Chapter 74: Boars and Bandits

It was the 1st of April today...but April's Fools isn't a thing here, so that's irrelevant. 

It was a Friday, and I was currently at the Academy, struggling to stay awake during the first session. Professor Payse was a lot less boring than Professor Tolsh had been, which wasn't saying much, but I still had a hard time paying attention. Most of the topics just didn't feel relevant, and since my head was firmly of the opinion that this information didn't really matter, it made it pretty difficult to feel any interest in it. 

As the session ended, the Professor approached me. 

"Mr Black, the headmaster instructed me to inform you that he wishes to speak to you after the first session," She informed me with a smile. 

"Oh, alright," I replied, standing up and stretching up my arms. 

She walked with me as I headed to the headmaster's office, since she was headed for the staff room in the same direction. 

It was a bit uncomfortable, because, you know...the whole thing with me assassinating her husband. It'd probably get pretty ugly if she ever found out. 

I knocked and entered the headmaster's office as I reached it, closing the door behind me. Erhtaph Ragiu was there too. 

"Ah, Mr Black...I've been expecting you," Greeted the headmaster. 

"Uh, right...so, what's this about?" 

"Allow me to explain," Said Erhtaph, as he filled me in. 

As it turns out, before he had started assigning me missions, he had first consulted Headmaster Yiserir regarding the whole covert investigations and assassinations thing, and the headmaster had also agreed with him that I should be chosen for it. 

"Mr Ragiu has been filling me in on your progress...quite impressive, your track record continues to prove your worth. How many have you convicted thus far?"

"Well, only two of them were spies, both are dead now...though one of them technically blew himself up. I did assassinate two others, but they weren't spies. The rest of everyone I investigated turned out to be innocent," I explained, before I heard something stir outside the room, "Who's there!?" 

I shot towards the door and opened it...but if someone had been there, they were already gone. There was a left turn a couple of meters to the left of the door, the eavesdropper must have slipped away down there, and there were a bunch of staff members and students there, so if there had been an eavesdropper, they would have already blended into the crowd. Hopefully, it was just my imagination. 

"Was someone listening in?" Erhtaph inquired with a concerned look. 

"I'm not sure...it could have just been someone passing by, or maybe I imagined it," I replied uncertainly. 

Well, no point worrying about it, that won't change anything. We got back to the matter at hand, while I kept my ears alert and listened for any sounds outside. 

The reason I was called in was because they had decided that it'd be better if I got my missions from the headmaster instead of Erhtaph...that made sense, people would probably be suspicious if they say me regularly visiting the house of one of the most influential royal advisors. Not to mention that it's a bit of a long walk from my place, while the Academy is much closer. 

"Sure, that works for me...but maybe you should write the mission assignments in some kind of code if I'm going to be accepting them and reporting here. I can come up with an encryption code you can follow," I suggested. 

After they agreed to that, I excused myself and left, hurrying over to the training hall where the second session of the day was to take place. 

After the first hour of the session passed by with nothing out of the ordinary, Instructor Dile changed things up for the second half of the session. 

"Your attention, students!" He boomed, activated a barrier around the training hall, "I shall randomly pair you all up, and each pair will spar with each other. This barrier will prevent the use of Elemental Magic, as this is solely to improve your physical combat abilities."

He first split the class up into two halves of eight, one half was those skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and the other half were those who weren't as skilled. He then randomly paired us up. I got paired up with...Lamasa. I wasn't as dismayed as I would have been a few months ago, because she was now pretty much just a shell of her former self.

She hardly spoke anymore, was clearly depressed, indicated by her messy, half-dyed hair and slight gain in weight. She used to maintain her purple-dyed hair, but now it had faded into an ugly pink, and about a couple of inches of the roots were undyed, her natural light brown hair color clearly showing. 

"H-hey, Kuro...help," Az pleaded, as he got paired up with Gela. 

"Well, uh...you're getting better at staying on your feet when you spar against me, so you should be okay...I think...just, uh...stay clear of her left hand."

As he reluctantly headed towards his sadistic sparring partner, I turned to Lamasa. 

"Alright, uh...come at me, I guess."

She simply nodded sullenly and ran at me, throwing a somewhat...half-hearted punch at me. Without moving from my spot, I blocked and grabbed her fist before it could hit me, and then kicked her shin, causing her to fall over. 

For a moment, a look of fear appeared in her eyes as I stared down at her, before she slowly got back up. 

Her movements had gotten a lot worse than they had been before, she was slower, weaker, less agile and flexible, and overall just seemed rusty. It didn't help that her depth perception was off with just one eye remaining. She probably wouldn't make it past the mid-year exams at this rate...actually, it would be sort of a miracle if she did.

She came at me again, once again with no real intent. I stepped out of the way of her clumsy punch and tripped her. I can't even enjoy messing with her while she's in this state...

I tripped and knocked her down several more times through the course of the hour, while she never even got close to landing a blow on me. It got so painfully easy that I literally fought her with my eyes closed towards the last fifteen minutes or so. Her arrogance, pride, bitchiness, hubris, conceit...they were all gone. She was almost like a vegetable, except that she could still walk. 

Next was the Elemental Magic session. I still hadn't gotten used to Misen as an instructor, but since he actually did his job in a professional manner, it wasn't that bad...I hated to admit it, but he was actually a half-decent teacher.

As the session ended, I joined up with my group and headed out. We had decided to take on an actual Quest today...whenever we wanted to train in the forest area, we just picked some random yet simple D-Rank Quest in that area, like picking a handful of herbs. 

But D-Rank Quests don't pay very well, so we decided to go for something with a decent pay today. 

We headed for the Guild and entered it, walking over to the board filled with Quest flyers.

The Guild was a large building, with several pinboards on which clients or the Guild itself could pin up Quests for Adventurers to accept. Once you've chosen a flyer, to take it over to the front desk, where one of the attendants approves you to take on the Quest, so long as you're at an eligible rank. 

The Guild was run by the Guild Master, who was...Headmaster Raedal Yiserir. Yeah, both the Adventurer Guild and the Adventurer Academy were run by the same person, though he was a lot more involved with the Academy than the Guild, the latter was mostly run by the hired attendants. 

After some searching, we stumbled across an absolutely golden B-Rank Quest. Normally, it was next to impossible to find a B-Rank Quest that would pay more than five gold...but here was a Quest to gather a bunch of wild boar, and they would pay based on the number of boars you captured, and there was no cap or limit on the amount. It was one gold per two boars, not a bad deal. 

We took on the Quest, and headed out after getting it approved. As we went to rent a cart, I paid for renting two. 

"Hey, two is kinda...are we renting horses too?" Asked Rai, a bit cautiously. 

He was almost always the one who ended up having to pull the cart, but he wouldn't have to this time. 

"No, we won't have to...hey push the carts together, so that they're firmly in contact with each other," I said, after paying the rental fee. 

"Uh...okay," He replied in confusion, joining the two carts next to each other. 

Hope this works... 

"Alright...Store." 

I pressed the scroll right at the point where the two carts were touching, and...both carts disappeared immediately. 

Yes, it worked! 

Store can only hold one item at a time, so long as it weighs less than a ton...but it looks like I can Store more than one item so long as they're attached. I had figured I could do that after I used Store on the first guy I killed during my investigations...I had ripped out his teeth and chopped up his finger segments, but once I fastened them onto his corpse with my wire, along with stuffing them into his mouth, the entirety of that bloody mess was taken in by Store, chopped up appendages and all. 

"Oh, wait...we should probably get a couple of tarps and rope too, in order to fasten the boars to the carts, otherwise I might not be able to Store all of it," I realized, using Extract to bring out the carts again. 

"That is a really useful spell," Remarked Key. 

"I know, right? If you want a copy, why not ask Az...his mentor is the one who made it, after all, it may have been my idea, but there's no way I could have made it myself."

"Hah, yeah...you suck at creating spells-!" 

"So do you, Raccoon Tail," I retorted, zapping his tail. 

Once we got everything we needed, we headed out after I used Store on the carts. 

We would have to head in pretty deep into the forest, though not all the way to the swamp. For obvious reasons, I had been avoiding that particular spot. 

The monsters we ran into...aren't worth talking about. After facing off against Giants, Cyclops, Abominable Snowmen, Ice Wyverns, and other strong monsters...these low level monsters were less than child's play. Speaking of child's play...that was a pretty good horror movie series.

Anyway...let me update you on my new abilities. The change in my speed was relatively minimal, so it hardly made a difference, but my strength...I packed a much stronger punch than I used to. I'd say I was about fifty percent stronger than I was before. I hadn't yet gotten a chance to try out my teeth. And as for Vampire Mode, let's just say that...I was working on it. 

I could use all my remaining Karma now, my body's tolerance to it had also greatly increased, though the full hundred percent only lasted around ten seconds before the damage sets it. 

I could use twenty percent, the amount that was formerly five percent, for five whole minutes now. Forty percent lasted around two minutes and ten seconds, sixty percent for fifty-five seconds, eighty percent for twenty-three seconds, and hundred percent for ten seconds. 

Lightning Boost was still at x3. With the rate at which my progress with Lightning Boost mastery is slowing down...I'll probably reach my limit with it soon, at most I'd estimate that I'll hit my ceiling with this technique at around x3.5, though it could be less. 

Lightning Boost was a technique that very, very few could master at a high level, the majorities' bodies wouldn't be able to handle it. If it wasn't for my Healing Factor, I don't think I would have been able to master it to this extent. Everyone's limit with it varies, and I had a strong feeling that I wasn't too far from mine. 

On another note, we all had gotten some new battle gear. For the most part, everyone still looked the same and had simply opted for similar gear but made with more high quality materials. 

Rai wore a navy blue light-armored leather top with long sleeves, it was barely armor, looked more like thick spandex, but the leather was really tough and high quality. It had a dark green leather strap at the back to hold his scythe, and he wore dark green fingerless gloves on his hands. He had navy green leather-armored trousers and dark blue shoes. 

Key had on a tight red tank top and red gloves that went halfway up her biceps, on top of which she wore a sleeveless thick brown-leather armored top and dark brown leather gloves that covered her forearms. She had maroon light-armored trousers and dark brown boots. She had a black belt that had her sword's sheath strapped to her left hip. 

Azyl had chainmail under a thick brown leather armored top with short sleeves, and brown leather armored gloves with small black shields that covered his forearms. He had dark brown leather armored trousers and black boots. 

Persia wore a tight black tank top underneath a sleeveless black leather light-armored top, with black fingerless gloves with black steel knuckles and square black steel plates at the back of her hands. She had light armored black leather shorts that covered two thirds of her thighs and knee length black leather boots. She had a Switch Spell Scroll on her lower back that was linked to mine. 

I had on a long-sleeved light-armored black leather top with a hood, along with black fingerless gloves. I had light-armored black trousers and open-toed tabi boots. My short-sword was strapped vertically along the right side of my back with the handle over my right shoulder and my dagger strapped horizontally across my lower back, with the handle pointing left. 

On the left side of my back, I had my Counter Barrier, invisibility barrier and Switch spells on the left side of my back and Store and Extract on either side of my waist. I had a black utility belt, where I kept my various laced needles, throwing knives, smoke bombs and wire. There were some needles hidden in my sleeves as well. 

Key and Rai also each had Switch Scrolls paired with each other. 

"Hey, so are you two now officially living together or what?" I asked them curiously. 

"Well, it's been a while since I went back home...I haven't really spoken to my parents since then either," Sighed Key, looking irritated. 

"Y-yeah, it's kinda a touchy subject, so let's talk about something else," Rai urged nervously.

"Oh, uh...my bad."

We soon ran into a group of four wild boars.

Az used razor sharp water blades to slash all four of their throats at the same time. I used Extract to get the carts out and hauled the pigs onto one of them, before using Store. It stored both the carts and the boars without a problem. 

"This should be done in no time with you around, Az," I grinned, slapping him on the back. 

"Sure, happy to help. I'm just glad to get away from my tyrant of a mentor," He sighed with a shudder. 

Apparently, Elolina had been working him pretty hard lately. 

Anyway, with that, we continued into the forest, looking for more boars to hunt... 

... 

After we had collected around eleven boars, we ran into some bandits, seven of them. We each picked out targets and shot towards them. 

"Perfect!" I grinned, dashing forward eagerly. 

Finally, an opportunity to test out my new Vampire teeth! 

I ducked under the swing of one of the bandits and slipped behind him. I then extended my canines and plunged them into his neck, and to my surprise, my fingernail also grew sharp, and I caught the reflection of my face on his blade...my pupils were scarlet red. 

The moment I sunk my teeth in, time seemed to slow down and I could feel that I could either drain his life force or share my Healing Factor with him. The choice was obvious. 

I began draining his life force and, to put it elegantly...sucked him dry in a matter of seconds. His body collapsed lifelessly as I got done. And bonus, it looked like absorbing his life force had fully restored my stamina. 

And it felt like I could extend my fingernails even further...I tried it out, and my nails grew out about five inches long, and they were razor sharp.

So, when I extend my canines, not only can I drain a person's life force or heal them, I enter a state that turns my eyes red and enhances my perception, and also allows me to extend my fingernails into sharp, dagger-like claws. 

I didn't feel any strength or speed boost, and it also felt like I couldn't channel my Mana or extract any Karma while in this state, which meant that my Elemental Magic was disabled in this state. 

And my mindset felt a bit...feral and bloodthirsty, my sadistic side surfacing. What should I call this? 

Bloodsucker Mode? No, it sounded cool, but it was inaccurate. I don't drink their blood, I drain their life force- oh, I know...how about Soul Eate- crap, no, that was taken! Damn it, and it's the perfect name for this state too!

...wait, it should be safe if I add a '-' in the middle, as in Soul-Eater Mode. Yeah, that works!

With that decided, I shot towards another bandit, evading the downward swing of her hammer and using my fully extended fingernails to slash off the top of her head across the middle of her eyes. 

Key extended the full extent of her Retractable Anima and jumped over the horizontal slash of her target's blade, and slammed her prehensile foot onto the back of his neck, knocking him out. Another bandit shot towards her as she was airborne, and swung a metal staff up at her. She blocked it with the handle of her sword before swiftly unfurling a hand chop at the side of his neck. While she wasn't against the rest of us killing, she herself still avoided killing. 

Persia formed two rapidly rotating wind spheres in her palms and dashed towards one of the bandits, easily dodging his fire attack and slamming one of the wind spheres into his chest, instantly blasting a hole right in the middle, killing him. 

She then leapt up and sprang up off of his shoulder before his corpse dropped, as another bandit ran towards her while she was in mid-air, thrusting a spear up at her. She extended a quarter of the full extent of her Retractable Anima to increase her agility and twisted her body in mid-air to dodge it and then slammed her remaining wind sphere onto his face, exploding his head like a watermelon dropped from a balcony. 

Rai sprang up onto the trees and zipped across the branches using his tail, before dropping down onto the remaining bandit before he could react and electrocuted his head, knocking him out. 

An eight bandit suddenly sprang out from a bush behind Persia. She had noticed so wasn't exactly in any trouble, but it was a good opportunity to test out this spell, so I intervened anyway. I returned to my normal state, reached behind me and ran Mana through the Switch scroll, and...in an instant, switched places with her. 

I re-entered Soul-Eater Mode and bit into the surprised bandit's neck, draining his life force before he could stop me, his body lifelessly slumping to the ground as I finished. I have to say...sucking up a person's life force felt pretty refreshing. 

With all the bandits taken out, the others turned to stare at me with curious and intrigued looks... 

Persia quickly retracted her Anima before the others noticed...she still hadn't told them about it, but she didn't have to worry...everyone's attention was fixed on me. 

I retracted my canines, my eyes and nails returning to normal as I reverted to my normal state. 

"Woah, what did you just do, dude?" Exclaimed Rai, staring at me wide-eyed. 

Guess I can't hide it anymore...

"Well it's, uh...," I began sheepishly, before explaining what had happened with the Vampire. 

I left out the part about Vampire Mode, since I couldn't quite use it properly yet. 

"So you can heal people now?" Asked Key, as I finished my explanation. 

"I think so, I haven't actually tried that out...this was the first time I got to try out the draining part of it. I'm a bit reluctant to test it out since I can't be sure it'll have any side effects on the person I use it on." 

"Oh, you're being too cautious, dude! Here, let's test it out right now," Rai volunteered, taking off a glove and scratching his palm with the tip of his scythe, "Ah crap, I cut deeper than I meant to! Kuro, quick, dude....this really hurts!"

I face-palmed and sighed in exasperation, before walking over to him. 

"Fine, if you insist...just don't blame me if something goes wrong," I shrugged, extending my canines and biting his neck after adding, "By the way, the process of my healing tends to hurt more than the wound itself, so brace yourself". 

I then shared my Healing Factor, the cut on his palm closing up in a handful of seconds. 

"Ow! No kidding, that really stings!" He winced, his arm shaking slightly. 

"Alright, let's get back to collecting pigs," I suggested, after I finished healing his wound. 

The others voiced their agreement and we continued on our Quest. 

... 

A couple of hours later, we had collected thirty wild boars, and both carts were completely full. We secured them with the tarps and rope, before I used Store to contain the carts and boars. 

We then headed back to the east gate, before making our way to the Guild to turn in our haul and collect the reward for it. After the stressful escort Quest and guard mission during the Silvland alliance thing, a low-stakes, unimportant Quest like this was much needed. 

Given everything that was going on in this world right now, the weakening barrier in the Vampire Forbidden Zone, as well as The Valaque Empire, it was almost inevitable that eventually, this world would be plunged into a war, so...while things are still normal and peaceful, I might as well make the most of it... 

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Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Don't forget to vote, and feel free to leave a comment, I appreciate any and all feedback and criticism! Also, check out my Instagram account @aimdaqs for posts relating to this book.