Like realm knights, realm mages have appropriately increased mental capabilities depending on their core’s realm and layer. A neophyte realm mage’s intelligence increases roughly twofold. Like with realm knights, realm mages’ power approximately doubles with each realm. While realm mages start humble for the first two realms and cannot use their mana to strengthen their bodies, later they can unleash devastating long-distance attacks and many other miraculous displays of elemental power.
— Excerpt from Introduction to Realm Cores
Day 21, 3:00 AM
After two more meals at Basil’s and two weeks of nothing but relaxed reading, it was time to die. Since I had noticed suspicious men following me on my excursions over to the tavern, I knew the assassins still hounded me. With that in mind, I decided to make my death worthwhile.
The plan was simple - leave the safety of the town’s walls and let them catch up to me. Then I would kill my attackers or die trying. Either was fine, but given my abilities, I was fairly confident I would die to my own hand after getting the information I needed. I wasn’t much of a torturer, but I knew the basics - hurt them until they talk, stop hurting them while they talk, repeat until you learned everything you wanted to know.
Nine hours before my deadline, I bade Ruby goodbye, left the library, and headed in the direction opposite to Basil’s place. I chose my direction to let my tail know I was not heading out for a meal, in case that leaving at two in the morning wasn’t clue enough. In the corner of my eye, I caught the two of them on the rooftops, following me stealthily.
Unfortunately, the direction I took led straight to the keep, so I took a sharp right, wandering the larger streets. Considering the time, decent folks busied themselves with sleep or other nightly activities as their bladders permitted. Despite the witching hour, the streets were well lit, but you could find a few iffy figures ambling around here and there, mostly keeping to the dark alleys.
I glanced up. Only one hooded shadow stuck close, navigating the rooftops. Hopefully the other had left to find the rest of their crew. The town’s defensive wall was quite a distance away, and my winding route didn’t help expedite things. Then again, I had plenty of time, and didn’t mind a city encounter, even if we raised some racket. Men tended to die loudly.
A dozen streets later, the inevitable finally happened, and a group of ten thugs clad in black cut off my path.
“End of the road Dandy. I bet you didn’t see me coming.” A man sporting grand vizier facial hair stepped to the front, a crossbow in his hands. He had a build similar to mine, broad shoulders, but less burly overall, more on the athletic side.
The rest of the men also revealed their ranged weapons, and I noted three snipers hiding on surrounding roofs. The speaker didn’t seem to fit the heir or spouse categories, but there was no indication whether he was a rival or an advisor. The familiar address could fit either, and I had long since learned not to think a person wearing a goatee was necessarily a villain.
I could trash talk, but I’d shoot my enemies while they monologued, so instead of holding a speech, I threw myself to the left, jumping back right as soon as a symphony of twangs started. In a single inhuman bound, I grabbed a henchman by the shirt, lifted and spun him in the direction of a pair of twangs from above.
He grunted as bolts slammed into his back, and I threw him to the side, picking up another shocked human shield. I tore the crossbow from the man’s hands before using him like a scutum. Three bolts burrowed their way into his back, and I threw his crossbow at a rooftop attacker. The wood shattered against the sniper’s face, he lost his balance, fell, and shot himself before toppling to the ground.
During the time the assassin took for his comic act, I broke another man, and grabbed the fourth as a shield and an improvised melee weapon. Holding the man’s ankle, I smashed another, their heads colliding with a sickening crunch.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
The display broke the courage of those on the ground, and they fled every which way like rats, or whatever saurian counterpart this world had to offer. In their mindless flight, they left the mustachio-twirler hanging out to dry. Two snipers remained, but I used the dead club as a projectile, hurling the corpse at another shooter, finally scaring the third one away.
With me and the grand vizier alone in the street, I could see the man looking for an escape path, but he knew he was dead.
“I always hated you!” Petty and spineless, probably not a rival then, those tended to be tougher, rather than shrill screamers.
He jerked his arm up, trying to shoot me with his final bolt of the evening, but I rolled towards him, the missile whistling above me. I pounced, grabbed his throat with one hand, the crossbow with the other, and slammed the weapon against his face, breaking his nose and the bow’s handle.
“I have some questions,” I told the dazed man, running towards the town wall at what felt like forty-fifty miles per hour. “The first one is who the hell are you?”
The man glared at me, and I tore off his finger. He screamed as I chucked the bloody digit onto the street behind me as I ran.
“No, seriously, who are you, and why do you want me dead? You can answer or lose another finger.”
“I am Blackbush,” he hissed while choking, “Blackbush Blackfist, your half-brother and the second in command in the Blackfist bandits.”
“See? It’s not hard, so I have a half-brother. And why do you want me dead?”
“The key to the loot,” he managed through my chokehold, and I eased my grip.
“Ah, they trinket around my neck.” I connected the dots immediately. Any other key would be something he had access to once I left the castle for three weeks. “Did I refuse to share the loot fairly? Was it something which couldn’t be shared, and I decided to keep it?”
He blinked at me, his mouth opening a crack. My questions obviously confused him, but we were resetting the timeline, and there was little need to play nice. I feel not a hint of sympathy as I tear off his second finger. Ruby called Dandelion’s men a gang of murderers and rapists, even shredding them apart didn’t seem like too much of a punishment.
Besides, he killed the old owner of my body, the least I could do was get some revenge for Dandelion’s fear and suffering. Should I kill Blackbush in the final loop or not? I guess it depends on what my investigation over the future loops reveals. I could even ask Ruby about her opinion over lunch in the final loop, I just have to remember to invite her, since in this loop I pretended she didn’t exist, other than wishing her a good day every once in a while, which should be fine.
Blackbush whimpered, staring at me like I was an eldritch horror, but I calmly repeated the question.
“What was the problem?”
“You took all the manarium for yourself, not letting me advance to the third realm, fearing I would grow stronger than you, you damn maniac!”
A good enough reason to hate someone. Assuming the books I had read were correct about the life-extending aspect of advancing one’s realm, I would hate Dandelion too. He was sentencing his half-brother to a shorter lifespan and earlier grave.
“Where do you usually sleep?”
“What?”
“Where is your room in the citadel, or whatever you want to call our house.”
He stared at me until he lost another finger.
“Fuck! The furthest right room on the second floor!”
“See I’m not even asking difficult questions, just be prompt to answer them and there will be no suffering. Who delivered the poison? How many accomplices did you have?”
“The entire gang hates your guts! Haleweather poisoned your soup.”
“Where did I stash the treasure?”
“You lost your fucking memory from the poison!” He finally realized what my cover story was. “You’re an even bigger bastard than before!”
“I consider myself quite easy-going. You could have kept all your fingers if only you answered my questions quickly enough. Now, back to my question, where is the treasure and how many people should I share it with so everyone’s satisfied?”
“What are—Argh! Stop ripping off my fingers!”
I cocked an eyebrow at him, looking at him with as much emotion as I spared the door we just passed.
“Answer questions, keep fingers, life simple.”
Blackbush spilled everything. The gang members, what the treasure was, the fair split, everything. All things considered he was very cooperative, and took the loss of digits surprisingly well, my guess is second realm knights could endure much more pain than regular folks, commoners, as the bigoted authors called them.
I had spare time before I could kill myself, so I buried Blackbush under a nice deciduous tree. A tree whose name I sadly did not know, but I planned to fix that shortcoming one of these redos.
