Stygian Mage

“We are here for a Vestige”

“And since you have joined us officially you can also take part in this,” Smiley explained to Soren.

A surprised expression appeared on Soren’s hidden face upon hearing the word ‘Vestige’. He had read about it before and had some common knowledge about it. But he had no idea that there was an unexplored Vestige near this town.

“According to our info, it’s a Vestige left behind by a Rank 2 Initiator. He was supposedly a quite famous swordsman, years ago. He had a peculiar fighting style and that’s what made him famous, I think. This man here had some info about the coordinates of that Vestige and was going to sell it to us; maybe that’s why he got on your hit list; that is if you were tailing him to kill him.”

Smiley pointed to the man who had fainted during the fight. It was actually him who made that man lose consciousness; otherwise, it would have been a really messy situation right now.

Soren first digested all the information he just got and then finally looked at the unconscious man.

“Do you want in?” Smiley asked a simple question.

Soren thought about the question hard and decided to agree. He nodded towards Smiley and answered positively in response.

Smiley simply smiled at Soren and then focused on the man lying on the ground.

SLAP!!

A sharp sound resounded in the air which slightly startled Soren. He hadn’t expected Smiley to slap the man; and this hard on top of it.

“Um…Umm…*Yawn*…” But the man on the ground had a different reaction than what Soren was thinking.

“Eh! Where am…AHHH!” Now he had the reaction that Soren was expecting.

The man looked completely flustered as he looked around him like a startled dog. He noticed the two disguised man in front of him and then finally, he noticed the dead man on the ground whose chest was opened up and the heart missing; the whole image being completely bloody.

After seeing this scene, Soren backed off with furrowed eyebrows and tightly closed his ears with his hands. He already knew what was going to happen.

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” -- And it did happen.

A loud and long scream exploded in the air. It was good that they were in a deserted alley and the only ones listening to this loud scream were those two men and the cold emotionless wind that was blowing through there.

BAM!!

And that man again lost consciousness. Smiley slowly put down the brick aside which he had used to knock this man out.

He then looked at Soren helplessly, hoping to get some idea from this new comrade. Soren only shrugged as he also didn’t have any good way to deal with this situation.

Finally, they decided on a course of action together.

……….

BOOM!

A black fireball hit the dead ‘Draco’ and exploded on contact. Soon, there was nothing but ashes left of him which the wind took away with it. Soren had already looted him so there was no worry there.

After seeing this, Soren had to admit—his own fireball couldn’t do this; otherwise, he didn’t need others to clean up after him. After cleaning up the body, they once again tried to wake up the man.

This time, he didn’t scream after waking up but was scared shitless.

“So, should we continue with our business, Mr.…Umm….What is your name again?”

The man had calmed down a little by now and started to answer.

“Forget it. It’s not like we will meet again anyway. So, let’s continue with our business.”

The man could do nothing about being interrupted, so he just followed the cloaked man’s lead.

“Give us the info and we will pay you what was promised.”

The man nodded to acknowledge and started telling them what he knew. The contents inside, though, made Soren very surprised.

………..

The content was: The Rank 2 swordsman who had left this Vestige had a pet with him when he died. It was a cub of a Winged Tiger. The beast was very small at that time and somehow it had survived till now.

It had hunted around the Vestige to stay alive and slowly cultivated to get stronger. Finally, one day it broke through Rank 1 and became the lord of that area by subduing the other strong beasts.

The area around the Vestige actually came under Liston’s Family territory, so they were the first to know about this. They had acted very quickly and pulled out their other members out of that area. At the same time, they started their preparations to send in some of their strong experts to kill this beast and explore that Vestige.

The details surrounding this Vestige had shocked Soren. Slowly, the puzzle pieces fell into their place and completed the whole picture for him.

The man told them all the details he knew about the Vestige. He even told them that the other Families had also obtained this information and were planning to fight for it.

“Hmm…It might get tricky if those Families also get involved. Just hope they don’t find the real….. ” Smiley talked to himself in a low voice.

A silence followed in that dark alley.

“I-I have given you a-all the information that I had. No-now, pl-please pay me the crystals.” The man stuttered slightly trying to ask for the crystals that he thought he deserved.

“Y-You don’t have to w-worry; I w-won’t reveal this to a-anyone. I’ll also take my family and m-move away from h-here and…”

BANG!!

Instead, he got a bullet in his head.

Thud!

Soren holstered back his smoking gun as the man’s lifeless body fell backward in his own blood and brain matter.

Smiley was not at all startled by this. He was no saint either and had no plan to let this man go back alive from here anyway. Soren too couldn’t let a high priority target leave as that would have meant suffering from a penalty.

And the most important reason was a very simple fact– dead men tell no tales.

He didn’t even pay attention as the bullet hit the man’s head and blasted off from the back; he was still thinking of the problem about the Families getting involved in this matter.

“Let’s go back for now. I’ll keep you updated on this issue. Also, you can tell those guys the details of your missions whenever you want. They are all here for the Vestige so they don’t have anything else to do anyway.” Smiley said.

Soren nodded once to acknowledge. He then started looking around and erased any obvious sign of what had happened here tonight.

He took out his communicator and sent the message for the cleanup to the Vultures and one other message to the captain; he had to follow this process for the man on his target list.

After finishing with all this, he took one last look at the area and went on his way. They soon parted ways as they moved towards a busy area.

……….

Soren had been injured in the last fight. Although the cuts were not deep, the amount was high and with that amount of blood loss—it made him somewhat dizzy. Now that he had relaxed all the tension, his steps became unstable like a drunkard.

Of course, that was not a problem as he mixed in quite nicely with all the drunks moving in that area.

So, he slowly moved towards his hotel; trying not to bump into people. And just before reaching his destination, he made his way towards a dark alley. He stood there for a while trying to check his injuries. His wounds had already stopped bleeding by now and were showing signs of healing which made him quite happy; he was delighted to see his recovery rate increase to this level. But as he didn’t have any way to compare it with other Initiator, he didn’t know if his recovery rate was considered fast or not. Regardless, it made him happy.

He took off his disguise after confirming that he was alone and finally, made his way towards his hotel. It didn’t take him long to reach there.

A gasping sound was heard as soon as he entered the hotel; it was Leah. Although Soren’s clothes hid the wounds on his body, his wounds on the face and neck were clearly visible. She quickly ran over and asked him about it with a worried expression. Soren easily dodged the topic by making up something about getting in a fight with some guy.

Seeing that Soren didn’t want to talk about it any further she didn’t have any choice but to drop it. But she didn’t believe Soren as she could see the wounds on his neck, which although were closed, looked quite deep.

He didn’t want to waste time right now, so he quickly said goodbye to her and went up to his room.

..………

Soren held the bottle that contained the ‘Draconic Blood’ in his right hand and observed it carefully. While observing it, he was also contemplating on the feedback from his fight.

He knew that he only won today because of his eyes and the identity of his opponent. As his cultivation increased, his ‘Powered Vision’ also evolved and his skills related to it, such as dynamic vision etc. got stronger. He only survived because he could see the blade moving with his eyes. His brain moved much faster than his body in that fight. That was the reason he survived and that was also the reason he got so many wounds.

He knew he had to work on many aspects of his but first, he decided to focus on defense and what he needed to improve it.

His eyes gave him a big advantage in the fight which could allow him to easily dodge his enemy’s attacks, but his body couldn’t keep up with it right now. His combat style was still developing so nothing was fixed for now but he had to work on his defense to fix that weakness.

He had two choices for improving his defense:

One was to increase his physical stats. There were two ways to do that; one was to buy stat enhancement potions, pills etc. Another way was to change his priority towards his physical stat.

He immediately rejected this choice as he didn’t have extra crystals to buy stat enhancements and he didn’t have any intention to change his priority.

His second choice was to use spells and skills. He could buy or develop any spell or skill that would help him defend or evade his opponent. Of course, developing such a spell or skill would take a lot of time, so his only option was either to buy it or trade for it.

He had actually checked it in the store before but couldn’t find any spell that suited him. Most of the Defensive Spells were of the different attribute, so using them would cost him an excessive amount of Mana which was not efficient in the long run.

He also found that Defensive Spells for his attributes were a little uncommon and he could only find it in bigger cities or trade it with someone who had it. He knew from the info he had that the coming auction would be selling such spells and skills together with some rare items, so he was hoping to fulfill his needs from there.

As he had to wait for the auction for this matter, he decided to put it aside for now.

Next up was a spell or skill that could help him scan or sense his surroundings. This was something vital for his arsenal as he had realized time and time again that he needed something like this. This was also included in the auction list and was something he was hoping to get.

But for that, he needed more Mana Crystals. That was the main reason he had asked for help from the other members instead of gifts. Smiley said it depended on them if they wanted to give him a gift or not, so instead of hoping for gifts, which might or might not be helpful to him, he asked for their help.

He had about 5100 Low-Grade Mana Crystals right now, but he knew it was not enough. He also had to pay the captain 3000 Mana Crystals for what he had requested of him. The remaining 2100 crystals were definitely not enough for the items he wanted to buy from the auction.

Soren focused on the bottle in his hand again as his thoughts came back from roaming all around. He was actually hesitating on what to do with it. He could try to sell it but he didn’t know how rare it was or how much would it sell for. Although he still didn’t trust that guy with the clown mask, he was sure that the blood was at least not harmful to him, as he already had Isaac check it.

The main thing he was concerned about was the consequences of owning this bottle of blood. He had actually seen quite a few of that race in this town moving freely. If this blood was so precious, the Dracos in the town would have been hunted for it.

Seeing that it was not the case, he was left with only two conclusions: 1) The ‘Draconic Blood’ was not that precious so as to hunt the ‘Dracos’ down for it. 2) Hunting the ‘Dracos’ for ‘Draconic Blood’ was a taboo and was not allowed.

Soren was fine with the first conclusion but if it was the second….it was best to keep this a secret.

Thinking about it for a while he finally made his decision: it was best to use it quickly.

But he had to wait before he recovered completely before using it, so he had no choice but to keep it with him for now.

Making his decision, he put the bottle aside.

Finished with making plans he finally decided to start his practice. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and cleared his mind. He then started devouring the mana around him.

………

CP – 8%

………

CP – 10%

He stopped after his CP reached 11%. He then started working on his idea about the ‘Simultaneous Casting’. He could tell that he was still far from reaching it.

He also tried out some ideas for a Defensive Spell but soon gave up on it as it was not possible for him to come up with a decent Defensive Spell right now; he did not have enough knowledge about it.

He then practiced his ‘Mana Manipulation’ in the end and finally, ended his practice for the night.

He opened his status once before going to sleep.

He had also made some adjustments in the status screen for his convenience. It was pretty easy to do so as Isaac was synced with the system and could make any changes; though he knew for a fact that others could also do the same, it was more complicated for them and they had to do it themselves. Whereas for him, Isaac could simply record his items and available crystals and then display it on the status screen.

Also, his weapons changed places between ‘Items’ and ‘Equipment’ depending on if he was armed with them or not. If he had the gun on him it would be shown in ‘Equipment’ and if not, it would be shown in ‘Items’. It was a subjective matter for which Soren depended on Isaac completely.

Finished with everything, Soren went to bed.