Duskbound

By the time Velik and Torwin returned to Cravel, everything else had been taken care of. Supplies had been purchased, paperwork had been obtained, and horses had been rented for the group. Velik had declined his, not having the slightest bit of experience with riding one of the animals. Torwin likewise preferred to run on his own two feet, and as the beasts were barely past level 10, could easily keep up with them.

They met up on the east road leading out of the city. Velik was the first one there, arriving some few hours before dawn and settling in to wait. Though the gate guards didn't give him any grief now that he had a gold pin on his collar, he'd been warned more than once that the guild itself might try to interfere. He figured that, if they were going to do anything, it would be when he tried to leave. So he left while it was still dark and he was at his strongest.

It seemed his fears were misplaced, as Torwin arrived an hour before dawn and Jensen showed up with Sildra and Giller in tow about two hours later. Sildra was sitting on a horse and looking uncomfortable about the whole thing while Giller rode next to her. The older woman gave her advice on proper riding technique in a low voice, too muffled for Velik to make out from a distance. Three more riderless horses followed along behind the group on a long lead.

"No Aria," Torwin observed. "Too bad. I wanted to see some fireworks."

"Fireworks?" Velik asked.

"Didn't you know? Aria and Giller are cousins, and they do not get along. I cannot imagine what Jensen had to promise them to get both of them on the same team, and I'm more than half convinced they don't know about each other yet. I'm looking forward to seeing the show."

Velik didn't share Torwin's apparent glee as the upcoming confrontation. He didn't particularly care if one or both of them dropped out of the team, except that without Aria, they'd need to fund the spatial storage rental somehow, and without Giller, they'd lose access to her boss as both a backer and possibly the source of their border passes. If Jensen already had those passes, then it didn't matter, but if Blendstin could somehow invalidate them or had arranged for them to be picked up on the journey, it was going to be a problem.

"You know that if what you're hoping ends up happening, Jensen is going to want you to help him smooth things over, right?" Velik asked.

"I know he'll be out of luck if he tries," Torwin shot back. "I'm happy to enjoy the show, but I'm not here for the clean up after the party's over."

And he's the oldest person in this group. We're doomed.

"Velik!" Sildra called when the two groups spotted each other.

He'd been somewhat dreading this meeting, Sildra being someone he'd known back as a child before the class orb—or dungeon seed, if it really was that—had turned him into [The Black Fang] and his best friend into a living monster factory. He'd left the frontier region on the north end of Ghestal specifically to get away from his past.

Having Sildra here was uncomfortable for Velik, but he hadn't protested when Jensen had brought up including the woman. She'd been the one who'd been blessed with a new class by a god and given a system-backed quest to remove the corruption that was slowly infesting the frontier towns. She had as much of a right as he did to be part of this.

On the other hand, [Apex Hunter] sized her up and immediately dismissed her as a threat. If she was higher than level 16 or 17, he'd be surprised. Worse, her class was focused on mystic and maybe mental, if he had to guess. Physically, she was no stronger than any teenager who hadn't gained their class yet. Keeping up was going to be difficult, even with a horse to ride.

"Hello, Sildra," he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

Giller looked back and forth between the two, snorted, and shook her head. "Puppy love," she muttered, completely oblivious to the true nature of their relationship.

"No, it's not—" Sildra cut herself off and took a breath. "He's a friend from back home I haven't talked to in a long time. Don't make assumptions about things you know nothing about."

"Oh, of course. How rude of me. My apologies." The sarcasm in Giller's tone was practically weaponized.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Ignoring the older woman, Sildra angled her horse toward where Velik and Torwin were standing. "Master Torwin," Sildra said with a nod of her head as she got closer. "Do you two still… you know… have the quest?"

[Current quest: Locate the source of the dungeon seed and destroy it before it can spread more chaos and destruction.]

The line had been burned into the back of Velik's eyelids over the last few months. He'd stared at that notification for hours while he tried to figure out the best way to complete the quest and lamented that Morgus wasn't more helpful. A starting location or the identity of the source would have been nice, and it seemed like a god should have known that and provided it, but Morgus had done nothing of the sort.

"Yes," Velik said. "It's good to finally take the first steps toward completing it. The last few months have been full of… setbacks."

He shot a glance at Torwin, who had the grace to look embarrassed. "Sorry. I didn't know you'd get so heavily caught up in guild politics. I thought you'd just breeze through the iron rank stuff and be a fresh bronze when I got back."

While Velik realized that Torwin didn't actually owe him anything, he was still a bit fresh about finding out the man had disappeared for months to essentially take an extended vacation without telling anybody. It was mostly misplaced anger at the guild itself, so he'd done his best over the last few days of travel to treat the old [Ranger] fairly.

"Things are a lot better back home," Sildra said, either missing the subtext or deciding it was best to just move past it. Unfortunately, her choice of topic wasn't one Velik was particularly interested in talking about, and he found himself missing the ability to just disappear into the trees to get out of a painful conversation.

"I'm glad the monster population has shrunk to a reasonable level," he said as diplomatically as possible.

"It's made life a lot easier for everyone left, but we did end up shrinking down to just two towns for now. There was talk about new crews coming up north, but nothing's happened yet. I guess now that winter's over, we can probably expect the orders for lumber to increase again, so maybe—"
Read new chapters at My Virtual Library Empire

"Sildra," Torwin said gently. "I don't think he wants to hear news from back home."

"What? Oh! I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"It's fine," Velik said. "Have you made any progress on finding the source?"

She shook her head. "It's been all I can do just to build my level up over the last few months. You?"

"I discovered a few things, but I'm not sure how much will end up being important. I suppose that's what we're going to find out."

He laid out the bare bones version of what he'd learned from the guild archives, painting the picture in as broad of strokes as he could. Sildra listened silently until he was done, then asked, "Is this demon tree thing real? Like, could we travel to wherever this old kingdom was and burn it down?"

Giller, who'd been lurking in the background with Jensen while they waited for their last arrival, started laughing. "It's an old fairy tale. There's never been any such tree that fruits monsters in its bough. Everyone knows monsters come from dungeons or mutated animals that stumble into magically charged locations."

"Oh, well if everyone knows it," a new voice broke in, "then it certainly must be true."

Aria walked out of a patch of starry night that folded closed behind her and shot Giller a waspish look. "After all, the wisdom of the masses far outstrips the learnings of the greatest sages."

"Spare me," Giller replied acidly.

"Good, that's everyone," Jensen said as he stepped between the two women. Velik wasn't sure if that was a good idea to defuse the sudden tension or a good way to get shot when the fighting started, but Jensen played it off coolly. "Our first destination is King's Crossroad, then south toward Ashala. From there, we'll head straight for the border and be inside Slokara within the next two weeks."

"It would be faster to go cross country," Velik said.

"For you alone, maybe. With the horses, we'll stick to the roads," Torwin told him. "Besides, I understand we have some business in Ashala."

"Exactly right," Jensen said. "Our financier has promised the paperwork needed to make the border crossing will be waiting for us at the capital next week, so even if we were to go afield, we'd still have to wait once we got there. There's not much point to making a harder journey just to save a bit of time if we'd just end up waiting longer at the end anyway."

"Enjoy the fresh air and the chance to stretch your legs," Torwin advised. "Won't be long before we're in the next loud, stinky town anyway."

"Like you're one to talk, you old drunkard," Aria said, but there was a friendliness to her voice that had been entirely absent when she'd spoken to Giller. "You just want to hit every inn and roadside tavern on the way."

"A man's got to have his hobbies!" Torwin said.

This is going to be a long trip. Maybe I'll just meet them at the border in a few weeks. It'd be nice to have some time alone.

"Don't even think about it," Torwin whispered, pulling Velik closer. "I see that look in your eyes. You're sticking with the rest of us. Think of it as a training exercise in team dynamics."

"You know I don't really want to be a guild hunter, right?" Velik asked.

"Nonsense! The guild does a lot of good, and membership opens a lot of doors."

So far, Velik had seen a lot of drawbacks and very few benefits, but he gave up his ideas of solo traveling with a sigh. It was too bad the rest of the world operated on daylight hours. He preferred a nocturnal schedule, but it looked like he'd have another month of sleeping at night. It wouldn't matter until he started hunting powerful monsters, he supposed.

Once they got there, though, all bets were off. He'd be doing what he did best, what [Duskbound] was made for.