Royal Blood: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

I’m starting a new story called Royal Blood! Here are the first Patreon chapters! If you enjoy it, swing by the story page on Royal Road and drop a rating? It helps a lot!

Chapter 6: Bloody Pride

One thing they never tell you is that it used to take forever to get from place to place before people developed planes. In my lessons, I learned that some of the island nations south of Norvusk had recently begun experimenting with airships, but everyone thought it was tripe so far.

Made me wish I could get in on the ground floor of that.

Still, as the carriage made its way down the cobblestone roads, it meant I had a lot of time to check my character sheet—sorry, my system. A lot had happened over the past day, and my new ‘boss’ didn’t seem like he was in the mood to talk.

With a blink, I pulled it up:

A lot more there and before. I had to hold back a wince at the sight of “backstab”. I’d probably be using that skill a lot more before long. It wasn’t that I was some pacifist or anything; hell, I was practically raised in a family that trained me to look at commoners more like livestock than actual humans, but there was still that part of me that shied back from the thought of violence. I guess I’d have to get over it sooner rather than later.

Or I’d die.

I slouched back in the chair, looking out the window as we made our way out of the hills that surrounded the capitol and out into the floodplains towards the sea. Norvusk was a beautiful country, and as it got further south, it went from temperate to practically Mediterranean.

I was distracting myself. I blew out a breath, glanding towards my ‘boss’.

After he’d taken me as his ‘apprentice’, he’d tucked the stone back away, pulled his hood down over his eyes, crossed one foot over his knee, and went to sleep. Or maybe he was still watching me from the shadow of his hood.

I looked back to my stat sheet. Right now, I had a problem. If I didn’t miss my guess, he planned to use me hard and discard me the moment I made a single misstep. That’s fine, I could handle hard. He probably thought I was some pampered little princeling who never worked a day in his life.

Bitch please, I grew up in a world where I scraped and worked two jobs just for the privilege of being buried under a mountain of student debt when I finally saved up enough to make it through college.

And really, even that was considered ‘lucky’.

No. The harder he worked me, the faster I’d level up. The faster I leveled up, the sooner I’d be free.

The bigger problem was that right now I was level 3. Even now, I’d be behind the level curve until about level seven, when my ability to level up with twenty five stat-ups would finally start to overtake the linear increase in quest exp.

Just like all my professors said, you use math every day. Hah.

The bigger problem was that, even with my ‘inflated’ stats, I was as strong as a wet noodle, and I couldn’t assign my stat points until I got a subclass. Each stat I boosted would be one less that I could level up. I was willing to bet I could maybe put one or two points per level in my stats, and still manage to level them, but even that would slow me down.

Once I finally caught up, I’d actually be over-stat, but for now, I was too weak and too slow to survive the moment I was tossed out in the real world.

Something that might happen sooner rather than later.

The plan had always been to save them until my first subclass unlock. After all, how was I supposed to level up attunement if I took a priest class? Pray? Now, though, as I looked at the 30 unspent stat points, I realized that I might not have the chance to wait that long. No, I definitely wouldn’t.

Then I looked at Luck. It was the one stat that didn’t level on its own. Most people ignored it. There were plenty of people who’d dumped everything into it as well, though most of them didn’t end up becoming billionaires when the king randomly tripped over them and proclaimed them heir to the throne.

It was, according to scholars, a finger on the scale, but if you didn’t have weight of your own, it didn’t matter how lucky you were: the archmage would still just vaporize you. I’d intended to follow established wisdom on the topic. Now though, I was gonna need a whole hand on the scale if I was gonna make it out of this ‘apprenticeship’ alive. After all, all the power I could have in the future wouldn’t save me if I died tomorrow.

I snorted. “If I were a hero, this is where I’d drop my cool one liner,” I murmured.

Instead, I just dropped all my points into luck, bringing it up to 31.

For making a wise decision in difficult circumstances, you have gained 1 Wisdom!

+8 exp

I quirked my lip. It was nice to know I’d made…if not a good decision, at least the best one I could in my situation.

LUK 31

With that, I leaned back, glancing over at the boss, only to half jump when I saw his cold grey eyes watching me from the shadows of his hood. They glinted like silver coins in the fading twilight.

I forced myself to relax, meeting his gaze for a moment, before deliberately looking away.

Outside, we’d finally taken a turn off the imperial highway that ran from the Imperial City to Port Royal. Now we were headed towards…Iduneth, I think.

Of course, we could just be passing through that city as well. Norvusk was a big place.

“You know, brat.”

I stiffened as I heard the man’s gruff voice.

I turned back. “Yes…?”

“I think it’s time to get you started.” He flicked something out of his cloak. I jerked to the side and a stiletto buried itself, quivering, in the wood right next to my shoulder. A strip of cloth fell from my shirt.

For dodging an attack from a vastly superior foe, you have gained 1 Dexterity

+8 exp

I glanced over at the man before reaching up and tugging the blade out. I frowned. “Does it have to be this one?”

He gave a rasping laugh. “Never trust a blade that hasn’t tasted your own blood.” His grin split the shadows of his hood. “How else would you know it was sharp?”

“By stabbing someone else.” I flipped the dagger into an icepick grip. “Repeatedly. Until he died.”

“Very good.” His smile grew wider. “Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going to stop you from just running away the moment I take my eyes off you.”

I shrugged. There wasn’t any point in lying. “The thought crossed my mind.”

“That dagger is part of it.” He leaned back, almost slouching in the carriage seat. “It has your blood, and the blood of your first victim. Notice how it’s clean again?”

I blinked. The steel had returned to a polished gleam. I assumed he’d just wiped it down somewhere and I’d missed it, but…

“Most of our knives are enchanted to clean themselves.” He chuckled. “Nothing more incriminating than a bloody weapon.”

“Caught red handed…” I murmured.

“Red handed?” He hummed and I jolted. Of course, they didn’t have that idiom here. “Yes, something like that. Of course, it serves another purpose. Care to guess?”

I glared, flipping the dagger over in my hands. It felt…more comfortable than before. “I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“Maybe I won’t, keep you guessing.”

I huffed, looking away. “You’ve done something to bind me to you.”

“To all of us.” He flicked his wrist, spinning another dagger across his fingers. “Not a lot of trust in the murdering business, you know.”

“I never would have guessed.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Keep using your tongue like that, and you’ll lose it.”

“I’ll just pay a priest to grow it back.”

He chuckled again. “There’s always the worry that someone might sell out your contract, or beat you to it. Then, some old idiot came up with the idea of enchanted daggers. I ran it across the apprenticeship stone before taking you on. By your blood and the blood of your victim, you are bound to the commands of your master, and your brotherhood.”

“Ah of course.” I rolled my eyes. “An assassin’s creed, right?”

“An Oath.” Suddenly, he was deadly serious. “And if you break it, you will wish you were dead.”

I frowned. “I don’t feel any different. And I’ve never heard of something like that.”

He chuckled. “It wouldn’t be worth much if everyone knew about it, now would it?” He yanked back his sleeve, and I saw a tracery of red ink running up his arm in a tattoo. “But yours will be coming in soon.”

I blinked, then grabbed for my sleeves. I rolled up one, then the other. Both were bare.

“Wouldn’t be worth much if it showed up in the same way each time either, now would it?” He jerked his sleeve back flat, leaning back in his chair. “As for not feeling it, well.” He glanced at the window. “You had all those fancy tutors didn’t you, brat? Who’s the goddess of moonlight?”

“Emvira…?” I frowned, thinking back to my theology lessons. “The goddess of moonlight and…moonlit acts.”

“Bet you thought they meant fucking.”

But I was barely listening. Instead, I turned to the window, as the last rays of the sun sank below the horizon behind me. Only a few seconds after, I saw the moon—Emvira’s chariot, some called it—peeking up over the horizon.

The silver light stabbed into my eyes like a thousand needles. I shut them, doubling over, but the pain almost redoubled.

I gasped out a strangled scream.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard my new boss laughing, and a woman laughing with them.

It lasted for a moment, it lasted for so much longer.

I lost track of time, maybe I even blacked out. When I came back to myself, I was lying on the floor of the carriage, body trembling. I could feel the sweat plastering my hair to my forehead. Above me, the boss was watching me with an expression of barely concealed amusement.

Gingerly, I pushed myself back into my seat. “W-what happened?”

“That would be your mark.”

I reached for my sleeves again, but he caught my wrist.

“Not there.” He chuckled. “You’ve got a good one. Make sure the ladies don’t get too jealous.”

“What do you mean?”

He held up his dagger in front of my face, angling its surface to catch the moonlight.

My eyes were brown. They’d been brown in my last life, and brown in this one. I liked brown. It was a normal color, and my eyes had been the exact same shade in both lives. Proof, maybe, that I hadn’t just dreamed up my whole last life.

Now, my eyes were still brown—the exact same color, even. At first glance, it looked like nothing had changed.

Except in my left eye, there was a single dot of red. It was like a blotch at the top of my iris. The color ran from my pupil to the whites of my eyes, forming a thin line that almost seemed to glow in the moonlight.

“Every time you complete a contract, it will grow, to show your dedication to the world’s oldest profession,” the man said.

I swallowed. “You’re right,” I said. “I did think that meant whores.”

He laughed, a full-bellied laugh that was different from his normal one.

“You know, brat,” he slapped his knee, still chuckling, “maybe I’ll let you keep your tongue.”

For earning the amusement of a superior foe you have gained +1 Charisma

+8 exp

“Much appreciated.” I swallowed.

And it was good to know that, even after you laughed at my jokes, you were still my enemy.