Book 2: Chapter 99: Crunch and Ring
When Sophie's Teleportation had concluded, Lone found himself in his camp with the blood mage, Breena, and Hamish.
From what little he could tell, the blood mage was controlling some sort of freeform blood magic to lightly strangle Breena and Hamish. Not enough to knock them out, but enough to snap their necks if just a little bit more force was applied.
Lone doubted his two companions were in any danger, however. 'If she kills them, she's dead. At worst, she can mutilate them and still maintain a position to negotiate with me, but even then, I can fix anything except death when my MP gets unsealed.'
"How'd you make the blood so solid?" Lone asked calmly while he inspected the freeform blood magic.
"So it was the human with the unique skill that looks like space magic... What a useful skill," the triple-S-ranker said, completely ignoring Lone's question. "Now, remove your armour."
He was hesitant to make her think she was the one with the advantage here, but armour or not, his skeleton itself was too strong to the point the blood mage had no viable method to kill him.
Thus, Lone did as instructed, controlling his bone armour to recede back into his body. "Does seeing me in the flesh make you feel more secure? I can't think of any other reason you'd insist I remove it. You're too weak to kill me or even just seriously injure me, armour or not."
The blood mage's pale expression twitched slightly in annoyance. "Less provoking, more doing what I tell you to. You don't want your friends here to die, do you?"
Lone slowly glanced at Breena and then Hamish.
"Ignore 'er, Lone," Hamish said as his grip on the blood noose around his neck tightened. "She's ah crazy murderer. It's oor fault fae gettin' captured. Just kill 'er, aye? Make sure ah'm buried next tae ma brothers."
Breena panicked. "I-I don't want to die!"
The blood mage laughed while she controlled some blood and stuffed it into Hamish's mouth to shut him up. "At least one of these two has some sense. Stupid dwarves with their worthless honour."
Lone frowned before he suddenly sat on the floor and crossed his legs. He saw the blood mage flinch at his quick movements but she didn't panic.
"Getting yourself comfortable?" the blood mage asked, sarcasm lacing her tone.
"You want to negotiate? So let's negotiate," Lone said coldly.
He ignored the itching sensation gnawing away at him to immediately kill the triple-S-ranker while he slowly glanced around the farwind tunnel they were in. "Lotta shadows here."
Breena's eyes opened slightly, as did Hamish's, while the blood mage looked confused. "What?" she asked.
"Nothing. Just an observation. You wanted to introduce yourself to me earlier, right?" Lone replied. "I'm Lone Immortus, silver-plate adventurer, and likely the hardest to kill C-ranker on the planet."
"... Rosanne Daybringer, accomplished blood mage, explosion mage, and wind mage," Rosanne said.
"Daybringer?" Lone raised an eyebrow. 'You know the plan.'
'We would much rather save Breena than him, but yes, we do. We are ready on your signal,' Sophie replied.
"I know, ironic. I hardly got to choose my surname though nor did I get to choose my main magical affinity. Who'd have thought the heiress to a powerful explosion magic-centred family would be given the gift of blood?" Rosanne joked.
"Magic affinities run in the family?" Lone asked rhetorically. "It must work like genes do. I bet your great-granddad or something was a blood mage. Why're you not a vampire? Wouldn't that sync up well with blood magic?"
Rosanne laughed. "You really aren't from this world, are you? No one in the right state of mind would willingly become a thrall of the night. To be a true sanguine lord one must be born into the species."
"Shame. I was considering it for a power boost, but the only other person I'll ever listen to besides myself is my girlfriend," Lone sighed. "Well, negotiations, yeah? What do you want, exactly?"
"Right... You let me leave with these two. I'll drop them off somewhere populated in a few weeks. I'll put them under a blood geass to prevent them from contacting you for a month. After that, they'll be free to use any branch of The Adventurer's Guild to reunite with you. I don't really care about them so long as I'm long gone and it's impossible for them to lead you to me," Rosanne demanded.
Lone shook his head. "I don't care about them that much."
Hamish didn't react but Breena looked heartbroken.
Lone gestured with his head to the Stone Dwarf. "He once tried to murder me. I've got him under a magical contract that allows him to be useful without the possibility of attacking me again."
He then gestured to the Crimson Foxkin. "She's dying. Dunno how much you know about Primals, but awakening nullifies whatever it is that allows beastkin to be immune to ageing."
The blood mage glanced at Breena's purple-tipped trio of tails as well as her ears and hair. She frowned and gnashed her teeth subtly.
Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Persuasion] has levelled up! It is now Advanced Level 3.
"You've awakened three times yourself," Rosanne pointed out.
"What stopped you from permanently injuring let alone killing me is what is also keeping my time-relative immortality intact," Lone explained. "I was just going to dump her off at the Crimson Foxkin Clan as a favour to the matriarch when I was done serving my sentence here. Thus, their value, separate or combined, isn't quite worth me going against the scripture magic and failing my mission. Offer me something else. Something that's worth 13 years of my time, because that's what killing you will buy me."
"..." A look of frustrated worry crept onto the blood mage's face.
Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Acting] has levelled up! It is now Advanced Level 5.
"Skills! You said you like skills, right? I-I can show you some of my magic!" Rosanne offered. "I-I can only show you the weaker ones since I'm low on MP and I'd sooner die than damage my mana organs, but I do have a scroll with contract magic binding it! W-We can just write up the terms, I show you my skills, and then I'll be on my way."
Lone stroked his chin. "Now that is a truly interesting proposal. What kind of skills do you have? Any utility ones? I have plenty of defensive skills and while I only have a few offensive ones, they're all extremely deadly. I would love to see more miscellaneous magic at work."
"Oh, dozens. What mage doesn't have a grimoire's worth of spells for odds and ends? Perhaps only those who dedicate themselves wholly to being a battle mage would opt for no utility-based spells, which as I said early, I am not," Rosanne answered.
"Not what I asked, but whatever." Lone slowly pushed himself back up to his feet. "You don't know any shadow mages do you, assuming those exist?"
"No, I can't say I d-"
"Survivor's Speed," Lone invoked.
At the same time that he rushed to the blood mage and grabbed her throat, Soph had instantly teleported Hamish away while Breena had used her Shadow Walker to slip out of her blood bindings.
The very next moment, both Lone and the mage were surrounded by a Barrier Prison than locked them in place.
"Perfect," Lone said with a vicious grin on his lips.
"Wha-"
He squeezed down on the mage's neck. "Ah, ah, ah. No talking for you. Don't want you casting any more spells, now do we?"
Rosanne's expression was consumed by one emotion and it was fear.
"Now you're scared?" Lone would have laughed if he wasn't forced to speak through his teeth like a ventriloquist right now.
Sophie's Barrier Prison was tight. He could deal with that though since he didn't want to risk letting the blood mage quite literally slip out of his finger. The barrier did allow him to tighten his grip on the mage's neck though which was perfect.
"Y'know, you never stood a chance," Lone said as he squeezed, forcing the mage to convulse as best as the barrier would allow her. "Even if you did kill them, we had a plan for that too. Do you really think I wouldn't over plan for my first fight with an SSS-ranker, let alone an SSS-ranked mass murderer?"
He could see the woman trying to shake her head and speak so he tightened his grip even more. "I'd love to torture some skills out of you right now, but your ability to turn into blood is too big of a risk."
Lone closed his fist more and more until finally, he heard a crunching sound. "Goodbye, Rosanne Daybringer."
The barrier around him dissipated when he felt a surge of strength, no doubt coming from the levels that came along with killing such a powerful person.
Sophie appeared again with Hamish in tow while Breena slinked out of the shadows.
Hamish approached Lone cautiously. "She's deed, aye?"
Lone nodded. "I'm the only person I know who can survive having the cervical part of their spine snapped like a twig. If she weren't a mage with lacking physical stats, it'd have been a right pain to kill her like that."
"If she wernae ah mage, yer Mental Destruction would o' 'ad 'er brains bleedin' ootta 'er eyeballs," Hamish remarked.
Lone let go of the mage's limp neck, allowing her body to flop down onto the Farwind beneath their feet. "Not necessarily true. A physical focused fighter may have the right resistance to avoid instant death, but yes, in general, you're right. By the way, I couldn't control her blood at all, it was a nice idea though."
"Ah, shame," Hamish replied.
"Wh-what now?" Breena asked as she shuffled forward, uncertainty and hints of awe clear in her voice.
Lone smiled. "Now, we see if she had any valuables on her person, I store her corpse, we do the other guild quests we were assigned, and then we loot what's left of Krieg Stunfurn from top to bottom."
"You're sure?" Lone asked Soph who had assumed control of her body now that the danger had passed.
She nodded. "That ring's stuffed full of magic. It's very bright to my eyes and it kinda reminds me of the magic in your adventurer's pouch. Y'know, the one you pretend to use when getting stuff from your Dimensional Storage."
Lone pursed his lips in thought. "So there's a good chance it's a spatial storage item of some sort, but I have no desire to open it without having it be properly investigated first."
"Worried it'll blow up?" Soph asked curiously.
"Not really, I'm more worried the contents inside of it will," Lone replied. "This could be the treasury of a triple-S-ranker for all we know, but that very same triple-S-ranker was an explosion mage. Who's to say she didn't work with an enchanter or something to rig it to go boom if anyone but her tampers with it?"
Soph frowned. "Guess we just need to find a dwarf with that racial skill... uh, the one Hamish doesn't have."
"It's a rotten shame there's no Identification Guild in the dwarven kingdoms," Lone lamented.
Soph cocked her head. "Identification Guild?"
Lone shrugged dismissively. "It's apparently a pretty widespread organisation that's a branch of The Adventurer's Guild. Milindo was too rural to have one and the dwarves have no need since half the population can use Stone's Vision, meaning the guild would see no profits in the Farwinds."
"I could bring it to Wilbur," Soph suggested before she panicked upon seeing Lone's expression drop. "Uh, if-if that's okay with you! I, uh, I know the scripture magic prevents you from seeing him..."
Lone smiled wryly. "Nah, it's fine. I'm not in a rush. We can get it and anything else I need looked at identified topside by the Identification Guild or some private company that does the same thing. I don't wanna bother Wilbur with something so petty and I doubt any other dwarf would be willing to help us out, not for a reasonable price at least."
Hamish approached the two of them as he tossed a cog-covered square around a bit carelessly. "Or claim ya tried tae steal it fae 'em in ah bid tae nick it 'emselves."
"True, true," Lone agreed. "What's that you're playing with?"
"Dinnae ken. It's ah steamforged artefact, aye, but ah've never 'ad the money tae splurge on these trinkets so ah've nae got the foggiest idea what it could dae," Hamish said.
He then walked up to Lone and left the device on the floor in front of him. Lone ignored it for now.
"Nae gonna store it?" Hamish asked.
Lone shook his head. "It'll gonna hurt like fuck since I'm not allowed to touch or take any steamforged artefacts. One of you three'll shove 'em all in a bucket and I'll store the bucket with the bauble inside of it. No constrictions against that."
"Sneaky. Wanna gae us the thingymabob the guild gave ya to check the state of the enchantments on their branch 'ere?" Hamish offered.
Lone nodded. "Sure," he said, retrieving the device and tossing it to the dwarf who caught it effortlessly.
"And I'll get back to looking for valuables!" Soph happily exclaimed before teleporting away.
Lone smiled before he opened his status. Now that he was done looking through the blood mage's possessions, it was time to see how many stats and levels he'd earned from ending Rosanne Daybringer's life.
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