Chapter 308: Danger Wherever You Look (Patreon)

Author’s note: Hi guys.

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So here it is, I'm finally here with the Lament of the Slave chapter.

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Honestly, this chapter was hard to write for so many reasons, after a free December and a January focused on other stories, I put a lot of details about the story out of my head, not to mention the whole nostalgic side of it, the feeling of what I left behind, BUT at the same time, it was great to write about characters I had lived in my head with for so long and continue the story.

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Anyway, things are as they are and I just hope you enjoy the chapter. :)

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Chapter 308: Danger Wherever You Look - Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/97349460

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Chapter 308: Danger Wherever You Look

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Cenberet Waldobert Liryadon.

The man was a ghost. For an Imperial agent to see him that way was saying something. But that was the way it was. In the four days since Liryadon had met Grey - er, the Ward - they hadn’t managed to catch a glimpse of him, except on one occasion when he clearly wanted to be seen. The man wasn’t doing anything special, just walking down the main street. But his fleeting glance at both Sah and Hal, his colleague and equally experienced Imperial agent, spoke for itself. No presence needed. A warning. They both agreed on that.

In their search for the truth, they had come too close - and they were caught. A failure, no matter how one looked at it. A failure they still had to report. Usually, something like that led to the recall of the agent, and that was in the best-case scenario. Agents had died as a result of such mistakes. Not this time, though. Liryadon didn’t seem keen on getting rid of them, and the brass had no one better to replace them.

Nevertheless, there were things to be learned from failure. They might not have confirmed that Liryadon was a dragon, but the man was powerful and did not consider the two Imperial agents a threat. In fact, Sah would dare to say that he didn’t consider the power of the entire Castiana a danger to him.

Thankfully, Hal’a did much better and managed to track down two more Sleepers. One, a drunkard, no doubt planted to keep an eye on any rumors spreading through the taverns. The second, a low-ranking Seeker, doing the same thing, only in circles of brave fools who dive into the labyrinth. It might not have gotten them much closer to the mind mages behind it, but it told them enough. They had set their sights on this city, or rather on their Ward, Korra’leigh Grey, and they weren’t going to just give up. She was too valuable, and they knew it. Guardian of the Esulmor World Tree, a returnee from the Labyrinth. But did they know of her non-Eleaden origins, or of a potential dragon in Castiana with an interest in the young woman as well? Sah doubted it.

As for Grey, he envied her.

According to Hal, who had been doing most of Ward’s babysitting for the past few days, she quickly adapted to the new ways of the System and got used to the teachings of others. After some initial hesitation, a dozen or so guards decided to reset one or two skills. But only the first batch eventually took the plunge and turned off the System support altogether.

Insane, according to Hal and Hal’a, interesting to see as well. They were not blind, and like him, they saw that once one got over the initial shock and loss of levels, it brought results. Grey was a shining example of that. The young woman didn’t even realize how fast her growth had been. No wonder, though. Stella, the leader of her City Guard squad, was no different. And ever since her mentor, Deckard, had taken the plunge, he had devoted himself to nonstop training with the enthusiasm of a newly minted 16-year-old. Rarely seen in people his age and older. Youthful enthusiasm long gone, new levels harder and harder to come by - many people struggled to push on.

On the other hand, what Grey was struggling with was her heat. It afflicted her far more than Terran women of her age.

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***

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“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” I cursed softly, hiding in the shadows of the main building, fanning my hot cheeks with my wings. The barracks yard and especially the training grounds were dangerous territory. So many hot guys, some of them half-naked, sweaty . . . oh, fuck . . . me! My drake heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to jump out of my chest, and waves of intense heat were hitting just the right places, messing with my head. I just couldn’t take it anymore. There was no other way. I had to do it.

So, heedless of the warnings about side effects, I drank another potion just a few hours after I had taken my morning one.

“Are you hiding, Korra?” Idleaf asked, popping up next to me.

Seriously, I should be used to this by now. She did it all the time. When something caught her eye, instead of walking over like a normal person, she just popped over. It scared the shit out of me every time, and this time was no exception.

Even though it made me feel lame, I blamed it on my domain. It wasn’t the skill’s fault; it was my reliance on it, on what I perceived through it every moment, the details - I missed nothing - which was becoming quite a problem now whenever I got close enough to a guy. Watching drops of sweat roll down his . . . anyway, Deckard said it was a problem everyone had to go through, even him. Not the guy stuff, of course. Over-reliance on domain-type skills. Like everything in life, each skill had its pros and cons. And as with all things, you could go your whole life without experiencing those cons - many Terran women, I was told, enjoyed being in heat; you just had to go with the flow - or those cons could be in your way all the time - in the case of my heat. What you got depended on a lot of things; your general attitude towards it, your other skills, your tastes, your body, your gender - Deckard claimed that even at the highest levels, women noticed different subtleties than men about the domains and vice versa. What the son of a bitch didn’t tell me was what the differences were. Said I’d have to work that out myself.

“Korra’leigh?” Idleaf asked again, this time with a hint of concern in her voice.

“Fine - I’m fine. I just needed a moment to . . . catch my breath.”

“Here?” As always, the lie didn’t fool her. Or rather, as with the differences between men and women, as a tree, she looked at the world very differently. While a human would get the hint, she took everything more literally.

“I felt awkward . . . okay?”

“About being out of breath?” she wondered, and then her eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah, your heat. Actually, Korra’leigh, I heard a man say he would know how to help you with that.”

“Which one was it?” Which one of those bastards? “That tall one,” Idleaf pointed to the man practicing spear moves with his buddy. Only a little older than me, not bad looking. A dangerous combination. Yet, much to my relief, my beastly lust didn’t kick in. If anything, the only urge I had was to kick his jewels.

The potion had done its job.

“You want me to ask him what he knows? I’ll ask him.”

“Don’t!” I blurted out in a panic, just in time to stop Idleaf from popping over to him. “I can do without his advice.”

“You sure?” the World Tree’s spirit asked with concern in her voice.

“Yes, Idleaf, I am sure.”

“Good,” she bounced happily, youthful verve instantly replacing her worry. “What do we do now? Will you continue training? Or do we go into the city? I heard of this new bakery. They say they have the best muffins.”

Honestly, Idleaf’s ability to hear all kinds of things never ceased to amaze me. My hearing was annoyingly good, but she could make an excellent information broker on the spot. Or an imperial agent.

Sah informed me that two of his colleagues were already working in the city, but that was all. The asshole hadn’t bothered to introduce them to me. Rather unprofessional, if I may say so. According to him - yes, I asked - it had to do with their safety. Standard procedure when it came to mind mages and targets of unknown abilities. As annoying as it was, and it was - I felt that uneasy feeling in the back of my neck more often now than I liked - there wasn’t much I could do about it if I wanted to be more or less free of the Sahal Empire.

“Muffins sound good, Idleaf, but . . . ” I said and checked the time through the System. It was still too early, annoyingly so. If I left now, neither Rayden nor the others would be too thrilled. “I’ll practice some more . . . and then we’ll try the muffins, okay?”

Idleaf’s expression changed swiftly; disappointment gave way to excitement, followed by sadness. “What about Ria?”

“We can stop by the City Hall and ask.”

“Yay!” she squealed and started jumping around me in a happy dance. Likely due to World Tree’s mind being young despite her actual age, she and the little kitsune got along really well.

Taking a deep breath, I peeked around the corner to make sure the potion had indeed worked, and headed back to the training grounds. Dozens of city guards, young and old, men and women, were training here as they did every day, except that a small handful of brave souls now dared to challenge the established customs of the system.

“Ah, Korra! Took you long enough, huh?” Harper smirked. Annoyingly, saying I was going to take a piss didn’t fool anyone.

“What can I say . . . ” It wasn’t something to be sorry about. There wasn’t even much I could do about it, unless I gave in to the beastly urge and jumped the first guy I came across.

“That you’re ready to have a round with me.”

“Always.”

“Liar,” Harper laughed, hinting at how I had run off to hide in the shadows just before the start of the bout with her.

[Blastmaster: lvl 150]

Ever since Harper gained a level yesterday, she has been begging everyone she ran into to fight her. Not so strange. Her skill levels haven’t returned to where they were before she gave up the System’s support, and yet her overall strength has increased. In fact, it prompted Meneur to give up his remaining concerns and make the leap as well, joining the rest of Squad Four, Deckard, Vara, and of course Elira - who didn’t leave her friend alone in the end - in a unique club of people wading through the frontier of System utilization.

“You ready?” Harper asked, her hand already holding her two pistols.

“Kiss and Bliss?” That was what she called them. Weird, I know. But who was I to judge? After all, I named my tail.

“Whacker, as a rifle, isn’t really suited for close combat. Besides, I want to practice certain skills.”

“Suit yourself,” I said, shoving my clothes into the outfit-spatial ring and going full beast. Even though Harper had seen my transformation countless times, she still flinched. To her credit, she immediately steeled herself and got back into a fighting stance, a mad smile on her lips, focus in her eyes.

I growled, and she fired.

Honestly, I hated guns. Unlike bows and crossbows, they were so loud, smelly, and fast. Seriously, you had a better chance of dodging the bullet if you anticipated its path than waiting for it to leave the barrel as an arrow with the twang of a bowstring. Not to mention that arrows and bolts were relatively easy to pull out of the body, bullets not so much.

Avoiding them, being constantly on the move, and making myself unpredictable was one option. Forming some kind of shield wasn’t a bad solution either - if you had a shield that could withstand the force of the shot. I opted for direct confrontation and charged Harper head on. Getting shot stung and was generally annoying, but I could take a few hits - or dozens - as long as she didn’t aim for the head, an agreed-upon rule. So, knowing she didn’t have to hold back, Harper fired shot after shot at me, trying to stay as far away from my claws as possible.

She was fast - for a human. I was faster, though. Much faster. A few strides, a sideways dodge, and I was in her face.

“Come on, back off, sit down . . . you got me!” she blurted out, her eyes fixed on my fangs, a hair’s breadth from her nose.

“I thought you were ready?” I stepped back, taunting her a bit.

“Fuck you. I just didn’t expect you to come at me right away.”

“Should I just let you shoot me?”

“Well, that’s not a bad idea . . .  all right, jokes aside. How the fuck am I supposed to deal with a beast like you?”

“Grenades?”

“They don’t grow on trees, Korra. I have to make them.”

“And not use them?”

“It’s fucking wasteful to throw them around during training.”

It wasn’t hard to see what she was getting at. Even the bullets she fired were lost to her forever. She had to be aware of the state of her inventory at all times - a stark contrast to the other classes. Mages had magic, only mana was their limit. Warriors needed only a sword, a spear - some, like me, could get by with just their bodies. The only thing that limited me was stamina - and mana, and knowledge of magic, and myself, my inner beasts, the way I was able to lean on them.

And of course there was the heat.

Sure, I was a weird one, and it was more complicated than that. Just as I needed mana, so did most of the finer warriors. Just as I was eager to . . . mate, so were they. Aside from that hot issue, even mages needed stamina just as much as those swinging swords. From what I’d seen on the battlefield in the past, casting spells took quite a toll on the body, even if you were just standing still.

“Isn’t making those part of your class?”

Harper sighed, kicking a pebble on the ground in frustration. “Half of Blastmaster’s fucking skills focus on maintaining equipment and making ordnance, but if I choose those, then I’m going to suck at shooting. I didn’t join the City Guard to become a craftsman, Korra.”

“I get that. I really do. Look at me. All I wanted was to be normal again. To be human again.”

“Yeah, that didn’t really work out for you. Still, no. I’m not going to sit on my ass in some dusty workshop all day making bullets and grenades.”

“With the way we know the System works now, you could master all those skills.”

“Huh?” Harper raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you and Stella say something about the System being designed so we wouldn’t spread our focus too thin? Only eight Class Skills and all?”

“True. But then I don’t know what to tell you,” I shrugged. “Unless you can put some magic in your bullets, you have no choice but to shoot me with as much lead as you can.”

Harper laughed in obvious desperation. “That’s what I’m trying to do. I mean, the magic part. As a Blastmaster, I should be able to give my shots some . . . blasts. Fuck! Eventually, I shouldn’t even need real bullets. But so far, none of my skills allow me to do that.”

Was she serious? If Harper wasn’t capable of that at her level, then . . . Shit! I was just being stupid, heat-struck bitch! Usually, people had skills at the level of their class, or at least most of them, but the Fourth Squad was an exception. Well, except for Stella . . . and Meneur, actually. Okay, it was just the three of us, me, Harper, and Freyde, who hated our original classes and thus made our skill levels a mess. Just like I did after the class evolved, they completely overhauled their skill sets after theirs. Giving up the System’s support has lowered their skill levels even more. Right now, as she shared with me before, her skill levels were basically at 50.

“Sorry, Harper, I . . . ” what was I going to say? That I was sorry she was weak? That I was sorry she trusted me with the System?

“What are you yapping about all of a sudden, Korra?”

“With all the . . . stuff I had to deal with, you know . . . I kind of forgot how weak you are.”

“Are you saying I’m weak?”

If I had learned anything about her, it was not to tiptoe around her. “Yeah, you are.” She was. A fact that both saddened and thrilled my best pride. I was stronger than her, much stronger, our previous exchange was proof of that, but her weakness was my fault.

“You bitch in heat!” Harper growled, not really angry, more like amused, motivated to prove me wrong . . . and obviously hell-bent on pissing me off. The vixen knew where to poke, what would annoy me the most, what would make me shut up and get back into the fight. Of course, I didn’t just let it go; my shamed pride wouldn’t let me. But much to my annoyance, the disgruntled growl with which she called me amused her even more.

Thankfully, to her dismay, it didn’t take long to heal my wounded pride in the fight. Without breaking a sweat, I kicked the vixen’s ass again.

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***

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“Okay, that’s enough for today, Squad Four!” Pinescar finally decided to end our training. He’d been fidgeting for a while, obviously conflicted about something. It turned out that he was waiting for Rayden to show up.

“A moment of your attention, Squad Four,” the woman in question said as I shifted into my human form, clothes appearing on me in an instant.

“Ma’am?” I, Harper, Freyde, Meneur, Stella and Idleaf saluted, wondering what she wanted with us now. As for me, I could think of a ton of things: Word Tree stuff, beasts in Esulmor, elves, mind mages, and even a potential dragon in the city, for whatever reason, with an interest in me. Just the same old song. I didn’t think it was possible, and if someone had asked me a year ago, I would have told them it was bullshit, but at some point, one really stops caring. Not like not caring at all. Fear still gripped my heart at the thought of mind mages, and the idea of facing a dragon made me shit my pants - and a little curious. I just learned not to worry all the time.

“I want to talk to you about becoming full city guards. I’d like to postpone that decision.”

“What?” Harper barked.

“But, ma’am.”

“Captain, you said.”

“I know what I said, Welkes. But you have to admit that the situation has changed considerably. I’d like you to take more time to bond as a squad and grow your skills back before I put you out on the city streets. That’s why I think it’s time for you to return to the Labyrinth.”

That was like a cold shower for the entire Squad Four, including Idleaf. Every protest, every remark, every objection was silenced. The World Tree’s spirit, usually more than happy for any mischief, now had a disapproving glint in her eyes, and neither Stella nor I took it as easily as I thought we would. We were both aware that the question of returning to the depths beneath the city always loomed in the air. It had to come one day. But now, faced with the possibility . . . well, I didn’t want to go.

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Author’s note:

I don't know what to say and I can guess what you want to say. It would be great if I could get fully back into Lament of the Slave but at the same time I feel like if I did, I'd be digging my own grave - okay, that's a little harshly put, but true nonetheless.

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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the Lament of the Slave chapter at least a little - after all, it's been two months since the last one.

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I intend to put up a poll as I said, but that's later today.

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