Part II
- Kya - Sayrin - Wade - Carcelo -
_________________________________________
"What in the world?" Kya said aloud, turning back to look at the manor house in the setting suns.
She had just left and was still trying to parse the fact that the Dwarven servant who’d shown her in and the one who’d just closed the door after seeing her out weren’t the same ones, when she’d gotten her first notification in quite some time.
- - - - -
- NEW QUEST!
Closeted Cultists: You survived the dinner with Arthur Daris, but of course noticed some of the many discrepancies around his property. Why is a struggling farmer living in such a lavish home? Why are his servants so unique in their dealings? And most of all, why were the servants switched out without you noticing?
- Objective: Uncover the secrets to Arthurs Manor
- Progress: N/A
- Time Remaining: 47h:59m:41s
- Reward: Reward dependent upon nature of quest completion.
- - - - -
And well… There was a lot to unpack there.
She’d been somewhat off put most of the evening, not feeling that same warmth that typically accompanied people like Arthur. That good natured, grandfatherly air he’d had in the guild hall had taken on a more forceful air, like he was trying to put that across, rather than it being natural to him.
She hadn’t thought too much of it, honestly. She didn’t much care what the elderly man was doing in his own home, she’d come for a nice meal and because his was the first quest she’d done and wanted to tell him personally that it was completed. While she’d taken care of the latter, the former hadn’t really happened.
However, all of that went out the window with the first sentence of her quest. She stared at the words hovering in front of her in their little semi-transparent window, reading them again and again as the time ticked down.
“What the hell does ‘you survived’ mean?” She muttered to herself, before pacing slowly away from the front steps and down the hill somewhat. She wasn’t leaving, not yet at least. She just didn’t want any suspicious eyes on her from the house.
She dismissed the quest window, and started pacing at the bottom of the hill on which Arthur had built his home. She had forty-eight hours to figure this out, meaning she could absolutely leave and return in the morning. Kya knew her current quest and the whole reason she was out here wasn’t completed until she turned it in at the guild hall. She could just as easily head back to the city, turn in the quest, sleep, and return in the morning to investigate.
This appealed to Kya for several reasons, chief amongst them being that she was rather exhausted from the day's events. Sure, she’d been more or less healed from the battles she’d fought against the pack of hellhounds, but that was a physical thing she’d discovered. Her bones weren’t broken, her muscles weren’t torn. But mentally, she was pretty out of it. She idly thought about whether her rapid use of magic was related or not? Questions for later.
For now, she thought it was pretty reasonable to leave and come back. Pulling up the quest description one more time to make sure this wouldn’t trigger anything unintentional as she began to move away, she almost stumbled over when she noticed the glaring change, focusing in on it.
- - - - -
Quest - Closeted Cultists:
. . .
- Time Remaining: 11h:52m:14s
. . .
- - - - -
Snapping her head around, she swore she saw the curtains moving in the front kitchen window, like someone had been there a moment before, watching her.
“The timer can change?” she thought incredulously, “I guess that means I’m figuring this shit out tonight then.”
She was about to march right back up to the house and simply ask the drunken man what exactly was going on, when she thought better of it. Her timer had gone down rapidly as soon as someone in the house saw I hadn’t left immediately. She wasn’t sure if it had been Arthur himself or one of the servants, but someone watching her was bad regardless. If she went back up and confronted the problem head on, that would likely result in very little, possibly even losing the quest altogether. Besides, the servants weren’t likely to tell her much, and the man was so drunk he’d tell her they sky was neon orange if she asked.
So then, Kya figured she’d start her investigation elsewhere.
She’d seen a couple long low shed-like buildings dotting the landscape when she’d observed Arthur's farmland from his porch. She’d taken them at face value as nothing more than sheds, and perhaps that truly was all they were, but at this point, she was beginning to question everything about this place.
Making her way to the nearest one, she ducking off the pathways and crept along inside the seven foot tall stalks of golden grain. They wouldn’t do much to hide her presence from observers, but any cover was better than no cover.
The moment she arrived at the simple stone building, she knew it wasn’t a shed, or at least, simply a shed. For one, it was massive, at least twenty meters long, and five or six wide, it was much bigger up close than she’d thought when looking at it from afar. There were only two small windows about the size of dinner plates at about the same height off the ground as the tallest stalks of grain, before the simple slanted roof carried it up about another foot. There were no decorations, or symbols, or embellishments of any kind. It was simply a gray stone building with a darker gray roof.
However, appearances can be deceiving after all. Without her aura, she might have assumed it truly was that and nothing more. But her senses stopped dead when they came into contact with that building, unable to penetrate any deeper within the simple gray exterior. The only other time her aura had hit a dead space like this was in the ritual room back in Rory’s clinic. At the time it hadn’t mattered that much to her, but after only a day of relying on it, she already found the incongruity staggering.
More importantly, what simple shed would have magical defenses to protect against aura’s?
Stepping as lightly and softly as she could, Kya crept her way towards the simple metal barn doors on the shorter side of the building, and tried to open them. Of course, they were locked with a simple padlock and chain. This would have stumped her out in the woods perhaps, or undoubtedly before she’d gotten her class and come to this world in the first place. It might have been a simple looking lock, but the chains were as thick as her pinky finger, and not something she would have been able to easily circumvent. But of course, now she was all magical and whatnot. Not letting the gravity of the situation prevent a smile from playing at her lips, she took out both of her knives, and slipped the blades into the middle of the padlock, before using her strength to leverage them against one another.
She knew, physically, she was quite enhanced from her previous self. The ease and speed at which she could run was proof enough of that. But here again, she saw undeniable proof. It took a concerted effort, sure, but to be able to brute strength the lock like this was still impressive to her.
Which is why she let out a soft chuckle when, after only a couple of seconds, the lock popped open and she pulled the chain off the door. Giving them a quick pull, they slid open with a thunderous cacophony that could no doubt be heard by everyone in the vicinity.
“Fucking hell” she cursed to herself, pulling up the quest timer and cursing again, with added color and variety.
Stolen novel; please report.
- - - - -
Quest - Closeted Cultists:
. . .
- Time Remaining: 6h:41m:31s
. . .
- - - - -
She’d lost several hours from simply opening the doors? What the hell would happen if she failed the quest? Would Arthur get away with whatever was happening here? Would he get away in general? Walking into the dimly lit shed, she thought the same thing she’d been thinking for most of her life really, but especially since waking up in that damn temple: “I need more information.”
However, all thoughts of “that damn timer” left her mind as soon as her eyes adjusted and she could make out what was within the shed.
Kya hadn’t been big on video games. Growing up she’d never had any next-gen consoles or anything. She’d had a Gameboy Advance SP with a copy of Pokemon sapphire she’d played to death, and a DS Lite with littlest pet shop and deal or no deal, also both played to death. Other than that, she’d had a few computer games, but nothing really noteworthy.
The same could not be said about anime. She wasn’t crazy into them, watching every new show that came out or anything, but she’d seen several of the most popular ones, and dozens more besides. She’d really enjoyed them for the mostpart, even if the fanservice did get to be a little much at times.
So when she saw the ritual taking place on the floor, she immediately said out loud “Oh, so we’re doing human transmutation then” to try and not throw up over what she was seeing.
There were several wheelbarrows, hoes, shovels, etc. But past all of those, behind one of those accordion-like changing screens, was a massive pentagram filling up the entire space.
It was carved into the ground, with a suspiciously red liquid filling in the carved earth like rivers from the old testament. At each spot where the pentagon touched the outlining circle, a large clear black crystal was placed, and at the center was an almost… almost entirely decomposed skull. Parts of the muscle and hair were still attached to the body, making it look somehow much worse than it really should have.
Staggering back, and then running outside, Kya promptly vomited up the contents of the dinner she’d had earlier.
“What the actual fuck was going on in this place?” She said to herself, knowing that she’d done it again. She’d fucking done it again. She’d told herself after the spider incident that no matter what, this world would not take her in again, only to blindside her with some atrociously horrific thing. She would be prepared and ready for it… And she was proven wrong yet again.
She didn’t want to go back there, if for no other reason than the smell of the place was that of month old rotten eggs left in a car in July, but she also knew if nothing else, she needed to disrupt whatever the hell was going on with that pentagram thing. Deciding to compromise, she used her ability to pull on the black crystals, summoning them away from the circle. They resisted, quite firmly, like they were deep underwater, or moving through syrup, but with a sharp “pop” she eventually got each of the five crystals free and tucked them safely in her inventory after identifying them.
- - - - -
- Item: Death Crystal
- Rarity: 1-Star - Common
- Description: A crystalized form of death mana found in an area of high magical saturation. Useful in rituals and death related spells.
- Enchantments: N/A
- Requirements: N/A
- - - - -
Seeing that that made the right amount of sense, she finished off by pushing the skull out of the center of the diagram, likewise meeting significant resistance for what could only have been a couple of pounds.
The second the skull had left the circle, she knew she’d done something important.
- - - - -
- Progress on Closeted Cultists updated:
- You have diminished part of Arthur’s ritual, however, this is only just a part.
- New Objective: Destroy each of the smaller ritual sites to stop the main ritual from being enacted.
- Progress: 1/11
- Time Remaining: 2h:22m::19s
- - - - -
Kya heard the skull dully thud against the far wall of the shed, before finally coming to a rest, rolling slightly off to one side. The patches of hair still clinging to its muddy red surface falling off in clumps, while the empty eye sockets stared up at her accusingly.
Fighting off another wave of nausea, Kya left as quickly as she could, seeking out the next shed off in the distance. It was going to be a long night.
~ ~ ~
Arthur woke with a start, his head pounding like church bells and his tongue feeling like a shag carpet.
“Taln… Taln! Gimme mah drinkin drink a’fore I loose mah mind!” He called out to the dimly lit kitchen. The suns had disappeared beneath the horizon, and several candles had been ignited throughout the house, as well as a single yellow glowstone that hung from the ceiling above the kitchen table at which he now sat. Together, they made for warm, if a bit dull lighting in the large farm house.
The damnable dwarf finally came through the archway into the kitchen, taking entirely too long for Arthurs liking. Entirely unbecoming for a servant to make their master wait.
Speaking in their idiosyncratic way, that is two blocks of granite trying to squeeze by one another, the dwarf said “I prepared it for you sometime ago. It’s just there, in the goblet in front of you. Sir.”
Eyeing the dwarf, Arthur tried to decide if that last part had been disrespectful, however, the only thing he could decide was that he couldn’t think right now.
He downed the contents of the glass in front of him in a swift motion, feeling the effects almost instantly. Sitting up straighter and looking directly at the dwarf with clear eyes and mind, he said “How did tha evenin’ with the young miss end? I may have gone a bit overboard there at tha end.”
“She suspects nothing. She has destroyed three of the sites. She’s on her way to the fourth now.” The dwarf was utterly emotionless as he delivered the news, no inflection or cadence to the words.
Taking a deep breath, Arthur backhanded the diminutive man, who had the courtesy to recoil from the hit, even when he likely didn’t need to.
“Why in tha absolute hell did you not wake me?” Arthur demanded coldly.
“I tried. You were deeply unconscious. Too much wine.”
Taking several more deep breaths, Arthur forced himself to remain calm. This was not the time for another replacement. He would need to act quickly, or this could all be ruined in one night. The plan had been going perfectly, but he was never supposed to sleep for that long.
“Have you warned mah son to be ready?”
“I did so the moment she discovered the first site, sir.”
Finally, something good, Arthur clapped his hands together once before excitedly saying “Excellent! Good work number… Seven?”
“Eight, sir.”
“Ah yes. Excellent work number Eight. As long as Zag is ready below, we’ll be all set.”
It was all coming together. Years of work, and it would all happen tonight. Rising, Arthur walked out of the kitchen, and to the underside of the large staircase, unlocking the heavy door to the cellar. “Eight, signal me if she does anythang we ain’t expectin’.”
With a simple bow, the dwarf acknowledged the order, and Arthur descended into the darkness below.
~ ~ ~
This was almost going too easily. Kya didn't say anything out loud, of course, she wasn’t an idiot. But genuinely, she thought that there should have been something more happening. She had just found the fifth and last of the sheds as far as she could tell, and it had only taken some thirty minutes to destroy them all so far.
They were all identical. A dismembered head, five death crystals, and a gut wrenchingly horrid smell. At each site, she took the crystals into her inventory, and knocked the head out of the circle, before moving on to the next one.
But there were no signs of resistance or actions she could discern coming from the house on the hill.
She’d thought, after losing so much time from the quest, that they had noticed her snooping around and were taking steps to stop her… but again, this was almost too easy.
Looking around, she didn’t see any more sheds poking out above the grain, but she could see, at the base of the hill behind the house, a door and wall leading to what could have been a basement or cellar for the large building.
Her doubts were confirmed when she got that vague sense of direction coming from there, telling her to complete her quest, she’d be delving into Arthur's basement. Interestingly, she could also vaguely feel the other quest, the guild contract, telling her to head into the city. But that one was significantly diminished unless she focused on it. Helpful to know if she took on multiple quests.
Turning her attention back to the door leading down beneath the manor, Kya was sure of two things. Yes, she would probably need to go down there, and no, she wouldn’t be using the obvious door to the cellar. That seemed too… obvious in her mind. She had taken care of the ones she could outside of the house, now if she was going to dive back into the belly of the beast, she wanted to get some information first.
Getting down, she began to crawl forward both as quickly and as quietly as she could, trying to approach the house without being seen.