Chương 26

"Come on, face me, Selfish John! Don't you want to give this damn tutorial a spectacle?"

"Sir John, let me deal with this insect," King Pussycat said to me in an angry voice that I found unlike him. It clearly offended him that this man and his huge belly had just hurled a lightning bolt at us.

"No," I said slowly.

"Don't kill him. Guys, can you all trust me on this? I'll explain in a second."

"George!" Alice shouted.

"What the hell are you doing?" So his name is George, I muttered to myself.

"Hey, George, wait a moment. I'm coming," I said, taking out my new spear from the lion's side, where it was resting. I hadn't left it in the inventory, because I wouldn't have been able to take it out otherwise during battle. There were many things that I would have liked to ask this man, but I feared that I knew the answer to most of them. For example: he hadn't attacked us while we were in the haven because he was afraid of the penalty. If you kill someone inside a haven, you get hunted.

The System posts a reward on your head. So that was the first sign of malice from this man. Well — the first, of course, had been the black smoke on his hands. But I still hadn't told anybody about that. Third, that hammer was clearly very powerful. It was possibly the most powerful weapon and spell I had seen so far. Of course, it was nothing to King Pussycat, and it was nothing compared to the attack that my pet could unleash on the man to vaporize him in the blink of an eye.

At the same time, despite the fight being slightly dangerous for me, I saw a rare opportunity in front of me. Lotheriel might take this out of context. It would be so easy. And that's why I opened my streamer tab and activated the recording function. And then, only then, I asked, "George, what's up? Why were you trying to kill us? Why did you attack us out of nowhere?"

"Because you— you're a selfish bastard who only thinks about himself."

"George, don't act rashly. Don't do this," Alice shouted, while King Pussycat stood and watched me as I walked closer to George.

"So I'm a selfish bastard, and that gives you a reason to try and kill me?" I scoffed.

"Are you for real?"

"That's because I know that you're actually working against the haven. You have gotten into Father Okonkwo's ear, but I know that it's all a ruse. You just want Father Okonkwo dead, so that you can gain immortality for yourself." I actually started laughing at that. Like a genuine laugh.

"Jesus Christ, man. What's the matter with you? What the fuck are you talking about? What kind of bad drama soap operas have you been watching? Is this some South American crap? Are you well?" George didn't seem amused by my comments. And he also noticed that I was getting closer.

"Stay away!" George shouted.

"You just said I should come and face you." I smiled. My Sphere of Intuition was active, and I saw the air getting charged. Most importantly, despite George not being in the Sphere's range, I saw a trail of sparkling mana forming toward me. A second later, George raised his hammer and fired another bolt of lightning.

"Sir John!" King Pussycat shouted.

"John!" All my co-workers joined in. Alice looked terrified. But I jumped to the side, a little awkwardly, and the lightning just passed me by and exploded on a patch of the yellow prairie, creating a small fire.

"You—" George was wide-eyed. I pointed at my head.

"Can you read?" He looked at the three S's on top of my head. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"So, George, let's make this easy," I said, resuming my walk toward him.

"Who have you killed in the haven? Well — outside the haven. You waited for me here, and I suppose you waited for someone else, too. Your hands are dirty, aren't they? Father Okonkwo himself said that he always suspected you killed your friend." I saw George's eyes go wide.

"How? How— how does he know?" His voice broke. Holy shit, I thought. I actually bullshitted my way to this. Goddamn, I'm good.

"I— he was already weak, and he had lost an arm. He couldn't fight, and he couldn't become a crafter. I— I just put him out of his misery, all right?" George shouted, beside himself.

"He was always weak. He was the one saying that Father Okonkwo should be killed, that he was a heretic, and that— that this God wasn't true. But when the System offered me a reward…"

"Ah, fuck," I said.

"So the System offered you a traitor's reward, and you accepted it."

"I— it— it wasn't a traitor's reward. It just said that I had to weed out the weak, and…" This was a chilling, chilling revelation. So the System didn't necessarily work alongside me — or not as I thought, at the very least. It seemed that it weeded out the traitors too.

"George, you killed another person here, right? Around here. Did you bury the body, or did you leave it to the monsters?" From George's silence, I immediately inferred the answer to that.

"All right. So who was it that you killed?"

"I— I killed Lothar. He…" I saw the man's eyes getting wet. Then he shut them for a few seconds and muttered something to himself, and he pointed the hammer once again at me.

"You will die, you selfish bastard." I took a deep breath and nodded. He started shooting lightning again, but the Sphere alerted me to where the attacks were going to land about a second or two before they did. And so I quickly sidestepped them. It wasn't pretty. I was clumsy, and I stumbled back and forth. It almost looked like I was one of those drunk kung fu masters who move in a state of drunk-like trance. But I wasn't in a trance. And I did wish I was drunk, for what was about to happen next.

The hammer, in fact, stopped firing. It had fired way too much for such a powerful spell. And when I got close, I almost hesitated. Almost. I'd rather not recount how exactly I killed the man. It was gory, because I forgot in that moment about my Strength. It was extremely gory and ugly. I buried him after. Deep. I dug with my spear, and with my Strength so high, it took barely minutes to move the ground.

The others offered some help, but if there was a little selfishness in me, it was this: I had just killed a man. Sure, people had been killing other people for who knows how long. Since the dawn of time, probably. And so I didn't wanna make a whole big thing about it. But I did wanna bury the man myself.

"So who was the guy he killed?" I asked Alice after turning away from the grave.

"It was another crafter. He wasn't great at his job, but Wilson thought he had walked out to his own death. That shit — George had said that he'd seen Lothar walk out of the city, and Wilson believed him. I can't believe that— I can't believe that he killed him. They were like best friends."

"Well," I said, "not the best friend I'd wish on anybody." They had known each other before the tutorial, and they had worked at the same plumbing company. Lothar had lost his arm during the first day, at the entrance test. I picked up George's hammer. I also found out that when a human died, you could check his inventory like you could with any normal corpse. It made me sick. Thankfully, there was nothing else of note. I checked out the description on the hammer.

Item - Hammer of Lightning (Rank - B) - Level 15 Strength, Plus 5 Constitution, Plus 10 Grants the following Skills: Lightning Bolt - Rank D Lightning Bolt Proficiency, Level 10 - Rank C Interesting. Apparently it provided two skills, one of which amplified the other. This was definitely one hell of an equipment piece.

"Marcus, take it. It's for you. You can use this so that you'll be able to deal more damage. You're able to hold the shield with one arm now, right?" Marcus nodded slowly and took the hammer.

"Feels a little creepy that that guy was holding it and tried to fry us with it."

"Fuck him," Lucas said.

"The bastard is dead." I sighed at that, and then I actually blurted out a laugh.

"Lucas, thank you, man. That helped."

"What?" Lucas frowned.

"Don't worry about it." I smiled at him.

"Now, we are all level 12, and it's time we go to—""I'm level… I'm not level 12." Alice frowned.

"Wait, what level are you?" I said.

"You've been fighting in the siege, right? Like… oh, wait. You— I— well, I'm level…" Before she could answer, I got a notification. Alice Moon - Level 6 I looked at Alice's level, and I frowned.

"How are you level six, if you've been fighting in the siege? Do you have, like, some weird experience-sucking skill or anything like that? Like a weapon? A piece of equipment?" Alice stiffened at my question.

"It's none of your damn business."

"All right," I frowned.

"If you fought all night, then you know best. But we gotta go hunt alphas until we reach the stronghold. I would say as soon as the night falls, we go straight for the stronghold. But that also means we really need to hurry up and get as many levels as possible. The plan is simple." I turned toward King Pussycat.

"Now, apparently, we're all in the same group. The experience is shared equally. So we'll go around with King Pussycat. He will blast the monsters away, and we'll get the experience. We're not gonna level up our skills much that way, but we need the attributes more than the skills, I suspect. So — is everyone ready?"