The Sixth School.

Chapter Twenty Three: Drawn in…

Greg was a bit conflicted even as he moved through the forest. He had succeeded in killing his uncle at last. After a long and fierce struggle with the man, he had taken his head off. Greg had no regrets about it. Had he wished for things to turn out this way? No. Was he happy that things had turned out this way? Also no. But did he regret killing the man? Not in the least. His uncle had of his own volition chosen to make himself Greg’s enemy by killing his father, planning to kill him, and even threatening his family in the process. There was no coming back from that. The man had to die!

The reason Greg was conflicted was because of his cousin. Greg had always known at the back of his mind that if he was the victor, he’d have to deal with Nolruk in some way. The problem was no matter how he questioned the guy, it was clear that he had never held any malice towards either him, his father, or his family. The only reason he had stuck around his father and did his bidding was because he was afraid of the man. And after the fight that he’d had with the man, Greg couldn’t exactly blame his cousin for being afraid. There was also an element of desiring to obtain the powers that his father had. Greg, however, would be a hypocrite to fault Nolruk for that when he too desired to become the strongest mage he can be.

Under any other circumstances, Greg would have thought that his cousin was just saying what he needed to, to save his own skin. Nolruk, however, was still under the compulsion of the confessor’s tincture. Whether he wanted to or not, his cousin didn’t have the ability to lie. Greg had framed his questions in many different ways trying to seek out any hidden malice that his cousin might have had against him or a member of his family. All that he’d succeeded in doing was uncovering the fact that rather than hate him, his cousin had always been jealous of Roka because he had a father who loved him instead of abused him at every chance he got. Greg had even told his cousin that he’d killed his father, just to see how he’d react. If he’d shown animosity towards him and the desire to seek revenge, it would have given him the excuse to nip this future trouble in the bud right there and then. But other than slight surprise, there had been complete indifference in his cousin’s eyes. Greg couldn’t help but wonder at what Nolruk had gone through for there to be not even a hint of sadness in his eyes at learning about the death of his father.

The fact that his cousin didn’t harbor any plans of revenge, however, didn’t mean that he wasn’t a danger to Greg. If he were to reveal to anyone else back in town that Roka had murdered his father, then Greg would have to run for his life. The little town that Greg had been thrown into didn’t have such a thing as a jail. No one was going to let you sit in a room and feed you for years on end. Not when they had to fend for themselves and their families. In this town, the punishment for murder was always death. Unless it can be proven that one acted in self-defense or that there were extenuating circumstances that forced the hands of the killer, then there was no escaping the same fate as your victim.

Greg had found himself in a quandary as he tried to figure out what to do next. Killing his uncle had been one thing. The man had been a threat both to Greg and his family. Greg had no qualms about eliminating that threat. Killing Nolruk, however, wouldn’t be for any form of self-defense, it would be purely an act of killing someone for his own interests. He’d be no different from the uncle he’d just killed. Greg knew that strength was everything in this world. The bigger fist was always right. Perhaps there would come a time in the future when he would be able to kill without remorse, simply because it was the most convenient solution for him at the time. He, however, hadn’t reached that point just yet. Nolruk wasn’t his enemy, he was just unfortunate enough to be born to the wrong father. A fact that left Greg frozen and unsure what his next move should be.

In the end, it was Olivia that came to his rescue. Greg had been agonizing over what to do with Nolruk when Olivia, who’d already gone back inside his glabella to hide from his cousin, appeared once more in her corporeal form. Before his cousin even had the chance to marvel at the scantily clad beauty that had just appeared out of nowhere, Olivia crouched down until she was at eye level with Nolruk. Greg watched as Olivia’s golden eyes started to glow brightly. His cousin’s look of shock quickly turned to one of confusion. Not long thereafter, however, it turned into a look of pure and unbridled joy. The smile on his cousin’s face was of one who was secretly taking pleasure in something that they had done.

“What did you do to him?” Greg had asked when Olivia finally stood back up and his cousin slumped forward clearly having passed out.

“I made him think that he had killed his own father,” Olivia calmly replied.

Greg’s mind had gone blank for a moment, unable to process what he’d just heard and how he should feel about it. “What?” in the end, this simple question, is all that he could master.

“I’ve erased all his memories about magic, starting from the day his father got the staff moving forward. I’ve replaced it all with appropriately fabricated memories. Right now, like everyone else, he believes that your father’s death and your injuries are the result of a snow bear attack. That way, he’ll have no reason to believe that you’d have any motive to hurt his father. He will forget everything about the staff, this cave, the dark crawlers, and your abilities. As far as he is concerned, he’s been going on normal hunting trips with his father right up until one day an argument with the man went a step too far and things got out of hand,” Olivia plainly stated.

“Then why was he smiling like that?” Greg couldn’t help but ask, his confusion evident.

“For all his faults, your father’s brother wasn’t deluded about how his son felt about him,” Olivia had answered cryptically. Greg, however, had no problem parsing out what the familiar meant as he could quite clearly remember his uncle declaring that his son would never cry out for him because the boy hated him. Greg could feel chills run up his back as he remembered the smile in this new light. His uncle might have known that he wasn’t loved by his son. Greg, however, couldn’t help but wonder if he knew just how deep the hatred his son had for him ran.

Part of Greg had been worried that it would be too cruel to make the son believe that he’d killed his father. From the smile that had crossed Nolruk’s lips, however, Greg doubted that even being made chief of the whole town would have made him that happy. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any better ideas. Letting the boy go would have been risky, and he wasn’t comfortable with killing someone just to silence them. Making the boy believe he was the killer was a grey area that Greg would have to make peace with. Not only would he not worry about being accused of murder, the only witness, his cousin, would be the one most interested in hiding anything to do with his father’s death.

Right now they were moving through the forest towards the place where the fights had taken place. After all, the scene of the crime had to be cleaned up. If they left his uncle’s beheaded corpse where it was and some other hunters came across it, it would lead to a bigger issue than Greg wanted it to be. Just like his father, Greg wanted his uncle’s death to be nothing more than a small blip on the radar as far as the whole town was concerned. Right now, they were moving in a procession of three. Olivia was moving at the front, and from the view her swaying hips were giving him, Greg wasn’t exactly complaining. Greg himself was in the middle. Behind him, was the only clone to survive the fight with his uncle. The one that had landed the killing blow with the floating dagger set. On the clone’s shoulder was his cousin, Nolruk.

The reason Greg had his clone come for his cousin was because it would raise unnecessary questions in his cousin’s mind if he believed that he'd killed his father but couldn’t find the body thereafter. Greg had gotten the clone to come to the cave for two reasons. The first was to pick the cousin up and move him far away from the cave. With the memories of the cave taken away from the boy, it wouldn’t make sense to have him wake up there. The second reason was to buy a storage ring for the clone. While living things couldn’t be placed inside storage rings, lest they die, there was no problem with storing a dead body inside a storage ring. The reason Greg went through all the trouble wasn’t because his clone wasn’t strong enough to carry both his cousin and his uncle’s corpse. Instead, it was a matter of prudence. If someone came across his clone carrying around a passed-out Nolruk, his clone could easily explain the issue away. The same, however, wouldn’t be true if his clone was caught carrying a passed-out Nolruk on one shoulder and his beheaded father on the other.

When they got to the clearing where the fight had taken place, Greg couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of the crater left behind by the attack his uncle had made after going berserk. It wasn’t just the thought of what would have happened to him had he been the target of that attack that gave Greg that feeling of dread. It was also the aura given off by the magic his uncle had used. His uncle had summoned abyssal creatures in the form of dark crawlers. Given this, Olivia had offered a guess that, most likely, the powerful entity that had transformed his uncle into a tier zero mage was also one of the powerful entities from the deeper levels of the abyssal realm. As such, the remnant aura left behind by his uncle’s attack was also from deep within the abyssal realm. It was sinister and baleful, leaving one with the feeling of being tainted in some fundamental way.

Doing his best to ignore the aura, Greg turned his attention to his uncle’s headless body. Gory as the sight was, Greg didn’t shy away from looking at what he had done. This man, owing to his desire for more power, had been willing to slay his kin. At the same time, it was through this act of killing his brother and trying to kill his brother’s son that Greg somehow gained a new lease on life. Greg would be a liar if he said that he wasn’t happy to gain another chance at life. This left Greg conflicted as to how he should feel about the whole situation. Should he hate the man for wanting to kill him? Should he be grateful to the man for trying to kill the former Roka? Was it right to be happy that he had benefitted from someone else’s death?

Not having any answers to offer himself, Greg just sighed and turned in the direction of his clone. Giving it a nod, Greg watched as it walked forward, crouched beside the dead body, and placed a hand on it. Using him as a conduit, the clone used Olivia’s mana to activate the storage ring on its finger and sent the dead body inside. The head quickly followed thereafter. Already knowing what needed to be done, his clone got up and wordlessly started walking away out of the clearing. Greg quietly watched the clone go before turning his gaze to the place where the body had been. The staff that had started all this was laying there quietly on the ground. Greg had to admit, he could see why his uncle would think that it was a valuable item, by just looking at the item. The ornate carvings that covered every inch of the staff gave it both an appealing and a mysterious air that drew one in. And that was before one even considered the large blood-red gem that the head of the staff was curved around.

No doubt, the staff was a very powerful item and probably worth a lot, not just aesthetically but even as a magical item. Unlike his uncle, however, Greg knew what the staff could do. He had no desire to commune with entities at the deity level. Powerful as his uncle had demonstrated a tier zero mage to be, Greg wasn’t looking to be a flash in the pan. A power that would leave him with at most a month to live, held zero appeal to him. If anything, it left him afraid to even come close to the thing. Who knew if the item was cursed somehow and just proximity to it was enough to initiate communion with otherworldly entities? After his clone was done with moving his cousin and uncle’s corpse, Greg would have it come to pick this staff up and place it in the storage ring that Greg had bought for it. At least that way, there would be no danger of anything bad happening to him.

DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE TIER-ONE REINFORCED FLASK FOR 8,000 MAGIC POINTS?

YES/NO

A frown crossed Greg’s expression after reading the prompt from the system that had cut into his thoughts. Killing his uncle had turned out to be a far more expensive endeavor than Greg would have thought possible. After all was said and done, he had gone from having one point three million magic points to just ten thousand magic points and some change. Given the fact that it had taken almost everything he could throw at the man to kill his uncle, Greg didn’t regret this expenditure. Nevertheless, he couldn’t understand why Olivia seemed to want him to spend almost all of what remained to buy a flask.

Turning in her direction, Greg found the familiar standing at the edge of the crater in the middle of the clearing with a wide smile plastered across her face even as she looked inside. “What’s the flask for?” he asked even as he moved to stand next to his familiar at the edge of the crater. This was the smaller of the two craters. The one that was formed as a result of Greg repeatedly trying to kill his uncle with alchemical bombs. After his uncle had quite literally flown out of the crater, all that was left behind was gore from the last of the dark crawlers that his uncle had kept by his side, and dirt. Greg was unable to see why his familiar would seem so excited.

In a confident tone of voice, however, Olivia replied. “Trust me, master, you will one day thank me for making you buy that flask,” She said cryptically. “Now do it!” She instructed.

Greg was unable to puzzle out why the familiar was so excited or what she was talking about. Still, she was yet to lead him astray, and thus, had earned some trust with him. In keeping with this, he clicked on ‘YES’, leaving him with a little over two thousand magic points in total. Greg waited ten seconds for the item to form inside his storage ring before he took it out. The reinforced flask was the size of a small vase, and unlike the vials that were usually smooth, all across the surface of the flask was a whole bevy of runes that were softly glowing. If the name was anything to go by, then the runes were probably meant to make this flask much more resilient against damage compared to a normal flask of the same tier.

Before Greg could further inquire about what was going on, he noticed Olivia pointing both her arms toward the center of the crater. Choosing to remain quiet to let her concentrate, he watched, curious to see what would happen. At first, all was quiet. Eventually, however, Greg noticed a bulge forming close to the center of the crater, almost as if something was trying to burrow out. Greg could feel his heart begin to race as his paranoid mind went straight to dark crawlers. It may have seemed like they were easy to kill, but Greg literally had to use tier-three alchemical bombs and to make his clones into suicide bombers to kill the things. After spending everything he had, Greg couldn’t replicate his first success. If one appeared before him, right now, Greg would be as helpless as a newborn chick before a full-grown hawk.

When the mound finally grew tall enough for the dirt to fall by the side and reveal what was behind it, Greg couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief as he realized that he was right and wrong at the same time. The thing that was under the dirt was indeed a dark crawler. It, however, was dead. This was the last dark crawler to die by the alchemical bombs. The first two dark crawlers had been completely decimated by the bombs, their bodies quite literally being torn apart as a result. This last one had only had the time to reveal half its body, the rest of it had still been underground, A fact that, it now seemed, had spared this latter half of the dark crawler from complete destruction by the alchemical bomb. Three bombs had gone off on top of the worm, so not much of it was left. Still, there seemed to be enough for Olivia to smile like a pirate that had come across a chest of treasure.

Greg had listened very carefully when Olivia had been describing the dark crawlers. Seeing the thing up close, however, even if it was just a small part of the whole, Greg couldn’t help the after-the-fact fear that he felt. Especially when he considered that there had been four of the things. Part of Greg could now understand why Nolruk had been looking at him like he was a dead man when he came to get him. No one in their right mind would bet on a mundane human coming out on top in a show-off against four dark crawlers. This thought in Greg was only further reinforced when Olivia used her telekinetic abilities to rid the carcass of the layer of dirt and dust that covered it and Greg got to see the thing’s stinger. It was only now dawning on Greg just how lucky he was to have managed to survive this altercation with his uncle. By all rights, his uncle should have been the one who came out of this alive, not the other way around. Heck, if he wanted, his uncle could have taken on the whole town and still, there wouldn’t have been anyone powerful enough to stop him. Perhaps the healer could have made a difference, but Greg wasn’t certain. If she was struggling with healing spells, then whatever was wrong with her was serious enough that she probably wouldn’t have been able to go up against four dark crawlers and won.

A harsh sizzling sound broke Greg out of his thoughts. Greg turned his gaze towards the stinger of the dead dark crawlers just in time to catch it as a drop of black liquid beaded at its pointed end before dropping off. The moment the drop of black liquid touched the soil below, Greg watched as it ate into the ground emitting harsh noises and dark grey fumes as it did so. With one hand still pointed at the dark crawler’s carcass, magically keeping it in the air Olivia turned in his direction and extended her other hand. Greg had been about to hand over the vase when it flew out of his hands on its own. “You might want to step back,” The familiar advised. With a smile, she added. “I wouldn’t want to have to cut off parts of you.”

Greg didn’t need telling twice as he quickly moved several paces back. By now, it had already clicked in Greg’s mind why the familiar had insisted that he buy the reinforced flask. Olivia meant to harvest the dark crawler’s venom, or essence of corruption as it was usually called. Greg could quite clearly remember the familiar saying that just one vial of the stuff was worth more than the town. The reinforced flask, being the size of a small vase, could probably fill anywhere from ten to fifteen vials if he was really careful with it. Despite being completely ignorant of this world’s currency system, Greg suddenly felt like he was swimming in money. This feeling, however, was short-lived as he remembered that the stuff was illegal in most places and it would be a very serious crime if he was found in possession of it. In the end, all Greg could do was sigh as he realized that he would have to be very careful about when and where he revealed that he had the stuff, lest it be his undoing.

Olivia’s open palm slowly closed into a fist. Magically, as if some invisible hand was squeezing it, Greg watched as the last segment of the dark crawler started to shrink and collapse in on itself. What had been a steady dripping of the venom, quickly turned into a thin stream of the black-as-night substance flowing from the tip of the stinger into the reinforced flask. A frown crossed Olivia’s expression when a harsh sizzling sound filled the clearing. The runes on the reinforced flask began to glow brightly even as they fought to keep the flask intact and stave off the corrosion of the essence of corruption. Once again, Greg’s avarice took center stage as he found himself worrying that the flask wouldn’t be able to hold the essence without being corroded. The flask, however, managed to hold out to the very end as it was filled almost to the brim before the essence from the dark crawler ran out.

The harsh sizzling sound continued to resound even as a white lid appeared from thin air to seal the mouth of the flask. “The essence of corruption is from a tier three creature, to say nothing of its destructive nature. A tier-one vessel was never going to hold the essence of corruption forever. I thought the flask would survive at least three months before we had to switch it out with a better vessel,” She explained. “However, it was summoned into this realm by a tier zero mage. A mage that was in communion with a being from probably the deepest levels of the abyssal realm. These two facts seem to have empowered the dark crawlers in some aspects,” Olivia offered a guess. Clearly, she too wasn’t all that certain of this explanation. She was just offering her two cents on the matter.

“Whatever the case may be, this essence of corruption is a lot more potent than it ought to be, and by a big margin,” She said. “Forget three months, we’ll be lucky if the flask holds out for three weeks,” She offered. “Nothing short of a tier three flask will be able to hold the stuff safely,” She informed him. A smile then crossed the familiar’s lips as she spoke. “You need to work your charm with the healer to get the points you’ll need to get the tier three flask. Otherwise, we’ll lose this little treasure trove in about three weeks,” She said causing the flask to float before her. Even with it sealed Greg could swear that he could hear a faint sizzling sound coming from within the flask. If a normal flask had been used, there was no doubt in Greg that the black liquid would have bored a hole right through the bottom the moment it touched the vase. As things stood, the runes were fighting a losing battle against the corrosion of the essence of corruption. “Until then, I’ll just hold on to this,” Greg watched as with a wave of her hand, Olivia made the Jar disappear like it had been an illusion. “Now comes the nasty part,” The familiar said, turning around.

And nasty it was.

It turns out that the essence of corruption isn’t the only thing that the familiar was after. According to her, in the hands of the right weapons smith, the stinger of the dark crawler could turn into a very formidable weapon. The same was true of the gleaming black carapace of the dark crawler. In the hands of a true master of the art, despite being materials from a monster equivalent to a third-tier mage, it could be made into armor that can resist attacks from fourth-tier mages.

However, unfortunately for the two of them, neither one had either the power or the tools they’d need to pry apart the shell or rip off the stinger from the tail end of this tier three monster. Greg was just a mundane human and Olivia was only a second-tier mage. If Greg had the points, he could have bought the tools needed from the system. That, however, wasn’t the case. As such, rather than lugging around a dead body, Olivia was forced to hollow out the thing. It was a long and slow process due to the complicated internal structure of the dark crawler. As it turns out the thing wasn’t just a tube of meat and viscera. And the smell…. gods the smell! The only reason Olivia could calmly work with a smile was that she had made her nostrils disappear. She still had the perfectly-shaped nose she always had, there were just no holes through which she could take in the nightmarishly horrific stench of a dark crawler’s insides. Greg, on the other hand, had to move to the edge of the clearing to find barely breathable air and to avoid puking his guts out. He didn’t succeed in either. The stench was almost like an area of effect attack. No matter where you were, so long as you were in range, it would hit you like a biochemical weapon of mass destruction. Try as he would, Greg just couldn’t keep the contents of his stomach. It was so bad that Greg almost missed it when his clone came back, his task already done.

Greg never thought he would be jealous of one of his clones. His clone’s only reaction to the damn near world-ending stench was just a slight frown and a look of disgust in the direction of the crater that was quickly filling with viscera. When Greg saw this he couldn’t keep himself from thinking that perhaps it wasn’t too bad to be a mindless drone that was immune to all kinds of discomforts and pains. Glad to have the distraction, Greg turned to his clone and mentally asked it to pick up the staff that his uncle had dropped and put it away in the storage ring that it had. Without hesitation, delay, or fear of any negative consequences, the clone turned and walked over to the staff. But while the clone didn’t seem all too bothered, Greg was watching it like a hawk, ready to react if anything untoward happened to the clone. Even though they would be gone in three days, Greg found the clones to be rather convenient help, he didn’t want to lose them pointlessly. Nothing, however, could have prepared Greg for what happened next.

As soon as the clone touched the staff, Greg could feel a powerful force reach for his mind through the connection between him and the clone touching the staff. Greg’s first instinct, and thus his first action, was to try and cut the connection between him and the clone. As precious a helper as the clone was, Greg had already demonstrated that he was willing to sacrifice them to save his own life and he most certainly wasn’t afraid to do it one more time. The connection between the two of them snapped, but only for a split second. Barely even a fraction of a second after the connection between him and the clone broke, a new one, much stronger than the first, was established. If the one Greg broke was a piece of string tying the two of them, the one that replaced it was an adamantine chain that wouldn’t be broken until the one that had established it was done with him. Before Greg could even do anything to signal to Olivia that something was up, he was gone. Like a liquid being pulled through a straw, Greg could feel his consciousness being pulled through his connection to the clone that had touched the staff to a place that he didn’t know.

Imagine, if you would, that an ant were to creep onto the tip of your index finger. And for whatever reason, whether out of interest or just plain boredom, you were to bring the finger before your face to inspect the ant. Now, let’s say, for a second that you were to switch consciousness with the ant. That for one dreadful moment, you weren’t the observer, but the ant on the finger being observed by a being much bigger and vaster than you could ever imagine. It’s almost impossible to capture in words the depth of existential fear that would grip you at that moment. The ant wouldn’t even have to try to hurt you. It wouldn’t even have to show any kind of malice towards you for it to happen. Just the simple realization of the vast difference between your ant self and the body that is now occupied by the ant would be enough to paralyze you with soul-crushing fear.

That is exactly how Greg felt as he found himself looking up into the pair of giant, sun-sized orbs that were the eyes of the being that had pulled him into this strange realm…