Chapter 8: Ah, My Soul Is Here

Deep into the night, Lorthic opened his eyes. 'Seems she's finally asleep', he thought, she was no longer shivering and her breathing became calm.

'As a little girl pampered from a young age, the past few day's must have been tuff on her.'. Sighing Lorthic closed his eyes, thought dreaming was out of the question, the familiar darkness no longer drove him crazy, rather it calmed his mind as he let go of his consciousness.

The darkness felt like it lasted only for a second but when he opened his eyes he found that the night has gone, replaced by the morning rays of a new dawn. Standing up from the bed, Lorthic found Annabel still sleeping comfortably.

'Best to leave her be'

Stepping out of the building Lorthic breathed in the morning cool air, the women were already busy making food for the rest of the tribe as the men checked their weapons and readied themselves for the hunt.

Nevarre stood straight with a spear in hand and a sword at his hip, yelling out orders. The hunters paid special attention to what he said as he relayed strategies on how to handle the creature they were about to face while also giving some tips on how the hunters should approach this enemy.

"Unfortunately that damned insect has a lot of spiders under its control, thus we will have to first dwindle down their numbers, this will be all of your jobs when enough of its subordinates are killed the enraged spider should come out of its burrow to attack us. This will be where Braska and I take charge. We will be saving our strength especially for the big one, so we won't be there to save yer asses, be sure to have some antidote herbs or medicines prepared."

Braska sat at the side a long wooden staff laid over his lap, its top had a human skull placed on it with two red gems laid in its eye sockets. He sat with closed eyes while muttering incoherent words, his left hand hovering over the skull, as its gem inlaid eyes glowed dully.

'Storing mana inside of the staff as to reduce the mana cost of spell's, effective way for those who have little mana like him, but it also means he is reliant on his staff and is vulnerable when his staff is taken away or its mana runs out. Luckily he still has his Voodoo beasts, gues he relies on them to keep him safe.'

After Nevarre and Braska finished their preparations, they said their goodbyes to the village and left. Their target was a Warrior Rank spider to the south of the tribe, there they will try and capture it as to pay Lorthic for his services.

Watching as they left, Lorthic turned his attention to the food one of the tribe's women brought him, he graciously accepted it with thanks before finding a seat on a log to enjoy his breakfast.

'With those five Warrior Rank souls, I should be able to create a [Helmed Horror], all that is left next is to find a suitable piece of armor for the creature to inhabit, hopefully, I will be able to get my hands on some good armor when I have safely returned Annabel to her father. She should be worth at least that... I hope unless her father doesn't care about her, though that should be impossible since he placed that tracking rune in her family crest amulet, luckily I was able to disrupt it as to make it give those tracking her the wrong coordinates. If they were to find her then all my effort would be wasted and I might not even get half what I plan on demanding'

Lorthic heard somebody approached him, 'Ah, my little treasure box has awoken', he thought as Annabel sat next to him with a wooden plate filled with some sort of mushroom and meat stew.

"Morning" Annabel said as she ate her stew, Lorthic watched her from the corner of his eyes, 'She seems to have overcome her fear of me for a bit, I knew having her sleep with me would calm her nerves, I did nothing to her while she was at her most vulnerable so she has less to fear from me while she is awake, though it won't work immediately it will slowly whittle down her defenses. Hopefully, she won't take it too badly when she finally sees me rip the souls out of living beings, it can be quite the disturbing sight.'

"Slept well?", Lorthic asked as he took a bite from the roasted meat he was given. "Mhhh" came her reply, she silently continued to eat her food. Lorthic could tell that although her fear of him had diminished greatly she was still wary of him, well it couldn't be helped, although he seemed to treat her nicely he was still a stranger to her as well as one that would even accept souls as payment, even if they were animal souls it was still a soul and many living beings would find the soul to be a sacred thing no matter where it came from and they would believe that only devils or those truly heinous individual's would partake in the use of souls for whatever reasons they might have.

Lorthic couldn't exactly find fault in this reasoning since most evil beings would use souls while most good and neutrally aligned beings would never think of touching the stuff, even in his old world almost ninety-nine percent of Necromancers and even Pale Masters were level people who enjoyed slaughtering or other unspeakable acts.

After finishing his meal Lorthic had nothing to do other than wait for the hunting party to return with his precious soul. Thus Lorthic decide to take a walk in the forest, he had nothing worth studying and while asking Annabel about her kingdom or the city her father rule's over might be better he decided it was best to do so only after she had gotten used to him.

Standing up from the log he slowly started walking into the forest, Annabel also stood up and followed him silently, she behaved like an obedient little girl and stayed close to him.

'Although she is still afraid of me she knows out of everyone here I am probably the only one that would protect her, her decision isn't baseless either, not only did I accept her payment but the way I have acted rasures her that I am a character that keeps my word even if I am not what she would consider a good person I am at least trustworthy.'

After walking for some time in the forest Lorthic decided to turn back, 'They should have my Soul ready by now, well they should if they hope on giving me five of them at the end of the week'

While walking back towards the tribe Lorthic felt the presence of a being approaching at a fast pace. Ignoring it Lorthic kept on walking until at the last moment was a black shadow jumped from the nearby bushes to attack Annabel.

The poor girl didn't even have the time to scream before the creature was upon her its jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth ready to bite at her tender neck, but before it could close its jaws a bolt of lightning shot straight into it throwing it back due to the rebound.

Annabel, shivered when realization set in, she turned in the direction that the lightning came from and saw a finger pointed in her direction, following the finger she saw Lorthic's unchanging face and his scary eyes. Turning back to the beast that attacked her she covered her mouth with her hands in horror as nausea started to set in.

The beast's head was gone while its entire body was charged black giving off a horrendous smell. Annabel was about to throw up when she felt a hand touch her back and a southing feeling went into her body. She didn't need to look to know who it was.

"Thank you", she said quietly.

"Just doing my job", Lorthic replied, then the duo continued walking towards the tribe. Annabel silently followed Lorthic but she would glance at his back every now and then.

'Just who are you', she was currently feeling strange, she was afraid of this unknown man yet there was a strange sense of security while being in his presence as if nothing could hurt her as long as she was by his side.

Arriving at the Tribe Lorthic saw the hunters surrounding something, the group looked quite haggard and were covered in the green slime-like substance. Braska approached Lorthic, he looked tired but his eyes shined excitedly, "Lorthic we got it, please have a look", He said as he ushered Lorthic through the group of hunters. Lying down unconscious in the middle of the encircle meant for hunters was a massive spider, it was around the size of a carriage if you didn't take its legs into account.

'Ah, my soul is here'