Ruthless: Path of Conquest

“Hunting, huh?” James said. “Well, it was on my to-do list already. Let’s do it, absolutely.”

In fact, identifying people he could employ to help keep the small community supplied with fresh food had been his top priority. Way to make my life easy, guys!

There was a part of him that wondered if these three gentlemen had anything more planned beyond hunting, but their whispered huddle conversation hadn’t revealed it if so. It was just James’s own dark instincts that made him suspicious.

“That’s great!” Masterson said, high-fiving his two friends. “I knew you would be interested. How soon can you be ready?”

“Give me fifteen minutes,” James said. “I’ll just make sure everything is okay for my family, and then we can head out.”

“Sounds good,” said Masterson.

“Do you have a watch somewhere we can’t see?” Matsumoto asked. “Paul here has a pretty good watch that’s solar-powered, but Sam and I have been having trouble finding a way to tell time. The phones are all dead.”

“Oh, mine still has a little bit of charge,” James said. This was a little bit of a lie by omission. His phone did still have some power left, because he wasn’t using it for anything. Just keeping it in his magic satchel, which seemed to keep stored items in stasis until he needed them. But James wasn’t using that to tell the time.

With Mind of the Predator, ordering part of his brain to count the seconds and let him know when fifteen minutes had passed was easy. But the details of his powers were on a need to know basis. All these gentlemen needed to know was that James’s power was impressive and not to be trifled with. He would show them a taste of that during the hunt.

He turned and began walking up the stairs.

Mina was waiting for him at the top. “Well, what happened?” she asked.

He briefly went over it, and she nodded her approval. “I can’t believe someone thought that they could use a property rights claim for anything now. What was he trying to accomplish?” she asked.

“I think he was really hoping that I would agree to give him some sort of a free living. Take care of him in lieu of paying him rent. He was talking about how this place was his whole retirement plan. I felt a little bad for him.” Then he mentioned the hunting plan.

“That seems fine to me,” she said. “I’ve realized I probably shouldn’t be worrying about you as much as I used to.”

He chuckled at that. “What, I’m not vulnerable enough now for you to worry about me?”

“You don’t seem vulnerable to anything at all, as far as I know,” she retorted. “Yesterday, I saw you chop off your own hand and turn it into a living thing, then grow a new one without using any visible magic. You know, I used to worry that you would get into an accident driving home from work. Now I think that even if that happened, only the cars would be damaged. And whoever the other driver was!”

James chuckled and shook his head.

You had some dark intuition about the intentions of those men downstairs, came Roscuro’s voice in James’s mind. Are you sure you don’t want to say anything to your wife about it?

No, James replied. I’m fairly certain I’m just being paranoid. If they did have bad intentions, those would only apply to me anyway. Maybe they want to be in charge around here, so they planned to arrange a hunting accident or something. Still, he didn’t really like leaving his wife alone here. She was far from defenseless, especially with her new Class, but still…

“Have you thought about trying some sort of protection spell on this place?” James asked.

Her eyes softened. “You worried about me, skapi?” She planted a soft kiss on his cheek.

“Only whenever I can’t see you,” he said.

“Well, I’ll try it,” she said doubtfully. “My knowledge of spellcraft like that is very basic, though. Hecate mentioned Witch Classes need spellbooks to properly hone our Skills. I only learned a very small share of what’s possible with the Class change.”

What can I do to keep you safer? James thought. He remembered one of his Fisher King abilities.

“Mina, could you get on your knees for a minute?” James asked.

She arched an eyebrow. “Why exactly?”

James smiled mischievously. “So I can bless you,” he said. “It’s one of my Fisher King Skills. Whenever I want to use one of those powers, I get a mental picture of how it’s supposed to work. When I use Blessing of the Fisher King, I’m supposed to be positioned above you.”

“Alright.”

She bent and then sat down on the floor, legs folded in front of her.

“Is this good?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s fine,” he said.

Blessing of the Fisher King! Different options for blessings presented themselves to him. He sensed that the word combinations he was seeing were only a few of many possible. The ones that his subconscious mind had deemed most appropriate out of the available choices.

“As the flora and fauna of the Fisher King grow, so must you grow stronger,” he pronounced. “As the beasts of the field and the birds of the air grow in their numbers, so will you be fruitful and multiply.”

James’s body sagged slightly as he finished speaking, and his vision went slightly blurry. That had taken a lot out of him! He only dimly noticed that Mina was also showing a physical reaction. Her whole body shuddered.

After a few seconds of this, he sat down for a moment on the nearby sofa to catch his breath. He checked his Mana. He still had almost half of it. The blessing had used up more Stamina than anything else, though it had cost him a bit of Mana too. It felt as if he was speaking magic words, even though it was plain English.

Mina rose beside him. “That blessing is quite something,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I feel different. You’re going to need to only use that on people you really trust. It’s quite a boost, I suspect.”

James just smiled grimly and nodded. He didn’t bother to mention that he was fairly certain there were blessing options that accounted for the Fisher King not fully trusting the recipient.

“I’m going to go now,” he said. “It took a bit of a toll. I hope you feel comfortable holding down the fort?”

“I feel like I could tear down a fort,” Mina said.

“Well, try not to do it while I'm gone,” James said, giving her a grin. “I only just put the building up. I know it needs a lot of improvements, but I don’t think starting from scratch is the answer.”

She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to respond.

“James,” came Yulia’s voice from the other side of the room, “could I ask you about something?” She looked worried.

He looked at Mina for a moment. She shrugged.

“I’m going to go and check on the little ones while you and Yulia talk,” she said. She went into the children’s room.

“What’s up?” he asked after a long moment. “Did you want a blessing too?”

“No. Maybe. Not right now. It’s about the kids,” she said. “I’m so glad that you found them, but I was wondering if there might be others?”

“There were,” James said. “I went around last night and found over a dozen other children who used to live in these apartments. Fortunately, there were some responsible adults who agreed to look after them for now. We’ll need to figure something more permanent out soon, but the situation is under control.”

“That’s great!” Yulia looked relieved, only for her face to turn downcast again.

“What’s wrong now?” he asked.

“Well, I was just thinking, what about all the kids who weren’t in the apartment complex? What’s going to happen to them?”

James immediately sympathized with Yulia. She’s so compassionate, he thought. It’s really something you can’t teach. Who knows if I would’ve ever thought about the hundreds or maybe thousands of children around Central Florida who are probably homeless tonight? It’s a real tragedy…

“You’re right,” he said. “I mean, I understand what you’re thinking. I think there are some children who are going to be in real trouble these next few days.”

Really, if no one finds them in the next forty-eight hours, a lot of them will die. James didn’t want to say that, but he was certain it was true. And he was fairly certain he could do something to at least reduce the numbers. It would just use up more resources and energy that could be spent on improving his little community’s odds of survival. Even if he was successful, any children he saved would become a future burden.

They’re not your business, his dark inner voice said. If you do nothing at all, they’ll either be saved by other people or disappear. Do nothing. It’s the best thing for you and your family. Objectively.

“Is there anything we can do?” Yulia asked, searching his face for any sign of hope.

James suppressed a groan and made himself smile.

“Yeah. There is something we can do,” James said. He checked his mental timer. All good. I have another five minutes. “Want to see something cool?”

She nodded.

James used Shed Skin twice and Monster Generation eight times, infusing moderate amounts of Mana into each creation. The monsters were each composed of one quarter of the total coverage of his skin, but each took on a semi-humanoid shape, with two limbs, a pair of wings, and a face.

There, now I’ve really done all that I can do, he thought, breathing heavily again. If I make any more of those monsters, I won’t have energy left to hunt with. He was glad he had superior regeneration abilities. As long as he didn’t do any heavy duty magic, he would be back at a hundred percent by tomorrow. Though his skin was incredibly tender right now as well. Losing so many layers in a row was far from fun.

“What are those?” Yulia looked slightly horrified.

“They’re my pets!” James said proudly. “They can fly, because they’re my hollowed out skins. Lighter than me, with some of my strengths. I’m going to send them out to look for missing children. It should be more effective than searchers on the ground would be. So we’ll know if there are kids anywhere for at least a few miles around in every direction. I’ll keep them searching for as long as I can.”

“That’s, um, great,” she said, looking a little nervous at the sight of the monsters.

“I know they’re a little strange-looking,” James said. They looked, even to him, like some giant insect’s discarded exoskeletons. Ominous and ugly. “But they’re very useful and completely obedient to me. They require very little in terms of upkeep.”

They just eat whatever’s around, he thought, assuming they aren’t killed before they need to eat. Not so different from him, really, now that he had the Omnivore Skill.

Yulia approached one of the monsters and took its hand.

“Thank you for helping us with our search,” she said, shaking hands with it. The monster looked to James for a moment. He didn’t give directions one way or another here, though.

James had put a bit more of himself into these creatures than he usually did, giving them more independent intelligence and decision-making ability, as well as the ability to speak. That was part of why creating eight of them took so much out of him.

Even the mechanism of flight was different.. Instead of being balloons like his first generation of flying monsters, these creatures would open the skin on their backs into a pair of wings and rapidly vibrate them to fly. This should allow for better precision flying and directional control. Which could be important in a search and rescue mission. These creatures were so different that James had given them a new name: Skin Husks.

“You’re welcome,” the Skin Husk rasped after a few long, uncomfortable seconds. Its voice sounded like Autumn leaves crunching. Yulia looked like she was resisting taking a step back as she listened to it.

“We’ve gotta get going, okay?” James said.

Yulia turned back to James and surprised him with a hug. “Good luck!” she said. As they separated, he saw there were tears at the corners of her eyes.

Right, he thought. She manages to care so much even about people she’s never met or heard anything about. It was almost incomprehensible to him, but also sweet.

James sent the Skin Husks out through the window in the master bedroom, and then he descended the stairs.

Time to hunt—and decide if these guys are people I can trust or not.