Aeres Academy - Chapter 12 preview

They never talk about the first time you put a blade through a body on purpose. The way it feels, the minor resistance that gives way with suddenness as your knife breaches the skin barrier. People on this world, they grow up knowing about how cheap life is, understanding on a fundamental level as they attend funerals and watch friends and family die from sickness and injury how fragile we all are. For all the healing potions and skills out there, their medicine is stuck somewhere in the 1800s or so, with as much fiction as fact. 

It is almost impossible, especially for those of us who grew up in more modern, civilized worlds – who never went to war or took a life on purpose – to understand that mindset. It is one that you have to train to accept, a discomfort that has to be pushed into.

The first time I took a life, it was not in the dungeon. I had spent two years preparing for this delve, and part of that included joining fight clubs, taking part in semi-ethical training grounds that helped children and new delvers gain the right mindset.

Semi-ethical, entirely legal. An entire kingdom built upon the idea of death and carnage taken on the regular, that glorified the mass killers and had no problem training new ones. Just like in Sparta, this was a world that had brainwashed themselves to accept a certain way of life.

And I had willingly drunk the Kool-Aid.

Pulling the dagger out of the last knocker, I stood up and stretched. Face, jacket, hands; all of it stained with blood that smelled sweet and like iron. A convenient pool allowed me to wash the worst of it off my hands; the rest I ignored. Knew that I would be drenched again, soon enough.

A tug on my skill opened my notification, the earlier injuries – including the cracked bones in my knuckles and hands – healed over.

Vault 1: Health

Conserved: 80.81 days

Annoying, to have to spend precious health on minor injuries. I could only hope that once I finally joined the academy they could help me expand my skill at a faster rate. Aid me in opening new vaults, begin to conserve more than just health.

Expand my options in combat, beyond being a punching bag.

I peeled my mind away from those thoughts, flicked my hands up and down a bit and watched the water roll off the leather gloves. Enchanted to wick away water, with minor self-repair and durability enhancements, these were the best gift I had received on this world. Cost more than I cared to think about, though minor scuffing and signs of wear indicated this was a not a brand-new project but a repurposed one.

Not that I cared. One thing you learnt, living in a semi-industrialized world, was how precious clothing and almost everything else was. Clothing and linen were produced from mutated crops and animals – there was supposedly an animal that shat out the local equivalent of flax – that had a higher and easier production level than Earth, but it still required processing. And the industrialization process for that was just starting. Clothing was getting cheaper – but there’s a difference between cheaper and cheap.

It was like getting a glimpse into the life of my grandparents who had talked about repurposing old discards, sewing their own clothing and rebuilding furniture all the time. Every scrap of metal, every piece of leather or cloth was used and re-used because labor and the cost of production was so high. Never mind how, generally, everything was well built – comparatively speaking.

No buying a smartphone and throwing it away in a few months, no new stoves that needed updating in a few years. Stoves were built to last generations; the magical ones were all too new to become heirlooms but were built along the same concepts. The only thing that needed updating was the enchanting script – and even that lasted decades.

Same with pots and pans and everything else; nothing was thrown away. So, these gloves might have been used before; but there was nothing wrong with that. In another time, another place – mostly, the main dungeon – sweeper teams would pick up after adventuring parties, collecting everything that could be taken from bodies and monsters.

Here, today, all of us were being wasteful. It would impact the academy for weeks, maybe even months, the derived income from whatever we left behind and all the loss in the dungeon ecology. It was part of the reason why their recruitment fee was so high. It defrayed the cost of this entire exercise.

Now that I was clean, monster shards extracted, there was only one thing left to do. Keep going. I was fairly certain, at this point, I had enough shards to pay my way through the academy. Now, the only question was, how much more I could acquire in the last few hours.

Eyeing the dim lighting of another cavern, I slipped through the shadows.

I might, of course, have just hummed a few bars of “The Shadow” while doing so.

***

A spinning kick caught the knocker high in its temple. The metal plate embedded at the back of my boot, to help provide support and reduce wear, had the added advantage of increasing the impact, not that the temple strike needed it. The knocker dropped bonelessly to the ground and I recovered, verifying that no others were around.

I scanned the nesting cavern that loomed a good eleven feet up and seven wide, filled with nooks and crannies that offered sleeping knockers an iota of privacy. In one corner, their refuse pile, the other, a clear pool of water fed by a spring. 

Beyond that, blessed silence emanating from the cavern. Distant sounds, some disturbing, but within, silence. No cries, no baby knocker sounds, for which I was grateful. If they had a family system and did not just birth from the crystals themselves, the knockers were also very good at removing the vulnerable to places none of us dared follow.

For example, the pair of deep shadows near the base of that wall to my left. I was all but certain they were passages, artfully hidden but for their haste. Too small for me to crawl through for certain. Maybe possible for a smaller adult, perfectly sized for a child. If I had a death wish, perhaps I could try to squeeze in, but going head – or legs – first into an unknown location, head pressed to the ground, squeezing by inch by inch, seemed like a terrible idea.

I’d seen that movie.

Surprisingly, for what seemed to be a major nesting ground, there were very few guards. Five of them, easily dispatched with minimal injuries. One had managed to slam a club into my ribs, bruising them, and another had clamped down hard on an arm with their mouth, bruising skin and muscle beneath, but I had managed to dodge or parry almost all the other attacks. Beyond minor nicks – verified after completing a wet check – I had emerged from the fight pretty safely.

By the time I cleared out their shards – still no full cores – I was ready for the next decision. A quick mental checklist popped into my head, before I began running through my options. Food stores, a little low. I’d eaten more than expected, and that thought had me popping another handful of the Haeros version of trail mix in my mouth. A little spicier than nuts and raisins, but just as nutritious.

Body was fine. My chest hurt and I had quite the collection of sore muscles and bruises, but nothing that required the use of my stored health. Nothing that would seriously impede my fighting ability. 

Water was a little short, so I wandered over to the pool by the side of the cavern, refilled the water skin. Drank a couple of mouthfuls and refilled again. 

First aid kit had barely been touched. Same with the sundry other backpacking items within, including the torches and spirit lamps in case I had to stay longer than expected. All in all, I was in decent condition, resource wise.

Mentally… I was a little wiped. I could feel my mind wandering, acting as though I’d spent the last fourteen hours at work, sorting paperwork for incoming students. Emotionally, I was no longer excited, no bubbling balls of joy emerging from the soul pool. A little sickened, if truth was told, but I had those feelings shunted aside for the moment.

Probably get nightmares later, especially if I did not take some time to process them. Killing, even in an abattoir or as a chef, was nothing like this. The creatures I dealt with did not fight back, did not have that desperate intelligence of the knockers. 

That despairing look in their eyes, just before a blow landed. Livestock did not crawl away, desperate to escape, mewling pitifully till I put a knife into the back of their necks. Did not make noises that might be construed as “Ma ma.”

I shuddered, turned and took a half-dozen steps away as my stomach heaved. I did not bother fighting it, and managed to expel the contents of my stomach, the smell of acid in my nostrils, the taste of bitterness and vinegar on my tongue, my throat burning. 

The spring helped wash it all down, as I gargled and spat aside.

So, emotionally, a little rough.

Question was, now what?

There was roughly two hours left, best guess. It would take at least an hour to get back, assuming no detours or monsters. Best to call it an hour and a half at a minimum. It left me with very little time, and while you could not be failed for being late, you could be fined. Which would have the same result. 

Smart thing to do was return. Right now.

I felt the tug of desire, the desperate need to go. 

Maybe because I’m mulish, because I had chosen to live my life anew in a different way. Maybe because I knew that if I turned back now, reentering the dungeon would be even harder. Maybe, because I could.

I turned from the way out. Moved towards the only other exit.

The noises that emanated from within, the grunts, the growls, the knocking of rounded teeth together, spoke of even more opponents. Close, too, not much of a trip over. I did not know why they hadn’t run, not yet; no idea of the challenge that was within. But…

Sometimes, you just had to embrace the suck.