The Crimson Warlock

by Paulo Meireles Junior

  “Sir Hunter, you arrived earlier than we expected, our guildmaster wishes to speak with you, do you have time?” he asked me.

  “Sure, you guys need to calculate the feather prices right? I’ll meet your guildmaster in the meantime.”

  “Okay, if you’ll follow me please” he then got around the desk and went up the stairs, instead of curving to the right where the library was located, we went further down the hall and he knocked on the door at the end before opening it.

  The medium sized office was as messy as an office could be, there were parchments of various sizes scattered around the office and I could hardly see rabbit like ears behind a ton of books that lined the desk located at the center of the office.

  “Lady Yuna, sir Hunter is here as you requested” the rabbit like ears twitched before a young woman with violet hair and rabbit ears stood from her chair behind the desk, a smile plastered on her face. She looked quite young and was beautiful, perhaps in her twenties, she wore black robes fit of a witch and considering the state of her office, or her books, I think she was one.

  “Oh, please sit, sir Hunter” she pointed to a chair and murmured something, the books on the table suddenly began to levitate along with parchments and other objects, in the span of a few seconds all of the objects flew in various directions and as soon as the started it also ended, leaving the office neatly cleaned as all of the items found their respective places “sorry about the mess, it’s what happens when I procrastinate”.

  She then sat down and I took her offer sitting on one of the chairs opposite from her, since her desk was now clean, I could see her upper body, and again my attention was brought to her ears just as the clerk nodded and left the room closing the door behind him. The guildmaster seemed to understand as she talked.

  “Is this the first time you meet a beastkin?” she smiled, leaving me embarrassed “my mother is a human but my father is a rabbit-folk beastkin”. The majority of beastkin were basically humans that had animal like features such as a different physiognomy, which could be animal ears or sometimes fur. Some could also have fur in other parts of the body and even have a tail. Other then these specific features, they were basically human. There were also beastkin that didn’t looked like humans, but they weren’t great in numbers. Ignoring her rabbit like ears, Yuna looked like a human.

  “Forgive me, it’s the first time I’ve seen a beastkin, yes”.

  “No problem” she chuckled “I wanted to meet you, we received word from Luna, she informed us that we have an adventurer that can teleport. You can see my interest when she informed me that you would be heading in this direction, although I am surprised at how quickly you arrived here”.

  “Oh, I can use a spell called 『Improve』, that lets me travel faster than normal, it took me three days to get here from Elistera” I shrugged.

  “Interesting, you intrigue me. It must take a lot of mana to be able to teleport several times a day and use this other spell of yours”.

  “I do seem to have a lot of mana, yes” there was no point in lying.

  “I read your information, a clerk from Saurian recommended to test you in a rank higher than gold, would you be interested in completing a platinum rank quest so we can gauge if your rank can be upgraded?”

  “Yes, I would”.

  “Very well, I’m certain you’ve been informed that monsters are appearing more frequently than ever before around these parts, it all seemed to have started around the time that a village from Alfhram was decimated by monsters, but we found no traces to corroborate the theory… Anyway, we will be needing adventurers capable of handling them, if a worthy platinum quest comes across my desk, I’ll separate it for you… If you don’t mind me asking, will you be staying around here for long?”

  “I’ll be here for at least the next two weeks, I do need to buy supplies and look around, but if I need to get out of the city I can inform someone here so you can reach me if you need”.

  “Excellent! I look forward to working with you, sir Hunter”.

  “Ah, not big on formalities, James is fine”.

  “Very well, thanks James...” she then made a strange expression “I never even introduced myself, how rude, apologies. My name is Yuna Relington, please call me Yuna”.

  We then talked for a bit before I went downstairs to collect my reward from the quest, the total amount I got was thirteen gold, two gold for the feathers wasn’t much but at least it helped the market. I ended up collecting and selling a lot of feathers so somewhere someone would be happy.

  The next day was productive, I popped up in Saurian and Elistera to look for houses and found a few of various prices, the cheapest was one that had one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom located in Saurian and it costed twenty-five gold. Other houses ranged in price from thirty gold to one or two platinum, a Realtor told me that mansions ranged from three to six platinum, I had a long way to go if I wanted one so I could store my stuff and have room to practice magic spells. I then decided to just forgo on looking for houses for the moment and focus on my ranks with the guild or my mission. But I needed to buy better equipment.

  I had to show my 『Guild Information』 to even enter the noble district, but I ended up finding an armor shop in the noble district, in comparison with the commercial district, the nobles seem to be competitive as their mansions attracted attention, there was even a plaza near the biggest church I’ve ever seen, Mega even noted that there was a barrier which upon further inspection we found that it was impeding the use of transportation magic around the church; lots of soldiers were everywhere and people dressed neatly, women especially, walking while holding umbrellas to protected their skins from the sunlight. The shop seemed to cater for nobles or royal knights and I had to show my 『Guild Information』 again, this time just to enter the shop. Although apparently only gold, platinum and diamond adventurers could even buy from them.

  From the windows of the shop I could see parts of the royal castle in the distance and even though I would like to see it closely, I wouldn’t go out of my way to make my presence known to the royalty around here. His Majesty, the King seemed to run this kingdom really well, from what people say in the streets, the royal family are honorable people and with the wedding of the oldest prince coming soon, I was sure that interesting times were coming for this kingdom.

  The shop had a range of magical items that piqued my interest, but I was looking for something light that offered protection. The owner informed me that they had a mantle that her daughter made, when I looked at it, I was instantly sold. Not only the mantle had style but according to the owner, it was enchanted with a lot of spells. The mantle had a protection spell, which meant that it would never get dirty, it also had an impact absorption spell that reduced the damage that the user took, a size refitting spell so the mantle could auto adjust in size depending on how the user wanted. The other two spells were the most important, the elemental resistance spell that reduced about twenty per cent of all elemental magic damage and the reconstruction spell that auto-repaired the mantle if it was ever damaged in a fight, the user could utilize his or her mana so the process of repair would take less time or the mantle would pull mana out of the air to slowly auto repair itself.

  I almost had a heart attack when the owner informed me the price of the mantle, at thirty-two gold, this equipment was more expensive than a house in Saurian, nevertheless I bought it after teleporting to the guild and back to the shop so I could get my money. The mantle covered me from head to almost my ankle, it had a hood and long sleeves, the whole mantle was stylish, the outer parts of the mantle were blood red while the hood was white. I’m not gonna lie, that mantle made me look like an assassin from a video-game, which I found funny since the mantle itself wasn’t exactly stealthy.

  I talked with Mega at the end of the day and I informed him that I needed to take more quests to make up the amount of money I just spent. I knew I wouldn’t be spending a lot like I just did, but only the auto-repai
ring factor combined with elemental resist and impact absorption made the mantle the perfect equipment for me.

  In the end we decided to alternate days, I would spend one day at the city and the surrounding area looking for the dark aura and in the other I would be completing quests to earn a few more gold coins. According to the guildmaster, I was the only gold ranked adventurer at the capital so I wanted to take advantage of that and earn some good money, I also planned on selling whatever materials I could too because those thirty-two gold hurt my wallet.

  I spend most of my two weeks doing quests for the guild and looking for the source of the dark aura without much luck. I was sleeping soundly after a whole day of searching when someone woke me up at dawn by rapidly knocking on my bedroom door. I stumbled in the direction of the door and opened it, a frantic Yuna never even waited for me to invite her in, she just barged in as soon as she could.

  “We have a problem, there’s a Hydra on the border of Heryan and Largos, a group of adventurers, three silver, two gold and one platinum died while fighting the beast. The request comes from Largos and the royal family of Heryan reinforced it since the beast is swimming from one kingdom to the other and killing anyone that approaches”.

  I sat on the bed and reached for the water jar that was on top of the nightstand near the bed, poured some water on a glass and handed to Yuna, I then poured some for me and drank it.

  “Okay, and you want me to kill it?” I asked and yawned.

  “Yeah, if anything, I’m hoping you won’t die and instead teleport to safety if the monster proves to be too difficult”.

  “Alright, I’ll do it, how much is the reward?” I asked and reached for more water.

  “Three platinum coins” I spit water all over the floor. Damn, three platinum, what kind of beast is worth that amount of money?

  “Sorry, which rank is this beast?”

  “Platinum, close to Diamond if I had to say. I know this might be a strong beast, even for you, but we don’t really have other capable adventurers in the area and we can’t transport too many people” what did she mean by ‘transport’?

  “The problem is: the border is really far from here, it will take me a few days to get there”.

  “We can open up an emergency portal for you, it functions like a gate. The reason I recommended you was exactly because of the amount of mana you seem to have and because you can use 『Teleport』, this gate is a one way travel spell that we can use in emergency situations at the guild” so that’s what she was going on about, interesting...

  “Okay then, let me grab something to eat and I’ll head over to the guild” as soon as I said that, she bowed and mentioned that they would prepare the gate. She returned the empty glass of water and got out of the room.

  “Mega, what do you think of that?” I asked while looking at the ceiling.

  “There’s no reason for a Hydra to appear between Largos and Heryan, they like deep oceans, but we might as well help them, otherwise more people will die”.

  He then told me more about Hydras. Differently from Earth folklore, Hydras from this world didn’t grow two heads when you cut one of them, but they regenerated the severed head if the wound was not cauterized, which meant that I would need to cut all of its heads and use a strong fire spell to make sure those heads never grew again. Mega then reminded me that 『Firestorm』 would be very effective and destructive. I wasn’t about to lie to myself, I was having too much fun using destructive spells in a way that helped people. I wasn’t a fan of causing disorder, but these spells were dangerous and fun to use against monsters that only killed innocent people, they also made me look like a proper Warlock.

  I washed my face and put on my mantle before going down the stairs and in the direction of the kitchen, I summoned my map to look at the time and it was just after five in the morning. It was a good thing that this inn had people up so early. I couldn’t find Beth, I asked one of her helpers for something to eat before heading out of the building and in the direction of the guild.

  I opened the doors of the guild building and moved in the direction of the guildmaster that was talking with a clerk, on the ground in front of me a circle with a lot of strange symbols around it was drawn, if I had to guess, the circle was probably the spell that would teleport me to the location that I had to go. Not making the guildmaster wait, I carefully stepped around the symbols that looked like were made with chalk and went to her.

  “Yo, how are we doing this?” I asked and took a sip of my coffee in a disposable cup.

  “Hey, I was just talking about it with Luke” she gestured the young clerk near her and he nodded at me, his spiked dark hair making him look even younger “I’ve already informed the guild at Oetto and they have a carriage waiting for you there”.

  “No time like the present then, how does this gate of yours work?”

  “Hang on a minute” she and Luke went in the direction of the circle and stopped outside. They both raised their hands and recited incantations in another language, after a few minutes the symbols on the ground started glowing and suddenly they rearranged themselves, the inside of the circle also started glowing, I then saw a wooden gate slowly emerge from the ground. The spell literally summoned a gate “there you go, open the gate and step through it, good luck and don’t die”.

  I waved and stepped inside the circle, the moment I opened the gate I saw the inside of other building similar to this one, but clearly different. I stepped through the gate and as soon as I was on the other side, the gate then closed itself and slowly disappeared.

  I was definitely inside a guild but I couldn’t see anyone in the place, the inside of the building was similar to all of the guilds and this one was smaller than the one at the capital and bigger than the one from Elistera. I didn’t wasted time and exited the building since I apparently had people waiting for me outside.

  As I exited the guild a few people looked in my direction, I could identify the guild clerk amongst the soldiers from the empire. The most interesting part was looking around and finding a city akin to a Japanese town from the Tokugawa period, compared to the capital of Heryan, the city of Oetto had really unique houses and shops, as well as various trees and flowers everywhere. Lining the streets there were sakura trees and violet flowers in the middle of the road. Since the sun was barely out, it was kind of difficulty to see around and I would love to explore this city later. As my eyes certainly shined looking at its beauty, a soldier approached me.

  “Are you James Hunter?” he asked.

  “Yes, good morning, here is my info” I showed him my 『Guild Information』.

  “Very well, we will escort you to the beast’s location, we have a few soldiers camped just out of the monster’s reach in case we need to step in”.

  “That hopefully won’t be necessary”.

  “I hope so. Please get in the carriage” he motioned in the direction of the expensive looking carriage.

  I stepped inside and the soldier followed me, after a few seconds I felt the carriage start moving. The seats in the carriage were fit of royalty, really comfy. That felt awkward though, I wasn’t royalty and although I was here to resolve an issue, they didn’t need to pamper me with stuff like this.

  “You came highly recommended through the guild, normally we wouldn’t be desperate to complete a quest, but this monster threatens both Largos and Heryan and since the two nations have a strong alliance, we cannot let this beast destroy our territories and kill our people”.

  “When did the beast appeared?”

  “Five days ago, a group of high ranked adventurers were dispatched to kill the beast, one of which was a local hero, none of them survived, such a shame, they were quite good” I saw the soldier’s expression, his sorrow was clear to me, he obviously knew one of the adventurers who died.

  “What can you tell me about this beast? Hydras don’t really like shallow places, the beast’s behavior can help me determine what approach I’ll use”.

  “Well, it a
ppears that the monster is hyper aware of its surroundings, if I had to say something about it, I would wager that the monster looks like it’s guarding something, at least that’s what it seems”.

  Guarding something… Something felt wrong about this.

  The soldier then informed me of what they tried to do, since the monster was near a village, they had to evacuate a good part of the citizens from the place and they started a camp so soldiers from Largos were watching the beast from afar. They were intelligent enough to not approach the monster and instead only focused on keeping their people safe and watching the creature.

  As soon as we drew close to the camp I felt it. The dark aura was there, the same one from before, I had no idea how that malign aura worked but I immediately knew the Hydra was most likely a byproduct of whoever was behind the aura. That brought a smile to my face, whoever was the mastermind behind this was not going to be happy when I killed that beast.

  The carriage suddenly stopped just at the entrance of the camp and the soldier got out first before holding the door open for me. I got out and followed him, at the center of the camp there was a knight pointing at a few things on a map on top of a table, by his armor I could deduce that he was the leader of the soldiers around the camp, the knight was named Casper and he asked me what I planned to do with the beast since a full group of adventurers couldn’t kill it. I couldn’t see anything in the distance as I looked at the coast, so I asked about it and he informed me that the creature was most likely resting under the water. I then informed him to not get close because I would probably be using powerful spells to kill the creature, there was also a possibility of damaging the area around it, so I wanted them to be informed before I started fighting the Hydra.

  I messed my hair in awkwardness when Casper looked at me before weirdly wishing me good luck. He thinks I’m going to die… Oh well… Moving on then.