I woke up with a start snapping into a sitting position. My mind launched into fight or flight mode as I prepared to smite someone out of existence.
Only to just realize the sound I was hearing was someone knocking on the door. I took a second to reaffirm my surroundings.
Yep. Still a slave. I sighed a little. For a second I’d hoped it was just a dream. Even though I was very lucid during the whole ordeal. Unfortunately.
Nobody likes waking up to find out they’re a slave. At least no one that I’ve met so far.
“What is it?” I yelled grouchily at the person still pounding on the door.
“David want’ ya’, so get yer ass out here!” A voice responded gruffly before marching off back down the dirt and stone hallway.
I grumbled a little about how even as a slave I still had to attend mandatory meetings. Ridiculous.
I stalked out of the room and shut the door behind me and started to walk off before an idea popped into my head.
With the plants now in the room if I was in range I could use [One With Nature] to see what was happening in there, as the skill leveled more and more I could more clearly make things out with my perceptions through plants and stuff. But it wasn’t the entirety of a security system, I had the CCTV system. Now I just needed to lock it.
I pressed my hand against the door and started molding the back of it. I created a stake that speared into the ground and formed a plank that fused itself to the back of the door. Now someone would have to completely remove the door in order to get in, if they tried to kick it down they’d have a rough time.
With the door now ‘locked’ behind me I made my way down the hallway towards the commons area for our group. I had only gotten six hours of sleep, but thankfully with stats and everything I wasn’t feeling all that tired. And surprisingly my limbs didn’t hurt that badly either, they were a little worn out. But I figured that with the six more hours into our resting I’d feel fully rested, it might build up over time as I worked more days, but I figured that I’d get skills to counteract a lot of what was happening.
I stepped out into the commons area and looked around before I noticed David sitting at the edge near the wall surrounded by a couple of women hand-feeding him food that was very clearly not from the kitchens here.
He had something akin to a throne that he was sitting on, with the women either draped over him, the chair, or both, being particularly handsy. The women were slaves as well, I had seen several of them working in the gorge as well.
I stepped up to him, David noticed me a ways away but waited until I got closer before saying anything.
“Ah, the elf. You get your beauty sleep sweetheart?” He asked mockingly, several of the women snickered at his poor attempt at a joke.
I just completely ignored it, the joke was so cliche I couldn’t even be bothered to pretend it existed.
“What do you want, David? Here to flaunt the fact that you can sneak in contraband or the fact that you’ve got a bunch of side hoes?” I said with a pretentious glance at the women around me, several of them glared back at me while the others didn’t look like they had enough higher brain activity to do more than breathe.
The textbook definition of an air-headed bimbo.
David’s eye twitched a little but then laughed it off, “Good good, you haven’t lost your spine after your first day! That’s good since you’re gonna need that. You killed Fist. He was my right-hand man, not particularly bright, but good for a very specific set of skills that I now need to have someone else fill. You wouldn’t be my first choice, or even my last choice considering you’re an elf and only tier two. But you are the one that killed him, so no one else quite has the same level of strength as you do. And the ones stronger weren’t interested in working with me in the first place.”
I nodded slowly somewhat seeing where this was going, but I decided to let him finish before saying anything.
“So I’m having you take his place.”
There it was.
“Several of the people owe me favors that they haven’t paid up on yet, I want you to go and let them know what’s what around here. Even if those other guys aren’t working with me, they certainly aren’t working against me, so I’m the one in charge. Some of them have forgotten that, and now a few of them are trying to back out now that you’ve killed Fist. So you can see how that puts me in a rough spot. A rough spot that you, conveniently, can help fix! Ain’t that great? So if you don’t have any questions you can run along, Gorlin can fill you in on the other details.”
He obviously didn’t really expect me to say anything and more expected me to just do what he said and go handle his problem for him. But it seemed he was forgetting something.
I was going to have to remind him, but I had to be careful about how I did this. I didn’t actually want to fight David here and now. I wasn’t confident in my chances to win even in top condition. Fist had relied so much on his overwhelming defense and strength that he had no speed to catch me with. That was not the case with David.
Mana started pouring off of me causing David’s attention to snap back to me.
“It’s really interesting what you’re saying here, David.” I started as more mana built off me before I started funneling it behind me into the ground causing wood to sprout out of the ground.
“What are…” David started before his eyes narrowed and he grit his teeth as he saw what I was making.
I sat down and lifted one leg to rest my ankle on the other knee, leaning back on the ‘throne’ I had constructed and resting my arms imperiously on the armrests.
“You see, David. You’ve forgotten something important. I’m not your bitch. That was made very apparent when I completely and utterly decimated your thug in front of the entire cell block. Correct me if I’m wrong on that.”
I kept a steady gaze straight into his eyes that he held with me. He said nothing initially, so I continued.
“I’m willing to work with you, David. Not for you. That’s not a small difference in position. You also agreed to that yesterday, we are equals going forward.”
His eyes narrowed further, a vein twitching on his temple as he got progressively more angry listening to me speak. He interjected when I stopped,
“I could crush you right now, you know that. Don’t push your luck with me elf, I will tolerate a lot. But I won’t tolerate disrespect while I’m still alive.”
I just laughed, “And you think I will tolerate the same? You’re more than welcome to get up off your ass at any time, David. But until that moment, we’re equals. I’ll say it again. We both know you’d win, how much are you willing to sacrifice for that though? If you attack me I could kill hundreds of the people in this cavern before you won. And then when the guards come and find we’ve killed so many in our conflict, you think they’re going to let you live just because you won? You’d be an idiot to believe that.”
I leaned forward to hammer in on the intimidation factor I was trying to display.
“So I’ll ask you again. How much are you willing to sacrifice to win, David?”
His eyes flickered back and forth across my face, searching for something. An out? A sign of weakness? I wasn’t sure.
I leaned back into my mock throne and held out my wooden hand palm up and poured some mana into it. A single stem sprouted up with a little leaf that slowly grew and then morphed into an apple. It went through all of the growing stages before finally arriving at the finished product, a brilliant, deep red.
I willed it to drop into my palm and for the small ‘tree’ it grew from to disappear. I brought it up to my mouth and took a bite out of it. The crunch on it was so satisfying and the taste was the best thing I’d ever had from an apple. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was actually good, or because it was just infinitely better than the shit they served us for food here. It didn’t matter in the end.
“I’ll go take a look at what you want me to, David.” I kept enunciating his name without the Mr. I had used initially and the fact was really starting to show on his face as he realized why I was doing it.
“But if I don’t like what you’re doing I won’t assist you on it. I won’t fight you on it either, but I’m not going to help you bully anyone. If someone actually trying to fuck you over after agreeing to something that’s one thing, but if you’ve forced them into something they had no chance of ever realistically paying back on…” I let the implication hang in the air.
I threw the apple at him and stood up. He caught it right before it would’ve hit his face.
“It’s better if we work together, Mr. David. I can do far more for you than you can imagine. But I work with you. If you try to order me around like I’m another one of your two-bit whores again, I will actually take offense to that.” I didn’t wait for a response as I turned around and walked away. I willed my throne to deteriorate, it slowly did so dissipating into dust and mana particles.
I left the apple.
Who knows, if he likes it maybe he’ll be more willing to accommodate me and my wants as well.
It was time to find Gorlin and see what he had for me.
***
“Gorlin knows. David told Gorlin all about it.”
“Yes, thank you, Gorlin. Now I need you to tell me about it, can you do that?”
“Yeh, Gorlin know. Gorlin was told.”
“Tell me what you know, Gorlin, so help me God.”
“Follow Gorlin. He shows.”
“Finally. Thank you.” I said with exasperation.
I had been trying to wring the information out of him for the past half hour, but it was almost an exercise in futility.
I tried not to be too harsh with him since he obviously wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards, but my patience had been slowly dwindling with him as I tried to get him to communicate what David told him.
It seemed like he wasn’t going to tell me the people I needed to go to, but rather take me to each one individually.
I guess it didn’t particularly matter in the end, I just needed to figure out what was going on and go from there. If he was forcing the little man into shitty situations I wouldn’t be the one to keep pushing them around. But if the only reason they had been upholding the deal was the threat of violence… Then I wouldn’t mind continuing in that vein. I could nail some levels in my classes and hopefully get up in levels and get close to tier three. Although I had a long way to go before I got anywhere close to ascending.
I also needed to try and fill out the open skill slot in my mage and martial classes. Hopefully, I could get something good in either one.
Fingers crossed.
Gorlin led me through the commons area and down one of the hallways that housed a bunch of the cells. They weren’t honestly much worse than the room I inherited from Fist. Although, it’s not like there’s much of a difference between one room carved out of rock and another.
The biggest difference between the two simply being that these rooms were shared and I got mine to myself. Which I definitely preferred overall, if only because I don’t like having to sleep in a room with other people. I never slept well during sleepovers with friends, or in hotel rooms that I had to share with other people.
Further and further into the twisting hallways, we went. People stopped what they were doing to turn and look at us as we passed by. Some with unguarded curiosity, others with blatant hatred. I gave polite nods to people as I passed them by.
Looks like I’m working an uphill battle with this crowd. I thought to myself as I kept following Gorlin. Eventually, we get to a cell with a group of guys playing cards with each other. They looked up from their game, one of them looking slightly surprised, the other two with annoyance that someone was bothering them. At least until they saw me and their frustration sank in a little deeper as one of them sneered slightly as he stood up.
I raised an eyebrow as I looked at him, he was quite… Short. So the intimidation factor he was going for with his facial expressions was lost when he had to look up to see my face.
[Level 45²]
[Level 33²]
[Level 49²]
All three of them were just on the cusp of ascending into the next tier. A pretty large difference in levels… if you discount my third class.
Man having this heart and class feels kinda of like cheating at these early levels. No one would have any way to determine that I have that third class, so from an outside perspective you would think I wouldn’t stand a chance against odds like these. But honestly, it wouldn’t even be a tossup. Individually my stats are higher than each of them, and that creates a disparity in which skill can’t necessarily be overcome.
You would think that a significant difference in skill would be enough to overcome statistical odds, but it’s best to think of this like a game. You don’t have a way to exploit anything, there are no bugs or glitches to use. And you’re fighting an opponent that’s faster, stronger, and equally as skilled as you.
What can you do? The answer for my pea brain is nothing.
On Earth, the way you’d handle a more skilled fighter is by overwhelming them with numbers. There’s only so far you can go with skill and strength alone on Earth simply because that’s just the way the world works.
But here? I could become strong enough to punch a nuke and win. Theoretically. As such when your stats elevate you to such a degree, a number difference literally means nothing. Which is the situation now. Statistically, I’m stronger than any one of them. Most likely, anyway. I doubt any of them have a third class yet, although I shouldn’t discount the possibility.
As such this statistical advantage strengthened me enough that it would practically eliminate the numbers advantage that they had.
Hopefully.
“So, Gorlin? What exactly am I doing he… re…” I turned to Gorlin who was already round one of the bends of the hallway heading back to the commons area.
I stood there staring incredulously at the spot where I last saw him as the men fully stood up and one of them addressed me.
“So David’s new dog decided to pay us a visit then? And what do you think you’re going to be able to do on your lonesome, eh little elf? If you think you’re as intimidating as Fist, you’re dead wrong.” The one in the front said to me.
I let out a long groan of frustration.
“I guess David wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what I meant,” I said, more to myself than them.
“Listen, right? I don’t work for David, I work with him. I told him if he didn’t like that he could get up and make me his bitch instead, but he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle for him. But that’s beside the point, since Gorlin left me here by myself without explaining what’s going on, maybe you can tell me why I’m here? David said something about favors owed?”
I raised an eyebrow and glanced between the three of them, the two closest to me looked pretty angry, while the one in the back had moved from surprised to indifferent.
“Hah, we made a little deal with David a while back. Honestly, the only reason we didn’t just take what we wanted from the pint-sized bastard was because he had the big man dancing in the palm of his hand. But since he’s killed dead now, it’s not like we have much to worry about going forward. So why didn’t you run back to him and suck his cock or something, yeah?” The one in front sneered and then spat.
Directly onto my chest, since he couldn’t get enough velocity to make it to my face.
For a moment I couldn’t even react. I had never met anyone so self-destructively idiotic in my life until now. And here I thought I was the biggest moron for provoking Raylith.
Did they not understand how levels worked? David is stronger than Fist. The only reason David takes on henchmen like that is because he’s lazy, but also because delegation is a good business practice! If you can have someone else do your job for you and you receive the benefits, why wouldn’t you do that instead? He didn’t have Fist because Fist was somehow stronger than him.
And did they not understand that because I killed Fist, that just makes me more deadly by nature of being victorious? Maybe I couldn’t hit as hard explicitly, but that’s not relevant if you can’t hit your targets in the first place or if they just run away.
My brain took about 15 seconds to go through a factory reset as I tried to process just how moronic these guys were.
Eventually, it sunk in as I stared at the ball of spit defiling the tunic I had received from the elves, surprisingly it hadn’t been confiscated as well.
My calm demeanor slowly started to morph into one of pure anger, the cold kind. The kind where your mind sharpens and you vow to do everything you can to make sure whoever has wronged you will pay for it.
I could’ve tolerated the insults and the obnoxious remarks, and I would’ve responded in kind, but that’s just the nature of those things. Don’t dish out what you can’t take.
But they made it physical, honestly, it would’ve been less disrespectful to shank me in the balls with a rusty spork than to spit on me. At least that’s how I felt about it.
The longer I thought about it the more pissed off I got.
I took a deep breath and held it for five seconds before slowly letting it out through my nose.
“You know…” I said, starting to slowly roll my shoulders and neck, “Fist was pretty strong.” I said as my mana started to build up, wood slowly creaking around my ankles and working its way up my legs.
“He was certainly stronger than the three of you put together, wouldn’t you agree?” I asked not really expecting an answer.
“So if Fist wasn’t strong enough to kill me…” The wood slowly made it to my neck and then slid down my arms fully completing my armor. It fused into my wooden arm at the shoulder and bulked it up slightly to match the design symmetrically to my right arm as it created a gauntlet to protect it.
“What makes you think you’ll be able to?”
I stepped forward.
I woke up with a start snapping into a sitting position. My mind launched into fight or flight mode as I prepared to smite someone out of existence.
Only to just realize the sound I was hearing was someone knocking on the door. I took a second to reaffirm my surroundings.
Yep. Still a slave. I sighed a little. For a second I’d hoped it was just a dream. Even though I was very lucid during the whole ordeal. Unfortunately.
Nobody likes waking up to find out they’re a slave. At least no one that I’ve met so far.
“What is it?” I yelled grouchily at the person still pounding on the door.
“David want’ ya’, so get yer ass out here!” A voice responded gruffly before marching off back down the dirt and stone hallway.
I grumbled a little about how even as a slave I still had to attend mandatory meetings. Ridiculous.
I stalked out of the room and shut the door behind me and started to walk off before an idea popped into my head.
With the plants now in the room if I was in range I could use [One With Nature] to see what was happening in there, as the skill leveled more and more I could more clearly make things out with my perceptions through plants and stuff. But it wasn’t the entirety of a security system, I had the CCTV system. Now I just needed to lock it.
I pressed my hand against the door and started molding the back of it. I created a stake that speared into the ground and formed a plank that fused itself to the back of the door. Now someone would have to completely remove the door in order to get in, if they tried to kick it down they’d have a rough time.
With the door now ‘locked’ behind me I made my way down the hallway towards the commons area for our group. I had only gotten six hours of sleep, but thankfully with stats and everything I wasn’t feeling all that tired. And surprisingly my limbs didn’t hurt that badly either, they were a little worn out. But I figured that with the six more hours into our resting I’d feel fully rested, it might build up over time as I worked more days, but I figured that I’d get skills to counteract a lot of what was happening.
I stepped out into the commons area and looked around before I noticed David sitting at the edge near the wall surrounded by a couple of women hand-feeding him food that was very clearly not from the kitchens here.
He had something akin to a throne that he was sitting on, with the women either draped over him, the chair, or both, being particularly handsy. The women were slaves as well, I had seen several of them working in the gorge as well.
I stepped up to him, David noticed me a ways away but waited until I got closer before saying anything.
“Ah, the elf. You get your beauty sleep sweetheart?” He asked mockingly, several of the women snickered at his poor attempt at a joke.
I just completely ignored it, the joke was so cliche I couldn’t even be bothered to pretend it existed.
“What do you want, David? Here to flaunt the fact that you can sneak in contraband or the fact that you’ve got a bunch of side hoes?” I said with a pretentious glance at the women around me, several of them glared back at me while the others didn’t look like they had enough higher brain activity to do more than breathe.
The textbook definition of an air-headed bimbo.
David’s eye twitched a little but then laughed it off, “Good good, you haven’t lost your spine after your first day! That’s good since you’re gonna need that. You killed Fist. He was my right-hand man, not particularly bright, but good for a very specific set of skills that I now need to have someone else fill. You wouldn’t be my first choice, or even my last choice considering you’re an elf and only tier two. But you are the one that killed him, so no one else quite has the same level of strength as you do. And the ones stronger weren’t interested in working with me in the first place.”
I nodded slowly somewhat seeing where this was going, but I decided to let him finish before saying anything.
“So I’m having you take his place.”
There it was.
“Several of the people owe me favors that they haven’t paid up on yet, I want you to go and let them know what’s what around here. Even if those other guys aren’t working with me, they certainly aren’t working against me, so I’m the one in charge. Some of them have forgotten that, and now a few of them are trying to back out now that you’ve killed Fist. So you can see how that puts me in a rough spot. A rough spot that you, conveniently, can help fix! Ain’t that great? So if you don’t have any questions you can run along, Gorlin can fill you in on the other details.”
He obviously didn’t really expect me to say anything and more expected me to just do what he said and go handle his problem for him. But it seemed he was forgetting something.
I was going to have to remind him, but I had to be careful about how I did this. I didn’t actually want to fight David here and now. I wasn’t confident in my chances to win even in top condition. Fist had relied so much on his overwhelming defense and strength that he had no speed to catch me with. That was not the case with David.
Mana started pouring off of me causing David’s attention to snap back to me.
“It’s really interesting what you’re saying here, David.” I started as more mana built off me before I started funneling it behind me into the ground causing wood to sprout out of the ground.
“What are…” David started before his eyes narrowed and he grit his teeth as he saw what I was making.
I sat down and lifted one leg to rest my ankle on the other knee, leaning back on the ‘throne’ I had constructed and resting my arms imperiously on the armrests.
“You see, David. You’ve forgotten something important. I’m not your bitch. That was made very apparent when I completely and utterly decimated your thug in front of the entire cell block. Correct me if I’m wrong on that.”
I kept a steady gaze straight into his eyes that he held with me. He said nothing initially, so I continued.
“I’m willing to work with you, David. Not for you. That’s not a small difference in position. You also agreed to that yesterday, we are equals going forward.”
His eyes narrowed further, a vein twitching on his temple as he got progressively more angry listening to me speak. He interjected when I stopped,
“I could crush you right now, you know that. Don’t push your luck with me elf, I will tolerate a lot. But I won’t tolerate disrespect while I’m still alive.”
I just laughed, “And you think I will tolerate the same? You’re more than welcome to get up off your ass at any time, David. But until that moment, we’re equals. I’ll say it again. We both know you’d win, how much are you willing to sacrifice for that though? If you attack me I could kill hundreds of the people in this cavern before you won. And then when the guards come and find we’ve killed so many in our conflict, you think they’re going to let you live just because you won? You’d be an idiot to believe that.”
I leaned forward to hammer in on the intimidation factor I was trying to display.
“So I’ll ask you again. How much are you willing to sacrifice to win, David?”
His eyes flickered back and forth across my face, searching for something. An out? A sign of weakness? I wasn’t sure.
I leaned back into my mock throne and held out my wooden hand palm up and poured some mana into it. A single stem sprouted up with a little leaf that slowly grew and then morphed into an apple. It went through all of the growing stages before finally arriving at the finished product, a brilliant, deep red.
I willed it to drop into my palm and for the small ‘tree’ it grew from to disappear. I brought it up to my mouth and took a bite out of it. The crunch on it was so satisfying and the taste was the best thing I’d ever had from an apple. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was actually good, or because it was just infinitely better than the shit they served us for food here. It didn’t matter in the end.
“I’ll go take a look at what you want me to, David.” I kept enunciating his name without the Mr. I had used initially and the fact was really starting to show on his face as he realized why I was doing it.
“But if I don’t like what you’re doing I won’t assist you on it. I won’t fight you on it either, but I’m not going to help you bully anyone. If someone actually trying to fuck you over after agreeing to something that’s one thing, but if you’ve forced them into something they had no chance of ever realistically paying back on…” I let the implication hang in the air.
I threw the apple at him and stood up. He caught it right before it would’ve hit his face.
“It’s better if we work together, Mr. David. I can do far more for you than you can imagine. But I work with you. If you try to order me around like I’m another one of your two-bit whores again, I will actually take offense to that.” I didn’t wait for a response as I turned around and walked away. I willed my throne to deteriorate, it slowly did so dissipating into dust and mana particles.
I left the apple.
Who knows, if he likes it maybe he’ll be more willing to accommodate me and my wants as well.
It was time to find Gorlin and see what he had for me.
***
“Gorlin knows. David told Gorlin all about it.”
“Yes, thank you, Gorlin. Now I need you to tell me about it, can you do that?”
“Yeh, Gorlin know. Gorlin was told.”
“Tell me what you know, Gorlin, so help me God.”
“Follow Gorlin. He shows.”
“Finally. Thank you.” I said with exasperation.
I had been trying to wring the information out of him for the past half hour, but it was almost an exercise in futility.
I tried not to be too harsh with him since he obviously wasn’t playing with a full deck of cards, but my patience had been slowly dwindling with him as I tried to get him to communicate what David told him.
It seemed like he wasn’t going to tell me the people I needed to go to, but rather take me to each one individually.
I guess it didn’t particularly matter in the end, I just needed to figure out what was going on and go from there. If he was forcing the little man into shitty situations I wouldn’t be the one to keep pushing them around. But if the only reason they had been upholding the deal was the threat of violence… Then I wouldn’t mind continuing in that vein. I could nail some levels in my classes and hopefully get up in levels and get close to tier three. Although I had a long way to go before I got anywhere close to ascending.
I also needed to try and fill out the open skill slot in my mage and martial classes. Hopefully, I could get something good in either one.
Fingers crossed.
Gorlin led me through the commons area and down one of the hallways that housed a bunch of the cells. They weren’t honestly much worse than the room I inherited from Fist. Although, it’s not like there’s much of a difference between one room carved out of rock and another.
The biggest difference between the two simply being that these rooms were shared and I got mine to myself. Which I definitely preferred overall, if only because I don’t like having to sleep in a room with other people. I never slept well during sleepovers with friends, or in hotel rooms that I had to share with other people.
Further and further into the twisting hallways, we went. People stopped what they were doing to turn and look at us as we passed by. Some with unguarded curiosity, others with blatant hatred. I gave polite nods to people as I passed them by.
Looks like I’m working an uphill battle with this crowd. I thought to myself as I kept following Gorlin. Eventually, we get to a cell with a group of guys playing cards with each other. They looked up from their game, one of them looking slightly surprised, the other two with annoyance that someone was bothering them. At least until they saw me and their frustration sank in a little deeper as one of them sneered slightly as he stood up.
I raised an eyebrow as I looked at him, he was quite… Short. So the intimidation factor he was going for with his facial expressions was lost when he had to look up to see my face.
[Level 45²]
[Level 33²]
[Level 49²]
All three of them were just on the cusp of ascending into the next tier. A pretty large difference in levels… if you discount my third class.
Man having this heart and class feels kinda of like cheating at these early levels. No one would have any way to determine that I have that third class, so from an outside perspective you would think I wouldn’t stand a chance against odds like these. But honestly, it wouldn’t even be a tossup. Individually my stats are higher than each of them, and that creates a disparity in which skill can’t necessarily be overcome.
You would think that a significant difference in skill would be enough to overcome statistical odds, but it’s best to think of this like a game. You don’t have a way to exploit anything, there are no bugs or glitches to use. And you’re fighting an opponent that’s faster, stronger, and equally as skilled as you.
What can you do? The answer for my pea brain is nothing.
On Earth, the way you’d handle a more skilled fighter is by overwhelming them with numbers. There’s only so far you can go with skill and strength alone on Earth simply because that’s just the way the world works.
But here? I could become strong enough to punch a nuke and win. Theoretically. As such when your stats elevate you to such a degree, a number difference literally means nothing. Which is the situation now. Statistically, I’m stronger than any one of them. Most likely, anyway. I doubt any of them have a third class yet, although I shouldn’t discount the possibility.
As such this statistical advantage strengthened me enough that it would practically eliminate the numbers advantage that they had.
Hopefully.
“So, Gorlin? What exactly am I doing he… re…” I turned to Gorlin who was already round one of the bends of the hallway heading back to the commons area.
I stood there staring incredulously at the spot where I last saw him as the men fully stood up and one of them addressed me.
“So David’s new dog decided to pay us a visit then? And what do you think you’re going to be able to do on your lonesome, eh little elf? If you think you’re as intimidating as Fist, you’re dead wrong.” The one in the front said to me.
I let out a long groan of frustration.
“I guess David wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what I meant,” I said, more to myself than them.
“Listen, right? I don’t work for David, I work with him. I told him if he didn’t like that he could get up and make me his bitch instead, but he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle for him. But that’s beside the point, since Gorlin left me here by myself without explaining what’s going on, maybe you can tell me why I’m here? David said something about favors owed?”
I raised an eyebrow and glanced between the three of them, the two closest to me looked pretty angry, while the one in the back had moved from surprised to indifferent.
“Hah, we made a little deal with David a while back. Honestly, the only reason we didn’t just take what we wanted from the pint-sized bastard was because he had the big man dancing in the palm of his hand. But since he’s killed dead now, it’s not like we have much to worry about going forward. So why didn’t you run back to him and suck his cock or something, yeah?” The one in front sneered and then spat.
Directly onto my chest, since he couldn’t get enough velocity to make it to my face.
For a moment I couldn’t even react. I had never met anyone so self-destructively idiotic in my life until now. And here I thought I was the biggest moron for provoking Raylith.
Did they not understand how levels worked? David is stronger than Fist. The only reason David takes on henchmen like that is because he’s lazy, but also because delegation is a good business practice! If you can have someone else do your job for you and you receive the benefits, why wouldn’t you do that instead? He didn’t have Fist because Fist was somehow stronger than him.
And did they not understand that because I killed Fist, that just makes me more deadly by nature of being victorious? Maybe I couldn’t hit as hard explicitly, but that’s not relevant if you can’t hit your targets in the first place or if they just run away.
My brain took about 15 seconds to go through a factory reset as I tried to process just how moronic these guys were.
Eventually, it sunk in as I stared at the ball of spit defiling the tunic I had received from the elves, surprisingly it hadn’t been confiscated as well.
My calm demeanor slowly started to morph into one of pure anger, the cold kind. The kind where your mind sharpens and you vow to do everything you can to make sure whoever has wronged you will pay for it.
I could’ve tolerated the insults and the obnoxious remarks, and I would’ve responded in kind, but that’s just the nature of those things. Don’t dish out what you can’t take.
But they made it physical, honestly, it would’ve been less disrespectful to shank me in the balls with a rusty spork than to spit on me. At least that’s how I felt about it.
The longer I thought about it the more pissed off I got.
I took a deep breath and held it for five seconds before slowly letting it out through my nose.
“You know…” I said, starting to slowly roll my shoulders and neck, “Fist was pretty strong.” I said as my mana started to build up, wood slowly creaking around my ankles and working its way up my legs.
“He was certainly stronger than the three of you put together, wouldn’t you agree?” I asked not really expecting an answer.
“So if Fist wasn’t strong enough to kill me…” The wood slowly made it to my neck and then slid down my arms fully completing my armor. It fused into my wooden arm at the shoulder and bulked it up slightly to match the design symmetrically to my right arm as it created a gauntlet to protect it.
“What makes you think you’ll be able to?”
I stepped forward.
