Once again I wake up and meet Daniel for breakfast a few hours before the sun rises. I read the second letter from the Spacers Guild, and it’s pretty much the same as the first one, but slightly less polite and even more insistent that I come see him as soon as possible. I ignore it. I’ll go to the Spacers Guild later.
Daniel and I make our way to the Necromancers Guildhall and meet the others in the usual workshop. Clark’s body is looking almost ready to be brought back to life. His missing leg has been replaced with a new flesh-and-blood one properly grafted on, not a prosthetic like mine. It looks like they finished implanting all the wires and nodes that Daniel and I made for his mana circulation system and now just need to put in the soul harness and then move his soul inside. At least that’s what Duncan tells us.
“We are nearing the end of this project,” Mordak says while we all surround the table Clark’s body is on. “All we need to do now is install the sole harness and then let Duncan do his job.” He turns to look at Daniel and me. “I will need your guys’ help with the fitting in of the sole harness.”
“We’re not really like doctors or anything, but we’ll help if we can.” I respond as Daniel gives me an odd look.
“Perfect! I’ll need Daniel to use his [Infusion] skill on the implants to synchronize them with the body better. Ray, I need you to create a pocket of expanded space inside his chest cavity. I’ll help you so it goes faster.”
“Alright, let’s get to it then.” Daniel says reluctantly.
Mordak first guides Daniel on where the implanted mana circulation system runs and how to use the skill to better get the effects he wants from it. Apparently [Infusion]-type skills are pretty valuable for making long-lasting implants that mesh with the body. If it’s done well enough, it can even turn into a trait upon raising the undead, which is what we’re hoping for.
My job is to expand a pocket of space near the heart so the soul harness can properly fit into place. This requires Mordak to cut open Clark’s chest cavity like an autopsy to get enough space to work with. The actual enchantment will be carved into his ribcage, with me providing the layout of channels and nodes and Mordak actually creating them with a couple of his bone skills. He’s much faster at enchanting bone than I am, which makes sense given his class and profession.
Daniel’s work is slow and repetitive, but I can tell he’s learning a lot about his skill and probably even getting a few levels from how little he’s complaining about such boring work. I also get a few ideas from my part for a future project, but I push that to the side as I keep on working with Mordak.
Around noon, after about seven hours of work, I finally finish the expansion in Clark’s chest about an hour after Daniel finished his part. Clark’s chest now has a bit of extra volume in it near the heart, making space for the soul harness to be installed. Mordak says that it will take him, Stella, and Duncan just a few hours to install the soul harness, and then they need Daniel to use [Infusion] on it.
Daniel and I decide to go out and get some food for everyone during this break. We leave the guildhall and head a few streets over to a small market and get a variety of food from a few street vendors. On our way back to the guildhall, I notice something through my spatial perception in one of the alleys near us. Three guys are surrounding a kid who’s in the fetal position on the ground, kicking him.
From the amount of mana they are letting off, I’m guessing they are around the same level as most people in Barad, mid- to high thirties, except for the kid. He’s low level for sure. Daniel notices that something is up and gives me a ‘are we in trouble?’ look.
“Some kid is getting beaten three V one in an alley over there.” I say, walking to the alley.
Daniel shrugs his shoulders. “I guess we can play heroes for a bit. At least even up the numbers.”
We enter the alley just as the beating is dying down, and the three start hurling insults at the kid. It doesn’t look like they notice us approaching them. One of them, the one doing most of the kicking and insulting, is wearing fairly nice clothes and has a clearly expensive sword at his hip. The other two look to be wearing matching uniforms with a sigil that depicts a scale with a gold coin on one side and a human heart on the other. Some noble and his lackeys, maybe? They all look to be around late teens to early twenties, too old to be beating up a child. I [Inspect] each of them, the noble kid last.
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[Level 33 Wind Speed Brawler]
[Level 35 Spear Warden]
[Level 40 Thoughtleech Psion]
“No weapons. We don’t need to go to jail over this.” I say to Daniel.
“Little freak! Know your place next time, or this will look like a day at the park compared to what I’ll do to you!” The noble says as he winds up a big kick. The other two with him are snickering to themselves at the kids' suffering.
I teleport directly in front of the guy right as he starts his kick, alerting his guards with my use of mana so close to them, but the noble doesn’t react, like he didn’t notice it until I was standing right in front of him. My foot meets his shin with a mana-boosted kick of my own, and I feel his leg give way and snap under the force.
The two bodyguards are already lunging at me, but one of them, the one with the spear class, stumbles as Daniel does something to trip him up before joining the fight himself. The other guard, who seems to be a fist fighter, reaches me before I can pull off another teleport, forcing me to put my arms up to block the fist swinging at my face. Just before I block his hit, a burst of mana changes the direction of his fist, and it lands directly in my stomach, causing me to double over and all the air in my lungs to evacuate my body as I let out an unintentional grunt of pain. His knee slams into my face a split second later, and I’m sent stumbling back a few steps before I hit the alley wall with my back, my nose bleeding freely. I need to focus before this guy takes me down.
I slam mana into [Concentration], pushing away most of the pain and fear that built up over those two hits and putting my mind into overdrive. Daniel is on the ground with the other guard, taking as many hits as he’s giving, but neither of them has drawn any weapons yet. My opponent is taking a few steps toward me, giving me a moment to react, which I use to create some more space between us by backing up and acting fearful, putting my hands in front of my face.
“Please!” I say with as much fear in my voice as I can manage, blood spraying from my lips. “I yield! I yield!” My mana stirs, and I start to create a hidden rift as the brawler looks on the ground at the noble.
“Kill him!” The noble spits out with anger and vitriol from the floor, cradling his broken leg. “He broke my leg! Kill him now!”
The brawler looks indecisive for a moment, like he knows killing me is a terrible idea, but something in his eyes changes, and I know he’s going to follow those orders. His stance tenses up, and mana starts building up behind him, and just a second later he’s lunging at me with a speed that I can only hope to match one day, fist primed for what is likely a killing blow with the amount of mana surrounding it.
As he reaches me and I lower my arms to reveal my blood-covered teeth through my smile, I notice a speck of confusion cross his face. His hand, covered in his mana, sinks into the hidden rift I’ve been creating and reappears over the noble kid, hitting him square in the chest with the full power of the strike, blowing a huge hole open in his chest.
[You have slain a creature]
[Level 40 Thoughtleech Psion]
Uhh, that wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to have some kind of shield or technique to defend himself with, not die in one hit from his own bodyguard. The brawler freezes, and previously invisible tattoos on his neck light up with a blinding white mana that is distinctly different from what he was using earlier. The tattoos quickly extend up to cover his head as he jumps back and frees his hand from my grip.
“What have you done?” He yells at me with fear and confusion in his eyes.
A second later his eyes roll into the back of his head, and blood starts dripping from every orifice on his head as he lets out blood curdling screams through clenched teeth. He falls to the ground, limp, and a moment later I get another notification.
[You have slain a creature]
[Level 33 Wind Speed Brawler]
[You have leveled up to level 32]
The guy Daniel is wrestling with freezes after seeing both of his companions die in such horrible ways, which allows Daniel to get a solid punch in and knock him out.
“Christ, Ray. I thought we weren’t killing them. If that was your plan, we should have just ambushed them.” Daniel says as he stands up. “But I’m pretty sure this counts as self-defense.”
“Tie that guy up. He’s our witness. I’ll grab the kid and the bodies, and we can head to Morah.”
I move both of the bodies into my storage core, but it’s still painfully obvious that a fight happened here with the amount of blood on the walls and floor. I finally get a chance to look at the kid and freeze for a second, the surprise getting through to me even through my [Concentration]. It’s the blue kid, the one who smuggled my storage core past the city gate for me. I scoop him up in my arms, noticing that he has at least a few broken bones and his face is pretty swollen.
My mind is running at its maximum output, thinking of ways to get out of this borderline illegal situation. All I did was jump in to help a defenseless kid. They were the ones to go for the kill first. Yeah, we’re in the right here. We’re the good guys.