Chapter 82

“I- Thought- You- Were- Dead,” Zea said, punctuating each word by throwing handfuls of the gold and silver coins at Luke.

“Hey, stop that. Stop! You’re making a mess.”

Luke caught as many as he could, but he couldn’t snatch dozens of coins out of the air in only a few seconds. Coins bounced off of him and rolled into the dirt, hopefully to be reclaimed and not lost under loose leaves or in the tall grass.

“I don’t give a fuck about the money! You ran off and left me alone in the woods!”

“Well… yeah, but… it’s not like I was abandoning you.”

“We didn’t need to fight the bandits, and you definitely didn’t need to fight them alone.”

Luke sat there, scratching the back of his head. “We had to get the money some way,” he said. “Robbing thieves seemed like a good way to do it. And they were… mostly all low level.”

“What does ‘mostly’ mean?” Zea asked, her eyes narrowed into a suspicious glare. “Because it sounds like that means some of them weren’t low level at all.”

“There was one guy who was much stronger than he should have been. I guess he was part-ogre. It wasn’t really a hard fight, just kind of unusual.”

He decided he wasn’t going to mention the last fight if he didn’t have to. That had been unexpected, completely at odds with everything else he’d found in the old fort. The way Zea was looking at him though, he suspected his [Deception] skill wasn’t strong enough to get him through the conversation on its own.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Look, there was always going to be some element of risk, no matter how we got the money. We need to be higher levels anyway if this plan is going to work, and the world is better off without a bunch of bandits. Plus, they had way more money than the average monster. This was a win all the way around.”

“That’s not the point,” Zea said. “I shouldn’t have to spell this out for you, but you’re not getting it. We didn’t make a decision. You made a decision by yourself, and then you left me behind. If we’re going to be a team, you can’t do that. I get that there are risks, a lot of risks, big risks sometimes, but they’re supposed to be our risks, not just yours.”

“I… fuck. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Luke had spent so much of his time on Aros on his own that he hadn’t really thought about including Zea in the decision-making process now that they were out of the city again. He’d just kind of assumed she would follow his lead, the same way he followed hers around people. It was now glaringly obvious to him that this had not been a good assumption to make.

Thankfully, Zea seemed to feel she’d gotten her point across. She sighed and set the lock box down between them. “Here, you get those ones over there and I’ll pick up the ones on this side.”

Together they refilled the box. Luke wasn’t entirely sure they recovered all of them, but if they missed one or two, it wasn’t the end of the world. Between that and the jewelry they’d pawn in the next city, he figured that was probably enough for two people to take a boat across the ocean. All they needed to do now was find a sea-side city and book passage.

Maybe, if he was lucky, there’d be enough left over to commission some armor for the both of them. Luke had really been hoping for good armor, but the best he’d gotten was what amounted to a leather muscle shirt. It wasn’t really all that surprising, and he honestly wasn’t even sure he needed armor anymore. Between the defensive skills and the healing he got from [Life Surge], he was doing fine without it.

He still wanted it, of course. Not getting hurt at all was much better than recovering from it, and as long as it was flexible, it would take a lot more than thirty or forty pounds of steel to slow him down. But if it came down to it, Zea was a higher priority for armor than him, and unless something changed drastically, getting the boat tickets was the highest priority of all.

Before that, they needed to get there, and they needed to level up some more. Zea needed three more levels to have the 50 AP to spare, and Luke had pushed his own plans back by another level when he ranked up [Mace Mastery] mid-fight to throw that bandit off his rhythm. After that, he wasn’t entirely sure. Depending on which bloodline skills unlocked after they completed their plan to obtain [Bloodline Purification Ritual], he might start putting AP towards those. The costs were outrageously expensive, but the things some of them could do were completely broken.

Being able to just tell the system that someone was paralyzed wasn’t all that different than being able to tell the system to kill that person. Fabricating objects was basically the same as unlimited wealth. Messing with stats and skills completely destroyed any need for a build. Why settle for having holes in his capabilities when he could be excellent at literally everything?

He might even look into learning how to do magic, even though it sounded like a complicated pain in the ass. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t have the AP to waste on it at that point. Nobody really seemed to be interested in using it, but he suspected that was because of the high number of support skills required to even work with mana, let alone shape it into a spell itself. Then each individual spell cost even more AP. It was a real point sink. The average person would have to spend every single AP they had just to get access to a handful of weak spells.

Considering how much a person could do with even 20 or 30 AP invested directly into stats, Luke wasn’t surprised that anything to do with magic ended up being highly specialized. He certainly didn’t regret the path he’d taken, even if he had deviated significantly from the build notes Curt had laid out for him. But someday, maybe soon, he would have a chance to expand in new directions.

“Do you think the rain will let up soon?” Zea asked, breaking Luke out of his contemplations.

“Hard to say. I don’t think it matters much. It’s been coming down so long, it’s not like it’s any dryer here.” Luke looked down at his still-soaked clothing. “Or maybe that’s just me.”

“No, it’s been pretty miserable for me too,” she said. “I guess we might as well start walking? Road’s probably clear. We could make good progress.”

“Yeah. It’ll keep us warm too. Going to be a muddy mess though.”

They collected their things, including the new supplies and weapons Luke had taken from the bandits, bundled everything up, and left the dubious shelter of the pines.

* * *

As much as she still wanted to wring his neck, Zea thought Luke at least understood what he’d done wrong. She felt kind of bad about throwing the money at him, but she was so pissed at the time, that he’d run off and left her to risk his life by himself. She regretted losing her temper after, even if he did deserve it.

The fact that he’d come back with what likely amounted to several months’ worth of money was a mitigating factor. He hadn’t been wrong to raid the bandit camp, but it should have been a decision they made together. Either way, it was over and done with. As long as he didn’t do something stupid like that again, they’d be alright.

A large part of her was wondering what the fuck she was doing out there with him. She’d taken an enormous risk just going with him, and now she was pumping herself with XP, every monster they killed shortening her life span, just to pick up a skill that would help him. If he was wrong about how this all worked, she was literally killing herself for a guy she’d only known for a few weeks.

And then the big lump was so oblivious to it all that he just blundered forward, acting on every random thought that popped into his head without even a moment’s consideration for the consequences. He shouldn’t have trusted her at all, let alone so completely, but he did. It was kind of cute, she supposed. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

He’d come back with a lot of holes in his new clothes though, something she didn’t think would have happened if the bandits were all as weak as he’d said. She’d avoided commenting on it since he didn’t seem to want to talk about it, but it was somewhat exasperating that he’d need new clothes, again. On the other hand, they were modestly rich now, and he hadn’t had any dumb ideas like trying to give the money away. They could afford some nice clothes.

She wasn’t sure about pawning the jewelry though. Some of it was pretty unique, and she wasn’t confident on finding a pawn broker that would keep their mouth shut about where they got something hot if someone came around asking questions when she wasn’t a city native. Hell, she was barely confident about the broker they’d used last time. She wouldn’t have gone to him at all if it had been anything other than temple gear, but he was the only one who’d take it.

Come to think of it, they never had figured out how Myla had latched onto Luke so quickly. It was obvious that he was foreign just looking at him. His mannerisms, his accent, and even his skin color were all off. But Valtira was a big city, and it was stretching things to think an inquisitor had run into him after a few days by sheer chance.

That didn’t necessarily mean it was the broker, of course. It was possible someone friendly with the church might have reported Luke. It was possible that it truly was just bad luck. Hell, he was a fucking off-worlder apostate. It was even possible the gods themselves had told someone where to look for him. If there was ever anyone that would warrant personal attention from a higher power, it was Luke.

All the same, she didn’t think she’d be trusting a pawn shop anytime soon. If they sold them at all, she’d do it when they were on their way out of town so there was no chance of someone hunting them down while they were there. Even that was a risk. It was probably best to just throw them out, but she’d keep them tucked in the bottom of the bag just in case they found themselves in a desperate situation that only a few more coins would solve, however unlikely that seemed.

Plus, well, it hurt her soul to throw money away. Throwing it at Luke was one thing; abandoning it was something else altogether. Zea didn’t have it in her to throw them out, and besides, Luke had mentioned something about melting the gold down. It wouldn’t be as valuable that way, but it would be safer to unload.

The clouds drifted away as they walked, and by the time they settled down for the night, things had started to dry out. Even better, they came across a medium-sized town with a population of about a thousand, large enough to have two inns. They got a room for the night, or rather, she got a room by herself and had Luke come in through the second-story window later so that no one would notice a human-dwifkin couple traveling together. The last thing they needed was to leave a trail of witnesses for the church to follow.

Fortunately, Luke barely needed to sleep and he was gone again before the sun came up with a promise to meet her on the road north of town. Unfortunately, that meant the bed was far colder than she preferred for the second half of the night. It might have been necessary, but she sure as hell didn’t appreciate it.