The man in front was completely, and disappointingly, unprepared for my face to slam into his face. His nose crunched under the force of the blow and he was sent tumbling to the ground groaning while holding his face.
The second man was at least prepared before I made it over to him, but he just moved so slowly that it frustrated me even more.
These guys thought they could take me? I thought to myself as I idly blocked a few punches from the man in front of me.
It was very interesting that no one actually used any attack skills. Ever since coming here, I hadn’t even turned off my lightning mage passive which boosted my dexterity and agility and caused my legs and feet to spark when I moved, but none of the soldiers reacted. I didn’t see any runes like the ones in Verdanst either, so I wonder what was actually keeping people in line. How did they know who was using attack skills and who wasn’t? Very strange.
The man punching at me slowly got more and more frustrated as none of his blows were getting through my guard. The third guy was trying to be stealthy and get around my back, but he wasn’t doing a particularly great job of it. I decided to pretend not to see him and focused on the guy in front of me.
I spent some mana and caused small flowers to bloom in the corners of the room giving me more situational awareness and so I could keep tabs on the guy behind me without seeing him.
Two more punches came at me, one aimed for my groin that I smoothly stepped out of the way of, the other one aimed for my face that I caught before grabbing his arm and stepping back in front of him facing the other way, and throwing him over my shoulder into his buddy.
They both fell to the floor in a heap of limbs groaning slightly as they tried to untangle themselves. I didn’t let them. I stalked over to them and placed my foot on top of the pile and pressed down causing them to go still.
“Listen very closely, because I’m only going to say this once. You made a deal with David. Honor it. If I have to come back here, I’m going to make your life a living hell. Keep in mind I have a healing skill that I can use on you, so I can go much further than most would and no one would ever be able to tell. Is that clear?”
I waited for a few frantic nods before I walked back down the hallway to where Gorlin left too.
I didn’t actually plan to torture anyone, the very thought of doing something like that made me feel a bit sick. But they didn’t need to know that. The implication in most cases was good enough to incite submission in most small-brained individuals like themselves.
They very clearly only saw people as strong if they matched certain superficial aspects like height and muscles, instead of how you were supposed to, which would be levels. It would’ve saved me the effort of fighting them if they had just realized I was a better fighter than Fist, but because they underestimated me, that made for an easy fight.
Not that it would’ve been hard if they hadn’t underestimated me, but it all worked out regardless.
I grumbled to myself as I walked back through the hallways. Did he really have to spit on me? There were so many better ways he could’ve handled that situation, the first thing having been just not being an asshole. And yet people were diametrically opposed to that option for some reason.
I wasn’t going to lie and say I wasn’t an asshole to people myself, but I only stooped as low as the person I was being an asshole to. I quite literally would reciprocate your behavior and treatment of myself and my friends.
Petty? Maybe. Just don’t be an asshole to me for no reason and I won’t be one to you either. Quite simple really.
And yet that seemed to be so difficult for people no matter what world you lived in apparently.
Whatever, it wasn’t important anymore. I just had to move on. I had already broken his nose, so as far as I was concerned we were even now. I doubt he would see it that way, but he would have to suck it up unless he wanted me to break his fingers next.
If he did manage to suck it up I might even heal his nose back properly. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I let out a slight sigh as I wiped off a little of the blood that had gotten on my face from punching the guy and shattering his nose. I kept the armor on just in case someone else decided they wanted a scrap.
I had hoped that fight would be more deadly than that so I would get more exp for my classes. The fight had been so low effort I hadn’t even leveled [Fist Technique].
I stepped out into the commons area again and saw no sight of Gorlin. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I saw David was still sitting in the same spot with his… Women.
My lip curled slightly in disgust. I wasn't particularly a big fan of demeaning sentient races in such a way. For some reason, it just pushed me the wrong way. I stomached my dislike of the situation and walked over to him.
He looked up from where he was sitting, “Ah back already. How did it go then?” He had a slight smirk on his face, although I wasn’t sure if it was because he was just enjoying his situation or there was some play happening here.
I was never particularly adept at social interactions on this scale. Nuanced conversations I struggled with a bit, if only because I wasn’t some sort of hyper genius who knew what everyone was thinking. I was coasting by a lot of these if only because they were cliche situations to things I’d read before…
Now that I thought about it, it was extremely unnerving how similar a lot of these interactions were to fiction. I don’t know that I liked that thought. It definitely lent credence to the simulation theory.
“I’m not sure honestly, Gorlin didn’t even tell me who those people were or what they were supposed to act upon. Those guys weren’t the brightest either. They said something about only bothering to have agreed to any deal with you was because of Fist, and that if he hadn’t been there they never would’ve upheld their side.”
David laughed at that, “I think I know exactly who Gorlin took you to, and? I would certainly hope you didn’t just let them go freely.”
I frowned slightly as I continued speaking, “I might’ve just let them off with a verbal warning. But one of them decided to spit on me.”
David laughed a lot more loudly this time, several of the women joining in as well. “Yeah, that definitely sounds like Lorsal and his posse. Hah, he had that coming for a long time. I suspect he might still not uphold his side, so you may be visiting him again soon. But that’s for then and this is now. Good work.” He said.
I just nodded slowly, not sure what to do from here.
“I thought a little about what you said about working with me. I think you’re right, it’s too much effort to force you to be as submissive as Fist, you’re also smarter than him so you’re capable of much more initiative, so it’d be difficult to expect you to fill the exact same shoes. So I have a different proposition for you. I’m not terribly interested in the violent side of things, I’m definitely a leader of words. I have an administrative mind, you could say.”
I nodded again, “I think I get where you’re going.”
“Good, very good. Already showing that keen intelligence. I want you to be the muscle in this relationship. I’ll let you know who owes me… Rather us, stuff and you’d be the one to collect it. I’d be the one negotiating deals and favors from people depending on what kind of services they want going forward. Whether that’s they want a guy offed, they need something from the outside, whatever it might be. In turn, you make sure that anyone who tries to screw us over doesn’t. In turn, you get paid accordingly from the deals. Say we split it 7-3 my way since this operation was my brainchild to begin with and I was the one who grew it. Sound fair?”
I stood there for a moment running over everything in my head.
33% of profits for being hired muscle in an already relatively large prison op. Not the worst, although I wasn’t sure how profitable this ‘job’ actually was. Although it wasn’t like I was necessarily in a position to say no in the first place.
“Sure,” I said while forming another chair to sit in, “That sounds good. Would you be able to fill me in more on what exactly this whole deal entails? I want to know more about what I’m getting into and what sort of roles I’m being expected to fill. I don’t want to step on your toes doing something I shouldn’t be.”
David nodded with a grunt of approval.
“Fair enough, settle in we’ve got a bit to discuss as well as potentially another lucrative deal for you to undertake.”
I settled into my chair, “Want anything to drink? I’ve got some alcohols that I’ve managed to squeeze in.”
“Just water,” I replied.
He just shrugged and then snapped his fingers, one of the girls stood up and walked off, presumably to fetch some.
“Alright, so first things first. Your jobs. You got a pretty good idea of your main one dealing with Lorsal. Basically, people come to me and want stuff. A shiv, some outside food, maybe a woman for a night or two. Or maybe a man, I don’t judge. Anyways, they come to me and they ask for something. I’ll give it to them, and in return, I ask for something in return, a favor for a job is what I’ll ask if they have a particularly useful skill that I can use, otherwise, I’ll ask for payment from them. If they manage to smuggle some coins in here, perfect. Money in here is even more valuable than it is outside for reasons I’m sure you can imagine.”
I nodded, it made sense, they could bribe the soldiers with it for stuff is essentially how it worked. I wondered how he actually made his money going forward though.
“That’s part of it, the other part is Lurks occasionally takes one of us as a guard. It used to be Fist that handled that, she does a lot of strange stuff or maybe just wants a bit of extra muscle when meeting with one of the other leaders or something, I don’t know what she usually does. Fist wasn’t the most talkative person in general.”
I frowned as I rubbed my chin idly with my wooden arm. Why would Lurks want a slave as a guard? Did she inherently trust them to that degree? Was I misunderstanding the situation here somehow? I certainly wouldn’t trust a slave as a bodyguard unless I had a way to impose loyalty on them.
Maybe there was more nuance to it that I wasn’t seeing from here. I might be able to find out more later.
“Alright,” I said, “I’d be interested in finding out why exactly Lurks wants a bodyguard from a slave but I guess that’s something I’d have to ask her to find out.”
“Right you are, I was never able to figure out why she wanted him and I wasn’t interested in learning more either. There’s something just a bit off about her, so I don’t care to get up in her business. If you decide to work with her, that's going to be something you handle alone. I won’t intervene in any way between you two.”
I nodded, “Alright, fair enough.”
“That’ll pretty much be it for working in the cell block. There’s not much for you to handle, you’re just essentially my enforcer for the operation. Whatever you want to call it anyway. Pretty simple overall I would think.”
“Yeah, seems like there won’t be much to handle in that regard. I doubt you had much trouble with people while Fist was around, it’ll take a little bit of effort but I have no doubt I’ll be able to gain the same level of respect he had. It’ll take time though, people are going to want to test the line in the sand going forward.”
“If I were to give some advice,” David said, before pausing as the woman came back with a glass of water that she handed to me. I muttered a soft thank you as I took it from her.
“I would suggest not being lenient.” He finished.
“Oh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow imperiously, “Why is that?”
“The harsher you are on people the less likely they’re going to want to cross you. If someone does something that’s a minor inconvenience for you and you break both his arms. The next person is less likely to do something at all, let alone something more serious.”
I nodded slowly. The thought made sense, it wasn’t something I was necessarily happy to do either though. I didn’t really want to hurt people if I could help it. I had enjoyed sparring recreationally or being competitive in general. I didn’t care to harmfully flex my strength and authority though. It felt too close to being a tyrant, something I wasn’t interested in becoming if I could help it.
But at the same time, being seen as soft could be detrimental to my well-being here. It was something I’d have to carefully measure going forward.
I took a sip of the water and received a ping.
‘Ping’ You’ve been poisoned by [???] for the next five minutes. Health decreased by 150 pts every second.
I moved immediately, sparks flying as I launched myself at the woman who situated herself on the side of David’s throne.
She didn’t even get a chance to react as I grabbed her by the throat and hauled her up into the air.
“Was it you?” I asked, my voice deathly calm as I held her there slowly applying more pressure to her throat as she tried to claw at my wooden arm to no avail.
She didn’t answer at first so I reached forward and grabbed one of her arms.
“Answer. The. Question.”
“Fist-” She started before having to stop as she started coughing as I slowly crushed her throat, “Was my brother you son of a bitch.” She managed to squeeze out. Tears were streaming down her face. Her eyes conveyed the absolute hatred she held for me.
I looked at David who was sitting there with a smirk. He knew. My eyes narrowed as I considered my options. I glanced at my health, which was dwindling pretty quickly. This wasn’t a particularly good situation right now. But at the same time…
[Level 23¹]
She wasn’t particularly strong…
I let out a long sigh before dropping her unceremoniously onto the floor and I went to sit back down on my chair. I cast [Healing Blossom] on the back of the chair I was sitting letting it cast a soft glow over me and letting the healing counteract the poison.
“I won’t kill you. If only because I can understand your hatred for me at the moment. I would feel the same way if someone killed one of my siblings, I would spare no effort, no expense, I would spare nothing, to get revenge on the person.”
She coughed slightly on the floor as she pushed herself into a sitting position glaring at me with seething fury.
“I’ll give you some advice out of interest for allowing you to live longer and so I don’t have to keep worrying about assassination attempts. You’ll want to get a lot stronger before trying to kill me. Poisons won't work on me. Even lethal ones like the one I just ingested are an inconvenience at best. You want me dead? You’re better off doing that yourself physically. And currently? You’re not strong enough. So grow in levels, if you get stronger than me, feel free to come to challenge me again. If you kill me then I won’t begrudge you for it. But if you try something like this again I will kill you. Understand?” I stared directly into her eyes unflinchingly.
She returned the stare with a glare that could freeze hell over. She then nodded and went and stood behind David again.
I grabbed the cup from where I had set it and downed the rest of the water just to prove a point.
‘Ping’ [???] poison has been resisted.
Ugh… Why couldn’t it do that the first time?
The man in front was completely, and disappointingly, unprepared for my face to slam into his face. His nose crunched under the force of the blow and he was sent tumbling to the ground groaning while holding his face.
The second man was at least prepared before I made it over to him, but he just moved so slowly that it frustrated me even more.
These guys thought they could take me? I thought to myself as I idly blocked a few punches from the man in front of me.
It was very interesting that no one actually used any attack skills. Ever since coming here, I hadn’t even turned off my lightning mage passive which boosted my dexterity and agility and caused my legs and feet to spark when I moved, but none of the soldiers reacted. I didn’t see any runes like the ones in Verdanst either, so I wonder what was actually keeping people in line. How did they know who was using attack skills and who wasn’t? Very strange.
The man punching at me slowly got more and more frustrated as none of his blows were getting through my guard. The third guy was trying to be stealthy and get around my back, but he wasn’t doing a particularly great job of it. I decided to pretend not to see him and focused on the guy in front of me.
I spent some mana and caused small flowers to bloom in the corners of the room giving me more situational awareness and so I could keep tabs on the guy behind me without seeing him.
Two more punches came at me, one aimed for my groin that I smoothly stepped out of the way of, the other one aimed for my face that I caught before grabbing his arm and stepping back in front of him facing the other way, and throwing him over my shoulder into his buddy.
They both fell to the floor in a heap of limbs groaning slightly as they tried to untangle themselves. I didn’t let them. I stalked over to them and placed my foot on top of the pile and pressed down causing them to go still.
“Listen very closely, because I’m only going to say this once. You made a deal with David. Honor it. If I have to come back here, I’m going to make your life a living hell. Keep in mind I have a healing skill that I can use on you, so I can go much further than most would and no one would ever be able to tell. Is that clear?”
I waited for a few frantic nods before I walked back down the hallway to where Gorlin left too.
I didn’t actually plan to torture anyone, the very thought of doing something like that made me feel a bit sick. But they didn’t need to know that. The implication in most cases was good enough to incite submission in most small-brained individuals like themselves.
They very clearly only saw people as strong if they matched certain superficial aspects like height and muscles, instead of how you were supposed to, which would be levels. It would’ve saved me the effort of fighting them if they had just realized I was a better fighter than Fist, but because they underestimated me, that made for an easy fight.
Not that it would’ve been hard if they hadn’t underestimated me, but it all worked out regardless.
I grumbled to myself as I walked back through the hallways. Did he really have to spit on me? There were so many better ways he could’ve handled that situation, the first thing having been just not being an asshole. And yet people were diametrically opposed to that option for some reason.
I wasn’t going to lie and say I wasn’t an asshole to people myself, but I only stooped as low as the person I was being an asshole to. I quite literally would reciprocate your behavior and treatment of myself and my friends.
Petty? Maybe. Just don’t be an asshole to me for no reason and I won’t be one to you either. Quite simple really.
And yet that seemed to be so difficult for people no matter what world you lived in apparently.
Whatever, it wasn’t important anymore. I just had to move on. I had already broken his nose, so as far as I was concerned we were even now. I doubt he would see it that way, but he would have to suck it up unless he wanted me to break his fingers next.
If he did manage to suck it up I might even heal his nose back properly. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I let out a slight sigh as I wiped off a little of the blood that had gotten on my face from punching the guy and shattering his nose. I kept the armor on just in case someone else decided they wanted a scrap.
I had hoped that fight would be more deadly than that so I would get more exp for my classes. The fight had been so low effort I hadn’t even leveled [Fist Technique].
I stepped out into the commons area again and saw no sight of Gorlin. So I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I saw David was still sitting in the same spot with his… Women.
My lip curled slightly in disgust. I wasn't particularly a big fan of demeaning sentient races in such a way. For some reason, it just pushed me the wrong way. I stomached my dislike of the situation and walked over to him.
He looked up from where he was sitting, “Ah back already. How did it go then?” He had a slight smirk on his face, although I wasn’t sure if it was because he was just enjoying his situation or there was some play happening here.
I was never particularly adept at social interactions on this scale. Nuanced conversations I struggled with a bit, if only because I wasn’t some sort of hyper genius who knew what everyone was thinking. I was coasting by a lot of these if only because they were cliche situations to things I’d read before…
Now that I thought about it, it was extremely unnerving how similar a lot of these interactions were to fiction. I don’t know that I liked that thought. It definitely lent credence to the simulation theory.
“I’m not sure honestly, Gorlin didn’t even tell me who those people were or what they were supposed to act upon. Those guys weren’t the brightest either. They said something about only bothering to have agreed to any deal with you was because of Fist, and that if he hadn’t been there they never would’ve upheld their side.”
David laughed at that, “I think I know exactly who Gorlin took you to, and? I would certainly hope you didn’t just let them go freely.”
I frowned slightly as I continued speaking, “I might’ve just let them off with a verbal warning. But one of them decided to spit on me.”
David laughed a lot more loudly this time, several of the women joining in as well. “Yeah, that definitely sounds like Lorsal and his posse. Hah, he had that coming for a long time. I suspect he might still not uphold his side, so you may be visiting him again soon. But that’s for then and this is now. Good work.” He said.
I just nodded slowly, not sure what to do from here.
“I thought a little about what you said about working with me. I think you’re right, it’s too much effort to force you to be as submissive as Fist, you’re also smarter than him so you’re capable of much more initiative, so it’d be difficult to expect you to fill the exact same shoes. So I have a different proposition for you. I’m not terribly interested in the violent side of things, I’m definitely a leader of words. I have an administrative mind, you could say.”
I nodded again, “I think I get where you’re going.”
“Good, very good. Already showing that keen intelligence. I want you to be the muscle in this relationship. I’ll let you know who owes me… Rather us, stuff and you’d be the one to collect it. I’d be the one negotiating deals and favors from people depending on what kind of services they want going forward. Whether that’s they want a guy offed, they need something from the outside, whatever it might be. In turn, you make sure that anyone who tries to screw us over doesn’t. In turn, you get paid accordingly from the deals. Say we split it 7-3 my way since this operation was my brainchild to begin with and I was the one who grew it. Sound fair?”
I stood there for a moment running over everything in my head.
33% of profits for being hired muscle in an already relatively large prison op. Not the worst, although I wasn’t sure how profitable this ‘job’ actually was. Although it wasn’t like I was necessarily in a position to say no in the first place.
“Sure,” I said while forming another chair to sit in, “That sounds good. Would you be able to fill me in more on what exactly this whole deal entails? I want to know more about what I’m getting into and what sort of roles I’m being expected to fill. I don’t want to step on your toes doing something I shouldn’t be.”
David nodded with a grunt of approval.
“Fair enough, settle in we’ve got a bit to discuss as well as potentially another lucrative deal for you to undertake.”
I settled into my chair, “Want anything to drink? I’ve got some alcohols that I’ve managed to squeeze in.”
“Just water,” I replied.
He just shrugged and then snapped his fingers, one of the girls stood up and walked off, presumably to fetch some.
“Alright, so first things first. Your jobs. You got a pretty good idea of your main one dealing with Lorsal. Basically, people come to me and want stuff. A shiv, some outside food, maybe a woman for a night or two. Or maybe a man, I don’t judge. Anyways, they come to me and they ask for something. I’ll give it to them, and in return, I ask for something in return, a favor for a job is what I’ll ask if they have a particularly useful skill that I can use, otherwise, I’ll ask for payment from them. If they manage to smuggle some coins in here, perfect. Money in here is even more valuable than it is outside for reasons I’m sure you can imagine.”
I nodded, it made sense, they could bribe the soldiers with it for stuff is essentially how it worked. I wondered how he actually made his money going forward though.
“That’s part of it, the other part is Lurks occasionally takes one of us as a guard. It used to be Fist that handled that, she does a lot of strange stuff or maybe just wants a bit of extra muscle when meeting with one of the other leaders or something, I don’t know what she usually does. Fist wasn’t the most talkative person in general.”
I frowned as I rubbed my chin idly with my wooden arm. Why would Lurks want a slave as a guard? Did she inherently trust them to that degree? Was I misunderstanding the situation here somehow? I certainly wouldn’t trust a slave as a bodyguard unless I had a way to impose loyalty on them.
Maybe there was more nuance to it that I wasn’t seeing from here. I might be able to find out more later.
“Alright,” I said, “I’d be interested in finding out why exactly Lurks wants a bodyguard from a slave but I guess that’s something I’d have to ask her to find out.”
“Right you are, I was never able to figure out why she wanted him and I wasn’t interested in learning more either. There’s something just a bit off about her, so I don’t care to get up in her business. If you decide to work with her, that's going to be something you handle alone. I won’t intervene in any way between you two.”
I nodded, “Alright, fair enough.”
“That’ll pretty much be it for working in the cell block. There’s not much for you to handle, you’re just essentially my enforcer for the operation. Whatever you want to call it anyway. Pretty simple overall I would think.”
“Yeah, seems like there won’t be much to handle in that regard. I doubt you had much trouble with people while Fist was around, it’ll take a little bit of effort but I have no doubt I’ll be able to gain the same level of respect he had. It’ll take time though, people are going to want to test the line in the sand going forward.”
“If I were to give some advice,” David said, before pausing as the woman came back with a glass of water that she handed to me. I muttered a soft thank you as I took it from her.
“I would suggest not being lenient.” He finished.
“Oh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow imperiously, “Why is that?”
“The harsher you are on people the less likely they’re going to want to cross you. If someone does something that’s a minor inconvenience for you and you break both his arms. The next person is less likely to do something at all, let alone something more serious.”
I nodded slowly. The thought made sense, it wasn’t something I was necessarily happy to do either though. I didn’t really want to hurt people if I could help it. I had enjoyed sparring recreationally or being competitive in general. I didn’t care to harmfully flex my strength and authority though. It felt too close to being a tyrant, something I wasn’t interested in becoming if I could help it.
But at the same time, being seen as soft could be detrimental to my well-being here. It was something I’d have to carefully measure going forward.
I took a sip of the water and received a ping.
‘Ping’ You’ve been poisoned by [???] for the next five minutes. Health decreased by 150 pts every second.
I moved immediately, sparks flying as I launched myself at the woman who situated herself on the side of David’s throne.
She didn’t even get a chance to react as I grabbed her by the throat and hauled her up into the air.
“Was it you?” I asked, my voice deathly calm as I held her there slowly applying more pressure to her throat as she tried to claw at my wooden arm to no avail.
She didn’t answer at first so I reached forward and grabbed one of her arms.
“Answer. The. Question.”
“Fist-” She started before having to stop as she started coughing as I slowly crushed her throat, “Was my brother you son of a bitch.” She managed to squeeze out. Tears were streaming down her face. Her eyes conveyed the absolute hatred she held for me.
I looked at David who was sitting there with a smirk. He knew. My eyes narrowed as I considered my options. I glanced at my health, which was dwindling pretty quickly. This wasn’t a particularly good situation right now. But at the same time…
[Level 23¹]
She wasn’t particularly strong…
I let out a long sigh before dropping her unceremoniously onto the floor and I went to sit back down on my chair. I cast [Healing Blossom] on the back of the chair I was sitting letting it cast a soft glow over me and letting the healing counteract the poison.
“I won’t kill you. If only because I can understand your hatred for me at the moment. I would feel the same way if someone killed one of my siblings, I would spare no effort, no expense, I would spare nothing, to get revenge on the person.”
She coughed slightly on the floor as she pushed herself into a sitting position glaring at me with seething fury.
“I’ll give you some advice out of interest for allowing you to live longer and so I don’t have to keep worrying about assassination attempts. You’ll want to get a lot stronger before trying to kill me. Poisons won't work on me. Even lethal ones like the one I just ingested are an inconvenience at best. You want me dead? You’re better off doing that yourself physically. And currently? You’re not strong enough. So grow in levels, if you get stronger than me, feel free to come to challenge me again. If you kill me then I won’t begrudge you for it. But if you try something like this again I will kill you. Understand?” I stared directly into her eyes unflinchingly.
She returned the stare with a glare that could freeze hell over. She then nodded and went and stood behind David again.
I grabbed the cup from where I had set it and downed the rest of the water just to prove a point.
‘Ping’ [???] poison has been resisted.
Ugh… Why couldn’t it do that the first time?
