The two companions and the golem soon left the city behind heading east. Their progress was surprisingly fast for the time of year. Whatever Escar did or built into the road was overpowered by the blistering cold of the middle of the winter. What surrounded the road was miles of farmland so there was little to nothing to stop the wind from blowing.
After 14 hours of miserably slogging through the slushy wet snow that coated the road. They were nowhere near the next town so they decided to step off the road and make their way to a farm a little ways off the road.
It took a while after they knocked on the door for someone to answer. When they inquired about a place to stay the night out of the wind the farmer denied them. However Bjorn changed his mind when he gave the man a few coppers for them to stay in the barn for the night, under the stipulation that they would be gone in the morning and that they couldn't make a fire to make their dinner.
They agreed and made their way into the barn. They stripped off all of their soaked clothes and settled down into the hay pile with clean dry clothes. Bjorn then pulled out some warm food that he stored in his bag of holding out and they had a hot meal. For the 1,000th time Bjorn sent out a silent thank you for whoever invented spatial folding, as well as temporal distortion, then decided to mix the two together.
That night Bjorn decided it was time to do something that he had been putting off for entirely way too long. That was spending his attribute points. He pulled up his character sheet and decided that he was getting a little too lopsided. His highest stat was strength at 34, then constitution at 22, the rest of his attributes were in the 15-18 range. With 15 points to distribute he had a few options. One that he considered doing was dumping 3 points into each stat excluding strength, constitution, and charisma. He quickly decided that probably wasn’t for the best, to have some balance to his build. So instead he decided to put 4 points into dexterity, 5 into agility, and 3 points into both intelligence and wisdom.
His reasoning behind that was with his significantly increased strength stat over dexterity and agility was making him feel tight and kind of slow, more clunky than slow. He was hoping that by increasing both of those attributes to 20 it would help alleviate some of those effects. Having massive strength was nice but it would do him no good if he fought an agile fighter who could dodge all of his powerful strikes.
The moment the attributes were put into dex and agility he knew he had made the right choice. In a matter of moments his body loosened up and he felt limber. Tension he didn’t know he had been keeping was released. He felt good, as if he just finished with a full body massage and all of his muscles were still relaxed.
As for why he dumped 6 attributes equality between intelligence and wisdom was also a simple choice. During his time in the Eld the one thing that has helped him the most was his ability to cast spells. When he was weak it helped him equalize the playing field just a little bit. Now that he was stronger both physically and metaphysically it would play an even larger role. When people looked at Bjorn he was large and muscle bound due to his 34 points in strength. This made it so that people would overestimate his strength while underestimating his other abilities.
Having a larger mana pool and faster mana regeneration gave him more access to that great balancer. So with his mana pool now being at 225 with his mana ring it gave him access to more mana to fuel his spells. The 30% increase to his maximum mana per day meant he could cast more often. Both things he really wanted and felt like he needed. This increase meant that he was now regenerating 180% of his maximum mana per day. This coupled with the .2 increase to his base mana regeneration from his soul echo with Meira he regenerated 216% of his total mana each day. When it was all said in done he generated exactly 486 mana per day.
As for the profession points he decided to hold on to them for now. 20 points could get a nice talent but he wanted to dedicate more time to it at a later date, preferably when either the weather turns so he could brew more potions a lot easier, or until he had more talent points to spend.
Once that was taken care of Bjorn decided it was finally time to clue Adriana in on his new ability he gained from the spriggan. For her part she was unsurprisingly impressed by it’s capabilities. She had been wondering why she gained a lump sum of experience while Bjorn was down in the prison. It wasn’t until an hour into their conversation for her to puzzle out how beneficial this new power could be in conjunction with her parasitic partner ability. Now that she would be gaining 25% of all of the experience that the spriggan would be gaining she was about to power level. Currently she was level 6, which was already a massive jump since they had left Leefside.
In the morning they took off heading down the road, the storm had let off a little and the wind wasn’t blowing nearly as hard, but it was still a terrible day. Towards evening they finally made it to a smallish town that followed along the main road heading through Escar. When Bjorn and Adriana asked about their quarry no one had seen anyone passing through that matched the description. They spent that night in the inn.
This continued for 4 days as they made their way eastward. Slogging through the snow and cold and only stopping if they found a town, only on one occasion did they have to spend the night outside in the snow.
Each night while they stayed in the cities they left the golem outside of town. Bjorn wasn’t sure how common golems were to see and he didn’t want to stir a ruckus. Over the last few days Bjorn and Adriana spent the few precious words they spoke to each other in the freezing wind and snow running names by each other. So far Adriana has rejected the names, Stony, Rocky, Granite, and Flint. Bjorn has rejected the names Grant, Alex, Hodor, and Sue. He had no idea why she wanted to name the golem sue.
On the evening of the fourth day they entered a small town that Bjorn didn’t even get the name of. He saw something that caught his attention as they were on their way to the Inn. Out of the corner of his eye while they were passing the notice board in the center of town he saw a wanted poster. This wasn’t out of the ordinary, he had made it a habit of checking the boards in town as they passed by, as almost every town had a notice board of sorts.
Every town they passed they checked the board for signs of anyone on Kairon’s crew. This time however he saw a face on there he never expected to see. It was his own face. The likeness was uncanny. Upon closer inspection he saw the list of his crimes, breaking and entering, murder, breaking into a jail, bribery, threatening an officer of the law, and finally littering. He couldn’t remember the last one but who was he to argue based on all of the other crimes he had committed in Escar. The final nail in the coffin was his bounty, which was set at 2,000 gold pieces. That was enough money for most people in the Eld to retire and live off the amount alone. That amount was enough money that most people would even turn in their own mother for that. He hadn’t made that much money since he came to the Eld.
Nothing overly changed that night other than they pushed the beds against the door to their room and set out their bed rolls on the floor to sleep in/on. In the morning however there was an awkward situation as one of the bar maids recognized Bjorn from the wanted poster. Bjorn and Adriana made a hasty retreat after that.
Once then made it out of town and escaped the townsfolk who were trying to catch them for the bounty they decided it would be best to avoid towns in Escar for the time being. Luckily in the preparation for leaving Blackrock Bay Bjorn got two pairs of snowshoes. They were better built than the pair he had, and seeing how he had the money he decided why not? Strapping the snow shoes on they headed off road.
Their progress per day slowed to a crawl, but the nice thing about that was now every night their boots were still mostly dry. Even though they did their best to waterproof their boots they would still always be soaked through when they stopped for the evening while traveling on the road. That was the only nice thing about off-roading. In the evenings when they would stop for the night they would go through the motions of setting up camp. Collecting wood for a fire, building one, cooking, and then setting up their watch rotation again.
The next several weeks sucked because of that. As they traveled off road they stopped running into buildings and small towns, not that they would have stopped anyways. This made it so they had to sleep outside in the winter. They never truly got warm. True they had tents that they could set up but the problem was the tents only did so much to retain their heat. Their progress was slow because it was unsurprisingly slower to go snow shoeing instead of walking along a nice mostly cleared road.
One thing they didn’t have to worry about was animals. Even though it was starting to get to the tail end of winter it was still cold a wet. Most creatures didn’t want to be outside if they could help it. Besides that most creatures were hibernating for the winter or bedded down.
Bjorn and Adriana headed north once they got off the road. There were two major reasons for that. The first one was that they wanted to get outside Escar. While inside the country they were at risk of getting caught and captured or killed. He had no doubt that by now his wanted status has spread throughout the country. The second one was that the place indicated on the map was north of Escar. So by heading north out of Escar they could kill two birds with one stone. Once they got far enough north that they were back in the Summergate woods they took a turn and started heading east.
Only once during their next three weeks of travel did they come across signs of civilization after they left Escar. It was a single hut in the woods with light pouring out of the windows. It was so tempting to try and talk to whoever’s home it was but the risk wasn’t worth it. There was a fairly good chance that whoever it was that lived out here was either a hermit and didn’t want to see people or a criminal trying to escape the laws of Escar.
As for the golem who had yet to be named during this entire time, it was almost adorable. The golem was equally too heavy to stand on top of the snow, and too short to see out of the snow as it traveled. Still it followed after Bjorn and Adriana unerringly. There were times when they would pass over a snow drift and they would lose sight of the golem for hours. But when they past the snow drift and the depth of the snow decreased the golem’s head would break the surface of the snow.
Bjorn was honestly jealous of the golem. Even with his and Adriana’s increased attributes, by evening they would both be tired from walking over the snow. The golem however was unaffected by the snow. They would walk for 14, 15, sometimes as much as 18 hours a day and in the evening when they would stop the golem would be missing only a single point of stamina. It was bullshit.
Over the weeks Bjorn tried using two out of the three abilities that the golem had. The first one being increase mass. They ended up coming up to a pile of stone that was poking out of the snow. Bjorn and Adriana spent a few hours clearing snow around the base of the rock, clearing the ground. All so that they could see what was happening when the ability was used. Once that was done and they could see the golem Bjorn ordered it to use its ability.
The golem stepped forward and placed one hand? Knob? Appendage on the stone. The mana veins that ran through the body of the golem began to glow, showing themselves against its normally gray surface. After a second the stone surface where its appendage touched began to liquify. The liquid stone ran up the arm of the golem and sank into the surface. The process lasted a total of 2 seconds before the mana veins running through it’s body stopped glowing and it returned to the same color.
It was hard to tell but it looked like it could be slightly larger than it was before. It still came up to his knee however, and it didn’t look to be any thicker. Once again Bjorn was disappointed in the golem and what it did. He had done so much for so little return on this creature. But what was done was done.
When he checked its status it was completely drained of mana. So it looks like it can only do so much in its current state. He decided the next best path would be trying to level it up. With its 5 in wisdom it regenerated 50% of its max mana per day. They had to wait 64 hours for the golem to be back at full mana.
Bjorn was dismayed when two days had passed and the golem’s mana was only at 10 points. It should be back up to its max of 20. Determined to get to the bottom of this he dug into the golem’s character sheet examining every single part of it. When that didn’t supply an answer he started digging into the connection that he and the golem had together. That was where he found it.
Due to this stone golem’s golem core being damaged 50% of all of the mana regeneration will be dedicated to the repair of the core until the core is no longer damaged. This process is slow for new golems as their core is everything for its functionality and damage to the core and really stunt the growth of golems at first.
Bjorn couldn’t help but grit his teeth as he read that prompt. With a sigh of disappointment he decided to wait two more days to get his answer and see what the other ability did.
Finally when the golem had its full mana returned Bjorn ordered it to dump all 20 of the mana into experience for leveling up. When it did he checked the status of the golem again. When there was no indication that anything had happened Bjorn did some mental flexing and a total xp showed up on its status.
Xp: 4
So it took the golem 4 days to regain 20 mana, and as long as the golem didn’t gain experience anywhere else then the mana to xp conversion was 5 to 1. If golem’s require the same amount of experience to level it is effectively gaining 1 xp per day. For everyone else it takes 1000 xp to get to level 2. So at this rate the golem would level to level 2 in a little under 2 years. That wasn’t good enough.
Bjorn contemplated having the golem use it’s tiny mana pool towards growing larger. In his mind a larger golem made out of stone would be better for their chances at survival, as well as it doing more during the upcoming battles. He was acutely aware of the fact that he was nearing only having 12 months left to hunt down the rest of the bandits. Maybe by then it would be large enough to be of use.
The more he thought about it the less likely that outcome would be helpful so Bjorn decided to take a bit of a gamble. Maybe, just maybe the golem wouldn’t actually take 1000 xp for it to reach level 2. So that was the gamble he decided to go with. He ordered the golem to spend all of its generated mana each day towards gaining experience. From there he kind of forgot about the golem as it wasn’t of much use currently.
Finally around a month after they left Blackrock Bay the weather turned, this time for the best. A warm wind came down from the north and the landscape started to warm up and the snow started to melt. This was both a blessing and a curse.
On one hand they were able to make greater progress as they headed east. They were close to a quarter of the way to the edge of the location that Zain indicated on the map. Now that they were closer the area was massive, once they got there it would be difficult to comb it in hopes of finding this new village being built. On the other the snow was melting and so their clothes as well as themselves would get soaked each day as they traveled. Then at night it would still get below freezing, which would chill them to the bone.
Instead of getting down to the now worse conditions for them they decided to keep high spirits. Well Adriana kept her spirits high as she saw that the weather would only get better from here making their situation less shitty.
Bjorn’s mental state was progressively getting worse and worse. Each day that they made little to no progress he spun slowly down into despair. The enormity of what needed to happen continued to loom larger and larger on the horizon. He wasn’t making progress forward, he wasn’t getting stronger, it felt like he wasn’t getting closer to his goal.
At first he found her optimism annoying. He wasn’t sure that she understood what was happening or the gravity of the situation. If they didn’t succeed in time then his powers from Latent potential would be stripped from him, probably all of the power. If that happened he was never going to be able to get his vengeance.
As time went on however her optimism wasn’t nearly as annoying. It wasn’t infectious by any means. But it didn’t annoy him as they went on. She took this as her efforts were paying off. In truth Bjorn just started ignoring Adriana.
Another thing that worried Bjorn, which he tried to hide the best he could from Adriana, was his hand. By this point the spriggan was really starting to make inroads into his body. The main part of the wood had completely engulfed the lower half of his right forearm. There were also tendrils of the spriggans wood that were just up past his elbow.
It was odd being slowly consumed by wood. He would have thought that the process would hurt. That was far from the case in reality the wood was starting to feel like skin. When he touched it or touched stuff with it he still felt, it's just that the feelings were muted, limited. He found that he had developed an unconscious habit of running his fingers along the wood or touch around his wrist.
The further they went eastward the more the topography changed as well. On the west side of the Summergate woods it was more flat. The further east they went the more the ground started to develop hills or cliffs. There were several times where they had to detour more south or north to make their way around large ravines that cut through the landscape. There were a few that were only 10 to 15 feet deep, while most of them were several hundred feet or they couldn’t see the bottom at all. It gave the area they were moving through a much more rugged feeling. This change further slowed down the progress eastward they made each day. Oftentimes half of their day or more was spent walking around these ravines and cliffs.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
White traveling eastward they would occasionally come across a random house here or a few together. Each time they passed a single house they would walk right past it. Bjorn was still wary about coming across a dangerous person, even though he and Adriana could probably be considered just that he didn’t want to chance it.
Whenever they came across a small hamlet or town they always stopped for the sole purpose of trying to hunt down more of Kairon’s crew. Time and time again they came up short. For the most part the townsfolk were wary of the two travelers, but they usually answered the questions posed to them. Occasionally they would try and run away Bjorn and Adriana, once or twice they were actually welcomed. Those two times Bjorn and Adriana politely declined their hospitality as it was suspicious.
It was well into spring when they closed to around half the distance between the edge of the area marked on their map and Blackrock Bay. During that time they started to see signs of life again in the world around them. All around them the trees and shrubbery were starting to sprout new leaves. The ground was starting to get covered with green again.
They also started to see signs of animals coming back to life, bears coming out of hibernation, deer coming out of their groves for the winter. Insects, flies, and bees could be heard as they flew through the air. It was rather nice and almost a cheery time of year.
With the return to life there was also a return to creatures waylaying Bjorn and Adriana. As they went they started getting attacked by bears, wolves, a single brave badger, and countless other magical creatures. They saw a few of the arrowhead toads, they fought one of them. They also got attacked by two khumats on separate occasions.
These two fights worked more in their favor than the last time they fought the humanoid alligators. With Bjorn’s improved attributes he was better able to fight off the creatures, Adriana on the other hand had made leaps and bounds forward with her fighting ability. She had gone from a burden in fights to an asset. Her teachers had worked wonders.
She seemed to fit the bill somewhere between ranged fighter and support fighter. She liked to use her bow just as Bjorn does as well. When the bow wasn’t the best option she would swap out for a long 7 foot long spear that she used as a walking stick. She stood behind Bjorn and would attack around his body, only occasionally did she have to be the one in the front. This delegated Bjorn to the tank role. Not that he minded it.
As they traveled and fought Bjorn gained a few skill levels. That was something that he missed about adventuring, seeing his skills visibly grow again. While he was a farmer he did have skill growth, same while he had been in Blackrock Bay. But being out in the wild, adventuring was when he had the most growth by far.
With the constant use of his silence spell and with the growth he gained in Blackrock Bay he finally achieved a milestone in his sonic magic.
You have advanced your skill level in Sonic magic. reaching skill level 9. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
A smile crossed Bjorn’s face as he finally was able to attempt to learn a new spell from the spell books he gained all that time ago, the first time he went to Blackrock Bay.
Bjorn’s mind began to whir when he read the description of the spell. This could be a new powerful tool in his arsenal, depending on a few factors. It would take some testing but for it to do durability damage to an item could be huge. He was just envisioning using it on the breastplate of his enemy, reducing its effectiveness allowing him to land blows he normally would be blocked by armor. What about using it on a weapon, all of a sudden their weapon has an increased chance to shatter due to becoming brittle from reduced durability.
For the first time in the last few weeks Bjorn finally had a moment of hope, hope that this task wasn’t going to be impossible, hope that maybe they could win, that they could bring justice for Meira and Alaric. The hope was there for just a moment before it fled, before it disappeared once again and the reality of their task settled back on him.
After a month and a half total since Bjorn got the golem he got a notification.
Your stone golem(unnamed) has leveled up to level 2. It gains 2 free attribute points for you to distribute as you see fit.
Bjorn pulled up the golem’s character sheet and took a look at the xp that it had gained. It was sitting on a crisp 50 experience. This finally answered the main question that had been burning in the back of his mind. How much experience for the golem to level up? It looked like only 50 experience instead of the 1000 it took for Bjorn to level to level 2. This boded well for the future. The only downside was that the golem got 2 free points to distribute per level, it would have been better if it got more but there was nothing he could do about that. Beggars can’t be choosers and all of that.
He quickly found that he could assign the attribute points. For the next half an hour as they walked Bjorn did some quick mental math on how to optimize the golem’s abilities. It needed more mana without a doubt. Putting the free points into anything other than intelligence or wisdom would be a waste. It would stunt the golem’s growth in the future.
So the question became where to put the points. Doing some mental math he found that if he increased the golem’s intelligence to 4 it would give it 40 mana, which in turn would take it’s mana regeneration from 5 per day to 10 per day due to the wisdom attribute. While investing both into wisdom would increase it from 5 to 7 per day. The last option would be one and one, which led to 9 mana per day.
With that settled he put both points into intelligence. He effectively doubled the rate at which the golem would grow. On top of that even though he couldn’t see how fast the golem’s core was being repaired, doubling the speed at which it was repaired could only help.
Happy with that outcome they continued onwards. Finally, almost two months since they left Blackrock Bay they were around three fourths the distance to where Zain had indicated the rest of the group would be. At first Bjorn wanted to distrust the information he gained from Zain, Afterall Zain told Bjorn this information under duress. However the reports that Bjorn got from Gram right before he left corroborated Zain's words. The other two who were captured were low members in the group and didn’t have much information to give.
That evening they crested a plateau and came up to the first decent sized town they had come across in the last two months. They were nearing the edge of where Escar said the war with Cronkrum was. So instead of just walking up to the town they decided that it was in their best interest to observe the town.
There was a single road leading in and out of the town which led off to the south. The town was built right next to one of the 100 foot sheer cliffs. Which unsurprisingly protected that side of town. The other three sides of the town were protected by 10 foot tall stone walls. Occasionally there were towers built into the walls that were close to 20 or 25 feet tall. People outfitted with bows and crossbows could be seen patrolling the walls. The only gatehouse in and out of the town was built so there were two towers on either side of the gate.
The people patrolling on top of the walls and those few they could see going in and out of the town looked to be close to 6 feet tall and with the proportions of humans. They were far enough away that he couldn’t really tell for sure that they were humans. To test his theory he drew his bow, knocked an arrow and activated zoom. His stamina began to drop as what he was looking at became clearer. It didn’t truly zoom in his perception just made it easier to focus on a single target.
There were a pair of guards lazing about talking to each other on top of the parapets of the walls. When he was able to focus on them they were without a doubt human. Finally convinced that they weren’t going to be walking into a trap, at least not one that was that bad they decided they were going to head down into town.
They got up and walked around to the south meeting up with the road leading into the town. They were the only ones on the road. Together the three of them made their way up the road and to the gate. As they closed in they could see 4 heavily armed guards standing there. On top of that they could see 6 more guards on top of the gatehouse with bows, crossbows, and even a wand held in their hands. The trees and foliage had been removed 200 feet back from the walls in all three directions so the guards could see Bjorn and Adriana closing in with ease.
As they walked nearer the guards first tensed up at the unknown heavily armed people walking towards them. When Bjorn and Adriana showed no signs of hostilities the guards visibly relaxed, but all eyes were on them.
When they got up to the gate one of the guards held out a hand. “Hold there. What is your business in this area?”
Bjorn and Adriana exchanged glances. “We seek a place for the night and our business is our own.” Bjorn said.
The guard took that surprisingly well. Instead of taking offence he looked like he was going to accept Bjorn’s response. “I meant no disrespect, we just have to be wary. Things are starting to get dangerous in this area.”
“What do you mean by that?” Adriana asked.
“It is rare but the goblins have started raiding into this area of the forest. Not enough to overrun the front but small pockets of goblin raiders managed to push through our lines and the army is still working on cleaning them up. Now hurry up, let’s get you inside for the evening. We are going to need to close up the gates soon.”
Bjorn and Adriana nodded and began walking into the town. Just then a horn blew and all of the guards snapped to attention. Their eyes were drawn to the south, the way that Bjorn and Adriana just came from. Off in the distance there were several goblins standing in the trees alongside the road. They all had crude bows in their hands with arrows drawn.
As Bjorn watched the goblins released their arrows and they came streaking towards the gatehouse and the guards that Bjorn and Adriana were standing with. Reacting on instinct Bjorn pulled his bow back out of his bag of holding pulled an arrow, set it to the string, pulled back and released.
A moment later hands landed on his shoulder and began pulling him backwards. His focus was on the flight of his arrow, which flew straight and true, taking one of the goblins in the leg. A moment later the arrows from the goblins began to land all around them. Most missed, a few plinked harmlessly off of the armor that the guards were wearing. One looked like it was going to slam into Bjorn. However one of the guards threw his armored back in front of Bjorn. Unfortunately the arrow slammed into the back and punched through the chainmail.
Hands were dragging Bjorn and Adriana into the city as the last guard pulled his injured friend to safety. As soon as they were through the gate the portcullis began to descend down into place.
The sounds of arrows plinking off stone and the twang of bowstrings being released filled the air. Once through the gate guards on either side of the gate began pushing the heavy thick wooden doors shut. The sounds continued for around 30 seconds before the sounds fell silent.
As that was going on the guards that had drug Bjorn and Adriana into the town abandoned them and leap into action trying to figure out what was wrong with the guard who got struck in the back. He was writhing on the ground but his legs looked to be unresponsive.
“What do we do?” One of the guards asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should pull the arrow out?”
The man spoke through gritted teeth. “I can’t feel my legs. Pull this fucking arrow out of me.”
“Turn him on his back, I'll pull it back out.”
Bjorn heard this and had to put a stop to it. “Don’t pull it back through, the barbed tips on the back could cause more damage.” He walked over to where the guards were standing around their downed friend. “Move over.” Bjorn said as he pushed his way through the guards.
“What do you know?” One of the men asked.
“I am an alchemist and I have been trained in the healing arts. If you pull that arrow out it could tear organs or even sever the spinal cord.” Bjorn there Bjorn got down on one knee. The guard was laying on his side as the rest of the group moved him there to pull the arrow out.
He had to cut away the man’s belt to accomplish what he needed to. Then he placed his hand on the arrow shaft right against his back and held it steady. He then put his hand on the man’s stomach underneath the chainmail shirt.
“This is going to hurt.” Bjorn said and gently began wiggling the arrow shaft around as he felt on the man’s stomach. The man let out a groan of pain as the arrowhead moved around inside his flesh. Bjorn could feel the arrowhead just under the skin on his stomach.
“How bad is it?” One of the guards asked as he stood around uselessly.
“I need you to get a bowl of water, make it hot but not boiling. The arrow almost passed all the way through his body. I am going to have to cut the skin on his stomach and push the arrow through.” Bjorn addressed the man who asked the question. He fled.
Bjorn then motioned to Adriana. “Come over here and hold this arrow steady.” She came over and Bjorn let her replace his hand on the arrow shaft. He then moved his hand a few inches down the shaft and used both of his hand and with his immense strength snapped the arrow shaft as cleanly as he could.
The man let out a slight whimper but he held firm. Bjorn pulled his dagger from behind his back and held it away from his body. The guards all tensed up when they saw Bjorn pull his dagger. Even more so when the tall tale sign of fire magic began to condense in Bjorn’s hand. He began casting his firebolt spell. He felt the build up of heat on the end of his hand as his mana collected and attuned to fire.
Every other time before this he felt the mana build up and once it reached critical mass he had to release it otherwise it would start to feel unstable. This time he concentrated and stopped halfway through the incantation letting the mana controlled mana stay at the end of his hand. As soon as he stopped the incantation he got a splitting headache as the mana tried to feed back into his body. It took every ounce of his will to stop that from happening. Gritting his teeth he ran his hand over the blade trying to heat and sterilize the end of the blade.
After a few seconds of running his hand over the blade the headache was starting to make his vision go dark. So he picked up where he left off with the incantation and finished the spell. The fire mana finished condensing and fired off into the air streaking upwards harmlessly.
He had a new notification but he ignored it for now. When he looked back at the guards they were standing defensively around their downed friend. The other guard had returned with a bowl of water in his hand.
Bjorn stood up and started walking back, and his friends moved closer as if they meant to block his path to the injured guard. “Stay back.” One of the guards said.
This annoyed Bjorn as all he was trying to do was save this guards ability to walk. “If you don’t let me get to your friend he will never be able to walk again.”
They exchanged worried glances before the man on the ground spoke. “For fucks sake let him through. If he can save my ability to walk I want that.”
Finally the men let this unknown magic caster through and Bjorn knelt down next to the man. “I am going to cut the skin on your stomach and try and pull the arrow through that way okay?” He nodded. “Alright on the count of three, one, two.” He then pulled the tip of his dagger across the skin where he could see it distended by the arrow that was pushed into the underside of the skin.
The sharp blade separated the skin easily and he could see the arrowhead poking through. At the same time he smelt a strong stench of rotting eggs, like a bile smell. Even though Bjorn wasn’t overly versed with the anatomy and smells he was pretty sure it was the bile of his stomach mixing inside the man’s body. Knowing that the stomach was filled with acid he swore under his breath, he would have to handle that next. He pushed on one end of the arrow at the same time that he gripped the arrowhead and quickly pulled the arrow all the way through.
He looked at the man holding the bowl who had gone white as a sheet by this point. “Give me the bowl.” Bjorn commanded. He handed it over and Bjorn used the slightly warm water within to wash out the through and through the best he could. With that done he pulled a healing potion out of his bag of holding and popped the cork. He poured half of the contents on the wound on the front and half on the back. The arrow likely severed the spinal cord and he wasn’t sure if the magic within his potion would be enough.
There was a hissing sound when the red liquid mixed with the blood that was coming out of both wounds. Bjorn looked at the man who had a grimace of pain on his face. “That was a healing potion, it should restore 140 hp over the next 45 seconds. I fear that it won’t be enough. I want to feed you a healing potion, but I want you to know that if I do you might suffer from potion toxicity and your maximum hp might be reduced, do you want me to give you one?”
The man just nodded his head. So Bjorn pulled out another potion and gave it to the man so he could drink it. With that he pulled a bandage out of his bag and wrapped it around his midsection trying to close the wound the best he could. After that he stepped back and let his friends come in and look over the man.
“I appreciate you trying to save me.” Bjorn said to the man. “But you should have let it hit me, as an alchemist I have a higher tolerance for potion toxicity so I would have been able to heal that with less risk.”
The pained expression on the guard's face was quickly turning from one of pain to one of relief. “You're right. If I knew it would hurt this much I would have let the arrow hit you.” He said with a smile on his face.
Adriana laughed at that. “We are looking for a place to stay for the night, do you guys have an Inn here?”
The guard who got in Bjorn’s way replied. “Yes we do. It is the Prattling Pony right down the street that way. Go ahead and head that way. I will send someone shortly to talk to the owner and arrange for your lodging for the evening. The city of Leaf Fall will gladly pay for that for you. After what you did for us just now.”
Bjorn and Adriana gave their thanks and followed the guards instructions to the building. The town was on the larger side, maybe 500 or 600 people who lived here. It was well organized and most of the buildings were built out of stone with clay tiles for their roof. They easily found the inn and pushed their way inside.
There were maybe 10 or 15 people inside the center room of the tavern and the atmosphere was dead. All eyes turned towards the door when they entered and they took in the newcomers' appearances. Bjorn and Adriana gave the inquiring eyes any answer as to what was happening and instead just took a table by the door, then they sat to wait.
After 5 or 10 minutes with no news and no sounds of pillaging the talk in the room started to come back. Soon the room mirrored every single tavern they had ever been in. Over the next hour they had to beg off the serving girl who came by several times. Eventually one of the guards came in.
It was the man that Bjorn had saved, he was walking, albeit with a slight limp, but he was walking. He walked up to the bar and had a word with the barman. He then gestured over to the table where Bjorn and Adriana were sitting. The bartender nodded and slid something across the bar to the guard.
He nodded and picked it up then walked over to where Bjorn and Adriana were sitting. He sat down across from the pair and threw the item across the table. It slid to a stop and Bjorn could see it was a key.
“I arranged for you to have the room for as long as you need, your food and drink are paid for as well. Thank you for saving my legs.” The man’s voice quavered at the end of his statement.
“Of course. We only plan on being here for the night however.”
The man nodded and they started to talk. Soon a bowl of stew with a thick piece of bread as well as some soft cider in tankards were brought over to the table. The man talked about the town and what they were experiencing. Bjorn and Adriana gave a fake story as they didn’t want too much information to get out. They were fairly sure they were back in Escar, and he was a wanted man.
As they were talking and eating the door opened and two people walked in. One a woman and the other a male. The voices of the two were two voices that Bjorn would never forget. The laughter of the woman sent chills down his spine. He slowly turned and caught sight of an anthropomorph and a tiefling walking up to the bar.
He had found his next targets. It was Luna, and the man who actually killed Meira by choking her with his dick, Ramsey.
