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Chapter 120: Job Offer
🕑 Added 2024-09-07 05:29:45 +0000 UTCWorld: MSS - Loading...
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The weather was perfect for sailing. The skies were clear blue without a cloud in sight, and the sea breeze wrapped around my face and whispered beneath my armor like the soft finger caresses of a lover. The boat traveled faster than normal means –obviously an enchanted piece of technology unique to the world of MSS. I could see why people liked sailing and why rich people back in the world got yachts as wealth piled up. It almost made me want one of my own too.
Behind our boat was the other ship, holding the secondary party. We were too far apart for me to see their faces but it wasn’t hard to imagine that their general mood was similar to ours. Bits of excitement that shook through our body like jolts of electricity, spiked with shots of nervousness and anxiety that kept us from sleeping. Still, it didn’t matter what we felt. The small ships skirted through the ocean like stealth ships, skimming the waves with a sense of relentlessness.
As Zenom said, we kept watch in shifts. Lucky for me, I drew the lots with Zenom. Actually, no matter who it might have been, it would not have been my first choice. If I was alone with Arione, we might have a murder mystery on our hands and the first culprit would have been me. Delas, I couldn’t stand the man. Borealis might not have been too bad, but I couldn’t help but notice the underlying tension between us. Aurora in my party, my use of [Aura] –which both Zenom and Borealis had not been vocal about but I saw the way they looked at me when they thought I wasn’t looking– and the general sense of rivalry that stemmed from him.
At night though, it was completely different.
It was on the second night that Zenom and I took the last shift together. We would stand watch until morning, when we would finally see the island in view.
Ever been to the ocean at night?
It’s pitch black.
No, I don’t think you understand me. You probably heard ‘pitch black with varying shades of really dark blue and gray’. When I say pitch black, I mean black so deep that it absorbs light. It brings out a level of paranoia so deep within you that you didn’t know it existed. Hell, I had never been one to be scared of the dark before until I came to MSS. But even back on earth, I imagine the night in the middle of the ocean is scary.
Imagine swimming in the dark in the middle of the ocean, infinitely deep and infinitely vast. Then something slithers by you. I cannot explain how such a feeling must register in my brain. Slime and foreign, alien and erotic, something that makes us jerk awake in the middle of the night and brings us out of our calm sheep mind and into the erratic insectoid part of our brain responsible for fight or flight.
Run, run, run! Run, run run!
I imagine that people would say that my plight is not too bad, since I’m on a boat.
It was worse.
You have to consider, the worst thing on earth that could happen to you in the oceans are Storms and Sharks. I think that’s about the extent of people’s imaginations. But the blackness of the ocean makes sailors think, there’s a reason we have folklore about Sirens and Krakens and Typhons. Our brains have to make sense of the unknown that the complete black curtain of the ocean, trying to understand what lies behind it. That helps alleviate the fear.
But I wasn’t on earth. Monsters were real. Bloodthirsty mosnters with cold intelligence that sends sinister shivers up my spine and into my brain. The storms in MSS weren’t just wind, rain and waves. Don’t get me wrong, I bet it’s plenty horrible on earth. But here, it wasn’t just physics at play: it was magic. Magical storms could leave spots of lightning that activated only when something floated into it, say a stray monster or a speedster ship that had clueless adventurers on it. It would fry us from the bottom up before we could blink.
Not only that, monsters in MSS grow sinister at night. The smart monsters reign in the night and lightning a torch might attract them. They wouldn’t even jump us. They’d stay under the water; watching, studying, thinking and preying. Hoping and imagining what our flesh tasted like, trying to think of ways to make us feel pain in new ways.
The boat is just the plate which the monster would scrape our meat off of.
An ocean where the weather itself was magic and the monsters were thinking creatures who had nothing better to do than toy with us.
Now you know what kind of ocean I am in. Now you understand what kind of mission that the people of the advance party accepted.
That’s who adventurers are, people who wade into unknown dangers for the sake of figuring out what exactly lay there. Both the sense of fear and excitement flowed through my veins, fighting off sleep effortlessly.
So I stared out into the night, trying not to let my mind wander. I didn’t have the Darkvision from the Beckoning Cat Core anymore, but that didn’t mean I was blind. If something moved, I was sure I could see it, if I stared hard enough. I became a statue, trying to control my fears of the unknown ocean whose known facts already terrified me. My eyes were glued to the horizon, trying to catch the beginning of a sunrise that would signal safety.
“Slaveborn.”
When Zenom started the conversation, I almost screamed.
Instead I coughed politely and turned to look at him. Or in the general direction of where he spoke from.
The others were below deck. The ship wasn’t that small. It still had sleeping quarters. Only Zenom and I were out on the deck.
It took me a few seconds to realize that he was waiting for an answer. Ok, that was one information that I got out of this exchange, Zenom didn’t have a Core that gave him Darkvision. Tucking that information away for later, I spoke quietly, lest I awaken things that were best left sleeping.
“What is it?”
“I would talk with you.”
My brows furrowed into a line. What could he possibly want with me?
“Why? Did you see something?” I squinted harder into the endless night.
“No.”
I could feel his body hold steady, despite the gentle rolling waves that rocked the boat to and from.
“You are not from Turina, are you not?”
It was more of a statement than an actual question. “No, I’m not.”
“Your name is unfamiliar. I do not think I have ever heard of a Turina Citizen with that surname. Where do you hail from?”
I silently thanked Kyrian for having that conversation with me before. “I’m from the North.”
“Truly?” He sounded surprise. “I was unaware that Northerners became adventurers.”
Smirking in the darkness, I answered him. “Most don’t. Too busy trying to make a living.”
“That explains your penchant for combat.” He said, almost explaining to himself. “I had thought your style to be too… rough, to be from a Great House or from Nobility.”
“No, I’m not from a Great House or from Nobility. Not even from Turina, as you just heard.”
“So it seems.” He paused for a bit. “I have heard stories of you, when your party was being considered for this mission.”
I raised an eyebrow out of habit. “Stories?”
“Stories.” Zenom leaned against the railings. His words were clipped and to the point. “Of a former-slave who could use Aura. One who was present at the downfall of the Samak Horde’s City and lived to tell the tale about it. A Slave who leads a group of orcs and his own party, quickly gaining reputation. One who bested a Bastard of a Great House in combat.”
“I see.” I had known I was beginning to gather some attention, but didn’t think they would know the whole story of what happened in the last year.
“When I first heard them, I did not know what to make of you. When you applied for this mission, I hesitated.” Zenom said. “Your competency were rumors at best, but there must have been some ounce of truth in them for them to reach my ears in the heart of the Turina Empire and the inner circles of the Church.”
“But when I saw you in action, I saw that the rumors weren’t without seed. You are indeed competent with the blade, as well as any knight-in-training. Perhaps even some of the freshly anointed knights, those who have yet to earn their scars.” He continued. “Not just that, but I saw your knowledge. I was surprised to learn that a mere slave –former slave–,” he amended, “would be in possession of such knowledge. Even Borealis admitted later that his knowledge of the monsters such as [Imugi] were limited.”
There had to be a point to this, so I waited.
“You, Lock Slaveborn, are an anomaly.” Zenom asked.
Of course I would seem that way to him.
In a way, I was the opposite of Zenom. From what I could see, he tried to minimize personal connections as much as possible and I could see why. He served the Church and his Country. He didn’t have the concept of the good of one individual, it couldn’t. That’s the underlying power of religion and patriotism, that a person sacrifices their own good for the good of the whole. It’s a beautiful and powerful thing sometimes. That’s why martyrdom is a timeless tragedy that inspires thousands of others to do the same.
At the same time, it is poison. Because those same individuals begin to place the same expectations on others. When it’s no longer your own sacrifice but you demand sacrifice from others, it’s no longer something beautiful. It becomes toxic and sinister, and you begin to hold grudges in your heart. Asking questions like ‘How come I’m the one who has to sacrifice? How come others aren’t doing the same?’
So there was Zenom, with ideologies of the standard Holy Knight, ready to give his life for the Church and the Turina Empire. And he just talked me up a bunch, calling me capable and even comparing me to Scions –which, to Turinans, were the biggest compliment one could give. So it wasn’t a surprise when he asked me the next question.
“Have you ever thought about visiting Turina? Or have you already visited it on the way down South?”
“No, I have thought about it.”
“Why have you not? Someone like you would be welcomed with open arms.”
‘Because that country hunts Players.’ But I held my tongue. “No chance to, to be honest. And no reason to either. Between the Samak Horde and the Jayu States, I’ve seen more than one large city, each more beautiful than the last.”
“The beauty of Turina is different.” Zenom stated it like saying the sky is blue. “Tall towers built on ancient magic that still flounder the greatest mage minds of today. The Processions of the Great Houses, their banners flying high. The prayer might of the Church that resounds through the City of Light and blesses us all.” His voice was almost reverent.
“Consider this an official invitation, Lock Slaveborn. Once this mission is over, you should visit.”
I smiled awkwardly in response.
It wasn’t that I possessed negative feelings towards Turina. Some might think that I hold a grudge against them for bringing down the Samak Horde. But truthfully, the Samak Horde was on its last legs. If it weren’t for the Turina Empire, someone else would have swooped in. It happens in history –a weaker nation becoming a satellite nation of a larger, much more powerful one. It’s not like I had any particular feelings of attachment towards the Samak Horde as a whole either.
It was the underlying reason why Zenom invited me to Turina. And I had no reason to pretend it wasn’t otherwise.
“Is it because of [Aura]?” I asked plainly.
He felt his body nod. “It is.”
I nodded back, satisfied that the Holy Knight wasn’t the type to play games with words. “What about Aura? I’ve heard my own stories.”
“Such as?” His voice was eerie in the ocean darkness.
“That the Turina Empire sends assassins to kill those who learn Aura. That the knowledge of Aura is a closely guarded secret, even within the Empire itself. Unless you’re a Scion or a Knight of some sort, it’s almost impossible to learn the skill.” I grinned bitterly. “A blessing granted to the humans that’s being kept from them by their own people.”
“The Turina Empire has stood tall, a beacon of shining hope for humanity because of its closely guarded secrets and the military might that results from it.” Zenom was talking to me, and at the same time talking to himself. Like he was reciting something he memorized, that someone else told him. A story from long ago. “But the ages have changed, and not all humans are loyal to the Turina Empire. For the Empire to stand as a shield for the innocent, it must keep the secrets of its weapons closed off, lest they fall into the wrong hands.”
“Funny how Zimmskar doesn’t do that.” Zimmskar, the only other nation that was unitary. “Nor the Dwarves. Or the Elves. Neither does the Orcs for that matter.”
“They are not the same as us.” Zenom whispered quietly into the night. “They do not hold the same torch that we do, blazing bright with truth for the rest of the world to see. They do not know the true mission that we of the Church, nor share the same vision for the future.”
There was hungry fervor to his voice. I knew instinctively that Zenom knew something about the item that we were fetching. Of course, from what Aurora and Kyrian told me, he was practically a hero. He wasn’t stupid either, just brainwashed. He knew what the Empire wanted to do and what its endgame was: War. But unlike me, he knew why the Turina Empire wanted this War.
And it made me hungry for it as well. I wanted the answer to this mystery. Why was the human empire so bent on rapid expansion? Did it have something to do with the Players? If the gods were moving, no doubt that the Turina Empire was the chosen chess piece of the Light, Flame and Shield. Just what reason did their god give to his people, to justify genocide and the massacre of entire countries?
“What’s the vision?” I whispered in the same tone.
The answer was so close, it was on the tip of Zenom’s tongue. This was not the direction I had seen this conversation taking. But how could it not? Zenom, for all his smarts and battle prowess was a mushroom –kept in the dark and fed bullshit. He was brainwashed as they came, the perfect soldier and the perfect Holy Knight. Practically bred to be a zealot. What else could he talk about but the great cause of all this? This reason that forced us to take the chances on a small boat out in the ocean where unseen leviathans lurked?
“We,” Zenom declared at last, voice dripping with worship. “Are saving the world.”
When someone says they are saving the world, it sounds corny.
When Zenom said it, it wasn’t cheesy at all.
It was scary.
There was so much seriousness and reverence packed into the words that I almost wondered if he packed it with mana.
He believed with all his being that they were saving the world.
And just from hearing those five words from him, all my hopes of taking the Autarch’s Key from under his nose went out the window.
I knew by the end of this mission, I would have to kill him.
I think he knew it too.
This wasn’t just a casual invitation to visit the Turina Empire.
It was a job offer.
Cast aside my ways and join him.
Turn sides, so to speak.
“One day,” I answered back. “I’ll have to see Turina myself. But not right away, no..”
Zenom didn’t answer.
“Just know, Lock Slaveborn, that for someone like you, the invitation is always open.” Zenom replied.
And just as he finished speaking, sunlight exploded over the horizon. It basked the world in glorious light, fanning out in all directions. It showed me Zenom Saintred in full regalia, his blonde hair swaying slightly. His bastard sword rested on the floor, both his hands on the hilt. His blue eyes stared straight at me as his shadow stretched and stretched and stretched.
I stared right back at him and knew that my eyes weren’t the baby-blue of a Hero.
I had seen them before in the mirror.
They were the pitch black darkness of the open ocean on a night, with horrible things lurking beneath the surface.
And that was before I met Coum.
Now…
Now I don't like looking in the mirror anymore, because I don’t like the person who stares back.
Zenom apparently shared the sentiment because he looked away first.
Behind his back, I saw the first signs of the island, rising up slowly from the edge of the world.
“We’ve arrived, Zenom.” I said to the Holy Knight. “Let’s wake the others.”
***
Comments
Kai
Thank you!
Predyca
Thanks a lot for the chapter!!!
Terra
I like introspective chapters like this. It feels like an interlude to the coming action. Can't wait for more!
Mordock 24
So much to unpack
