Chapter 5 How to Get Away With Murder
You have slain [Human Lvl. 30 | Barbarian - Lvl. 35] . For killing an enemy several times above your level, additional experience will be awarded. For killing an enemy in a group, experience will divided according to contribution.
You have slain [Human - Lvl. 35 | Barbarian - Lvl. 40]. For killing an enemy several times above your level, additional experience will be awarded. For killing an enemy in a group, experience will divided according to contribution.
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 2.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 3.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 4.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 5.]
Once again, words surfaced in my sight. Although I couldn't comprehend the majority of it, what I did understand was that I had been acknowledged for killing the barbarians.
There were a lot of level up notifications, but before I could celebrate, someone grabbed my shoulder, causing me to turn around hastily and take a step back.
Redhead and Bennet were staring at me, frowning with grim expressions. I could not read what they were thinking.
Bennet spoke warily, his gaze fixated upon the dripping knife clutched in my grasp. “Why did you do that?" he inquired.
A foolish question. They were monsters, their sins were unforgivable. For all the lives they had taken and ruined, they deserved worse than death. To begin with, why the hell did they care? Sure, they were humans, too, but it that didn’t change the fact that they had been captured and locked up by them.
There was no remorse for my actions, no regret nor guilt. Not for them.
“They deserved it,” I barked, not faltering under their gazes.
For a second, I thought about just leaving and going by myself, but sadly that was not a possibility. Alone, I wouldn't be able to escape at all.
The room was hulled in a tense silence as no one said a word. I made no effort to defend my actions and I, frankly, didn’t care if it bothered them. I had done the right thing.
A clap broke the silence. I looked at Seth, whose hands were still together.
“Alright, everyone, they are dead, nothing to do about it and it wasn’t like they were good people. We can talk about morals later, but for now, we shouldn't waste anymore time because of them. So, how about we make ourselves scarce?”
I simply nodded, before making my way over to the door that led into Malik’s room.
It was quite obvious that Seth wanted to prevent things from escalating and that he tried to calm his companions down. I could not even understand their problem. These two men were literally part of a clan that wanted to torture them to death and worse — yes, there was worse.
Stepping through the wide door frame, I entered Malik's room. It looked still the same.
A giant bed still occupied the center of the back wall, and multiple shelves on both sides were filled with jars of various different sizes, depending on their contents. It was as though time had stood still in this space — maybe because he rarely entered this room and was very careful about who to let in.
“What the hell is this place?” Seth asked as he entered the room behind me.
The various jars were filled with all kinds of stuff. In some were eyeballs, the irises unusual colors like red, yellow or even silver ones, in others tongues could be found. In some were brains other organs. There were also a few with heads, hands or feet.
“It’s a collection,” I spat, feeling
Nausea was churning within me as a bitter taste crept up the back of my throat. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
A collection of his victims. A twisted hobby and in my opinion, more than reason enough to justify any violence against this clan. Even his dogs didn’t share the same hobby as him, they supported him and worked for him, they were equally guilty.
Lisa, Redhead and Bennet followed us into the room and were not hiding their disgust. Lisa even had to throw up. Right into his room, great job, Lisa.
“The exit is over there,” I said, pointing at a spot on the right side of the bed, between to shelves. A point that I couldn't reach with my height and hence needed someone to assist me.
“Isn’t that just a wall?” Seth asked
“You see that shelf?” I asked him, this time pointing at the shelf directly beside the bed, right of the spot I pointed at, “Behind the jar with the tongue.”
While I was tall in comparison to human females — even to some males — this room was built for an annoyingly tall psychopath, so some extra height was needed.
Seth walked over to the shelf and picked up the jar with disgust. “A button?”
“Yep. You know what to do with that, right?” I asked.
The wall shook slightly and the spot in the wall opened. The wall splitting in the middle and revealing a hidden door. Seth seemed to know how to use a button.
“A hidden mechanism? Clever… for a barbarian…” Bennet commented.
We immediately departed from the room. The doorway led to a cramped corridor that permitted only one person to pass at a time, causing us to form a single-file line with me leading the way.
The corridor was pretty short, and we quickly reached the end of it. The way out wasn't shut, but disguised by a bunch of foliage and branches. So I just pushed it aside and finally left that damn cave.
With a gust of fresh wind, my skin and face were invigorated, and my long hair was gently swaying. As I lifted my gaze towards the starry night sky, basking in the radiance of the moons, I felt a surge of ecstasy and elation coursing through me, causing me to nearly let out a victorious cheer.
I turned around, waiting for the others to arrive.
The cave was situated right at the base of a mountain. It wasn't a massive cave or anything, so the sneaky exit wasn't really that far from the regular one. It kinda made you wonder why there was a secret exit in the first place, but let's be real, Malik wasn't always the most logical guy around. The mind of a psychopath is unfathomable.
Shortly after, the others left the small opening one after the other and eventually, we all stood under the moons.
We found ourselves completely enclosed by a dense thicket of trees that extended as far as the eye could see. Somewhere on our left was the regular entrance, and I could make out some glimmering lights twinkling through the woods. I even heard some far-off shouts and cheers, which let me know that the battle between Malik and Igor was still going on.
“So, where to now, Miss Guide?” Seth asked me. I looked around carefully.
From here on out was uncharted territory for me, but I know the vague way. Our journey wasn’t going to be a long one, well, if I didn’t mess up.
From what I had gathered, this cave was located on a fraction of land that was completely separated from the rest of the continent. There were a bunch of connection points in the form of bridges, but I had only heard of them, never seen them personally.
I had a vague idea of the way we had to take to get there, but the problem was that the each bridge was quite far away from next one, so if we missed one, we would definitely need to search some time. Now, that wouldn’t be a problem, but only if we assumed that our escape remained unnoticed, which definitely wasn’t going to happen.
Taking this into consideration, we would also need to do this carefully. Of course, we needed to be fast, but fast was no use if we couldn’t locate a bridge. Luckily, the bridges were quite close, so even if we walked, we would be there in no time.
The good thing was that all the bridges were in the same direction. They all were in the north, were they connected to the rest of the continent. That meant, as long as we followed the moons, we would eventually get there.
“We need to head north, but it’s better if we don’t rush. It’s been a really long time since I was last outside,” I told them, while starting to walk in the direction of the moons, which was straight ahead.
“Where are you going?” Bennet asked me.
I looked at him, tilting my head.
“North?”
“That’s not north, that’s north,” he said, pointing further right.
I eyed him.
“North is where the moons stand in the sky,” I told him matter-of-factly.
“That’s wrong. The moons aren’t always in the north. I have a Class Skill that helps me navigate and I know for a fact that north is that way,” he said, walking in the direction he pointed out, my face burned with embarrassment.
What I had completely forgotten about just now, was that skills existed.
Looking at me worriedly, Lisa was dragged along by Redhead as they followed after him.
Only Seth waited for me, as the others walked away. The information I learned through a conversation between clan members was wrong, how very surprising.
Fucking barbarians…
Well, it was my mistake to have believed something spouted by savages to begin with.
“We should keep up with them, or else we might get lost. Don’t worry about this, everyone makes mistakes. And we still need you, after all, we have no idea what we are looking for,” Seth told me.
He was right. There was no reason to be down because of this. In fact, it turned out for the better. At least we now had the assurance that we were going the right way.
Clearing my mind of useless things, Seth and I followed after the other three.
“By the way, what’s a Class Skill?”
Seth raised an eyebrow.
“Bennet. He said something about having a Class Skill. What’s that?”
“I forgot that you just learned about the System,” Seth scratched the back of his bald head.
“Is it that unusual? I have seen a lot of people in similar situations as mine. You know, imprisoned and stuff.”
“It is. People are born with the system and normally introduced to it right after birth and during childhood,” he started to twirl his beard.
Yeah, I knew about the system from the get-go, but never bothered to check it out because I had no clue what it was all about. In retrospect, I really want to punch past-me.
Not that it would have changed anything. I had been imprisoned and it looked like I gained levels by killing, so I couldn’t have leveled either way. Still, it surprised me that I had never seen someone opening their status.
When Seth brought it up, I didn't know what to say, so I just hummed in understanding and walked next to him. We were still on the run after all.
“By the way, how are your injuries? I completely forgot about them, but despite how they look, you seem to be doing fine?”
"You're right," I replied, my words turning into groans at the end. For some reason, the pain was worse than before. No, until just a second ago, the pain wasn't even bothering me, but now it was almost impossible to keep walking.
I groaned, holding my stomach. Why was the pain back? Why was it even gone?
With each passing second, the pain became worse. How did I even manage to walk so fast until now?
“So much about Pain Tolerance,” I growled.
“Oh you have Pain Tolerance? In that case, I think I have to apologize,” he slightly bowed his head with an apologetic smile.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Why don’t you use Identify on the skill in your status?” He advised.
Well, there was no reason not to do it, though it would have been much easier if he had just told me.
I opened my status with a thought, and the floating words popped up before my eyes. I skimmed through the general skill section and used Identify on the Pain Tolerance.
[Pain Tolerance (Epic)]
You have experienced pain, but you resisted it. Your mind and body have learned to tolerate it and sometimes completely block it. Allows the user to ignore pain if they distract their mind from it. The pain returns once the user remembers it or is suffers new injuries. Allows the user to tolerate pain and allows the mind to stay clear even when in pain. The effectiveness of the skill is based on Willpower. This skill cannot be activated by will.
Now things made a lot more sense. The skill could nullify pain, but only as long as my mind was distracted or occupied with something else. While aware, the pain was weakened, but if I distracted myself, the pain would vanish until I became aware of it again.
In a way, it did exactly what the name said.
Seth’s apology now made a lot more sense and I couldn’t help but resent him a little.
And now that I knew of the condition to activate the skill’s effect, I had a feeling that in the future, activating it was going to be a lot harder. Especially since activation by will was not possible.
Right now, there was only so much I could do to distract myself, so I turned to Seth again.
“Hey, my skill says “Epic” behind it. What does that mean?”
“That is the grade of your skill. Epic is three grades higher than common, the lowest grade. I really don’t want to know what you have been through to get it there.”
Well, I wouldn’t want to know either. Teaser, it wasn’t fun.
“How do skills grade up?”
I mean, it was pretty obvious since I've already leveled up my Identify by using it a bunch of times, but I just wanted some extra reassurance since I was so off about the moons.
“Skills usually grade up by using them regularly and improve your handling of the skill. Passive skills, like Pain Tolerance, level when the limits of the skill are pushed. That’s why a lot of people with Pain Tolerance keep it at Uncommon. The pain you would have to endure to get it to Rare would be… I’m sorry,” he stopped mid sentence and apologized for some reason.
There was something about the pity stare that bothered me, but I did not mention it.
I nodded. So, if Pain Tolerance actually worked all this time, even if I just found out about it, then it must have been used a lot. Which would explain the grade ups.
Still, now that I knew about this way of using Identify, it was time to get some information out of my skills.
Chapter 5 How to Get Away With Murder
You have slain [Human Lvl. 30 | Barbarian - Lvl. 35] . For killing an enemy several times above your level, additional experience will be awarded. For killing an enemy in a group, experience will divided according to contribution.
You have slain [Human - Lvl. 35 | Barbarian - Lvl. 40]. For killing an enemy several times above your level, additional experience will be awarded. For killing an enemy in a group, experience will divided according to contribution.
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 2.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 3.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 4.]
[Species: Unregistered] level has increased to 5.]
Once again, words surfaced in my sight. Although I couldn't comprehend the majority of it, what I did understand was that I had been acknowledged for killing the barbarians.
There were a lot of level up notifications, but before I could celebrate, someone grabbed my shoulder, causing me to turn around hastily and take a step back.
Redhead and Bennet were staring at me, frowning with grim expressions. I could not read what they were thinking.
Bennet spoke warily, his gaze fixated upon the dripping knife clutched in my grasp. “Why did you do that?" he inquired.
A foolish question. They were monsters, their sins were unforgivable. For all the lives they had taken and ruined, they deserved worse than death. To begin with, why the hell did they care? Sure, they were humans, too, but it that didn’t change the fact that they had been captured and locked up by them.
There was no remorse for my actions, no regret nor guilt. Not for them.
“They deserved it,” I barked, not faltering under their gazes.
For a second, I thought about just leaving and going by myself, but sadly that was not a possibility. Alone, I wouldn't be able to escape at all.
The room was hulled in a tense silence as no one said a word. I made no effort to defend my actions and I, frankly, didn’t care if it bothered them. I had done the right thing.
A clap broke the silence. I looked at Seth, whose hands were still together.
“Alright, everyone, they are dead, nothing to do about it and it wasn’t like they were good people. We can talk about morals later, but for now, we shouldn't waste anymore time because of them. So, how about we make ourselves scarce?”
I simply nodded, before making my way over to the door that led into Malik’s room.
It was quite obvious that Seth wanted to prevent things from escalating and that he tried to calm his companions down. I could not even understand their problem. These two men were literally part of a clan that wanted to torture them to death and worse — yes, there was worse.
Stepping through the wide door frame, I entered Malik's room. It looked still the same.
A giant bed still occupied the center of the back wall, and multiple shelves on both sides were filled with jars of various different sizes, depending on their contents. It was as though time had stood still in this space — maybe because he rarely entered this room and was very careful about who to let in.
“What the hell is this place?” Seth asked as he entered the room behind me.
The various jars were filled with all kinds of stuff. In some were eyeballs, the irises unusual colors like red, yellow or even silver ones, in others tongues could be found. In some were brains other organs. There were also a few with heads, hands or feet.
“It’s a collection,” I spat, feeling
Nausea was churning within me as a bitter taste crept up the back of my throat. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
A collection of his victims. A twisted hobby and in my opinion, more than reason enough to justify any violence against this clan. Even his dogs didn’t share the same hobby as him, they supported him and worked for him, they were equally guilty.
Lisa, Redhead and Bennet followed us into the room and were not hiding their disgust. Lisa even had to throw up. Right into his room, great job, Lisa.
“The exit is over there,” I said, pointing at a spot on the right side of the bed, between to shelves. A point that I couldn't reach with my height and hence needed someone to assist me.
“Isn’t that just a wall?” Seth asked
“You see that shelf?” I asked him, this time pointing at the shelf directly beside the bed, right of the spot I pointed at, “Behind the jar with the tongue.”
While I was tall in comparison to human females — even to some males — this room was built for an annoyingly tall psychopath, so some extra height was needed.
Seth walked over to the shelf and picked up the jar with disgust. “A button?”
“Yep. You know what to do with that, right?” I asked.
The wall shook slightly and the spot in the wall opened. The wall splitting in the middle and revealing a hidden door. Seth seemed to know how to use a button.
“A hidden mechanism? Clever… for a barbarian…” Bennet commented.
We immediately departed from the room. The doorway led to a cramped corridor that permitted only one person to pass at a time, causing us to form a single-file line with me leading the way.
The corridor was pretty short, and we quickly reached the end of it. The way out wasn't shut, but disguised by a bunch of foliage and branches. So I just pushed it aside and finally left that damn cave.
With a gust of fresh wind, my skin and face were invigorated, and my long hair was gently swaying. As I lifted my gaze towards the starry night sky, basking in the radiance of the moons, I felt a surge of ecstasy and elation coursing through me, causing me to nearly let out a victorious cheer.
I turned around, waiting for the others to arrive.
The cave was situated right at the base of a mountain. It wasn't a massive cave or anything, so the sneaky exit wasn't really that far from the regular one. It kinda made you wonder why there was a secret exit in the first place, but let's be real, Malik wasn't always the most logical guy around. The mind of a psychopath is unfathomable.
Shortly after, the others left the small opening one after the other and eventually, we all stood under the moons.
We found ourselves completely enclosed by a dense thicket of trees that extended as far as the eye could see. Somewhere on our left was the regular entrance, and I could make out some glimmering lights twinkling through the woods. I even heard some far-off shouts and cheers, which let me know that the battle between Malik and Igor was still going on.
“So, where to now, Miss Guide?” Seth asked me. I looked around carefully.
From here on out was uncharted territory for me, but I know the vague way. Our journey wasn’t going to be a long one, well, if I didn’t mess up.
From what I had gathered, this cave was located on a fraction of land that was completely separated from the rest of the continent. There were a bunch of connection points in the form of bridges, but I had only heard of them, never seen them personally.
I had a vague idea of the way we had to take to get there, but the problem was that the each bridge was quite far away from next one, so if we missed one, we would definitely need to search some time. Now, that wouldn’t be a problem, but only if we assumed that our escape remained unnoticed, which definitely wasn’t going to happen.
Taking this into consideration, we would also need to do this carefully. Of course, we needed to be fast, but fast was no use if we couldn’t locate a bridge. Luckily, the bridges were quite close, so even if we walked, we would be there in no time.
The good thing was that all the bridges were in the same direction. They all were in the north, were they connected to the rest of the continent. That meant, as long as we followed the moons, we would eventually get there.
“We need to head north, but it’s better if we don’t rush. It’s been a really long time since I was last outside,” I told them, while starting to walk in the direction of the moons, which was straight ahead.
“Where are you going?” Bennet asked me.
I looked at him, tilting my head.
“North?”
“That’s not north, that’s north,” he said, pointing further right.
I eyed him.
“North is where the moons stand in the sky,” I told him matter-of-factly.
“That’s wrong. The moons aren’t always in the north. I have a Class Skill that helps me navigate and I know for a fact that north is that way,” he said, walking in the direction he pointed out, my face burned with embarrassment.
What I had completely forgotten about just now, was that skills existed.
Looking at me worriedly, Lisa was dragged along by Redhead as they followed after him.
Only Seth waited for me, as the others walked away. The information I learned through a conversation between clan members was wrong, how very surprising.
Fucking barbarians…
Well, it was my mistake to have believed something spouted by savages to begin with.
“We should keep up with them, or else we might get lost. Don’t worry about this, everyone makes mistakes. And we still need you, after all, we have no idea what we are looking for,” Seth told me.
He was right. There was no reason to be down because of this. In fact, it turned out for the better. At least we now had the assurance that we were going the right way.
Clearing my mind of useless things, Seth and I followed after the other three.
“By the way, what’s a Class Skill?”
Seth raised an eyebrow.
“Bennet. He said something about having a Class Skill. What’s that?”
“I forgot that you just learned about the System,” Seth scratched the back of his bald head.
“Is it that unusual? I have seen a lot of people in similar situations as mine. You know, imprisoned and stuff.”
“It is. People are born with the system and normally introduced to it right after birth and during childhood,” he started to twirl his beard.
Yeah, I knew about the system from the get-go, but never bothered to check it out because I had no clue what it was all about. In retrospect, I really want to punch past-me.
Not that it would have changed anything. I had been imprisoned and it looked like I gained levels by killing, so I couldn’t have leveled either way. Still, it surprised me that I had never seen someone opening their status.
When Seth brought it up, I didn't know what to say, so I just hummed in understanding and walked next to him. We were still on the run after all.
“By the way, how are your injuries? I completely forgot about them, but despite how they look, you seem to be doing fine?”
"You're right," I replied, my words turning into groans at the end. For some reason, the pain was worse than before. No, until just a second ago, the pain wasn't even bothering me, but now it was almost impossible to keep walking.
I groaned, holding my stomach. Why was the pain back? Why was it even gone?
With each passing second, the pain became worse. How did I even manage to walk so fast until now?
“So much about Pain Tolerance,” I growled.
“Oh you have Pain Tolerance? In that case, I think I have to apologize,” he slightly bowed his head with an apologetic smile.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Why don’t you use Identify on the skill in your status?” He advised.
Well, there was no reason not to do it, though it would have been much easier if he had just told me.
I opened my status with a thought, and the floating words popped up before my eyes. I skimmed through the general skill section and used Identify on the Pain Tolerance.
[Pain Tolerance (Epic)]
You have experienced pain, but you resisted it. Your mind and body have learned to tolerate it and sometimes completely block it. Allows the user to ignore pain if they distract their mind from it. The pain returns once the user remembers it or is suffers new injuries. Allows the user to tolerate pain and allows the mind to stay clear even when in pain. The effectiveness of the skill is based on Willpower. This skill cannot be activated by will.
Now things made a lot more sense. The skill could nullify pain, but only as long as my mind was distracted or occupied with something else. While aware, the pain was weakened, but if I distracted myself, the pain would vanish until I became aware of it again.
In a way, it did exactly what the name said.
Seth’s apology now made a lot more sense and I couldn’t help but resent him a little.
And now that I knew of the condition to activate the skill’s effect, I had a feeling that in the future, activating it was going to be a lot harder. Especially since activation by will was not possible.
Right now, there was only so much I could do to distract myself, so I turned to Seth again.
“Hey, my skill says “Epic” behind it. What does that mean?”
“That is the grade of your skill. Epic is three grades higher than common, the lowest grade. I really don’t want to know what you have been through to get it there.”
Well, I wouldn’t want to know either. Teaser, it wasn’t fun.
“How do skills grade up?”
I mean, it was pretty obvious since I've already leveled up my Identify by using it a bunch of times, but I just wanted some extra reassurance since I was so off about the moons.
“Skills usually grade up by using them regularly and improve your handling of the skill. Passive skills, like Pain Tolerance, level when the limits of the skill are pushed. That’s why a lot of people with Pain Tolerance keep it at Uncommon. The pain you would have to endure to get it to Rare would be… I’m sorry,” he stopped mid sentence and apologized for some reason.
There was something about the pity stare that bothered me, but I did not mention it.
I nodded. So, if Pain Tolerance actually worked all this time, even if I just found out about it, then it must have been used a lot. Which would explain the grade ups.
Still, now that I knew about this way of using Identify, it was time to get some information out of my skills.
