Chương 144: Scales and Plate

Shifting grey-black ethereal eyes bore holes into the bone knight's carapace; a shared sensation of familiarity echoed throughout Andle's mind and body as he tried to figure out if the one he was looking for was the one who stood right in front of him.

Andle did his best to remain aloof to the knight's senses; fortuitously, the knight seemed to have had their entire attention focused on a poor clerk standing behind the receptionist table, though it was clear that the bone knight was well aware of his stare as well as the stares of several others within the Guild's halls.

As much as Andle enjoyed not being the main spectacle, being a rare dragonborn with a unique complexion nonetheless, he couldn't help but feel that the ivory knight was stealing a little bit of his thunder. Andle's observations of the knight were short-lived; he could at least tell that he was a formidable warrior; however, his entire purpose of said observations wasn't fulfilled as of yet.

While his patron seemed to hold a brooding yet gentle demeanor in voice, the Thousand Voices often pragmatically offered assistance. However, despite that being the usual case, and despite the task Andle was pursuing being a task straight from his patron themselves, the Thousand Voices this time seemed to derive a little sadistic enjoyment from watching their Warlock search for a needle in a haystack.

'How the hell am I supposed to find one person, with no description?' A dozen voices harmonized and hummed notions and meanings instead of words into Andle's mind.

'I've given you the general location and where to look. The rest is your task!' Andle reached up, his scaled claw tracing the ridges of his deformed horns. Born with a hyper-calcified growth, he lacked the smooth, traditional horns of other dragonborn. Instead, his ivory crown resembled a cluster of jagged crystal growths, polygonal geodes erupting from the earth. The tactile feeling of warped bone simply bolstered his evaluation of the bone knight's ivory carapace.

Bone by nature was brittle; it would shatter under high stress, which was a massive issue when it was forged into armor. The knight's armor would have to be made of a hefty bone, which in turn would weigh down the user significantly. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Will, to Andle, was still a novel power. Nobody from his home, his country, or his continent used Will… consciously, that was!

Andle had come to the conclusion that most folk with power from where he came from had used Will subconsciously to access greater powers, and from that assumption, Andle had guessed that Will became obsolete when another power was learned. That knight's ivory armor, on the contrary, proved him wrong.

'Hypothetically, if someone was able to muster enough Will to break past the entry levels, wouldn't a hefty brittle set of bone armor be a simple matter? A power play even!?'

'… You are partially correct.'

'Care to elaborate?'

'…'

'No…'

June's towering shell stared down at the frightened clerk. While he had no problems using his shell's intimidation factor, it wasn't his current intent to frighten those around him, including the receptionist. However, regardless of such intent, he leaned in closer, his hands gripped tightly on the reception desk enough to leave noticeable grooves in them. An annoying development had popped up.

The local branch head was holding his payment until a formal meeting was agreed upon, while June had the option to leave the money behind and the hassle that came with it alone; the ordeal he put up within the sewers, along with the pay he was due, conflicted him enough to actually consider meeting the branch head.

'The longer I dally, the less time I have to get everyone something nice.' June clenched his teeth, not bothering to silence them with his Will, and so the sound of teeth being ground echoed out of the shell's empty helm, only emphasising how discontented he was with the Guild. He lifted a hand up slowly, before dropping a finger down onto the table, piercing a hole straight through the ornate desk.

He, like usual, didn't feel angry, nor mad, but to authenticate his substandard frustrations, he filled his mind with ichorous thoughts and uttered a single word with Will on his tongue.

"FINE" The receptionist shuddered, and another one seemed to run off after hearing his stifled agreement to a meeting. Diplomacy wasn't in his talent book, nor was negotiation; his pre-Dreamer skillset was skewed towards coding, problem solving, and mixed media. Mixed media, however, couldn't pry him out of this uncomfortable meeting, and after a few moments, an armed human woman in steel armor and a tiefling man wielding a quarterstaff stepped down a set of steps off in the corner of the large hall.

His escorts had arrived.

'Let's hope this meeting doesn't drag on… shit.'