Chapter 124

“Back on Earth, we had this thing called a telescope that let us see stuff from far away. They came up with all sorts of stuff from it, microscopes used for medicine and science, binoculars used for hunting and by the military, even big-ass telescopes that took up whole rooms and were pointed at the sky so they could look at the stars,” Luke said.

“Sounds useful,” Zea said dryly. “Probably why we have them too. People with low perception sometimes use them.”

“Yeah? Good. I wonder what it would look like if I looked through one of them now.”

“I’m told that they don’t mix that well. I guess you see farther, but it gets really hard to see far enough away without something blocking your line of sight and it just being the equivalent to putting your nose to a wall and looking at it.”

“I can see that,” Luke said. “Still, might be nice to have one for you right now.”

They were up a tree together, about a thousand feet from where they’d left their shoes. Luke had picked Zea up after she’d untied hers, and literally jumped up into the nearest tree. They’d done their best squirrel imitations and leaped from branch to branch until they were a good distance away. With any luck, whatever scent trail the ants were following would end there.

The ants advanced slowly, at least by person speeds. He would have walked faster than they were moving, even before the system had made him superhuman. It was interesting to see that the stream did not much slow them down, either. The made some sort of living bridge with their own bodies, thousands and thousands of ants crawling all over each other to extend it until they reached the far end. The ones in the lead raced off to the shoes and a wave of them washed over the leather. A minute later, there was nothing left.

“Oh damn,” Luke said, squinting to see between the leaves. Every few seconds, one annoying branch would sway with the wind and flop directly across his line of sight. “I think I get why people are so much more worked up about ants here than they are back home.”

“They got to the shoes?” Zea asked.

“Yup. Completely devoured them.”

“Are they still coming?”

“Doesn’t look like it. They’re just kind of spreading out in every direction now. I think… maybe they’re still looking, but they lost the trail? We should be fine to circle wide around them.”

“Good thing you left that armor back at the inn, huh? You’d have lost your fancy new sabatons before you even got a chance to use them.”

Luke let out a heavy, dramatic sigh. “It seems I am destined to never know the benefits of fighting in armor.”

“You’re damn near level 40. I don’t think you much need it at this point. How much AP do you have again?”

“226, but I want to save it for the bloodline upgrade. Those skills are never cheap, but they’re generally pretty useful. If I’ve got AP leftover after, well… we’ll see.”

He needed a few of those points to upgrade [Leatherworking]twice for Zea’s surprise, and depending on what was left over, he thought it was about time to upgrade a few of his combat skills that had been stagnating. It probably wouldn’t hurt to round off strength with another 10 or 15 points either. His mace would handle that level of force.

“If I’m right about this, I should be able to get everything you need for ten gold, maybe a bit less. That’ll give us one attempt, but, ideally, I want [Mana Manipulation], [Mana Sight], and [Cadence]all up to rank 3 first. That would cost 90 AP though, so it’s not really reasonable.”

“I know a little bomb who begs to differ,” Luke said.

Zea grimaced and shook her head. “Once was enough for today.”

“You sure? I know where there’s a big cluster of ants right now that I could probably hit with a careful throw. It wouldn’t be seventy thousand of them, but it might get you three levels.” When he saw her hesitating, Luke added, “Plus it might help make sure they don’t follow us if we wipe out the ants chasing us.”

“Fine, damn it. Let me just make up something with [Ghost Script] so we can hold onto the good ones. Give me a few minutes.”

Luke did his best to procure anything and everything she asked for, which wasn’t much. One of the biggest benefits to Zea’s new skill was that she would write runes onto basically anything just by tracing them with her finger. It still had to follow whatever enigmatic rules regular runes did to form the enchantment, but that seemed to mostly mean being properly shaped and sized to hold everything.

“No twine this time?” he asked after cutting the wedges out of the block of wood for her.

“Don’t have any on me. It was for the long timer anyway. I put a whole length of runes down the twine to give us the time to run. This one is going to go off about ten seconds after I empower the runes, so be ready to throw it.”

“Gotcha. We should probably move somewhere else first. I don’t have a good angle on the main swarm from here.”

They circled around at ground level until they found a spot a quarter mile downstream. The ants were mostly spreading up and down the shore, though a significant portion had gone into the woods. “Looks like we’re not going to get as many this time,” he said. “Too spread out.”

“That’s a hell of a long throw. Are you sure you can make that?”

“The distance? No problem. Accurately? Eeehh, probably. My biggest concern is it landing before ten seconds is up.”

Zea shrugged and said, “It probably shouldn’t land at all. From this distance, I don’t think it’d be possible to avoid breaking the wood when it hits. Then the enchantment is ruined and there’s no boom. You ready?”

“Ready.”

“Here we go. Ten,” she said, handing it to him. “Nine, eight…”

Luke took a second to aim, then threw it so that it spun end over end through the air. “Seven, six, five,” they said together. The enchanted bomb whipped through the air, now halfway to its destination. “Four, three, two.”

It was coming down now, and Luke was almost sure he’d thrown it too soon, that it was going to hit the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces right before it would have otherwise blown. Just before he could say, “One,” it went off, and he got whammied with another ding blast.

“Good thing it went off early,” he said after he came out of it.

“Yeah. I might have underestimated how quickly the timing runes would burn out.”

[You have assisted in slaying 8,521 creatures between levels 1-3. 14,595 XP awarded.]

“Not as big as the first one,” Luke said. “But still, not bad at all.”

“Got 2 levels this time, just barely. Brings me up to 95 AP though, so mission accomplished. There won’t be any extra AP leftover for anything else.”

“If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to take that bloodline skill that lets me play with other skills.”

“That would be nice, and I wouldn’t mind if you got that one that lets you just create things out of nothing to go with it.”

“Maybe the one that lets me change stats around too.”

They chatted about the possibilities while they walked back, both trying to ignore that they were barefoot. For Luke, it was less of an issue. His stamina was almost twice as high as Zea’s, though she’d gotten plenty of practice in not having shoes throughout her adult life. They were in firm agreement to get new shoes back in Sicanti, and that they were unlikely to try the bomb trick again any time soon.

“Cobbler first, rituals supplies after,” Zea said. “And then I guess we should probably find a ritual site that’s outside the city. I don’t want anyone coming to check on the noise and getting freaked out.”

“We could probably get it all done tonight,” Luke said. “There’s still a few hours of daylight left.”

Zea shrugged. “We’ll see how the shopping goes.”

* * *

“There have been reported sightings of a dwifkin in the city, occasionally accompanied by a human man,” the mercenary said.

“Where?” Lath asked. He hated this part of the job. The waiting was just so tedious. It was much better to arrive at a location, have all the information already on hand, and find the perfect moment to strike. But the waiting was part of his profession. There really was only so much he could do to create an opening without risking exposure.

If the goal were to just kill someone, well, any fool could stick a knife between some ribs. To kill someone and make it look like an accident, or to do it in a way that left a deliberate message, took skill and patience. He prided himself on possessing both of those qualities in excess. Still, the talking and the reliance on others grated on him.

“Business district. We’re not sure where they’re staying yet, but we do know they went down to the harbor and started looking to buy passage across the ocean.”

Lath couldn’t begin to fathom why anyone would want to go to the east continent. It was a savage and brutal place, devoid of anything remotely resembling what he’d call real civilization. Even their cities were crude caricatures of Hestoc’s glory here. He supposed it was a simple matter of an apostate running away to a far-off land, foolishly expecting it would allow him to escape the gods.

They would never get that far, of course. “Did they find a ship willing to take them?”

“Some coin exchanged hands, yes. My men weren’t able to listen in on the conversation, but it seems a fair assumption to make,” the mercenary reported.

“I’ll send a pair of inquisitors around to arrest the captain. No one gets away with making deals with apostates.”

Especially not apostates who’d killed his apprentice.

This wasn’t going to be an assassination. It would be an execution. From what he’d learned of Myla’s attempts at capturing the apostates, her mistake had been just that. She’d tried to capture them, to take them in for questioning so she could figure out how far the rot had spread. She should have excised the tumor immediately and then salted the earth anyplace that had an association with it. A few lost innocent lives were a small price to pay to ensure the taint left behind was fully expunged from this world.

“Perhaps it is time for me to join the hunt myself. Your team is capable of finding the apostate?”

“Given enough time, yes,” the mercenary said.

Lath didn’t like the woman. She was too cowardly to commit to something, too soft and weak-willed. He’d much preferred their old leader, but it seemed he’d lost his life challenging the apostate to direct combat, the idiot. If the master poisoner had paid for the Blacktongue’s services out of his own pocket, he thought he might have demanded his money back. It was ridiculous that they’d somehow made contact with, lost, and subsequently been decimated by one man.

It was interesting though, that none of them could feel the presence of his XP. That meant something, but Lath wasn’t sure exactly what. He suspected he might never know, as there would be precious little time for questions once the execution began. No doubt it was some odd ability the apostate had picked up whilst he was practicing his heresy, something to help him hide from the righteous light of the Pantheon’s truth.

Perhaps he might petition Zixin herself for the answer after he’d shuffled the apostate off his mortal coil. It was rare to receive such direct communion from any god, but he’d been worshipping the God of Death for forty years now, and had served as the church’s blade in the night for more than twenty of them. Surely he’d earned that much.

“We’ll be relocating to the business district. Find them and report back to me. Do not engage them. Do not let them see you. I will handle the apostates myself. All you need to do is tell me where they are. Do you understand?”

“I understand, sir,” the mercenary said, a sour look on her face.

“Banish all thoughts of avenging your fallen comrades from your mind. Those two are mine.”

The mercenary gave him some kind of salute he didn’t recognize, probably something unique to their company, and left the room. Lath moved to begin preparing his equipment. The hunt would be on soon.