Chương 40: The Academy - 4

A random note? For his girlfriend? But he didn't have a girlfriend!

"Maybe they misdelivered the ransom note and someone else meant to get this?" he asked himself.

"Possible, but I figure if someone's going to go through the trouble of sending someone a ransom note, they would make sure to deliver it to the right person... and even if I wasn't the person they meant to send this to, I can't just leave the person they kidnapped." LANCE thought about what he should do. He formed a basic plan then enacted it. Firstly, he took the note to the militia's office on campus. They looked it over, categorized it, and said they would dispatch people to investigate.

"I have a plan, actually..." he told the militiamen.

"Can you guys back me up on it?" The militia captain listened to his plan and though gasped a couple of times in mild bewilderment, he told him, "Normally, I would say, 'no, I'm not following some kid's plan,' but your level doesn't lie. We'll back you up." They made a new plan together and waited until the agreed upon meet for the hostage-ransom handover. In that time, Lance made a prayer to Cannabus. The Holy Shop opened and he focused on Boons which would help him in his current predicament.

Several options came before his mind's eye, those options were: [Locate]: a Boon incantation with obvious and useful purposes. His father and anyone who was anyone used it frequently. It cost two Boon Points. Another Skill Boon: [Track]. Another obvious Boon incantation. If one had part of a person, a bit of hair, some smudge of skin, you could track them up to a point. Some moral and ethical clauses existed with the use of this incantation, but it was nothing he feared as a Paladin of a Holy God.

It cost five Boon Points. And finally, [Detect Good and Evil]. An incantation which allowed him to detect abject good and abject evil, as the name implied. Though the incantation was limited in what it could detect, for the minutia of day-to-day life, it was an invaluable tool. Plus, it only cost five Boon Points. He bought all three boons. [Thank You for Your Purchases! -12 Boon Points Subtracted] [Unallocated Boon Points: 74] After his Holy Shop purchases, he practiced using his new skills until it was time to head to the library and save his... sort of, friend.

"You are whoever I'm supposed to meet?" he told a man wearing dark purple robes in the deepest part of the library. If this wasn't who he was supposed to meet, then darn, fashion had really gone strange, hadn't it?

"You received our note, then? Good. Do you have the money?" the man asked, his voice sounding young. They were probably a student from the academy. Such a shame, really, getting caught up in this cult business and for what? Validation, petty coin? A lay, perhaps? It was all worthless.

"I have the monies, yea," he held up a bag. It was filled with some real coins, yes, but mostly toy coins that law enforcement used specifically for situations like the one he somehow found himself in now. Lance activated [Detect Good and Evil]. A white smog from a person denoted their good intentions. A black smog indicated their evil intentions. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. From this person?

Heavy black smog came from them like a chimney which had seen better days. Another pity — so young and yet so wayward. He thew the bag of faux gold on the ground. He next incanted [Search] but found nothing returned to him. His investigative talents lacked the practical experience to pick anything up in this place.

As the cultist picked through the bag, try to find, and failing to find, if anything was amiss with the faux gold, he incanted [Locate: Penn Vic]: frustrated warbles came back to him, like distorted echoes. Hmmm... that might mean something, he deduced.

"Looks to be in order," the cultist remarked.

"Wait here, close your eyes." Lance didn't bother making smart with the cultist. He had already figured that the cult, or whoever these weirdos were, was holding Penn in some hidden chamber. Old libraries on magical campuses were no stranger to hidden chambers, secondary tunnels, and pits carved from ill-built depressions. His eyes closed, he sharpened his senses and listened for any clues. He heard footsteps, then muddled whispering, then a slight grunt as a door was opened. This was when he opened his eyes.

No one stood in front of him anymore. To the far end of the room, he saw the cultist slowly pulling a secret door open; he touched a crystal the militiamen captain had given him, signaling to the armed men outside the library he was moving into action; right after he touched the crystal, he shot forward and was behind the cultist, grabbing hold of their chest and throat before they could react.

A little pressure prolonged was all it took to render them unconscious, whoever the cultist was talking to had since run into the hidden corridor, obviously off to alert whoever else in the cult was with them. Not that they would get the chance... The cultist fell to the ground. Lance trusted the militiamen above would see the cultist captured all proper, then he entered the secret passage.

He made his way down the passage without any trouble and caught up to the secondary cultist before they had time to get to the end and make trouble for him; he grabbed hold of the cultist and used the same technique to render them into unconsciousness. He let a relieved breath out. At the end of the tunnel, he saw the passage emerge into what he thought, a hidden chamber.

He sneaked with what little stealth talents he had to observe the scene inside the chamber: a group of cultists surrounded a gagged and bound Penn Vic. He kept to the shadow of the tunnel's let out point to try and see if he could overhear the cult's speech.

"Where are brothers Michael and Nick?" someone said. To which, another replied, "I don't know. Probably smacked around the student some, forced them to perform on them, maybe? You know that's how they are..." Another cultist scoffed.

"Nick has joked about that kind of stuff but hasn't done anything like it. Michael isn't like that at all. He just likes to let some steam out once in a while..."

"By beating on people he's ransoming?" another said.

"Hey. We all have our imperfections, right?" And on their pointless conversation went. Typically, cults, had a purpose for formation. A mandate, so to speak, which defined their actions as a group. Was this cult a mere street gang? If they had actual cultic activities, they so far hadn't let slip what those activities could be. Which, of course, didn't matter in the slightest to he — Lance would take these creeps down regardless.

Lance transformed his sword, kept neatly hidden under his cloak, into a pair of knuckle-dusters and equipped them — on one hand only, though. He came from his hidey hole in the tunnel's shadows and revealing himself, said, "Hey there, old chaps! Room for one more?" He dropped down into the chamber and got to work pummeling people. Of course, because of his immense Martial Prowess, Lance had to pull his punches. His knuckle-dusters making as much all the more relevant.

Under their robes, some of the cultists wore armor. Yet their armor as he soon found out, was cheap, made by people who didn't know what the heck they were doing. He used a gentle tap on his armed hand to break that armor then put them out with a slightly firmer tap on his unarmed hand. A couple of cultists tried to stab or slice at him, one or two succeeded briefly before he put them down. His healing factor took care of the wound. Then the fight was over. All the cultists lay on the ground, unconscious.

He went over to a bound Penn Vic and untied and ungagged her, releasing her of all bonds just as the militiamen streamed through the tunnel to collect the cultists.

"I'm sorry about this, Penn," he told the young lady and his classmate.

"You're safe, now. Do you have any idea why they targeted you? They seemed to think you were my girlfriend? It all seemed weird to me." Penn's face went bright.

"Oh, dear! They must have taken some strange conclusions when they interrogated me. So, it's like this, I accidentally stumbled on one of their secret meetings. And, well, the rest was history once I knocked over a loose stone alerting them to my presence. I can tell you the whole story..."