Chapter 110

Luke had forgotten how uncomfortable a rank 1 language skill was. The way it twisted his lips and tongue around to form sounds he was pretty sure he’d never made in his entire life was downright creepy, like feeling someone else’s fingers in his mouth forcing it into the shapes needed to say the words.

It put him in a bad mood, and he didn’t need help with that. The merc he’d captured was woozy enough already that, now that Luke understood what he was trying to say, everything coming out of his mouth was nonsensical. Maybe the head shots hadn’t been the best idea. Then again, this guy had levels and stats. He should have bounced back from being hurt just fine.

So maybe he was playing it up. After all, people wouldn’t normally be able to tell exactly how much stamina someone had, so if the guy was sandbagging him to stall for time, pretending to be woozy from a blow to the head was a good strategy. It might even have worked if not for the fact that Luke had already hit him with an [Analyze] and knew for a fact that he had 26 stamina.

“Man, I really don’t want to have to start breaking things, but you see, my friend is very important to me. So I’ll make you a deal. Your buddies are gone. No one within a mile of here. You tell me what I want to know, and you can just walk away. Go wherever, do whatever. I don’t care.”

The merc spat out something that Luke’s new skill had trouble translating, but which he was pretty sure was a stream of swearing. Then, he said, “I won’t tell you anything. Just kill me now.”

“Oh, okay. Well, in that case.”

Luke brought his mace down on the merc’s knee.

“Six Gods curse your mother!” the merc screamed, trying to clutch at his knee, but prevented from reaching it by Luke’s hold on him.

“So where did you say your buddies were taking my friend?”

The merc gave him a sullen glare, but didn’t answer. Luke let out an exaggerated sigh, threw the man face down into the bare, scoured earth, and brought the mace around again to smash one of his hands. “I really don’t like doing this,” Luke told him once the screaming died down into whimpers. “But I’m going to get her back, one way or another.”

“Go fuck yourself, apostate devil,” the merc said as he cradled his demolished hand close and tried to scoot away on his elbows.

“Ah, so it is a church thing. Figured that was the case, but good to know. Look, my [Survivalist] skill is just okay, not that great. That only means that I won’t find her quickly, not that I can’t do it. But man, oh man, if something bad happens to her before I catch up, well, I guess I would say that I hope you hate your coworkers, because bad things would start happening to them too.”

The merc flipped onto his back and started using his good leg to kick against the ground and push him backwards. He was actually managing a respectable speed with it, all things considered. Luke clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Come on, man. Help me out here. No?”

The other knee was next, then the hip, then the shoulder, all on the same side and in quick succession.

“Greshlin! We’re working out of Greshlin,” the merc screamed out.

“Fucking fantastic! Now we’re getting somewhere,” Luke said. He paused a beat, and added, “And what direction is that in?”

* * *

In the heat of the moment, it was easy to take ‘necessary measures’ to get what he needed. It was only after Luke was finished working the guy over that it really hit him what he’d been doing. Specifically, it was while the merc was on the ground, delirious with pain and no longer able to answer anything at all that Luke got a notification.

[Congratulations! You have unlocked the Torturer (1) skill. 25 XP awarded.]

He stared at the little blue box blankly, his lips moving as he silently read the message over and over again. There it was, right there. Undeniable proof forever stamped onto his status of what he’d done. He’d gotten what he wanted, and he hated himself a little bit for that.

Then he looked around at the little clearing made by some sort of explosion. He was hoping it was from something Zea had made, but he didn’t know that for sure. Maybe Cartman had been the cause of it, however unlikely that appeared. What he did know was that she was nowhere nearby and at least one of the mercenaries had never even tried to attack him.

The merc he’d captured moaned in agony at Luke’s feet. A huge part of him was sickened by what he’d done. It was different than fighting the man, cruel somehow. Then his mouth hardened into a thin line and he reminded himself that, given the chance, these people would have done worse to him. They might be in the process of doing exactly that to Zea.

The mace came down on the man’s skull, shattering it in an explosion of bone chunks and brain matter.

[You have slain Blacktongue Human Mercenary (lvl 19). 374 XP awarded.]

[This creature has slain 428 other creatures.]

[Total kills for this type of creature: 8.]

[Highest level kill: 24.]

“Thanks for the help,” he told the now-silent corpse.

Luke started running north through the woods. Without Zea there, he didn’t need to hold back so she could keep up, and since he had System constantly correcting his course, Luke was heading towards Greshlin in a straight line. The merc had told him it was a twenty-mile trip by road, but System said twelve miles through the woods. Luke was determined to make it in under half an hour.

* * *

Zea was beyond pissed off right now. Whatever the fuck weapon that guy had been using, it had reacted really badly with her partially completed razor prong whip. She supposed that, strictly speaking, it was most likely her fault for trying to use a weapon that was only half enchanted. That did not make her any less pissed about the explosion, if only because she was pretty sure they’d left the prong pieces behind in the woods.

At least it had happened at the point of contact, which was on his end. She’d blown that fucker’s shoes off, even if the explosion had also tossed her into a tree fifty feet away. She’d barely been conscious when another one of Team: Asshole had showed up, pulled her out of the tree, bound her hands together, and gagged her. Then he’d taken all of her bags off her, thrown her over his shoulder, and just ran off with her.

Which brought her back to now, sitting on the floor, still bound and gagged, in an empty locked room with a guy who had enough XP to be at least level 30, and that was just what she could sense. Zea had a strong suspicion this might be the level 35 guy System had warned them about, and judging by how the rest of the humans acted around him, he was definitely the leader of their little group.

They hadn’t tried to question her, or even talk to her. In fact, they hadn’t done anything at all other than make sure she was securely tied up sit on her so that she couldn’t even make an attempt to escape. That was smart of them, since she was sitting on 32 AP and had a few ideas in mind for what skills she might pick up to get herself free if they happened to leave her unattended.

Someone knocked on the door, and the high level guy guarding her glanced over at it. He stood up, crossed the room, and pulled it open. “What?” he asked softly, probably too quietly for most people to hear. Zea had gotten quite used to having what was, for normal people at least, an abnormally high perception. The guy probably thought he was being quiet enough, but she could hear him easily.

“The other target is coming directly towards the town. One of our scouts spotted him three minutes ago. He is really flying. No one else came back out of the woods. They’re probably all dead.”

“He’s coming here?” the boss asked, surprise evident in his tone. “Well, that makes things easy then. Make sure everyone is ready for him. Our contract states they both need to be alive to get the full amount. If someone kills him, I will personally string them up by their own intestines. Then we’ll take turns beating them with sticks until all the gold we missed out on falls out of their pockets.”

The other man laughed. “Understood, sir. I’ll go spread the word.”

The boss closed the door, then returned to leaning against the wall. He glanced down at Zea and said, “Your man is coming after us. You’ll have some company soon.”

Zea laughed through the gag and mumbled something that probably wouldn’t have been intelligble even without the low rank in her language skill. The boss raised an eyebrow, then leaned forward and untied the gag. “Something to say?”

“Sounds like you’re all fucked then,” she told him.

He laughed. “That’d be a good time. We’ve got him outnumbered thirty-to-one though and he’s not even trying to be sneaky about it. Weird, that. The scouts are saying they can’t feel any XP off him at all. You’d think he’d have a stealth build if he devoted that much effort to hiding his XP.”

Zea just laughed again. “You’ll find out soon, huh?”

“Suppose so. Well, if he does manage to win this one, I want you to know that we don’t give a flying fuck about his status as an apostle. Well, most of us don’t. Never really was much for religion myself. Nuk caught it real bad a few years back. Probably why he volunteered for the capture mission. He gets all rabid about heretics. But the rest of us, well, we’re mercenaries. Gold is the only god we worship.

“What I’m trying to say here is, ‘good luck.’ I wouldn’t wish an inquisitor’s attention on my worst enemy. I hope you both escape, but only after we hand you over. I still want to get paid, of course.”

“Don’t expect me to be grateful for your consideration,” Zea told him.

“No, no, of course not. Ignore me. Just an old man rambling to pass the time.”

He didn’t look that old to her, but considering how high his level was, and that he was still in active service in a mercenary organization, she supposed he knew he only had a decade or two at most left. Well, if Luke was on his way in, it was more like an hour or two, especially if this guy was going to keep sitting on her. That practically guaranteed he’d be targeted.

Luke could be a big softie at times, and he wasn’t always practical about stuff, but he took her safety seriously. Honestly, he probably spent more time worrying about her than he did about himself. That was kind of sweet, kind of annoying, and wholly him.

The bastard put the gag back in place, nodded to himself, and leaned serenely back against the wall. “Any minute now, and the fun’ll start,” he told her.

* * *

If Luke had any doubts that he had the right place, they were dispelled by the asshole on the roof with a crossbow trying to hide just behind the peak. That seemed like a good sign. Plus the building was right on the edge of town, ten times bigger than a normal house, and made completely of stone, just like that guy he’d tortured for information had said. Between that and the three different traps he could see near the front door, two trip lines and some sort of pit covered in a screen of actual sod with grass going out of it, that pretty much confirmed his suspicions.

The asshole on the roof popped up over the peak, aimed his crossbow in a fraction of a second, and pulled the trigger. Luke shifted his mace so that the bolt pinged off the head.

“Yep, definitely the right place. Time to get to work.”