Chapter 25

It was odd looking at himself from a third person perspective, Jaune concluded after floating around his body for several minutes. He had never really acknowledged how handsome he was. Mirrors weren't something he spent a particularly long time around.

The sculpted face, strong jaw, windswept hair the colour of hay, and placid blue eyes. The posture, the poise, simply sitting there his body emitted an aura of nobility. Back straight, the heel of his right leg resting on his left knee, muscular arms set in the thinker's pose.

The tanned skin on the back of his neck held an immaterial chain, its links made of a bright light, a chain that led directly to Jaune's consciousnesses. Which was good. It signified that even if he was not currently inhabiting his body, he was still linked to it. The link was just weaker, signified by the fact that the only skill he retained in this form was dimensional comprehension, and a weaker version at that.

Referring to his body as his body was weird. Better to refer by its inhabitant. "What's your name?" Jaune asked.

His body glanced at him lazily. "It must be annoying referring to me as your body. I have many names, you can call me Morilec, last name Smrti."

Jaune nodded. Weird name, but he'd heard weirder… A certain "Newb Stomper" came to mind. Well, shared dreamspace was a place inhabited by beings from others worlds, universes, or timelines. The only thing connecting these inherently different people was their ability or potential with dimensional magic, or spacetime magic as a certain book called it.

Morilec had come to him in the form of a disembodied head. Like a dullahan, but without a body. Wait, that sounded dumb. A dullahan without a body was literally just a floating head. That was what he'd just described.

Well, what Jaune had been trying to get at was the fact that Morilec, who was someone who didn't normally possess a body, seemed perfectly fine in Jaune's body. One would think there would be more flailing around and all. Asking would be unwise though. Morilec seemed fine with having a body, and so the posture and facial expression of 'don't talk to me' was most likely intentional.

Jaune could understand. Someone who could travel worlds and efficiently take over a body must have been very old and powerful. Pestering him now would be the equivalent of a five-year-old doing the same to him.

Wait, were the skills he had tied to his body, his mind, or both? Two of those options would mean that he would perhaps see someone more experienced fight with his own personal skillset.

Jaune suddenly gained a more-than-visceral interest in how the fight would proceed. Before this it had just been something that would determine if he would live the rest of his life in slavery or not. Now he was able to think about it with a sort of academic interest from the perspective of someone who fought for a living.

The boredom became even worse with his strengthened anticipation, though. He wanted to see them face off. Black was powerful, there was no doubt about that. But if Black was powerful, then the feeling that Jaune had gotten from glimpsing Morilec's strength could only be described as a crushing cosmos pressing down on the soul of the observer.

He didn't have to wait for long. Steps resounded through the corridor, but Morilec did not act. Probably guessing his confusion, the demon whispered, "Not him."

Jaune nodded and watched as the same rogue from yesterday opened the cell and bid his body to follow him. He had somehow expected Black to come by personally, but the man probably didn't want to bother, which also didn't make much sense since from what he had heard the wizard could teleport.

The path they were taking, well the path the rogue and Morilec were taking while Jaune was dragged along, lead upwards. Which made sense. Black had tried to get a feel of him and eating was just useful for that. The consequent enslavement of Jaune did not necessarily have to take place in a dining room.

After some time going upwards, Jaune realized they were going onto the roof of the tower. He wondered why, but Morilec didn't seem to be concerned, though the placid expression might have been caused by the fact that for him, nothing was really at stake.

Giving over control of his body had been the best possibility to avoid enslavement. But being the best possibility in a sea of literal shit wasn't really all that great. There was a great chance that Morilec was tricking him somehow and had a way to possess him indefinitely. But even if he were to die as a result of his decisions, at least he would get to witness a battle between two powerful beings. Going out with a bang as they said, even if it wasn't one produced by him.

These thoughts flitted through his head as they finally ascended the tower completely. The rogue behind them did not come with.

The roof was vast, bigger than logic would normally allow when considering the fact that the tower beneath the roof was smaller. The usually blue and clear sky was for once covered by clouds. Not of the fluffy variety, but that of heavy gray rain. And there stood Black, hair whipping slightly in the breeze, wand held out. He was on the opposite side of the roof.

Jaune wondered about the theatricality. Black shouldn't have a way of knowing that he would be facing anything but a teenager today. Yet the circumstances hinted at something else. Had Black somehow found out about the fact that Jaune was not the one inhabiting his body right now?

And even if that were the case, why bother with the dramatic scene of two enemies standing on top of a tower as the sky grew slowly covered by rain-clouds?

Jaune looked around again, inhaling the atmosphere. Ok, he could see why. This was the kind of event and setting that could be painted and inserted into the biography of a legendary figure. So Black was dramatic? The actions of the day before leaned that direction as well.

"So you have come," Black said with a loud voice, observing the fact that he had indeed come, an event which Black himself had ordered. The man raised a hand towards him, resembling a gesture of invitation to friendship. "You don't look ready to join me though."

The wizard lifted the wand in his right hand to the sky, summoning a thick purple barrier that encompassed the top of the tower in a hexagonal ball-like structure. "I will show you the depths of despair then." The man, after saying this, giggled and smirked in a way that was not at all threatening.

Suffice to say, Jaune ascertained that Black was indeed a dramatic individual.

Morilec however, certainly wasn't. He might have appeared so in the deal they'd made, but apparently his attitude shifted once he was... on the job, so to say. An arcane bolt was sent hurtling at Black as if to interrupt any further dialogue. It broke apart into a flurry of vivid sparks on a blue shield surrounding the wizard.

By the time the sparkles dissipated, Morilec had already formed two more bolts, one for each hand. Black waved his wand and sent a hail of red bolts at Morilec, who simply jumped upwards to dodge.

...And simply stayed there as with another wave of the wand, the ground beneath Morilec's feet turned into ice. He was using arcane bolts as a propellant to float in the air.

A small pause descended on the battlefield. Black was the one to break it, bending down and touching his wand to the floor, working the first incantation Jaune had heard him mutter this fight. Morilec didn't wait to see what he was doing, showing off supreme control of flight by ascending even further while spinning. At some point during the spin he accessed his inventory and hurled several swords at lightning fast speed.

The swords stumbled on the same blue spherical shield as the bolt before, but they visibly dented it, creating cracks. Black had finished whatever he was doing and several man-sized gargoyles formed from the stone and flew towards Morilec, who spun and prepared another salvo.

Not to be deterred by the newly created pursuers, he hurled the swords, causing Black to shield himself rather than add another type of offence to the gargoyles. Despite their frightening demeanour, the gargoyles didn't seem to be very effective. Morilec easily fended them off with only his arcane-coated fists.

But he now had no way to actually attack Black, who now walked away from the small mountain of swords that had been thrown. He hurled red bolts that seemed to home in on Morilec, whose movements had become slightly frantic meanwhile.

Suddenly, though, Jaune's possessed body tightly gripped one of the gargoyle's heads, infusing arcane bolts directly into it, destabilizing the whole thing until it exploded into a great shower of stone.

"BANG!" Morilec flew out of the dust cloud, thrown by the explosion. Black was ready for him, sending a gigantic fireball to greet him. Morilec tilted his palms upwards and shot out several bolts into the sky in quick succession, slamming himself harshly into the ground to avoid getting burnt to a crisp. The thud he made as he landed was not reassuring.

But the smirk and the extended hand thrown Black's way certainly was. Rolling to the side to avoid a red bolt, he somehow managed to cast sword return on all of the swords lying just behind Black at once. Swords flew towards Black's back at frightening speed hilt first, smashing into him and sending the wizard sprawling towards Morilec. In a reverse of the previous situation, he was readily waiting for Black with another sword pointed at his quickly approaching body.

Black disappeared with a very loud crack to completely skip past Morilec, and appeared dozens of feet behind him. His momentum had not dissipated even with the teleportation, however, and Black had to manually stop himself with some acceleration-slowing spell. Arresto something.

Before the wizard could gain any sort of reprieve, several arcane bolts struck his position, completely obliterating the blue shield and forcing Black to erect another one.

A pause ensued in which Jaune wondered why Black had been hit by the swords in the first place. He should have at least one sensing skill, right? He sensed around the battlefield frantically with the minor access to dimensional comprehension he still had.

"Well, you certainly don't fight like a sixteen-year-old." Black commented, breathing rather harshly.

Jaune meanwhile found the anomaly. The swords that had struck Black were slowly transforming behind Morilec.

"You, certainly d-" Morilec started a retort before being interrupted.

"Behind you!" Jaune shouted at his body as the swords finished their transformation into several large black dogs and pounced onto his body.

Morilec wasn't able to turn around in time and was suddenly held in place by dogs biting down on every one of his limbs. The sound of flesh tearing and growls resounded as Black smirked. "Too naïve."

The man needed Jaune alive, but seemed to be forgetting that as he charged what looked like a localized tornado of wind above his head. With a flick of his wand, the rampaging air was sent towards Morilec, who despite the situation and Jaune's screaming in his ear like a little girl, smirked once again.

The dogs biting down on him suddenly started distorting, seemingly liquefying and being absorbed into the skin of their prisoner. The process was fast, allowing Morilec to clap his hands together with a resounding "Ha!" before the wind was able to reach him.

A small black ball the size of a fingernail appeared in front of Morilec's joined hands. Jaune felt woozy from the roller-coaster of emotions he was being subjected to, but was still able to feel the tyrannical hunger from the small ball as it floated there.

Was that inventory?

With a great roar, the tornado with a diameter of a dozen feet noisily crashed into the space in front of the pitch-black ball, before compressing to the same size, if not smaller than the ball and being completely absorbed by it in less than a second.

Black stared at Morilec, horrified. Morilec grinned back, a small amount of blood leaking out of his mouth, running down his chin and falling to the floor. The splash the droplet made as it impacted was not as much heard, as it was felt.

"Thanks for that. I don't have anything in my arsenal that's big enough to decisively beat you." The grin extended further. "It was pretty dumb of you to raise a barrier that hinders any spatial travel outside of it," Morilec added, eyeballing the hexagonal barrier that surrounded the rooftop.

Black started waving his wand rapidly, muttering to himself. Morilec simply unleashed the storm back from the small black ball, along with several gallons of blood and all the sharp objects in Jaune's inventory. Ah, so that's where the dogs had disappeared to.

The tornado had in its five seconds of absence turned into a hurricane, with Morilec at the eye of the storm.

Jaune wasn't able to see through the arcane-enforced wind to see what was happening to Black and his slippery grasp of dimensional comprehension eluded him due to the sheer amount of feelings running through him. He simply floated beside Morilec as the storm raged around them, swords and purple arcane magic encompassing their position completely.

The blood that was in the hurricane shed droplets onto his body, turning his clothing and face red. Jaune idly wondered if it the blood belonged to the dogs or Black.

His body didn't have the mana reserves to feed the storm with arcane magic for any long period of time, even if with superior magic control Morilec had wrung out three times the spells Jaune was able to. Morilec had to sluggishly dodge a few flying swords as the hurricane destabilized and finally settled. Jaune felt elated as he found Black's corpse lying against the battlement, several swords sticking out of it.

"Serves the fucker right," he muttered, to which Morilec chuckled. The demon dragged himself to the broken corpse that slightly resembled a hedgehog and started looting it, getting even more blood on Jaune's hands.

He retrieved a ring from one of Black's remaining fingers and an amulet with the shape of a sun from his neck. "The barrier is dissipating, guards will be here soon," Morilec commented, causing Jaune to panic slightly and look around the scene of the murder.

Blood literally everywhere, weapons stuck in the destroyed floor, an almost unrecognisable corpse that looked like it had been thrown around in a magical hurricane and filled with swords. Which to be fair, it had been.

"Well my part of the deal is finished," Morilec said faintly, causing Jaune's heart to stutter before he found something to retort with.

"Not going to be able to uphold my part of the deal dead, and they will execute me for this. How about you get me somewhere safe first?" he suggested.

It was quite amazing that he had been able to come up with an argument at all considering the fight was still flashing through his head repeatedly. Morilec had only used Jaune's skills and while Black had been much weaker than expected, it was still quite a feat to beat the man who in hindsight probably focused more on non-combat areas of magic.

On the other hand, Morilec hadn't won because of Jaune's skills, despite his ridiculous grasp on them. He had won because, from the start of the fight to the end, he had dictated every single action taken by both sides. From the first arcane bolt to the provocation to use a large scale spell that ended the fight.

This sort of battle experience was not something that Jaune could replicate. It seemed that he had made a deal with a supremely intelligent being/demon/god/whatever Morilec was.

"Ok, I'll get you out of here," Morilec said.

"Thank yo-" Jaune started speaking, but his words got stuck in his throat as he focused again on his body. His body which, after gulping down a healing potion, had climbed onto the smooth battlements and jumped off the tower.

Jaune barely had the time to scream before he was dragged along by the chain connecting them. If he was still in possession of his body he was sure that he would have vomited blood.

You say you'll get me out of here, but you just jump off the building. Bro you're too shameless. Jaune was relieved of his need to pray for an easy passage into the afterlife by Morilec, who laughed and pulled out a broom from somewhere. He straddled it and started flying on the shabby looking thing.

Jaune wished he could lose consciousness again like the last two times he'd dealt with Morilec. Then he wouldn't have to deal with this crap.

Someone else doing the stuff Morilec did would be enlightening in many ways, especially battle tactics. In some ways it'd even be amusing. But the problem Jaune had with the demon's actions was the fact that he was completing those actions while possessing his! body.

He chose to, for now, ignore that a broom, especially such an ugly one, was capable of fligh. Jaune just sullenly floated behind Morilec as he flew above the clouds in the direction of a harbour.

"What is the symbol you want me to use? You've never actually told or shown me." Jaune sighed. Despite all things, he was still grateful for Morilec, who was acting in a way that indicated he would hold his part of the deal.

"I'll get you on a boat and engrave it onto your clothes," was the answer, "but basically it's just a triangle with a circle inside of it bisected by a line."

That was good. It wasn't anything that would come over as rude or indicative of a criminal to others. Symbols were, after all, mostly used by immoral organizations like gangs, nobles, and kingdoms. Though some of those preferred the term 'heraldry.'

If Morilec's symbol had turned out to be any variation of a mandala, the representation of the now-defunct assassin supremacy terrorist organization, Jaune would have had some problems.

"Now that you mention it, your pupils in the shared dreamscape world were also shaped like some geometrical shapes," Jaune remembered. How far did someone want to go to change his own eyes? Or was he born that way? Well, maybe not born. Summoned from the darkest pits of hell that way?

They flew for a bit more before Morilec landed a few miles outside of the actual harbour town. He pulled clothes out of Jaune's inventory and Black's ring. Huh, so the man had been in possession of a spatial ring. Expensive and something useful to study. Who knew, maybe he could replicate such a feat in the future.

As Morilec started his engraving, Jaune was transfixed by the sea. It was his first time seeing it. It was quite beautiful; he only wished he could smell it.

"Done."

Jaune turned around to see Morilec don Jaune's usual style of greaves, leather pants, chainmail and vest. He didn't see the symbol.

Morilec threw on a purple robe that covered him down to his feet and pulled up the hood that hid his eyes. The bisected triangle with a circle inside of it was on the back of the robe, and on the hood above Jaune's forehead, the symbol being placed directly at the inner eye. It also had the function of casting the upper part of his face impenetrable shadows.

"It's not really a big town. You sure they will have a ship that goes towards Vale?" Jaune asked.

He received a shrug as Morilec lifted off his feet with arcane bolts. "We'll just have to go and see now, won't we."

-/-

There was actually a ship headed for Vale, with a stop in Menagerie, and Morilec had gotten Jaune on it before relinquishing control of his body back to him.

Jaune was thankful, but still pretty happy that he finally got himself rid of the probably-devil. He had never found out what exactly Morilec had been, but a semi-friendly devil was the likeliest possibility.

As a last gift, so to say, Morilec had used his flight to get onto the ship, getting awestruck expressions from the sailors. Jaune pissed off to his cabin before he ruined the first impression.

Morilec had reminded him of their deal, not that Jaune had forgotten. Bring renown to the symbol, recommended path to take, guild. This didn't mean he shouldn't try to gain renown on a personal level. Doing that would actually make creating a guild easier.

The best way to do so was, well, to act seriously and worthy of respect. The symbol was basically covering his whole body, so renown for him would lead to renown for it. Most heroes created symbols to be identified with, this would simply be his. He summoned an arcane bolt and tried to form it into the symbol. It failed, but he had enough time. The journey would take a few months.

He noticed a slight increase of his control regardless. Jaune was completely focused on examining the spell for the next few minutes. Mana cost had lessened, more maneuverable, easier to shape, and the explosion he shot out of the small window seemed more impressive than usual.

There really was one reason why something like this could have occurred. Morilec using his body and skills had somehow increased his own grasp of these.

Dimensional comprehension had improved as well, range and quality. Pest control, rend, stealth, and shared dreamscape received no improvements, which made sense as Morilec had not used them in the fight. Inventory though, brought with itself the largest surprise. The skill had been used in a frankly ridiculous way, shedding its boundary of only being accessible from Jaune's hands, to being pushed out as an actual entity, and absorbing not objects, but wind.

And then, as a cherry on top, he had gained two levels.

Rightfully speaking Black should have been worth more than just two, especially with Jaune's low level. But the simple fact of the matter was that it wasn't Jaune who had killed the man. It had been Morilec. He'd just used Jaune's body as a conduit for the act.

The fact that he may gain experience fighting Black had honestly completely slipped his mind. He had been more excited to see how someone else used his skills. He did think that overall the improvement of his skills was worth more than the levels themselves.

Level 24. One more and he would finally get to the meat of dimensionalism, intangibility, teleportation, and so much more. Level 25 was, after all, one-fourth of the journey to level 100, and that had meaning.

He wondered what skill Morilec would have chosen to supplement either his utility or fighting strength. Jaune sighed and wondered if he would ever be able to fight like that. It was possible with training, and he would gain an even larger repertoire of spells in the near future. Hell, he already had something that Morilec didn't. He may still be a gnat in the overall comparison, but Morilec didn't seem to know how to wield a sword.

The fact that the swords had only been thrown and the rend skill not used at all had not gone unnoticed by him.

"I bet I could beat him if I got him into close range." It was unlikely, but his ego needed the boost. Even if it came from a lie and he also needed to stop thinking about the demon. Their interaction was over now. He had other things that needed his attention. Like the fact that he was getting seasick.

A bit queasy, and he was on a ship, so it probably was seasickness, something he had forgotten to take into account. The feeling was novel but not entirely unenjoyable. He wondered how bad it would feel if he didn't have so many points in vitality and that brought him to the question of where to put the two points that he had from the level up.

Well that and searching Black's inventory could be done later. The fact that it was still light out was calling him to enjoy the scenery of the sea while he was still able to see it.