain Fenris is in his office. Sorry, if I scared you. It was not intentional.”
“It’s alright. See you around,” Duncan said and went towards Fenris’ office.
“I hope not,” Petris said with a smirk as Duncan was leaving.
Duncan knocked and Fenris yelled for him to come in.
After the greetings, Fenris asked, “What brings you here so early in the morning?”
“I came to return your books and discuss an important matter…” Duncan said and stacked the books on the table in front of him.
“Important matter? I am all ears,” Fenris replied leaning on his desk one hand supporting his chiseled jaw.
“I killed Rathan,” Duncan stated and waited for a reaction.
For a while, it looked like someone pressed pause on their conversation before Fenris shifted in his chair leaning backward.
“What happened?” Fenris asked.
“He tried to rape Marykah,” Duncan replied.
“The tailor girl? When did this happen and how did you get involved?” Fenris asked.
“I was supposed to meet her in the evening yesterday to get measured for a new set of clothes and walked into her shop just as he was tearing at her clothes,” Duncan replied while waving his hands around.
“So what did you do?” Fenris asked.
“I came from behind and stuck my sword into his back. Then cut off his head when he confronted me,” Duncan replied and stared toward Fenris’ eyes waiting for a reaction.
Fenris smirked. “Not exactly an honorable way to do it. But a man without honor such as Rathan does not deserve to go honorably anyway. I mean did not deserve to go honorably,” Fenris said after a while and smiled.
There was a pause in the conversation and Fenris stood up and started stacking the books on the bookshelves.
“It’s good that you told me so I can prepare for the pressure from above when shit hits the fan,” Fenris said as he turned around once again with a smile.
“I was instructed by Wazsh and Elland to tell you as soon as possible,” Duncan replied and breathed out.
Fenris nodded. “You have some very smart friends. They know I owe my life to you and they know I don’t like the Mayor or her goons. So they knew I will protect you from the consequences of this to the best of my abilities. Trouble is my abilities are not the best in this town,” Fenris explained.
“What do you mean?” Duncan asked, finally relaxed.
“The Mayor brought an entourage of personal guards as she came. Rathan was just a local hire. I reckon they are around level 40 or even 50 while I haven’t reached 30 yet. You know what that means?” Fenris asked.
Duncan mulled it over. Other than the obvious strength disparity he could not get Fenris’ meaning.
“Not really, other than the obvious,” he replied.
“It means we will have to level up a lot and fast in the coming days so we can prepare if they come after us… And by we I mean the whole guard team and yourself,” Fenris explained.
Duncan thought about it for a second but then nodded.
“Alright. When do we start?” he asked quietly, not sounding convinced at all.
“When can you start?” Fenris asked, looking at Duncan’s sour expression.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Whenever. Now if you want,” Duncan replied, frowning his eyebrows in annoyance.
Fenris raised his hands defensively before saying, “Well, hold your horses for now. I have to coordinate with the others and make a schedule. There should always be either me or Shaya present in a team that goes.”
“So, when?” Duncan asked, taking a big breath.
Fenris rubbed his chin before saying, “Can you come back in a couple of hours?”
Duncan nodded, before replying, “Sure.”
“Damn. I will just stay behind and run at the first sign of trouble I guess,” Duncan thought to himself as he exited the barracks.
He walked briskly to Elland’s shop and went inside. Elland came from the workshop and greeted him.
“Morning. You are up early. If you are looking for Marykah she just left a couple of minutes ago toward the fields,” Elland stated.
“Morning. I came to talk to you actually,” Duncan replied.
Elland looked surprised at that before asking, “What about?”
“How sure are you that the Ghoul poison antidote will work?” Duncan asked.
Elland sighed. “I see. That has you worried. All I can say is that I won’t be sure until we try it. I got the recipe from one of the books I translated.”
Duncan took out the potion and used Identify on it.
[Ghoul poison antidote]
“Identify says it’s the Ghoul poison antidote. So, it should be alright then?” Duncan asked.
Eland shook his head.
“It only says that because I told you it is a Ghoul poison antidote,” Elland replied.
“What do you mean? Can [Identify] be wrong?” Duncan asked.
Elland was in thought before replying.
“Let me tell you a story which I learned from my teacher. There was once a book written by his predecessor that had a tiny error in the description of the ingredients used for a recipe. Instead of Evening grass root the author wrote Night grass root. Both words use similar root symbols.
“Anyway, that’s not important. What was important was that one is poisonous and the other is used in healing potions.
“People who read the book and made the potion and identified it got a result of it being a healing potion when in fact it made you vomit your guts out.
“People who haven’t read the book or have not been told what that potion is and used Identify skill got Potion as a result.”
So, we can conclude that Identify skill is a very subjective skill which makes use of the latent information from the gathered knowledge the user has.”
Duncan puffed out a bunch of air from his puckered lips at the information before replying, “So, you are saying I should not put absolute trust in it?”
Elland nodded. “Yes, and don’t spread what I told you around. There are plenty of religious fanatics that would find such information offensive.”
Duncan frowned before asking for the reason.
“They consider the stats, inventory, and skills a gift from their gods. And gods are supposed to be infallible. Any mention to them that their gods may be wrong is a very touchy subject. A subject some are even willing to kill for. Do you understand now?” Elland replied.
Duncan nodded.
“So, we just use the potion and hope for the best?” Duncan asked.
“Well, it can’t really be worse than the alternative,” Elland replied.
Duncan nodded, feeling dejected.
“Can you give me the translated book to read?” Duncan finally asked after a pause.
“Sure, here you go. Please return it when you are done,” Elland said and summoned it from his inventory.
“Can I sit in that chair over there? I will read it now and return it to you afterward,” Duncan asked.
“Sure. I will get back to work then,” Elland replied and made his way back to the workshop.
Duncan sat down and took a look at the handwritten book. There was no title on it as it was just a notebook that Elland transcribed the content of the original into.
He activated his Reading skill and after 15 minutes he was done. He frowned at the nasty images that appeared in his head from body preparation to sewing up different body parts to make a death magic monster called Abomination. The vivid descriptions of bowel removal almost made him gag.
He did learn quite a bit about the death magic monsters. Shades were a monster made by pumping a recently dead person full of death magic mana extracting the soul. Wraiths were just upgraded Shades which killed enough creatures to level up.
The Skeleton Guardians were a combination of Shades and a skeleton used when the body was too far damaged to be turned into a Ghoul.
A Ghoul was an upgraded Zombie and could be made from anything. It just required a death mage or necromancer, as they were called, pumping his mana into a dead body. So far Duncan only ran into humanoid ones. If you used a high enough leveled body you could apparently skip the Zombie part altogether and directly make Ghouls.
There was also the mention of accidental poisoning and the antidote Elland made in that chapter.
The same principle of high leveled bodies also applied to Shades, which could be skipped and made into Wraiths or even Spectres, if the victim was leveled high enough. The book also described that the victims lost levels in the process of transforming them with death magic, which Duncan was really happy about.
The last chapter was about Abominations which were Frankenstein’s wet dreams and Duncan’s next nightmare. You basically stuck a bunch of different corpses together and pumped them full of death magic and hoped they would reanimate. It was more a lottery kind of deal than science.
“I bet this is just nanobots taking over corpses and calling it death magic,” Duncan thought as he put down the book.
He noticed the [ LOG ] was blinking at a rapid pace in the corner where he minimized it.
As he opened it a bunch of notifications spewed out along with it.
[
You have Learned Necromancy Level 1.
Wisdom +0.1
]
[
You have Learned Necromancy Level 2.
Wisdom +0.2
]
[
You have Learned Necromancy Level 3.
Wisdom +0.3
]
[
You have Learned Necromancy Level 4.
Wisdom +0.4
]
[
You have Learned Necromancy Level 5.
Wisdom +0.5
]
[
You have Learned Swordsmanship Level 5.
Strength +0.5
Dexterity +0.5
Agility +0.5
]
[
You have Learned Stealth Level 2.
Agility +0.2
Perception +0.2
]
[ You have killed Rathan - level 28 ]
[ You have leveled up ]
Duncan checked his level and he was at 23 now. He dumped the new level up stat point and the stat point he forgot about into Vitality bringing it up to 19.1, as he had a feeling he would need it shortly.
He stood up and walked into the workshop finding Elland cleaning a counter.
“Here is the book,” Duncan said as he stopped next to Elland.
“Done already? That was fast,” Elland said with a look of surprise on his face.
“Yeah. I have a skill for reading,” Duncan explained.
“Must be nice. I have some more books you can borrow and read here,” Elland replied after an initially shocked expression.
Duncan nodded before shaking his head, “Next time I am here I will make use of the chair again. Thank you for the offer. I should get going now.”
“What’s the rush?” Elland asked.
“I told Fenris and he wants to revisit the mine to level up his crew,” Duncan replied and shrugged his shoulders.
“He does? Well, it is not entirely unexpected. Make sure every one of you has the antidote potion on hand when you go in,” Elland advised.
Before leaving, Duncan remembered a pressing matter and asked, “How is Marykah?”
“You really do care about her. She is fine considering. Just a bit on edge,” Elland replied.
Duncan sighed.
“It’s not what you think. I hardly know her. It’s true I find her attractive. I also find Shaya attractive. Also, that wench of a woman named Demira is attractive. In fact, even Clara would probably be attractive to me if she were younger. I don’t have time or desire for a relationship. My life is complicated enough as it is,” Duncan stated.
“So you are just horny then,” Elland replied and smiled.
Duncan rolled his eyes and just said goodbye before leaving, slamming the door behind him.
“Wazsh was right. This really is fun,” Elland said, chuckling.