Blood in the Deser

by Sophia Schmidt

  "How much do you want?" He asked.

  "You say it like I'm extorting money. Before being a healer, I was a hunter. And the first thing I learned, is that hunters don't do favours, we cut deals. Here is my offer. I do the job, and if I succeed, I get a safe house for my family.

  I don't care if it's because the civil war breaks out, we get invaded or there's a sudden drought. The second something goes wrong; I want them safe and out of the Kingdom. Deal?"

  Lith extended his hand and Velagros shook it without hesitation. For a moment, Velagros had feared the kid would ask for a ridiculous sum of money or an artifact. Instead he had demanded something simple and reasonable, albeit expensive, leaving no space for bargain.

  "Deal. And what if you fail?"

  "If that happens, we both would have just lost a few hours of our time." Lith shrugged.

  "As long I can use Invigoration, there's nothing I can't diagnose. Curing it, thought, is another matter entirely. If the plague is something beyond my comprehension, not even true magic can help me." ¨C

  "It will take more than a few hours." Velagros explained.

  "Warp Steps are blocked in all the region. First, I need to have an exit point set up for us in the vicinity. Then we'll reach the quarantine borders by flying. It will take a couple of hours to arrange everything."

  "I thought we were moving right away." Lith frowned.

  "In this case, I want our deal recorded in writing and signed up. Words may fly away, but writings remain."

  "Not a problem. Use the time to settle your business or to arrange your baggage before leaving. Depending on how it goes, we may be stuck in Kandria until tomorrow. And remember, you are not allowed to speak about the mission with anyone."

  Lith walked away, ignoring the last trivial order. He moved quickly toward his room, his aim to catch as much sleep as possible before departing. Being in his weakened state while inside the academy was one thing.

  It was full of Professors bound to help him, and an hospital that could heal him as long he had a single breath of life. But on the outside, he didn't care if he was with the Queen's corps or the Queen herself, he would always act as he were alone.

  "I'm so happy you took this mission." Solus mind-smiled. "So many people are suffering, we should help if we can."

  "And that's where you are wrong." Lith objected. "If you volunteer every time someone is in danger, you'll live your life for the sake of others. Give an inch, and they will take a mile. The demand of payment served multiple purposes.

  First, if I succeed the vision should be foiled, at least the part that I really care for. Second, it showed them I'm no puppet. Only soldiers obey without questions, and only idiots and saints work for free when they could get the right compensation." ¨C

  Solus pondered on those words. Once she would have dismissed them as Lith being cold and cynical, now she wasn't so sure anymore.

  After Lith left the Headmaster's office, Velagros started arranging the last details for the mission, while Linjos couldn't stop sighing.

  "Is this the society we really want to create? A world where heroes are actually cold-blooded killers? At this point, I don't care what the Queen will do with me. I find way more terrifying the idea that if he succeeds, such a person will become a role model.

  I hoped that nurture could beat nature, but it seems I was wrong once again."

  Captain Velagros laughed out loud at those words.

  "Dear Headmaster, I don't know where you lived until now, but when I attended the Water Griffon, it was a nightmare. The pranks, the competition, the stress. So, what nurture are you talking about? Do you coddle the students here? Take them by the hand?"

  Linjos shook his head, blushing a little from embarrassment.

  "I've seen a lot of people like that. They usually end up in jail, join the military or become successful merchants. It depends on how much they are able to restrain themselves, usually picking jobs where they can legally ruin the lives of others or use violence.

  Think about the adventurers or speculators. Most of them are like him, yet everyone dreams of becoming rich with quests or being acclaimed as a self-made man. Have you ever stopped considering how much death is hidden behind their fortunes?

  If he does his job and doesn't go on a murder spree, then he is fine by me."

  ***

  Not even a minute after Lith was summoned in Linjos' office with the academy's public announcement system, a call was made from within the White Griffon to Archmage Lukart.

  "Lukart, you idiot, the Queen has asked for our help."

  "Who cares?" Lukart didn't like being insulted, but decided to let it slide. Having a traitor in the academy was worth enduring a foul mouth.

  "I already made sure that Manohar got the ingredient he was looking for, so he is out of the picture. According to Hatorne, there's no one else that can understand the 'plague's' nature. Despite the accident in the lab, everything is going smoothly."

  "Smoothly?" The voice sneered. "Triggering a quarantine and alerting the whole world about your experiments, is far from what would I call 'going smoothly'. Also, Linjos has just summoned Lith from Lutia, so you'd better take action fast."

  "Who cares about a kid? He can die in a fire, together with his filthy little village."

  The voice laughed out loud.

  "If you keep underestimating the same 'kid' that saved Distar's daughter from your prized poison, taking away the only silver lining in your utter fiasco of an assassination attempt, and later stopped the spatial breakdown with no casualties despite my sabotage, then you are a bigger fool than I thought."

  Lukart snarled, both failures still haunted his dreams. The first was supposed the take out Marchioness Distar's whole family, but because of Ainz's presence they had only managed to injure the daughter.

  The second had gone even worse. The death of the students would have caused an uproar, setting the foundations for the next step, leading to Linjos' execution and force the new noble's faction to either drop all their claims or start a civil war.

  Both scenarios were perfect, since in Lukart's mind they would end up the same way. His faction would win, and the commoners would have to submit or die.

  "Can't you just turn off the protective system and kill him?"

  "You really are stupid. After the sabotage, our rings have been stripped of several functions. Now only the Headmaster himself can interact with the academy's control system."

  "You really are useless!" Lukart slammed his fist against the table, bleeding a little.

  "Useless?" The voice gasped in outrage.

  "I arranged my lessons so they would be much easier for your sons. I made sure that the Clackers would haunt the location where the most promising commoners would appear. I deactivated all the protections, so that a class full of students could be decimated.

  If I am useless, then what about your precious offspring, that keeps getting outclassed by commoners? I'm starting to think this is all a big mistake. Maybe we should just accept the change."

  "Never!" Incapable of bearing any more of that nonsense, Archmage Lukart hung up the call.

  Chapter 136 Traitor 2

  A little longer than two hours later, Lith was woken up by a clerk, prompting him to go back to the Headmaster's office. The sleep hadn't been much, but enough to take some of the edge off his mind and partially reset Invigoration's effectiveness.

  Velagros welcomed him, giving Lith a copy of their agreement and keeping the other for himself, before Warping out the office.

  They materialized on a grassland, in the middle of nowhere. Lith looked around, instinctively searching for familiar landmarks, finding none. The only structure in sight was a circle, formed by rectangular wooden rods, from which they had emerged from.

  The rods were about 2 meters (6.5 feet) high and 3 centimetres (1.8 inches) thick.

  Each of the four sides was engraved with bright red runes, pulsing with power, that went opaque as soon as the portal closed behind t
hem. Waiting for them there was a group of three women and two men, all dressed like Velagros, and with various weapons dangling from their belts or backs.

  They immediately started to disassemble the circle, storing the rods in dimensional amulets.

  "Is it your first time seeing a temporary waypoint?" Lith nodded in response.

  "Crossing hundreds of kilometres at once would be impossible without such a device. By knowing its frequency, I can use it to lock into these coordinates, while the others pumped their own mana in it, allowing for us to get here with minimum mana consumption on my side."

  "Solus, how strong are these guys?"

  "Each one of them has a blue mana core, so in theory they are stronger mages than you. Also, everything they have is heavily enchanted. Compared to their clothes, your uniform is like a firefly besides a torch. Invisible." ¨C

  They were all of different ages and builds, the youngest one seemed to be barely over twenty years old while the oldest seemed to be nearing the fifties.

  "Our destination is in that direction." Velagros pointed towards south-southeast.

  "It shouldn't take much by flight. Half an hour, tops."

  At his command, everyone cast his personal flight spell, advancing with a wedge formation with Lith as its center. He used that opportunity to activate Life Vision, discovering that despite they had superior cores, their magical forces weren't much stronger than his own.

  On the contrary, Lith's physical prowess outclassed everyone else's, even without using fusion magic.

  After a few minutes, though, their spells disappeared abruptly, sending them into a free fall to the ground. Luckily, they were flying low, around 5 meters (16') high, to avoid being visible from a distance, so they ended up tumbling on the ground instead of splattering.

  The corps' protective vests absorbed much of the impact, but Lith wasn't wearing one, and his uniform's weak point was offering no protection against blunt impacts. He made the earth under him soft and elastic, bouncing and rolling to disperse the momentum.

  "Ambush!" Captain Velagros roared, while he and his men assumed a defensive position.

  Lith and Solus activated Life Vision and mana sense respectively, discovering that they had stepped into a very complex array.

  "This is clearly a high-level Warden formation." Solus observed. "Besides disrupting air magic, making flight impossible, somehow it also compresses space. I can't access to our dimensional pocket, and I bet that even Blinking or using Warp Steps is impossible." ¨C

  Cursing his bad luck, Lith alerted Velagros of Solus' discovery, while readying both fake and true spells. He would do everything to keep his secret, but dying for it was not an option.

  "Cr*p! The kid is right." Velagros had just tried to Warp them away, but to no avail. "Fall back, we are sitting ducks here!"

  Velagros had no idea how Lith had assessed the situation so fast, but that wasn't the time for questions. With no movement spells, escaping the encirclement would be difficult, and with their dimensional amulets sealed, their resources had been dramatically reduced.

  "How deep are we into the array?" He asked noticing how Lith's eyes were burning with mana.

  "Very. They probably waited for us to be in the middle before activating it."

  "Makes sense." Velagros nodded. "I would have done the same."

  Any direction was good as another, they were still in the open, with no natural formation offering them cover or protection. Velagros picked one at random, making his team move fast but keeping the formation, to not leave blind spots.

  To his surprise, despite being the shortest, Lith had no problem keeping the pace of their jog.

  "Since this was a last-minute operation, the only possible explanation is that there is a spy in the Royal palace. Otherwise it would be impossible to set up a trap like this on such a short notice." ¨C

  Velagros inwardly swore to find the traitor and give him a slow and painful death.

  Suddenly, several Gates opened in the air, from each emerged a person wearing a guerrilla combat suit, that unleashed a tier five spell on the corps unit. The air filled with countless spheres of fire the size of a house, while the ground all around them exploded in razor-sharp rock shrapnel.

  Lith realized that the Queen's corps unit was doomed. The aggressors could turn on and off the jamming field at will. Wiping them out with hit and run tactics was just a matter of time.

  He quickly activated all the barriers he had ready, only around himself, opening at the same time a deep hole in the ground right under his feet with earth magic.

  The assault continued for several seconds. The earth trembled like there was an earthquake, forcing Lith to keep digging away. The shockwaves from the surface only grew in intensity over time.

  "Dammit, and to think that Yurial always nag about useless a Warden is! I can't believe a whole unit of the Queen's corps was done so easily." ¨C

  One after the other, the life forces of the six people assigned to escort him faded away. Lith was shocked and angry, there was nothing he could have done to save them, even by revealing his status of Awakened one.

  The attack had been too quick and well-coordinated to open a hole big enough for everyone. And even if somehow he managed to, the enemies would have noticed, using tier five earth magic to squash them like bugs.

  It wasn't the first time that Lith had been forced to retreat, but it was the first time that such an act left him with a bitter aftertaste. He had never experienced such helplessness before, making him aware that he could only cower ad hide, like a rat.

  A few hundred meters to the east, the leader of the Talons was admiring the result of their work through a surveillance mirror. Once again, no survivors, no witnesses, no proofs. Farion Negal and his men were the best at their job, and they were proud of it.

  The Talons was a mercenary unit, whose members were once part of the elite troops from the armies of all the three great Countries, but had been dishonourably discharged for violating the warrior code, by either pillaging, raping and/or murdering in the territories that they were supposed to protect.

  A few of them were actually wanted criminals, but the Talons knew how to take care of their own. Offering their services to the highest bidder, they lived a life of luxury, being the living proof that their countries had made a big mistake by discarding them like trash.

  "Captain Seephit, check for survivors." Negal ordered to their Warden.

  "Come on, General! There's nothing left but a crater. It's a waste of my considerable skill!" Despite not being part of the army anymore, each one had a military rank and a status in the unit, according to his/her talent.

  "Do it anyway. We have a reputation to uphold."

  "Yes, sir!" Seephit was the third in command, yet sometimes he forgot how anal retentive the General was.

  Seephit disabled his arrays, allowing him to open a Warp Steps right above the crater and then cast the Life Detection Array, a Warden spell that in many aspects resembled Lith's Life Vision.

  From underground, Lith was still able to see the magic portal opening with Life Vision.

  "What the heck are they doing now? In their place I would either wipe down any trace of the massacre or check for survivors, if not both." ¨C

  "Good gods, General, you are right for once! We have a rat!"

  Thanks to his heightened senses, Lith was able to hear the Warden's snarky remark, and react accordingly.

  In all his years as a soldier first and a mercenary later, Seephit had never seen anyone moving so fast. Charged to the brim with air fusion, it took Lith but a second to get out of his hiding spot, cross the Warp Step, and rip Seephit's head from the neck with his bare hands.

  Chapter 137 Despair

  Although his entry appeared overbearing and dramatic to the members of the Talons, Lith was actually quite desperate, and so was Solus. The moment the snarky man had revealed his presence, he knew that he had just went from the frying pan into a volcano.

  Whoever those g
uys were, they had mastered the discipline of spatial magic to the point of making it an art form. Lith could only run or fly, but against an opponent that cold bend space, Blink or Switch it was useless.

  His only option was to get in and kill them so fast they would not even understand what had hit them. It was time to test the limits of his new body.

  "First thing first, we need to kill the Warden." Lith thought, not knowing it was his intended target's head that he was throwing to the nearest enemy, making both heads burst open for the violence of the impact.

  "Our only hope is to find him before he casts another array, otherwise we are screwed. The only silver lining is that Warden's spells are slow a*s."

  "You focus on the killing." Solus replied.

  "I'll collect as much intel as I can about our opponents. If I see the slightest hint of Warden magic, I'll tell you." ¨C

  Sadly, the Talons unit was comprised only by veterans, hence as soon Lith beheaded Seephit, it took them barely a second to recover and regroup. The one Lith had killed with an unconventional headbutt, was simply too close to dodge the projectile.

  Farion Negal, the General, instantly issued coded orders, that his men were ready to execute. The element of surprise was already lost, and Lith had yet to face nine more people.

  "Black two! Red three! White four!" Despite the target was just a kid, Negal employed an extremely aggressive tactic. His creed was that no matter the opponent, never underestimate, never relax, never talk until the kill was confirmed.

  The two most skilled melee expert would kill him, o worst case scenario, keep him busy while three mid range specialists would cover for them and stall enough time for the four long ranged spellcaster to put an end to the struggle.

  Cursing his bad luck for the umpteenth time since he was born back on Earth, Lith prepared to face his incoming enemies. First, he pushed his mana core to the limit, emitting a light cyan aura that enveloped the space around him with a mana so dense that the air started to crackle.