The Undying Magician - Book 2 - Chapter 52 - The Orphans Part I (Patreon)

                                                         Nathan
                                  Year 2849 | Month 12 | Day 15

After that first day, none of the cities have been anything other than polite, with each of them – more than just the three who initially approached me – coming on a regular basis and offering me mercenary work. Most of which tends to just be clearing out groups of bandits working independently from the cities and attacking anyone who leaves them.

One of the cities did try to hire me to attack an enclave of refugees, but I decided to instead kill their messenger to send a message that I won’t allow that shit. Especially since most of the refugees were just children, with only a couple adults to look over them.

I glance at the bell when it starts ringing before sighing and closing out of my terminal.

My main issue now is that they bother me too much.

Never really thought I’d ever be complaining about having too much work before, but now I am.

Maybe I should tell them to give me less jobs? Because they’re practically relying on me now to lower any risk of casualties they have at this point. Whether that’s killing rogue groups, collecting medicinal herbs from areas more deeply covered in miasma, or even recovering the bodies of some of their hunters that had wandered too close to the Dark Forest and gone missing.

It all makes sense, of course. But it’s still rather annoying to be bothered so often for it.

I get up from the bed I was sitting on before heading over to the entrance of the cave system, soon finding Captain Rogers standing there – the replacement for Amy after my first interaction with Frost Veil. The man has a large build, with the same sort of equipment on as her and long black hair running down his back and a very polite face plastered on.

“Good day, Undying Magician Nathan Fox,” he says with a light nod of his head before handing me a tablet. One that is long since outdated by Republic standards. But I’m used to it by now and simply take the thing before looking through it to find another job to take out a rogue faction.

“Very well,” I answer after reading through the details. “I’ll take the job.” I hand the thing back to him, the man giving me a light bow and a smile in response. But his smile cramps up when I add, “But I’ll be putting jobs on a hold for a month after this one.”

“What? Why?” the man asks, his professional attitude cracking ever so slightly before he fixes it again. “I mean, is there a reason for this change?”

I nod my head while putting my hands in my pockets, “Of course. I have too much food now, and very little that I care about spending my coin on. So what’s the point of taking on daily jobs when I could spend my time doing other things?”

He opens his mouth to say something, only to close it, seemingly not having anything to actually say. Then he opens it again and says, “In that case, I wish you luck with your endeavors,” and walks away without another word.

Hmm. He took it better than I expected, honestly.

I watch him walk away for a few seconds before looking around the area just in case another captain arrives and then walking back into the cave.

The job this time is just to capture and not to kill, so it’ll be a bit more annoying. Namely in that I won’t be using the sharp end of my blade, or using my sniper rifle, since I’m not confident enough in my first aid to help them after attacking. And I would rather not waste my mana on healing them with invigorate.

I’ve done a couple other jobs like this so far, and they were all major pains. The first time I did one I ended up killing one of them on accident, which lowered the bounty. Then I proceeded to just use the flat side of my blade to knock the rest out instead, ending up in a much more annoying fight where I took a lot more hits than I would’ve otherwise.

Not that it mattered much in the end. Beyond me needing to bring my armor to a repair shop in Frost Veil, which I found out quickly on that they had.

A very lovely place too, if I ignore the soldiers constantly surrounding me there that trust me far less than New Hope does. Even if they’re doing it politely and ‘for my own safety’.

Rather ironic all things considered.

My thoughts are cut off when the bell rings again, making me groan and turn around, heading back to the cave entrance again while seriously considering hanging a sign outside for the rest of the day. But when I make it to the front this time, I find someone I very much wasn’t expecting.

“Sir magician! Please, you have to help us!” one of the adults working with that group of refugee children practically shouts as they rush over to me, grabbing onto the sleeve of my armor for a second, making me frown.

I slowly extricate my sleeve from their grasp while asking, “What’s wrong? And can you really be away from the kids right now?”

Most of those kids are all little girls too, only between six to ten years old. Why that is, I’m not sure. Didn’t really care much about asking for the exact details of their situation after realizing that they absolutely were not a threat to anyone, much less a magician led city.

My best guess is that the boys are being used for more labor intensive jobs and were kept more strictly watched. Or they just had a lot of young girls there. Which is entirely possible.

There should be around two dozen girls in the refugee camp with like seven boys there.

“Falkner sent soldiers to attack the enclave!” she exclaims while out of breath, making my eyes widen slightly, even more so as she meets my eyes directly without any fear of me in them. “Please help us!!!”

Huh. Unexpected.

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