Chapter 35: Scout's Honor (Patreon)

“What, in the hell, is that?” Chris asked.

The look on her face was just priceless and Zed couldn’t help the urge to look for trouble.

“This,” he said with a smug smirk, “is called a scraggle bone club. And I made it just for you.”

The club was a large piece of bone shaped into a club. It was rough all over the end so that it dealt more than just blunt force damage. Anything it struck would suffer severe lacerations. In truth, he definitely hadn’t made it for her, considering he hadn’t even made it. But she was the only one who used a blunt weapon in the group. Using it for himself or giving it to anyone else was going to be nothing but a waste, so that was that. He only hoped she’d be able to use it since it weighed like a ton. It was already weighing down on him just dragging it.

Chris shot him a suspicious look.

“What the hell is that?” she asked Ash, this time. “And why is Bloodbath over here carrying it?”

“That’s a club,” Ash replied. “And he made it.”

“Sweet,” Oliver said, suddenly behind Chris. “That looks like a medieval executioner’s weapon. You know, the kind they use when they don’t need anyone to identify the body.”

He bounded past Chris with a child-like enthusiasm and halted in front of Zed, despite the fatigue from their fight.

“Can I have a go at it?” Oliver asked.

Zed gave it a considering thought before shrugging. He pulled the handle forward and offered it. Oliver took it with the grace of a child with a new toy.

It was twice the length of a normal club and thrice the width. As for its weight? Zed’s jaw dropped when Oliver hefted it like it weighed nothing.

“You know,” Zed said. “Being a Rukh rank mage is just unfair to the rest of us.”

“Why is that?” Oliver asked, admiring the concise artwork of the club.

“Because that thing weighs like a ton.”

“I know,” Oliver said, still not looking at Zed. “Have you ever tried picking me up. I also weigh like a ton.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yea,” Jason said, coming down the rest of the stairs. “The higher your rank, the denser you get. Chris here weighs—”

A loud thud filled the air and Jason doubled over Chris’ elbow in his side.

“Didn’t anyone teach you not to talk about a girl’s weight?” she asked.

Zed realized now that he’d been fighting monsters but had never fought another mage, or even seen mages fight.

“Does the same apply to monsters?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jason groaned, stretching himself back to his full height.

“But that one was easy to move,” Zed said, thumbing behind him at the overturned corpse of the Rukh rank scraggle.

“That’s because when anything with magic dies, they lose most of their mana, releasing it back into the atmosphere. It happens to monsters and mages alike. For some reason, that also affects their weight.”

“So we have enough mana in us to make us heavy. The more mana we possess, the heavier we get. Got it.” Zed tapped a thoughtful finger to his lips. “I wonder how much I weigh now?” he mused.

“I swear this club is wicked,” Oliver said, excited. “You can’t turn this down, Chris. It’s a freaking ranked weapon.”

Whatever that meant, it was enough to catch Chris’ attention. She came down the rest of the stairs and snatched the club from Oliver.

Zed caught the moment she felt whatever it was Oliver had felt and smirked. When he’d held it he’d gotten the same feeling. The effects of the club were impressive. Holding it made him stronger than he knew he was, as if swinging it would take anything’s head off.

Chris caught the look on Zed’s face and handed it back to him almost immediately.

“You can have it back,” she said.

“You sure,” he grinned, taking it back and letting its end drop to the ground. He couldn’t dream of holding it up for any considerable length of time. It seemed his strength aptitude was too low. Perhaps I should just raise strength, going for a balanced build was already going to be impossible in the first place.

• You have acquired [Scraggle bone club].
• Effect:
  • +3 Strength.
  • +1 Agility.
• Increase damage to blunt force attack.
• Would you like to equip [Scraggle bone club]?

“Chris,” Oliver groaned. “The dude’s giving you a ranked weapon for god sake. How many people would give you a ranked weapon? How many ranked weapons have you even seen?”

“If it’s so great, why don’t you take it?” Chris asked.

“And do what with it? I don’t know how to use a baseball bat, not to talk of fighting with one. It will be useless with me.”

“Well, it’s suspicious,” Chris said, eyeing Zed. “Why would he give it to me? And where did he even find it?”

“Does it matter?”

“Missing memory patient over here,” Zed cut in. “Will anyone be nice enough to tell me what a ranked weapon is?”

“It’s a weapon that’s imbued with mana,” Ash said. “Each one has a rank, the stronger it gets. Judging from the weight of the club I’d say it’s a high end Beta rank weapon, maybe early Rukh.”

Zed took a moment to think on that. It seemed when it came to ranked weapons, her discernment wasn’t so good. It was odd. Oliver claimed she was the one who taught him aura sense, but this was the second time Zed was seeing her have a problem discerning something’s rank.

“So, like, a category three,” Zed said. “Like the scraggle I got it from?”

“Ha!” Chris barked triumphantly. “I knew you found it somewhere.”

“He didn’t find it,” Ash said, unsure. “He actually kind of made it.”

“How?” Jason asked, curious.

“With a spellform,” Ash answered. “I’m not sure how he did it, and I’ve never seen anything like it, but I saw it happen. He touched the scraggle, cast a spellform and this was one of the things he got.”

“One of the things?” Jason asked. “What else did he get?”

Ash slipped her hand into her pocket and brought out a pendant suspended from a light brown leather rope.

“What’s that?” Jason asked.

Ash shrugged. “He calls it a sturdy pendant. And yes, it’s also a ranked item. Probably category one or two.”

“And he got it using a spellform,” Jason said, skeptical. “Can I see?”

Zed shook his head. “Maybe the next time I kill something. It won’t work against the others since I didn’t kill them.”

Jason shrugged. “Humor me,” he said. “If you could get all these from a Beta rank monster, I’d like to see what you could get from a Rukh rank monster.”

Zed sighed and turned around. He would go one more time just so they understand whatever the spellform was, it had limits. Zed gave Oliver the club and walked up to the Rukh scraggle still lying on the ground, belly up, and placed a hand on its side.

• Would you like to use [Conqueror’s touch] on [Scraggle      (Rukh, category 2)]?

He agreed and a new notification he’d seen enough times already popped up.

• You did not defeat this monster.
• You cannot use [Conqueror’s touch] on an enemy you did      not defeat.

Zed took his hand off the corpse.

“A failed spellform,” Jason mused. “You don’t see that very often.”

“Told you,” Zed said, dropping his hand. “Wait. How did you know I even tried it?”

Jason gestured around him. “The mana around you acted up then settled,” he said. “Spellforms disturb the ambient mana. If it had succeeded, they would’ve flared up for a longer period before settling but they just settled without flaring up.”

“Oh,” Zed mused, rejoining them. “Well, I think I’ve got to be the one that killed the monster for it to work.”

Jason rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t think there are spells that come with conditions. At least none that I know of. The only conditions they come with are that you are strong enough to cast it and your connection to the mana type is strong. That’s all. If yours is giving you limits, there’s a high chance its psychosomatic.”

Oliver leaned towards Zed and whispered, “He’s saying it’s all in your head.”

“I know what psychoso—”

A wave of nostalgia hit Zed. It sucked him in like Deja vu and he turned to Oliver with a serious expression.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“That it’s all in your head?” Oliver said, confused. “That’s what psychosomatic means.”

Zed frowned as his mind struggled with the whisper of a memory. He’d heard it before. Someone in his life had used the word once and another person had been forced to explain it, but it hadn’t been to him. He was sure of it. As sure of it as he was sure Chris wouldn’t stop being mean to him.

“Hey,” Ash touched Zed’s shoulder gently, a worried look on her face. “Are you okay?”

The memory slipped into fogginess before Zed could catch a glimpse of it and he shook it from his head. Its disappearance brought a mild displeasure with it.

“Yea,” he answered, his mood sober. “It felt like I was about to remember something.”

“What was it?” she asked.

Around him everyone else stood, quiet.

Zed shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t get to remember it.”

The nostalgia had been deep and heavy. It had come with a bout of happiness with an after taste of loss and sadness. He’d lost something important to him and he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t remember what it was.

It made him rethink his contemplation of whether to open his repaired pocket memories or not.

Thinking about them summoned a notification and he stared at it grimly.

• You have received repaired [Pocket memory(incomplete)]      4/5.

Over the week Zed had gained two more points to his Wil aptitude and a few more to his other aptitudes. He’d also gained more pocket memory repairs and had been stalling. Now, he was curious.

He dismissed the notification, knowing he would have to view it eventually. But he didn’t like cliffhangers. He would view it when it was complete and he was ready.

“So what you’re both saying,” Chris said, breaking the silence, “is that he touched the monster, cast a spellform and ranked items just popped out of the air?”

“No,” Ash said, slipping her hand in her other pocket. “What I’m saying is that he touched the monsters, cast spellforms and ranked items came out, along with these.”

She pulled her hand out and showed them four mana stones. Each one was a different color. They carried varying marks of hairline fractures. There was red, blue, green, and a color that looked as if it wanted to be red, but wasn’t quite. They were small enough for three to fit in the palm of one of her hands.

The others gathered around Ash like children flocking to sweets on Halloween. Zed wondered if the world still observed the holidays now that it had gone to hell. Maybe the VHF towns did. They did maintain some level of civilization, after all.

Jason took a mana stone from Ash and held it up.

“How?” he asked, disturbed.

Zed shrugged. “Magic.”

“Well, it does make some level of sense,” Oliver said. “I mean, mages have already established that everything is made of mana. With the right spellform you can even turn the mana in the air into gold. Can’t really be surprised if someone turns the mana in a monster into mana stone.”

“Wait,” Zed interposed. “Everything is made of mana?”

“Yea,” Oliver said. “You know how back in the days people used to say matter cannot be destroyed, only converted, and so every atom has existed and will continue to exist, just in different forms, and blah blah blah, just so they can say we are made of the same things the stars are made of so we’re all stars?”

Zed had no idea what Oliver was talking about. He nodded, regardless.

“Well it turns out they were right,” Oliver said. “At least to some extent. Everything is made of mana and can be converted from one form to another.”

“But it’s still kind of weird, though,” Chris said. “Have any of you ever heard of any spells that can do this?”

“No,” Jason answered. “And to be able to do all this it must require a lot of mana to pull off.”

Everyone stared at Zed.

“How are you even still standing?” Jason asked.

Zed thought of his mana aptitude and shrugged. “I’ve got a massive mana supply?”

They gave him a longer lasting look before Chris spoke up, reaching for the scraggle bone club now in Oliver’s hand.

“I just want to confirm one thing before I take this,” she said.

“What’s that?” Zed asked.

“If I take this, I don’t have to be nice to you, right? Because this is a really valuable item.”

“Well,” Zed said, dragging the word, “I’d be very happy if you would be, but you don’t have to be. Being nice to me is something I would like you to decide that you want to—”

“Got it,” she cut him off, snatching the club from Oliver’s hand.

Zed sighed. “I’m definitely putting a clause on the next item I get.”

………………………………..

They were outside the domed building now, back into the afternoon air. The outside air was significantly better than the one inside the building and they reveled in it as they walked.

Oliver hefted his backpack now carrying four extra mana stones and up to fourteen monster cores, three larger than the remaining eleven.

Beside Zed, Ash moved easily, her fatigue gone. When they were done extracting the monster cores from the scraggles with Jason’s rune gun, she’d downed a small vial of bluish liquid. When Zed had asked how they weren’t worried about breaking the vials, she had pointed out a small rune inscribed on the side of the vial. She called it a strength rune, designed to keep the glass sturdy so that it didn’t easily break under pressure. One of many runes Festus was capable of using.

Zed had gotten to finally see Jason’s rune gun in action when they were extracting the remaining cores, and it was more sci-fi than magic. Jason had stood ontop of the corpse of the Rukh rank scraggles and fired at point blank range. Each time he pulled the trigger, the chamber glowed a soft purple and a short beam of purple mana blasted out to drill a black hole in the corpse. For each scraggle, he’d fired thrice before the others pulled their chests apart to retrieve their cores. It looked like gruesome work but none of it seemed to bother them.

It made Zed wonder just how long they’d been doing this.

They were headed back peacefully when Chris took it upon herself to disrupt their peace.

“The shed’s not that far from here, you know,” she said, eliciting a groan from Ash.

“And so what?” Ash asked.

“Well, the VHF platoon is there, right?” Chris went on. “And we’ve all been hearing the rumors about negotiations and all that.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Zed said, looking from one of them to the other. “Am I the only one who doesn’t like where this is going?”

“No,” Ash said, frowning. “You’re not.”

“I’m just saying,” Chris continued, speaking more to Jason. “The VHF I know don’t do negotiations. They are more about espionage and war.”

“So what exactly are you saying?” Jason asked, knowing the answer.

“All I’m saying is that it’s not far from us. We can sneak up on them and have a look around; see what they have and don’t have. That way we can get the information back to Heimdall and his decision can be better informed.”

“Or we could go home,” Zed said. “Just a thought.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ash said. “I’m with Red on this one.”

“Yea,” Zed said. “Besides, doesn’t the sneaking around usually take place in the night. Last time I checked, the sun isn’t this bodacious at night. Ergo, it’s not night yet.”

“We get your point, Bloodbath,” Chris said. “And we’ve gotten your opinion on this, Ash. I say we go. All that’s left is what Jason says. It’s decided by the majority.”

Zed leaned in towards Oliver.

“Remind me again why you don’t get a say in their decisions,” he said.

“Because they know I’ll take Ash’s side,” Oliver answered, unbothered.

Jason took a moment to think. It was long and it was visibly thoughtful. The others watched him go through his mental dilemma as they waited for his opinion on the subject. While they waited, Zed raised a hand.

“Do I also get a vote?” he asked.

“No,” Chris said. “You’re an honorary member of the team. Honorary members don’t get to vote unless we need a tie breaker, which we never do.”

“Hey,” Zed protested. “I got us mana stones and a big bone.”

“Sorry, Bloodbath, but you can’t bribe your way into the team. We have a no bribery and corruption policy.”

“Then how do I become a full member?”

“Pass the hunter’s exam first and we’ll talk.”

“I thought it was a training?”

“The same thing.”

“And you’re talking about the one I missed because I had to wait a few days because of broken bones and couldn’t make it?”

“There’s another one coming up in a few weeks,” Chris snorted. “Pass that one and we’ll talk.”

“If I’m being honest,” Zed said. “I get the feeling I’ll never be in the right position to take it, and we’ll just keep missing it.”

Chris shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I think that’s enough of that,” Jason said, interrupting their growing argument. “Zed’s already a member of the team.”

Zed smirked.

“However,” Jason continued, “he hasn’t been with us long enough to get voting rights. One day he will, but that day is not today. As for Chris’ idea, I say we do it. It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes!” Chris pumped a triumphant fist in the air.

“Only surveillance,” Jason said, firm. “I know how much you hate the VHF, so I’ll repeat myself. Only surveillance. We are not there to fight or get caught. And if you do anything funny or inciting, we’re leaving you behind.”

Chris raised her hand. “I won’t,” she said. “Scout’s honor.”

Oliver shook his head as they changed direction, following a new path.

“Wrong hand,” he told Chris.

Chris dropped her left hand and raised her right hand. Oliver looked at her and she gave him an amiable smile. He shook his head again, this time with a chuckle.

“You were never in the scouts, Chris.”