Revenge of the King 33

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Chapter 33

Alessa

“Do we even need to question him? It’s pretty obvious why they came after us,” I said.

“Always cover your tracks. You never know when you might find out something you didn’t expect,” Oberon said.

“Money! The guard told us about the gold coins he got from you! I swear that’s all! Please have mercy,” the bandit yelled through the pain of his leg.

Oberon reached down and grabbed the man’s shoulder in an almost friendly way. “Who do you work for?”

“Bruce! He hired us to rob anyone heading this way! Please don’t kill me!”

“Kill you! I’m hurt that you would claim that a gentle person such as myself would do such a barbaric thing,” Oberon said placing a hand where his heart would be. I glanced a few meters from him at the bodies that had been sliced clean through. I suppose that he wasn’t barbaric in his clean method of murder.

“You’re right! I must have seen an illusion. You would never kill anyone,” the bandit said. I could almost smell the fear from him. Taking another sniff, I realized I actually could smell a scent from him. Helena came up next to me.

“Your level must have gotten high enough. That’s right vampires of the noble rank and higher can smell fear,” she explained. 

“Another useful trait for tracking prey,” I replied. 

“Yes.” She turned back to scene in front of us. 

“Bruce you say. That’s convenient and served my purpose to leave in the way we did. Take us to his hideout and you get to live,” Oberon said.

“No…NO! They would kill me!” the man said shaking his head desperately while waving his hands in front of him. 

“Its either we kill you now or you lead us where we want to go and hope for that slim chance to survive. Surely, there is a wench somewhere excepting you back in her arms?” 

“Linda…” the man said forlornly. “Alright! Swear that you’ll let me live if I take you to them.”

I could hear the grin in Oberon’s voice as he replied. “Of course. I am a believer of a mutual exchange.”

Oberon picked the man up and threw him in the back of the wagon. He clapped his hands like he’d just finished a chore. As he walked back around and climbed up on the wagon’s driver seat, I couldn’t help asking what was going on. “Why do we need to go to such lengths? Why not just kill him?” The man in the back shifted nervously. 

“This actually helps us. The last request was to eliminate a mercenary turned bandit lord. A one Mister Bruce. That’s why I gave the gate guard so much money. I knew someone like that would have connections,” he explained. He cracked the reigns and we started moving. “Really, I thought we would have to go all the way to this Huz Town. Thankfully, we got a gift.” 

“I see.” 

Oberon 

We traveled through the night. With the directions from the captive, we were able to make good time. This Bruce fellow had been racking in so much gold from his raids that he’d set up a village for his people. It would be a tragedy, but we needed to make a name for ourselves, just in case it ever comes in handy. Plus, killing those bandits was actually worth a good amount of EXP. Destroying a whole village should be worth a level. 

We were about twenty minutes out from where the bandit said the base was, when Helena raised her hand. I pulled the reigns bring the wagon to a stop. She stood on the edge of the seat sniffing the air in various directions. After about thirty seconds of this, she burst into shadows that streaked off to one side of the trail. 

I turned my gaze after her. There were hundreds of signs of life in the forest, making it hard for me to distinguish between any humanoids that might have been on look out. I was getting better at telling the difference but it would take me some more time. 

“Something you forget to tell us?” I asked peeking into the canvas of the wagon. 

“Must have slipped my mind with, you know, being terrified and all,” the bandit said not meeting my gaze. 

“Sure,” I said turning back around.

A minute later, Helena reappeared walking out of the forest. She was dragging a body behind her. She wasn’t being very gentle either. “A group of four were watching the road. They’re all dead now, but I felt it would be good to have Alessa feed on this one for the extra boost before the fight.” 

“Good idea. Ted can summon a minion afterwards,” I said, nodding.

“But my undead are weak,” Ted said shaking his head. 

“And they’re not going to get better if you don’t work on them.”

Alessa took the guy from Helena and bite down on his neck. He jerked but didn’t awaken. She didn’t have to hold back and drained him in a matter of minutes. I personally wanted to know where vampires stored all the blood. She dropped the body to the ground while licking her lips. “You turn,” she said gesturing to Ted. 

“Thank you… I think,” Ted said with a shudder. 

I walked next to him as he kneeled next to the body. I wanted to see how he learned to create undead. If my version of the magic was too different it would be hard to teach him. Plus, I knew deep in my dusty memories that an archmagi can learn from an apperantice that sees the world just a little differently. 

Ted pulled a knife out and made a cut on his thumb. He began tracing lines along the corpse and drawing magic runes on various places, such as the heart, lungs, and brain. I nodded as I read the runes. They were all much to what I expected. 

Movement, fine control, thought control, and more. However, there was a lot of extra that would actually hinder him. Most likely, he’d pulled this off one of the undead. Many of the runes pertained to Avrenim which would make the undead next to useless with how much mana they required.

I pointed the over two dozen runes out. “You don’t need these. They draw mana from the body to strength it during a ritual Avrenim uses to test his followers. This corpse is so low level that its going to drain it dry and the other runes will suffer.”

“Really! I knew some of them were redundant but without proper rune knowledge I was swinging in the dark. It also explained why the higher-level monsters I used worked so much better while the bodies all used the same rune pattern.” 

“A matter of perspective. I should thank you. Some of these runes are a close secret to the god that created them. He would never let me observe them so closely without forcing me to pay a price.” 

“I am a self-taught mage. My father made me go to the academy as a merchant.”

“Then, I am impressed even more by your memory.”

“No. I’m the one impressed. No one has had proper knowledge of runes in… two hundred years or so.” He threw a thumb towards Helena. “Long lived races don’t dare share their knowledge and the Elves are frankly too lazy to share.” 

“Well that’s just selfish,” I said looking over to Helena. 

“Shove it,” she threw back. 

Ted and I burst out laughing. Turning back to the corpse, we got back to work making notes of various ways to use the magic. As we talked I found that Ted would have made a great and frankly, a powerful mage. His parents really messed up by sending him to a merchant school. Alas, that was the benefit of hindsight. 

“Alright. We’ve removed all the unnecessary runes. This should be a rather decent undead if you can give it enough mana at the beginning to fuel all the starting processes. A brain is a far from simple thing,” I said stepping back. 

“I got this,” Ted said with a determined expression. He moved to the head of the corpse and placed his hands over it. He began chanting, the light bending slightly from the nature of the spell. The tell-tale miasma of undeath started rising around us and I pulled in a deep breath. Somehow, with skin, the action felt like it had more meaning. 

Green light flowed around Ted and the corpse. The body started twitching as it rushed in. As the spell reached the peak, the eyes opened with green light pouring out of them. Ted said the last word of the spell and with a pulse the last of the energy rushed into the body. He stepped back and waited. A few seconds went by before the corpse jerked. 

With jerky movements that slowly grew smoother, the corpse struggled to its feet. Once it stood up fully, it turned to Ted and bowed its head. I worried for a second that it was going to fall over, but it fixed itself. 

“What level do you think the bandit was?” I asked Helena. 

“Mid-thirties. I doubt he was any higher than forty-five,” she replied offhandedly. 

“So, if we factor in loss. Then I’d put it around level ten,” I said looking the zombie over. 

“Close. Real close. He’s actually level twelve,” Ted said after he placed a hand on the zombie’s arm to check its status. 

“Alright. Rest break is over. Time to slaughter… I mean… Actually, no. Slaughter works,” I said jumping back on the wagon. Ted ordered the zombie onboard and it struggled for a good minute before Alessa just tossed the thing into the back. Unfortunately for the bandit back there, the zombie’s head landed right in his lap and he started to scream bloody murder. I told Jack to cover his mouth and he did so.