The two days passed me by quite quickly. I was definitely not idle as I started to prepare in various ways. I didn’t quite know for sure what Randal was doing, but I also didn’t ask him. I, on the other paw, did quite a bit. First of all, I attempted to train my instincts and fighting techniques again, trying to rub off the rust that I had accumulated through my years of passivity. My attempts were semi-successful, though I couldn’t do anything more until I actually entered combat and had a trial by fire.
I had also gotten a change of clothes and cloak, something a little less cut up. I ended up getting black clothes that hid my tail and ears very well. Speaking of my wolf attributes, Randal still didn’t know what exactly I was. He didn’t ask and so I never told. We did, however, discuss my height. Since I did look fairly young, I thought it would be a problem but it wasn’t for two reasons.
The main one was that my height would make it easier for me to act like a servant to one of the richer nobles. They tended to have young and pretty people as their servants, so I would fit right in. My height also didn’t affect Randal since he had worked with dwarves before and I was just a little taller than them. Oh, that's right! I had also grown by quite a bit. I was now a little taller than an average man’s waist. It seemed that by leveling up I got older, which reinforced my theory that my race was some kind of monster race.
On another note, my wounds from where I cut myself healed fairly quickly. After just a day, the small lacerations had already healed up completely, leaving the faintest of scratch marks. I didn’t know exactly how good my natural healing was, but it was definitely better than it used to be.
Gambler proved to be as weird as ever. During the past two days, I had gotten a toothpick and salt. A single grain of salt. It was laughably useless. What was I supposed to do with a single grain of salt? Put it into someone’s eye? Actually, that wasn’t such a bad idea...
Also during that time, I had managed to level up to level three. Originally, I struggled for a moment on what to put my stats in. Early life stats played a huge role in someone’s life. According to the stats, among other things such as achievements and actions, a person would be offered different classes when they reach level ten. For example, someone who got hit a lot and had a high endurance would get the tankier classes as their option. There were a few exceptions to this rule, but otherwise this fact stayed true.
In the end, I decided to put three points plus the one forced into Charisma to get it to twenty. The reason for this being that at certain milestone’s there was a chance that a person could gain a skill from the Records. I put the last point into Strength. My stats looked like this now:
[Kali Vexia- Wolfkin - Level: 3
Titles:
None
Strength-14
Intelligence- 11
Dexterity- 17 (+15)
Endurance-10
Charisma- 20
( () = gear boosts)
Unique:
[Gambler]
Racial:
[Luna], [Shift]
Charisma:
[Animal Handling 1]
Other:
[Falsification 1]
Time- 2 years]
I had long decided to hide the Divinity on my stats. Every person’s status was fully customizable, which was handy for a number of reasons. The Divinity part was an obvious nice tweak, but there were plenty of other handy options like making the status really dark. This helped so a person wouldn’t be blinded by the Records if they were in a dark location.
I did manage to get a Charisma skill, but it sadly wasn’t one that would help me like I had hoped it would. At the very least, I did get a trainable skill.
[Ability: Animal Handling, 1(CHA): You can handle and work with animals better. Your ability to do so rises with your Charisma.]
Skills were divided into two main categories: trainable and untrainable. Trainable skills were skills that could be trained from level one to ten. At level ten, the skills would have a chance to evolve into something else. [Animal Handling] was one such trainable skill. Untrainable skills were the ones that couldn’t be trained with a level. Examples of this would be [Luna], [Shift], and [Gambler]. That doesn’t mean an untrainable skill couldn’t get better. For instance, using [Shift] no longer hurt me as much as it originally did. The majority of skills were of the trainable variety while untrainable skills were usually more rare, but they were also typically stronger.
Us two partners in crime met back at the tavern a few hours before the actual party. During this time, we went over the plan over a dozen more times and even made a plan C just so we could avoid the Tyroid forest. Speaking of the Tyriod forest, I also learned what a Slayern Spider Queen was.
There were only three Slayern Spider Queens that were known about, one on each continent. The spider was just a little smaller than the city that we were in, which was absolutely massive. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the queens gave birth to Slayern Spiders, which were just about as large as a human male. To make matters worse, their favorite food was creatures of the sapient variety. Thankfully, the Slayern Spiders couldn’t travel about ten gladiatorial arenas, which would be about ten soccer fields if I was in space, away from their queen or they would die. Doubly thankfully, the Slayern Spider Queens were extremely deep sleepers and had been in hibernation for years.
It wasn’t long after we rediscussed our plans that it was finally time to set out.
<<>><<>><<>>
‘A couple of hours later, the sun had set and the party was in full swing. Dozens of nobles danced and talked out on the well lit front lawn of the Judge’s manor. In the corner, a group of bards played slow songs, but occasionally would swap to a faster paced on. The fast paced ones would draw out the younger nobles as they danced away without a care.
Unbeknownst to them, a small maid was sitting against one of the walls around the manor, out of sight. She had on a black dress, like most of the other maids. Odly, she had on a black backpack and was missing the white apron that most of the maids would wear. Her black hair blended in perfectly with her dress as she sat against the wall. Sitting atop her hair was a large bow, tied together in the middle with a white ribbon. If one was to see her eyes, they would feel a sense of danger as a spark of feral excitement raced through the vibrant green orbs while the moon rose higher and higher.’
I stifled a yawn as I wrote in my journal. Somewhere along the way, I had decided to start recording my adventurers for some reason. I don’t really know why, but I figured it would give me something to do while I waited for various things like I was right now. It was better to have something to do than nothing since idle hands are the devil’s work.
Me and Randal had made entrance into the manor grounds an hour before. We used the servant’s entrance and got in fairly easily, just like what Randal said. I thought it would’ve been more difficult with my obvious tail and ears, but it was actually easy. Most maids wore bows in their hair and had on foofy dresses. I easily hid my tail under the dress and disguised my ears as a bow like I did when I first made entry into Serias. The only drawback was that doing so was extremely uncomfortable. It was like when your arm went to sleep and was prickling all over, but then you slammed it into a wall repeatedly and it felt like you were dying.
Randal had gone off somewhere to prepare while I casually waited by the side of the main building opposite of the party. The main building was a three story tall mansion. It was made out of a white stone and had lion’s heads all over it, a trend that I noticed most Roshan architecture had. Each of the lions were surrounded by large arches and pillars, giving off the illusion that the building was bigger than it actually was. It was a fairly cool building, but I wasn’t too impressed by the architecture because of what I kne was inside.
Standing up, I did some small stretches before rifling through my pack. There wasn’t very much inside, just a cloak, a set of tools, a noble and maid outfit, some rope, my two daggers, my journal, and a small container of what Randal called dwarven fire. I quickly put on the cloak and secured the two daggers around myself. Next, I materialized her new mask and put it on.
I had tested it a few days ago and found that the red material was actually some sort of one way glass, so vision wasn’t a problem for me. With all of that ready, I used Falsification to change what others would see if they used [Inspection] on me. Trying to think of something cool sounding, I changed my handle to [The Wolven Executioner - ??]. The name was pretty badass, but the double question mark actually had a meaning. If [Inspection] was used and question marks showed, it meant that the inspected creature was at least a hundred levels higher than the inspector.
Glancing around to make sure that nobody was looking at me, I started to climb up the sides of the manor. The walls seemed like they were almost made to climb as the arches, pillars, and lion’s heads made perfect hand holds. Glancing up the wall, I saw my goal, which was a window on the second story that had been left open.
If I had to be honest, this entire country had been a real let down… first there wasn’t a moat and then I had to climb something that wasn’t even remotely difficult. Even a child could do this! Wait, I guess I was technically a child, at least in body. On better news, the elven continent should be better.
Over the two days that I was with Randal, he had told me a little of the place we were going to. The elven continent was covered by a vast forest, older than the oldest of elves. He told me that the capital, our final destination, was a haven for adventurers as there were usually plenty of bountiful quests - not the system reinforced kind but more like bounties for mercenaries - to complete. Not only that, but every race - including humans - was allowed to the continent without too many prejudices. It was only called the elven continent because the elves ruled there. The thing that got me excited the most was that he said there were dozens of dungeons in fairly close proximity to the elven capital, which would give me a huge opportunity to advance quickly.
I froze on the side of the building. While I had been distracted by my thoughts, my sixth sense-which had improved slightly from my prior life-had drawn me out of my musings. I felt a gaze from behind me. I was tempted to move away, but I sat still against the wall, not moving an inch. I did this because the person that saw me might not have actually seen me, but moving would definitely draw their attention. It was something I learned in my ‘training’ if you could call it that. If you were in the dark with dark clothing and not moving, it became nearly impossible to be spotted. If I felt a gaze, it wasn’t necessarily true that I had been spotted.
Sure enough, after a moment passed, I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Once sure that I was safe, I continued my way up the side of the wall. It took longer than expected for me to reach the window for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I was shorter than I used to be so I couldn’t reach as far for the next handhold. That mixed with the fact I had to climb slower so I would be harder to spot made it extremely slow. Luckily, Randal had given me fifteen minutes after the party started before he would start the distraction. I assumed that barely five minutes had passed since I first heard the party music, so I had about tenish minutes left before I had to kick it in gear.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Grabbing one last handhold, I pulled myself up to my final destination: the open window. Peaking over the windowsill, I observed what was in the room carefully. The entire place was filled with rows of laundry hanging off of wires. It seemed that the window was opened by the maids to allow wind into the room to dry the clothes quicker.
I pulled myself up and over the windowsill, pausing when I was standing on it. Quickly reaching up, I untied the ribbon pulling my ears together since I forgot to when I was getting ready. I still wasn’t used to having my extra body parts, so I only realized that my ears were still tied halfway up the climb when they started to hurt. It was unfortunate because I needed two hands to undo the ribbon, but I had to have at least one hand on the wall to hold myself.
After scanning the room for a second time and listening outside for any noises, which I could do better with my ears untied, I quickly stripped out of the maid outfit and changed into the noble set of clothes that was in my bag. I made sure to keep my tail wrapped around my leg, although it was extremely uncomfortable. After changing, I made my way around the lines of laundry and approached the door. With a deep breath, I purged my mind of all second thoughts and made my way out of the room.
The hallways were made out of the normal white stone, though they were painted to be a dark gray so they wouldn’t hurt people’s eyes as much if light reflected off of them. The hallway was not very well lit, since almost nobody was inside, not even the maids. Almost every single one of the staff and guards were attending to the guests on the manor’s front lawn. Because of this, I didn’t need to be as slow as I was trained to be while infiltrating and could almost sprint through the manor.
After looking at the schematics for a few days, I knew where almost everything was. The basement was like a mini dungeon. The first floor was mainly for the servants and the more practical rooms like kitchens. The second floor was more of social rooms like the dining rooms, gamerooms, and things of that nature. The third floor was mainly the judges' rooms like his study and bedroom.
Knowing this, I skipped past all of the grandiose rooms and made my way to the bland servant’s stairs. Once there, I quickly took them up a floor and made my way to the Judge’s bedroom. By the time I reached the room, barely two minutes had passed, leaving me with just eight minutes before Randal made his move.
Glancing around quickly to make sure there were no guards, I quickly entered the room. What laid before me was both a fabulous and terrible image. The rich imagery was because the entire room had various objects plated in gold. A large crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and a dead fire sizzled in a large fireplace attached to one of the walls. Paintings of the Judge hung on the walls like prized possessions all around the room, each one encased in a gold frame. Laying in the middle of the room laid a large bed, big enough for five people. The entire thing was draped in satin red silk
The terrible part was the bed. Wafting off of the bed was their terrible scent of blood, sweat, and tears. Laying on the bed, chained to the bedpolls was a battered and beaten elf. Even in the terrible lighting, I could see the bright blood stains from the dozens of cuts and bruises all over her body. Blood and other bodily fluids dripped off of her, blending in with the red of the silk sheets. The majority of her limbs were twisted in weird angles that should’ve been impossible for someone still alive.
Quickly making my way to the elf, my furry grew more and more. Almost as in response to the rage, my ears stood straight up as my tail became ramrod straight.
I asked the elf gently, in complete opposition to how I was feeling, “Can you move? Are you Ilway?” Randal had never told me who exactly we were saving, but I did manage to get a name out of the secretive elf, Illway.
The elf on the bed shook her head and responded weakly to my query, “N-no, I can’t. H-he shattered my legs and arms… As for-'' She stopped as coughs racked her body, “I haven't seen her, but if she is a new slave-as in a month or so since I've been chained up here for that long-she should still be in the dungeon until the he found a use for her...”
A small part of me was relieved that the near death elf wasn’t Ilway, but that side was covered up by my growing rage upon hearing how long she had been here. I wanted to kill the bastard who did this. Of course, as a former slave, this wasn’t anything new to me. In fact, I could have been described as a slave from birth, just that I had a change of master halfway through my life, so I knew full well what had happened to the elf. None of this ever actually happened to me since I was horribly disfigured with scars when Terry ‘liberated’ me and he had other beautiful slaves. As for the scientists? They were more interested in torturing and expirementing on me than anything else.
The elf spoke again, her voice no more than a whisper, “C-can you do me a favor? Can you kill me? I want to rest. I’m so t-tired.”
I thought deeply for a second about her request. I understood exactly what she was feeling. Sometimes I had just wanted it all to end, especially since I had no family, friends, or happiness. A deep tired hopelessness had overcome me in my past life without me being able to do anything about it. That hoplesness was common amongst slaves, but then there was the other side, the temporary hopeless desire for rest that sometimes rose up that was also common amongst slaves. There was one simple question that usually snapped the temporary kind to pieces. “Don’t you want to escape from here?”
The elf shook her head sadly, “I’m the last survivor of my village… I was only spared since I could use healing magic, but that didn’t amount to much since he permenately disabled my ability to use mana. My f-family and friends-” I could see the agony and desire to weep in her eyes, but no tears came out, “I just want to sleep.”
Like I said, I understood where she was coming from. The lack of a will to live could completely destroy somebody, turning even the most prided warriors into useless lumps. I had even experienced the lack of a will to live. Unfortunately, the emotion didn’t last too long. Terry saw me as extremely ‘valuable’ so he used the strongest slave magic possible on me which allowed him to have complete control of my body and partial control of my emotions.
“Okay. I'll help you sleep.” I had come to the conclusion to follow her wishes. This wasn’t purely just because she wanted it since I also had a few reasons. The main one was that I wouldn’t be able to take her out of here. With her crippled so bad I would need to carry her, which was something I couldn’t do at the moment with my childish body. If I didn’t kill her, I would have to leave her here to suffer even longer under the judge.
The weak elf gave me a small smile of gratitude and pointed towards one of the paintings on the wall. “After he was done with me, he went over there and pulled the painting off the wall. Behind the wall was a safe. From my position, I could see that the code was 23,56,79,23,13 starting on the left.”
I nodded my head and pulled one of the daggers from my sheathe. I hesitated for just a second before driving the blade directly into the elf’s heart. As the crimzon liquid coated my hand, I could feel a warm path being traced down the side of my cheek. I didn’t know her for long, but we had a sort of camaraderie that only two slaves could have. Along with the tear, my ears and tail also drooped from the feelings of helplessness that seemed to bleed into me from the elf.
“May your soul find the warmth it seeks.” I blessed her out of habit. Afterall, I was once an angel even if I had been a fallen one. The elf had a peaceful look on her face, one that almost shocked me considering she had just died. As I stared at the elf, who I never got the chance to ask for a name, dead on the bed and my hands covered in her innocent blodd, I came to a resolution: I would become stronger so that I could stop things like this without being able to do anything. I would become strong so I never had to feel helpless again.
Putting the emotional struggle aside, I made my way to the distasteful painting of the so-called judge and pulled it off the wall. True to the elf’s words, a safe engraved with various runes sat in a hidden alcove. Only a few seconds passed as I entered the code before a soft click rang out into the somber room. The safe slowly opened, revealing what was inside. A look of shock briefly passed underneath my mask before I quickly pushed all of the safe’s contents into my bag. The sounds of metal hitting glass sang like a cruel angel from my bag, revealing an item I had forgotten about. I couldn’t help but let out a sadistic laugh before I took out the glass jar and leaned it against the door of the safe. After tinkering with the jar, I then closed the safe, resetting the lock mechanism.
My brief stint of sadistic madness was replaced with sadness as I walked past the bloodied bed. I would’ve liked to bury the elf, but it would take too much time. Speaking of time, I had just under five minutes left before Randal started his distraction. I needed to get a move on.
I quickly retraced my steps to the staircase and powered my way down, blowing past the other two floors like a breeze. It wasn’t long before I was in the bottom floor: the basement. The basement was a very small hallway. Lined up on either side of the hall were cells sitting like oppressive claws as they kept their prisoners in. There were no lights anywhere inside of the cells, giving very little visibility to anyone who would try to observe them. Each of the jail cells were terribly kept. Three of them were empty while the fourth had a shaking elf sitting in the corner. I couldn’t see her face or anything as she was tucked in between her legs in the corner, but she was the only other elf here, so I assumed she was who I was sent after.
I whispered out to the shaking elf, “Are you Ilway?”
The elf, finally having noticed my presence, started to shake harder, but replied, “Y-yes ma'am. Do you have n-need for me?”
A sigh of relief eased out of my mouth as I walked up to the jail cell. Without a second thought, I reached into my bag and pulled out some tools that Randal had given me. It was way too easy to pick the lock. Before I even had the chance to think ‘opensaysame’, the door was popped open. The elf looked up sharply when heard the lock being fiddled with and tried to back away, not that she could since she was already in the corner.
I, having noticed Ilway’s move, didn’t stop what retrieving my tools as I talked softly and placatingly to Illway, “I’m here to get you out, ok? Don’t be scared. If you want to escape, you have to do exactly as I say.”
“R-really? Can I go home?” Ilway finally stopped trying to get away, although she continued to shake in her corner.
With my tools packed up, I walked inside of the cell. Now with the elf staring at me with hope, I could finally see her. Illway was a very beautiful young elf. She had a large set of innocent green eyes that seemed to sparkle in the dim light. Her cheeks were red and streaked in trails from tears. The elf had an hourglass figure which combined with her innocent look to give off a very striking view. Her hair snaked behind her and was a blonde color.
I quickly pulled out the maid outfit and handed it to Ilway, “Here, put this on. I’ll go ahead and tell you the plan so you know whats going on. Listen closely because I only have enough time to tell you once, ok?”
The elf quickly grabbed the maid outfit, seemingly ecstatic to do anything as long as it meant escape, and stripped out of her previous spartan clothes, “Understood.”
“Great. Right now there is a party happening, hence why I was able to get in here so easily. In just about two minutes, my partner is going to cause a distraction. To avoid suspicion, we are going to pose as a noble and her maid, with you being the maid since it will be easier to beleive. I might have to do some things to get the act across, so I apologize in advance and hope I'm not put into a position where I have to.”
What I said was true, most ‘noble’ brats were usually extremely spoiled and grew to be abusive little parasites. At least, that was the way the majority of the brats I had seen across the universe had been. Sure every now and then there would be a good one, but I would say the odds were nine to one that a brat from a noble house would be abusive either physically or mentally.
“Y-yes.” Ilway said after finishing changing into the maid outfit. It looked a little roughly put on, but it would get us by most security if I do my part in acting.
“Here, hold this. I apologize, but it would be weird for the noble to do the heavy lifting.” I passed my bag over to the elf. She took it without any qualms and waited for my next step of the plan. I led her up the stairs of the basement as I made my own appearance changed. The first thing to do was to make the cloak disappear, which happened after I promptly shoved it down into the bag. After that was simple, I tied my ears up back into the bow tie form, made my mask disappear back into my tattoo, and reactivated [Falsification]. As I led us towards the back doors, I could feel Illway’s eyes on me as she watched me transform from the intimidating masked and hooded [The Wolven Executioner - ??] into the cutesy and snotty [Noble - 11].
Now ready, we waited at the back door. In just a minute, right on time, screams filled the air outside. Taking the opportunity, we snuck out of the house and into the scared crowd...
<<>><<>><<>>
Chaos was so… fun. I never really got to experience it all that much since I was kept inside by myself by both of my ex-masters, but now? I was right in the midst of a scrambling crowd of nobles, enjoying the view as me and Illway, my ‘maid’, hid in the crowd.
Screams such as “He’s over there!” and “Help me!” or even “I’m too rich to die!” filled the air as the assorted lower class nobles and merchants tried to get away from the manor. Every once in a while, I would see Randal appear from nowhere with spurts of blood following him as he killed a noble or guard before disappearing again. This was his ‘master’ plan. He was killing the crowd so that all attention would be on him, allowing us to get out of the noble entrance easier.
The manor had tall walls all the way around with only two entrances/exits: the noble and servant entrance. The servant entrance was me and Randal’s way in and was also the most obvious way to get out, but it would probably be guarded better since the judge wouldn’t want the ‘assassin’ to get away. The noble entrance was also heavily guarded, but the guards were guarding the nobles more than the gate.
As Illway and I approached the gate, with her timidely tucked in close to me, I felt a metal clad hand on my shoulder. Turning around, a large man filled my vision. He was… something special. I couldn’t see his face or anything like that since he was covered in armor, but I could see the symbol painted directly in the middle of his helmet. It was a star with each point ending in a circle. To an accustomed eye, the circles would just look like colored circles, but I knew better. The circles were in fact planets. It was the symbol of the [Revenant].