67 Discovering the Truth (1)
"I don't understand, why do you have so many clay golems?" Neita asked Scern as he pointed them out to the different tents.
When Scern faced her to answer the question, she could see he had blue glowing veins under the surface of the skin on his face. His black corneas that were contained by brown eyes were changed to now matching the same blue color as the golems' eyes as he brought to life.
"They may seem a bit odd, but they're practically a bunch of little hands that are wired into my brain to let me see what they see. It will certainly make the process go quicker. Now that you're here, we can start inspecting the damage."
Carnomancers were a rare class of magician, but their abilities in controlling a golems, puppets, or homunculi were desired in just about every field of work. Someone with the class that could control many small ones like Scern or large singular ones that could be advantageous for fighting or just heavy duty lifting. The limits for a synthetic being that required no food or rest were minimal, and that made them almost as big of a demand as summoners.
"They'll be able to check around all the burnt tents while we get to the more grittier details." Scern said as they entered the boundaries of charred wood.
Neita remembered very vividly this was where she saw the boy disappear into the night sky. Now that she could see everything clearly in the afternoon light without fire and smoke, the spot the boy was sitting at appeared to be a freshly moved pile of dirt. She stared at the large mound and wondered if the boy buried one of the fallen bandits.
Scern was mostly too busy checking out the traces of a battle along the inside the pavilion to see the dirt pile. He could see most of the table was crushed by the slamming weight of a beast much large than any human strength could muster. On top of the big clues, he could see weird scorch marks in one corner of the room and lightning patterns along the ground.
He brought the different piles of singed dirt to his nose and could tell right away that a pile of mana orbs exploded and left an acidic tinge to the earth. The rest had a slight burnt ozone smell that came from electrical magic.
Once he was done scanning the rest of the room, Scern walked over to Neita. She had her hand a few inches above the ground with her eyes shut in focus, using a skill he wasn't familiar with.
"Ada! Batu! Demo!" Scern called for three of his golems and they came running over covered in black soot coating their gray limbs and head.
'They are quite messy for "carefully inspecting."' Neita thought as she watched them start digging up the dirt with their spoon shaped hands.
It didn't take long for them to realize it was a massive body beneath the dirt. Neita wasn't too sure in the beginning of the dig that it was a corpse, because the amount of random weapons surrounding the body made it look more like a stolen armory worth of weapons. It wasn't until they moved a dozen daggers and swords that they found the body covered in a large bearskin cape.
"I don't understand, why was he buried with all those weapons? Wouldn't it have been better to keep them for selling or using them instead?"
Scern shook his head, he explained that one of many superstitious bandit traditions was to bury a man with his favored weapon, so he might not have had it after losing a battle and whoever buried him gave the best weapons they had on hand. A strange afterlife ritual like this would always pop up in different parts of Endora.
Last time Scern encountered a strange custom for death, was when he was much younger and in the capital, reading that the desert people between Silvate and Etherite border were discovered cremating the organs of their deceased and using it for fertilizer in a small oasis of trees.
"So the boy I saw here was burying him and praying, but then left." Neita wondered why only this person was buried. Their was still dozens of other bandit bodies scattered across the riverside that were untouched, the boy didn't even check to see that Symora was actually still alive as well.
"My guess is that boy has either pledged himself to kill the person responsible for the buried man's death in particular or to hide all evidence in fire and then start life anew. I'm gonna go with the first option though; most children brought up in this kind of environment would just believe the words a strong looking leader and burn everything else down to ash just for that parental like figure."
"But what about him just flying away? Could he or someone aound here have been a summoner that brings out a flying creature?"
"Its a possibility, but we still don't have technology that can read for realm energy and prove it was used here recently."
Scern pondered the possibilities as one of his eyes twitched and the blue glow inside the eye became brighter.
"Somebody grabbed Vedu's attention, they must have found something." Scern walked out of the pavilion and mention to a brown haired guild worker to I.D. the body.
The clay golem known as Vedu was waving them over to the river, next to another guild worker with blonde hair in similar attire as Scern. She was currently pulling a shrub from the side of the riverbank away from the water.
"Why the bush?" Scern asked, very confused as to why his associate was more concerned with the plant life and not the cluster of six bodies not even twenty feet away.
"Because of this." She said as she got the sopping wet plant back to dry land and pulled a piece of ripped cloth out of brambles.
"Someone lost a bit of their clothing before falling in." She stated what became the obvious consensus
"It's possible that if this was an internal conflict or an attack, someone was reasonable enough to escape by river or take a few down while making a last stand by the water."
"I wouldn't be so sure." Neita interupted as she relunctantly turned one of the mangled corpses over to show the paled over eyes she had gotten a clear look at the first time around.
When she wasn't looking at the mystery of Galahad Mystroff, Neita researches some of the reasons for faded eyes and unknown deaths at the library.
She had found a book that listed the traits of burned eyes and unexplained heart failure was mostly likely the aftermath of a Puppeteer's control.
She explained her theory and that seemed to make Scern go rather pale. He grabbed piece of clothes out of the guild worker's hand and put it up to his nose.
The cursing that followed that action was astoundingly vulgar and somewhat creative. When he was out of breathe and finally done, he explained his unprofessional act.
"It's got traces of the Sebe Desert's sand along the weave of the fabric, not fresh water river sand. Meaning this person came from the North recently and not the camp itself. Here I had only hoped the events taken place were due to betrayal among greedy outlaws. This is probably the worst thing that could have happened in this region."
"So you think you know who or what did all this? The bodies and the fire?" The guild worker asked.
"What?-hah no- but I can tell you exactly who finished the killing and for why."
His eyes went back to the normal brown color and the blue veins started fading away. One by one, the little golems had shut down as they were no longer support by their master's invisible mana tethers. He no longer needed their help to find the culprit.
"It's the Royals of New. They've been gathering so many masses they sent one of their lieutenants, Gyllden Hartbleed from the Silvate Kingdom to start assembling another army."
*****
Time carried on until the sun was going down, Neita was started to feel exhaustion draw out her evening of work. The group of Guild officials took note of everything they found and began taking the bodies away in carts to Bluewalk. Soon everything was disappearing from the hillside and river, leaving Neita nothing to do except wait for her carriage to return and reorganize her satchel.
Neita gathered up the files to sit next to one another when if they carried the same information and attempted to read them while she waiting for the driver to come back to take her to Bluewalk and then Diagon. As she stood there, she kept reading two papers side-by-side.
One was the medical report of Galahad right after being taking to the medical center, stating he was originally a support mage around level twenty. His stats were average for someone of his class, the same thing she read back when she visited with Malex.
The second paper made her only more confused. It had said Galahad was hardly half of his original level with all attribute stats higher than ever. That thoroughly confused her, and that made her look up at the top of the name and realize there was something very wrong.
Paper one said;
[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 23
Magician Class: Support Mage
Meanwhile paper two said;
[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 8
Battle Class: Spartan
'That doesn't make sense, why the hell is a tower considering him a battle class when he's a magician? And what is a Spartan?'
*****
The following morning in Diagon.
Galahad had gone to bed early and woke up at a decent time for once, there were no more crazy dreams or extreme hunger willing him to go into the dungeon jaws first. He was just getting up to go to a new job in a new city, with a new class and dire need to use his boss's power draining monstrosity to save his friends.
Galahad got up from his most recent purchase to start the day; a stuffed mattress he saw in a shop window after leaving Terra to buy her electrically charged mouse. He passed out in the second floor bedroom as soon as he put the mattress there. He found it was surprisingly pleasant.
Not nearly as surprising as the next thing to pop up in his sleepy eyes.
[ 00:00:00 ] flashed three times in his face before a trail of new messages popped up in the side view.
[ Abnormal substance refined: Resilience to Poison enhanced, unlocking new skill. ]
[ New Skill (Passive): Venom Breaker ]
At first Galahad was confused to why his Karmic system was suddenly giving him a new skill, but then the timer completing forty hours reminded him of the timer he saw started back in the Spire's medical floor.
It began after he chugged the bottle of antidote and he just ignored the countdown till now.
'So this black orb doesn't just absorb mana orbs and Karmic plates, it just eats everything and adapts it to my body.'
He sat up and read through everything sitting in his view passively. Studying it as closely as he could for the first time in a while.
There was a time of day in the top right, telling him it was still somewhat early in the morning. A window for notifications and experience gained on the side. Then his title and name at the top with a progress bar to his next level up.
[ Galahad Mystroff ] lvl. 17
Battle Class: Spartan
Title: Lone Survivor
[ 240/1700 XP ] lvl. 17
'But what about skills and titles?'
As if on command to his question, three windows filled up his main view side-by-side.
~[ Activation Skills ]~
[ Fury and Fyre ] [ 3:23 ]
[ Class Locked ]
[ Class Locked ]
[ Class Locked ]
~[ Passive Skills ]~
[ Venom Breaker ]
~[ Title Changer ]~
[ Lone Survivor ] [ Current ]
[ Gluttony ] (2/2)
'Huh, I haven't changed to gluttony yet. I wonder what that one does?'
Galahad swapped titles and as soon as he did it, a strange sensation poured over his whole body and mind. A driving force was making him stand up and take in a deep inhale.
His five senses found nothing satisfying at all. He hated all the sounds around him, he couldn't stand the colors out his window, and the taste and smell of the air was putrid to him.
He covered his nose and mouth to block out the grossly air, but stopped after getting a whiff of something else in the air. A faint smell of something absolutely fantastic downstairs.
The bliss he experienced from that smell was far greater than any Black rose flowers or delicious boar stew from Mower's Tavern.
Galahad was suddenly nose up and sprinting down the stairs of the house. Searching for the smell, willing to tear the house apart for it.
It took him only five minutes to figure out what could make such a delectable scent. In the pocket of his traveling jacket, there were all the mana orbs he gathered in a singular pouch.
Inside was so many incredible looking orbs, the blue glowing spheres were absolute perfection in his eyes now. The Succubus, Vesplugs, and a few extras were all the most amazing things he had ever seen. All of them were primed and ready to be consumed, making his mouthing water.
Unfortunately, all Galahad could see was they were locked.
The disappoint and anguish was making him feel like feral rage was about to take over. Before he let himself start tearing apart the house, he managed to focus on changing titles back to Lone Survivor.
Galahad felt a wave of relief as the title Gluttony no longer had a hold on his mind. He was sitting on the dirty floor, wondering how in the hell that was supposed to be a useful title.
'Just when you think you understand something, it throws you a curve ball.'
Galahad stood up and dusted off his pants before looking back at the time in the corner of his mind.
'Well I might as well take advantage of what I do know and focus on that for now.'
Galahad began mapping out his morning the back of his mind. Trying to remember where the nearest potion maker stand was in the market district.
