THEOS

Luke killed three more harpies that night, gaining a total of eight points from his kills. Even when he worked himself to collapse, he hadn't gained that many. Except he preferred working himself to exhaustion than killing the downed creatures.

Opening his status, he agonized over where to put his points before dropping half of them into the Strength Stat and the other half in Agility. Tempted as he was to unlock the secrets of Arcana, the Stat was a void. Recalling the difficulty with which he pulled the bow, it was better, at least for now, if he increased a Stat that he could actually use.

Status | Quests | Inventory

Name: Lukas King

Tier: Mortal

Mana: 168

Rate: 10% per hour

Strength: 22 > 26

Agility: 16 > 20

Constitution: 21

Arcana: 16

Stat Points: 0

Bloodline: Locked. Conditions not met. (1/10 000)

Charges: 7/10

He felt the difference immediately. Feeling both more limber, and stronger. Rolling out of his sleeping bag, he put both fists on the ground with his elbows tight on his body, and pushed himself up. Not feeling any pressure, he put his entire weight on one fist, and put his other hand behind his back. Lowering himself as slowly as he could, and then pushing himself back up.

Too easy.

He unfurled his fist, so that the weight was on his fingers alone. He pushed himself back up, marveling at the ease of the movement.

So this is what it feels like to be strong huh.

“Look at you go!”

Quickly climbing to his feet, he turned and saw Laxas. Watching him from the cart.

“Good morning.” He nodded to the older Inner Disciple.

“Are you ready for today?” He asked, his tone growing flatter. “You hid it well, but I noticed you weren’t doing too well last night. I get the feeling. Killing isn’t fun. But it needs to be done. I’ve seen what happens to places like these, when monsters come knocking. They’ll strip this town bare.”

“I get it. It's just… It feels cruel.” Luke ran his hands through his hair. Wincing in disgust as he felt the dried and crusty harpy blood caked against his skin. One of his kills had been extra bloody.

“That’s because it is.” Laxas said, picking an arrow from the carriage and slapping it against the palm of his hand. “The work we do is ugly, but it needs to be done. It’s the price we pay. We hide the truth, and in doing so, make all these people vulnerable, as such it becomes our duty to protect them.”

“You mention you worked in the mines. What was that like?”

“Hmm. I liked it. A lot of the people still working there will probably stab me if they heard me say that, but it’s true. I wasted my time in the Society, but when I got to the mines, I understood what I had to do. I had a purpose. To leave. They didn’t make it a secret that all we had to do to get out of the mines was reach the mid-stage of the mortal tier, and they even gave us tools to exercise with to achieve that goal. Most people didn’t bother with them. I could never understand why that was. Even now it bothers me. Those people chose indenture, and then they whine about it when their bodies become too frail with age, and they become too weak to progress. It made me not want to stay there. Being surrounded with such sloth.”

Luke’s eyebrows furrowed, as he mulled over his words. “People are dumb.”

“Truer words have never been spoken.” He glanced at the morning sky, the suns just beginning their ascent. “Wake the others, we should get going.”

“How far away is the nest?” Arn asked, only for Arya to tap his shoulder. A finger held over her mouth, telling him to shut up.

Taking the cue, the group of five walked in silence upstream along the river. Careful not to rattle their equipment.

A few minutes later, the harpies became visible. They had built a giant malformed nest on the ground, spanning across the bases of at least a dozen trees. Men, presumably from the town, could be seen nailed to the trunks of the trees the nest was built around, naked.

Luke winced at the sight. Harpies were all female, and regularly abducted men to breed with. It was a gruesome fate. The Bestiary claimed that their bodily fluids would put the captured men into a state 'conductive to procreation’, for as long as their bodies could withstand. Draining them of their vitality, until they died. After which they would feed the men’s corpses to the children that emerged from the union.

It was easy to forget with how peaceful life had been the last two weeks that Theos was dangerous, and that there were threats other than Arke that he had to be wary of. Thankfully, the Society itself was fairly insulated from them, letting those that resided in it, accumulate strength in relative peace.

He watched in silence, as Arya and Laxas handed both Ethan and Arn some metal posts and a roll of the wire net that they had brought with them. Splitting up in three groups, with Laxas setting off on his own, each of them chose a spot along the river and set up their defenses. Wrapping the wire net firmly around three trees in a tent like formation. One that was hopefully strong enough to give them some breathing room in case the birds crowded them.

Once they were all set up, Arya fired an arrow into the sky near the harpies. Moments later, both Laxas and Ethan fired an arrow from their vantage points. They were ready.

Luke readied an arrow, but didn’t fire. His aim wasn’t good enough to kill them in a single hit. The initial volley instead would be just Arya and Laxas, with the goal of picking off enough of them silently while they slept.

He and the other two Outer Disciples would join in when an inevitable non-lethal arrow would rouse its victim, and with it the rest of the flock.

It happened after they killed around thirty of them. An arrow glanced off a bird's head, and waking up to the smell of her dead sisters, she shrieked.

Within moments, the human-bird hybrids took to the sky. They were even uglier in the day. Their battered wings, mottled fuzz, wrinkled skin, and spotted beaks, speaking to the harsh lives they lived.

Luke took aim, and loosed a arrow, watching its trajectory as it managed to pierce one of them in the shoulder. It fell out of the sky, its flight interrupted, and into the river where it was carried away by the current.

Under their coordinated attacks it didn’t take long to thin their numbers. From hundreds to dozens. With a good number of them managing to escape the range of their arrows and fly away.

“It’s impossible to get all of them. They always scatter. They’ll fly around, attack small villages, and travelers, until they build their numbers high enough, before camping out at a town this size again.” Said Arya. “When that happens, the Society will organize another hunting party, and the cycle will repeat.”

“On and on huh.”

“Mhm. Our work isn’t done though. A lot of the ones we shot down should still be alive. We’ll have to finish them off. Will you be fine on your own, or do you want to come with me?”

Luke frowned as he considered her words. On one hand, the idea that he needed to be babysat was emasculating, but at the same time, it was also justified. Swallowing his pride, “I’d appreciate it if you let me tag along. Maybe I can practice with my sword more?”

“Very well.”

“The guy who gave me the mission also said something about their wings being worth good money. Do we cut them off?”

Her face crinkled in disgust. “No, we have an agreement with the town. We just kill all of them, and their butchers will prepare the wings for us.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.” She agreed.

“I remember hearing something about freshness and mana draining away, won’t that be a problem if it takes us three days to get back to the Society?”

“We have preservation talismans.”

“Oh. That’s convenient.”

“Very. There’s a harpy behind the tree.” She raised her bow. Gesturing for him to get on with it.

Drawing his sword, he did just that.

+2 Stat Points

Dismissing the message, he moved on. Not wanting to look at the fruits of his foul deeds. The role of an executioner, while rewarding in terms of strength, was decidedly not something that he enjoyed.

As the Points racked up though, Luke couldn’t help but notice how much progress he was making. How much power he was gaining. All at the expense of life.

“It’s good that you don’t enjoy this.” Arya said, after studying his expression. “I’ve known people who find joy in such acts. It’s unpleasant to observe.”

“I just wish I didn’t have to do it.”

“Then why did you?”

Luke stayed silent. It wasn’t like he could tell her that his sword made him stronger after every enemy he killed, and that he knew that because he was the thief Arke was searching for. One who had made off with an incredible prize that was guiding him towards godhood.

“It felt like the right thing to do. If you're not advancing, you're regressing and all that. Staying in the Society and picking flowers for chump change was a waste of my time.” He answered eventually, mixing elements of the truth with lies.

“It’s not a waste of time. When you learn to sense your mana, a lot of doors open up. A lot of the Society’s easier tasks are meant to give you a foundation in higher fields of study. The skills and knowledge you gain by picking herbs for example, are useful when refining them into pills and potions. There’s a familiarity that's needed with nature, and the environments that the plants grow in, that translates into combining those plants for the purpose of alchemy. An understanding that you can’t gain just by flipping through books. There’s so much information and nuance to nature, that only a small fraction can be learned through study. The smells, how they face the sun, what the light looks like when it reflects off of their petals, what the soil feels like, and not just what it's composed of. There’s so much that books can’t tell you. Or if they do, they only give you a small glimpse of what's actually there.”

“So you're an alchemist then?”

“I am.” She said, her face turning slightly red.

“How come you’re out here hunting harpies then?”

“Plants aren’t the only things that an Alchemist works with. Mana refined by the bodies of different animals, gains certain properties that can be harnessed. Just like plants, you can learn a lot by directly observing the environment they live in.”

“Huh. I guess I was just being narrow minded.”

“Wisdom comes from experience. When I was an Outer Disciple, I thought that what I was doing was a waste of time too.”

“So… two weeks ago?” Luke teased.

“I’m very good with a bow, you know.” She pulled the string back, the arrow pointing at Luke menacingly. He looked at it cross eyed. “There’s another harpy over there.”

Suddenly Luke was back to reality. A smile that he didn’t even know he was wearing, slipping off his face.

Right. We’re here to kill stuff. Not talk to pretty girls. It’s weird that the two aren’t mutually exclusive though.

After all the harpies were dead, they returned to their makeshift shelter and disassembled it, before meeting up with the rest of the team.

“How many?” Ethan asked.

“I counted eighty-nine bodies.” Said Laxas.

“Eight hundred and ninety merits then. Not bad. How are we doing the split? Even or standard?” Arn leaned in.

Laxas and Arya’s eyes met, as they had a silent conversation.

“Standard.” He replied slowly. Both Arn and Ethan deflated slightly at the news.

“What’s the difference?” Luke asked.

“Even, we all take an equal share. Standard, it gets sorted by rank. Let’s see.” Ethan cupped his chin thoughtfully. “Five people, one low, two mid, and two high. Luke, you get ten-percent, so eighty-nine merits. Me and Arn, will take fifteen percent each, and those two will split the remaining sixty.” He looked at the two Inner Diciples.

“Not bad, sounds good.” Luke nodded, never having expected to get an even share of the merits in any case. Not when he’d shot down a fraction of the birds the other four of them had. If he was being honest, just Laxas or Arya alone were probably capable of taking out the entire nest. Except for the part where they woke up, and scattered. Having more people shooting them down had been useful there.

Besides, hethought to himself, the real reason I came here was for the mana.

Status | Quests | Inventory

Stat Points: 32

He had earned a frankly astounding amount of Stat Points, in a very small window of time. If he counted the ones from killing four harpies the night before, then he had gained more points in one day than he had in two weeks of ruthless grinding.

Quest Alert: Escape the Island of Carim

He blinked at the sudden appearance of the quest.

Well look at that, a solution to all my problems.