The World Which Is, CH 100

I won’t say I’m fine by the time we reach the first town, but I’m better. I did consider, that first night, leaving before the others woke

I won’t say I’m fine by the time we reach the first town, but I’m better.

I did consider, that first night, leaving before the others woke and returning to Louisville to tell them I’m the one who killed the dungeon. They have a right to know.

But that would have my left friends undefended for my watch, and as I’d told Brandon, what’s done is done. What would me telling them change? What would them, punishing me change?

I’m pretty sure I was deep into rationalizing by then.

As the distance to Louisville grew, my need to turn myself over diminished. I don’t like that that happened. I’m going to be a guard. I should always uphold rules, especially when it comes to me.

But there’s also the reality of the wild. The system has its own rules that don’t care about what people want. Don’t care about what I want.

And I console myself with the fact I’m coming back through Louisville after finishing the quest. I can turn myself over then, and it won’t affect anyone else.

We come across a farming village within two days of leaving Louisville, and the people there are sickingly nice. I know it’s my bad mood talking, but everyone we encounter greets us, asks for news about the city; which I let Brandon field. They talk us, well them, and I go along, into staying for dinner. I won’t call what they do a feast, but they are certainly treating us like important people.

Brandon goes along with it, regaling them with made up stories of us taking on ruins and bad guys. I know they’re made up, or at least not what we did, since he doesn’t describe Dardanus, and it’s not like we dealt with a lot of bad guys.

We at least have beds for the night, with offers for them to be shared. I think they all take up someone on it. I don’t.

Most of them are in the field by the time we leave in the morning.

Three days later, we come across another village and while the greetings are cordial; we aren’t the royalty the previous one made us feel like. Helen’s mildly annoyed by that. We do get a decent meal in exchange for news and a bed. I catch the eye of one of the farmer and take him to bed.

I think I freaked him out when I clung to him and cried afterward.

Elbert is a decent side town. We resupply, and I buy myself a basic healing spell. And when I say basic, it means it. It heals one point for a treen in mana. I’d have loved to buy the next tier over, since that one’s point for six, but I didn’t have the money and I wasn’t letting anyone pay for me since this didn’t help anyone else.

I have enough mana so that when we take on the herd of Horner Beast, that’s been causing problems at the edge of their civilized zone for them, I use it, in conjunction with a few mana potions, I raise it to fourteen, which drops it’s cost by one. I’ll never raise it enough to make it worthwhile, but it will help, and hopefully by the time we reach the city I’ll have enough stuff to sell I can get the next one.

We get paid well for the work, and an alchemist buys the bones from us, so by the time we move on, I’m closer to a better healing spell.

Two days after that, things change.

*

“I’m off hunting,” I say, equipping my bow.

“I don’t think we’ll need meat for a while,” Helen replies.

“He needs to keep training,” Brandon says. “You know, so he’ll be good enough to be respected by everyone around him?”

These two are back to sniping at each other as if we aren’t the only people we can depend on. They are one of the reason I go hunting. I love them, but I need time away from them.

I pick up the trail easily, having reached the second treen in it, I think someone has to actively hide it to give me problem, and ungulate isn’t smart enough to do that.

It does take me a while to catch up to it, though, and I figure its six legs help make it fast when needed. The system identifies it as an Underian.

I’m taking aim when the guy tackles me. The arrow’s lost in the forest, the bow’s somewhere nearby when we land on the ground. I shove him off me in time for the knife about to slice my throat to miss.

We’re on our feet about the same time, me now holding my sword, and him with a gladius and a knife, and a sadistic smile. He comes at me and I parry.

“What do you want?” I demand, as we turn to face each other.

“The money your dead body’s going to bring me.” He attacks while I’m trying to figure out what he’s talking about. It puts me on the defensive and he gets in a few cuts, which helps my focus.

I go on the offensive; hard. I slash and thrust, and when he gives me an opening, I slam the pummel in his face and he staggers back.

“Who fucking wants me dead this time?” I demand, while he wipes the blood away with a hand.

“Some guy out of Toronto, from what I hear.” He looks at his bloody hand and his smile broadens.

What the fuck is wrong with that guy? “Do you mean Xander Pope?”

He shrugs. “Sound like the name.”

“He’s dead. The bounty’s no longer on.”

He turns serious. “Then I better kill you quick so I can get there before that news.”

I’m defending myself again, realizing he probably doesn’t care about the bounty. He’s just using it as an excuse to kill people.

Probably gets off on it too.

When I go on the offensive, I’m brutal.

How many others has he killed?

When he’s on the ground, eyes filled with fear and I’m standing over him panting hard, I find myself running the numbers.

He’s got to be at least my level, with how hard he made me work. I’m already partially through level nineteen, so that’s got to get me to twenty-one. Two ability points, six skill points. More attribute points. And one less criminal out there to hurt someone else.

The decision isn’t even difficult.

His eyes go wide as I raise my sword.

Then I’m yanked away and almost fall. Once I have my feet under me, I face his ally and have trouble reconciling what I see.

“Brandon?” There’s no way they’re working together.

He moves between me and the killer. “I can’t let you do that.”

I move to get a line of sight on the killer and Brandon moves to stay in my way.

How long have they been planning this?

The numbers aren’t exactly in my favor. The last time Brandon talked about his level, he was twenty-third. I know he’s a better fighter than I am, and in a forest I can’t make us of Momentum all that much. Still, if I manage it. That two levels guaranteed, and then I kill the other, and that’s at least one, possibly two.

I smile. Yeah, that’s going to make me better than any of the guards in Court.

And then, what I’m contemplating doing hits me.

It hits me hard.

I stagger back.

I was thinking about killing Brandon; my friend.

I was thinking about killing, about murdering someone else.

I’m going to be sick.

“Okay, good. You’re—”

I throw up against the three.

“I’ll take that reaction over the alternative.”

I’m glancing up, scrambling to see the debuff. There’s no way I’m not affected by something. I’m not a murderer. I’d never contemplate killing someone in cold blood.

Nothing.

Not even something fading away I can lie to myself as the reason for my actions.

I can’t push myself straight. I can’t—

The kick is followed by a grunt and I’m facing Brandon, putting his foot down and the bounty hunter is a different location, his jaw clearly broken.

“How long?” I manage to say.

“He’s been trailing us since we left Elbert.”

That wasn’t what I was asking about, but it’s got to be addressed. “And you let him?”

“I needed to see what you’d do.”

“Why didn’t he attack when I hunted last night?”

He shrugs. “How should I know? I trailed you while you hunted then and now.”

“So you let him attack me? What if he’d killed me?”

“I wouldn’t have let that happen, Dennis.”

I motion to the cuts on my armor.

“You were holding your own.”

“Then why?”

“To stop you from killing him if you couldn’t stop yourself.”

“There’s no way you could know I’d try that.”

“Dennis, why do you think I’ve been on your case from the start about not killing anyone?”

“Because it’s a crime.”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s because I know what it does to someone.”

The realization hits. “You?”

“Oh system no. And I’m fucking happy for it. There’s no way I’d be able to resist the temptation.”

“Then how?”

“A girl on a team I was part of had to kill someone to save her own life. She barely survived anyway. She wasn’t the same after that. There was this look in her eyes. You didn’t have it, so I was optimistic, but I wasn’t going to take a chance. Nothing happened for about a week. Then one of the other guy vanished. He was there when we went to bed, not there in the morning. He had the last watch. She, the one before that. She said she’d woken him, then gone to sleep. We had no reason to doubt her. So we just hurried away before anyone there realized what had happened.

“She killed someone else in the next town. She hadn’t meant to, she claimed, and she was in bad enough shape we believed her. Nothing happened for long enough, we all kind of forgot about it. Then, we hit the city. We were there for a couple of weeks. The explorer in charge had a lot of stuff to straighten out for the next leg of the trip since it was the one taking us to the ruin. We heard about dead bodies over a few days, and the guards were on the lookout for the killer.

“When the leader said we were ready to go, she wasn’t there. One of the team had heard her mention going to get something, so he, me and one other went to get her. We found her as she shanked some guy and the way she looked…. I’ve seen guys not look that pleased as they orgasmed. She didn’t even try to explain herself. She saw us and she attacked and fuck was she touch. She’d been my level when the group was formed. I was twelve, then. I have no idea how high she was, but she killed one of us before we could subdue her. Then she was pleading that she hadn’t meant to, that something had come over her. That someone had to have put a curse on her.

“I almost bought it. The other guy knocked her out before I let go.”

“Did he…?”

“No!” He replies in disgust. “Dennis, didn’t you hear what I said? Killing someone makes you a monster.” He catches himself. “ Makes it easier to kill someone else, and that makes you a monster.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. We handed her to the guards to deal with and we left before they could wonder if she’d acted alone. I’m guessing they burned her, or bled her, or tied her in the wild for the monsters there to kill her. There are a lot of ways to see someone dead without doing the act yourself. None of them pleasant.”

He ties the bounty hunter while I take that in.

“What happens now?” I ask, unsure I want to hear his answer.

“Now, you have to stay on guard, Dennis. I’m not going to always be there to stop you.”

“And what if I can’t….” I swallow at the memory of what I was thinking of doing.

“If I’m around, I’ll stop you. But I might not be. Dennis. This isn’t something you can hope someone will be there to keep you on the straight and narrow. What you have is an addiction, one that I don’t think ever goes away.”

“What do I tell Helen and Silver?”

“Nothing,” he snaps, then takes a breath. “Dennis. I don’t think you get it. Anyone who knows about this is going to consider you a danger to everyone around, and yes, that includes my sister. She’ll make it as quick and as painless as she can, but she will protect as many people as she can the only way she can think of.”

“And you won’t?”

“I’m not one of the good guys, Dennis.”

“Stop it,” I snap. “Stop talking like you’re some villain.”

He sighs. “I really wish you’d get it through that thick skull of yours, Dennis. I’m not someone you can save.”

“Maybe if you asked for help, I could.”

“I’m not worth it.”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t know what your problem is, Brandon. But you just told me I’m a bomb waiting to explode and kill people and you’re giving me a chance. There’s no way you’re worse than that. Let’s get back to camp with him,” I say before he can say something else inane to bring his worth down.