Chương 17: (17) B1 C17: Questions

As I made my way further from my opponent, Norman began to search the forest. I was confident that he'd already lost me, as the natural darkness of the night worked to obscure me from my attacker, despite my lack of stealth skills. I hid behind a tree before crouching down to watch Norman from a distance. As he began to throw a series of firebolts deep into the forest, the mage began to shout in frustration.

To my fortune, he didn't seem to know where I was, as each of his firebolts sailed past me with several meters of space between my hiding spot and where they landed.

"Come out!" He roared. He lifted his wand, then slammed it down to summon a gout of fire that obliterated a tree to my left. I flinched and ducked behind cover, then watched as Norman stumbled for a moment. He leaned to the side, his eyes glazed over, before he shook his head to refocus his attention, "What manner of creature are you? An assassin? A ghost?" As I slowly moved away from the growing flames, I kept my eyes on where Norman was pointing his staff.

He was much more dangerous than I would've expected, and after a quick check of my status, I confirmed that the single firebolt he'd hit me with had completely obliterated my Barrier and had continued on to destroy my Vitae. By the time the fires were extinguished, I only had 372 Vitae Points left. He must've hit me with a critical hit, if my exposed ribs and charred innards were any indication. Hells, I was able to see my heart and lungs!

If I wanted to continue this fight, I had no choice but to play extremely carefully, as just a single hit would do enough damage to finish me off, critical or not.

"Shit. Are you one of the Crownless? Were you the ones responsible for last week's attack?" Norman shouted out at me. Crownless? What happened last week? The dock attack only happened yesterday, so he must've been talking about some other incident, but who were the Crownless? As Norman continued to send firebolt after firebolt into the treeline, I slowly made my way around the campsite. Once I was behind him again, I waited until Norman used the large flame gout spell again, then I charged forward.

My dagger was pointed toward the same spot I'd attacked earlier, and the distraction of the spell allowed me to find purchase upon the back of his neck. His barrier shattered as my blade sliced through the top layer of his skin. He stumbled, both from the effects of his spell and from the damage he'd unexpectedly received, as an arc of blood sailed through the air. As Norman steadied his balance, he turned toward me and swung his wand, another ball of fire gathering below him as he moved.

Before he could fire it, however, I directed my hand to his wrist. The attack flew past me, not even singing my clothes as it missed me completely, and I heard a tree behind me groan in pain as it was hit by Norman's spell. I brought my dagger toward his body, then slammed as far as I could into the folds of his stomach. Norman flinched, gasping in surprise as the blade sank into his flesh. I twisted the knife, then slammed my shoulder into his body to force him onto the ground.

Norman fell to the earth, his wand discarded into the dirt at his feet. He looked up at me, an expression of pure terror on his face, before he quickly dove toward the dropped wand. I slammed my boot into the wand, cracking it in half before Norman could get to it. Then, with my other foot, I slammed my toes into his chin and watched as the impact tore him from the ground. He landed on his back, his eyes dazed and confused as he stared overhead at the stars above us. I smiled at his display of helplessness.

Then, I crouched lower, my claws gripping around Norman's collar as I lifted him to my teeth.

"Please! Wait!" Norman screamed, one of his arms fruitlessly pushing against my own. With his other, he held a palm against the wound in his stomach, "Please! Please!" His desperate and terrified plea screamed out like the echoes of a banshee as his hands clawed at my wrists in an attempt to get me off of him. I froze, then slowly lowered the mage so I could get a good look into his eyes. Norman somewhat relaxed, somehow relieved by my brief mercy, before he continued.

"Please! Please don't kill me!" he pleaded. His voice was strained and breathless, yet desperate and filled with urgency, "I'll do anything!"

"Anything?" I smiled. I crouched low, then brought Norman's collar up to my face. He was shaking by now, yet the sight of his terror only sent chills down my spine. That was strange. I'd never thought of myself as a particularly violent person. Before my transformation, I never got into any fights or scuffles. Even being mad at somebody was something I simply never did. So why was I taking so much pleasure in this man's suffering? The thought settled within my mind, but I quickly shook it away with a shrug.

Now wasn't the time. I looked back at Norman and began to wonder how exactly I'd make good use of him. It wasn't every day you had a slaver fully willing to surrender to you, after all. I didn't think I'd be able to use him as a servant or anything, considering there was nothing I could do to prevent him from betraying me, but on the other hand, if I chose to keep him alive for an indefinite amount of time, there was a good chance he'd escape and report me to his buddies. I brought a thumb up to wipe my lower lip.

The red remnants of my previous two meals were still wet upon my face, and I had no doubt that the sight must've left my prey terrified. As I'd expected, a bead of sweat dropped from his brow as he turned his gaze toward the large fangs protruding from my smile.

"What… what are you?" This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. I chuckled as I slowly shook my head. I hadn't expected to let Norman live if he gave up, but I figured his surrender wasn't an opportunity I wanted to let slip me by. Lucia couldn't help me with every question I had running through my mind, but maybe I'd be able to use Norman's desperation to fill the gaps?

"You'd do anything at all? Anything? Without hesitation? If I asked you a question, you'd answer it with complete honesty?" I pressed. With each word, I lifted Norman closer to my fangs. He nodded hard, as if trying to decapitate himself with force alone, and I slowly lowered him back to a more comfortable position. Good. Let's see… What could I ask? If there was anything Lucia didn't know, it would probably have to be our exact whereabouts.

I knew we were located somewhere within the Highmarket Consortium, but the Consortium was huge. In the lore, it was stated to be the size of an entire continent—about the size of the contiguous US. Of course, it'd been sized down significantly in the world of FFO, to the point where the game map's width was equivalent to about twenty-five real-world miles, but the lore-accurate size of it was still absolutely massive.

If I were dealing with the sized-down version, I'd be able to walk from the western beaches of the Consortium to the eastern beaches in just a few hours, yet I'd spent the last few weeks doing exactly that and hadn't seen a single beach within that time. Therefore, I had no other choice but to accept that we were dealing with the larger version of FFO's world.

"Your name's Norman, correct?"

"Y-Yes, that's correct, Ma'am!" The mage replied. I wasn't sure how I liked being called Ma'am, considering I was barely twenty-three, but I figured drawing attention to my age wouldn't have been wise.

"And we're in the Highmarket Consortium, yes?"

"Y-Yes?" Norman answered, though not without looking at me with a frown. He still held his hand against his abdomen, to where the dagger's hilt poked out from his stomach, but his voice was already sounding much healthier than it'd been only moments prior.

"Where, specifically? How far do I have to go to reach the nearest city?" Norman swallowed hard as another bead of sweat dropped from his brow. Then, after a brief moment of hesitation, he lifted his unoccupied arm to the northwest horizon.

"I-If you went that way and followed the West-Led Road, you'd be at Mercentoria within the month," Norman explained. Then, he directed his arm to the south, "But Hearthmill is a week that way. If you follow the river, you'll be there within a few days." I nodded, then began to search my mind for any memories regarding those two settlements.

Mercentoria was a large trading hub located near the center of the Consortium, kind of like a nexus for those wanting to head deeper, while Hearthmill was a small town built on the southern beaches of the Consortium. Hearthmill stood on a river—the same river only a few hours behind me—and acted sort of as a security checkpoint for merchants intent on heading further inland.

Between the two were a pair of forests, each vast enough to encompass hundreds of miles in every direction, and a network of golden plains that were filled with numerous herds of game. To my memory, there was the occasional hamlet between the two, but most of the journey from one to the other was flat land with little shade. Shit.

"Is there safe passage between the two? I'm talking about an enclosed space—not even a scrap of sunlight getting inside," I told him. Norman cocked his head, his brow furrowed.

"Uh… like… hiring an escort?"

"That could work. From here to Mercentoria."

"I don't know… maybe? You can, of course, charter a small ship from Hearthmill to Highmarket, but the journey would take several months. Afterward, I guess you'd then be able to follow the South-Led Road to Mercentoria, but you'd get there faster if you just followed the West-Led Road. Otherwise, I don't think it'd be possible to find something that… secure." So I had to find a different way to travel safely during the day? Shit, that wasn't good.

"Okay. Now, next question," I continued. With my location confirmed and the matter of my transport put on hold, I figured I'd move on to questions that were more personally important to me. As it was now, I was dreadfully short on information regarding this world as a whole. I knew, or at least thought, that I was in FFO, but every day that passed made that assumption weaker and weaker.

By now, I wasn't sure if I was inside FFO or in a world like it, so my first question was directed in a way that let me confirm it, "What year is it?"

"I'm sorry?" Norman asked. Fear had made way for bewilderment, which wasn't a surprise considering how strange the question must've seemed. I lifted him higher, my fangs on full display and Norman flinched in fear before finally answering me, "It's year 512 of the third Era!"

"The third era?" I mumbled. Time in FFO rolled forward at a rate of ten times the speed of time outside the game. Back when I helped kill Azkazan, FFO had been running for a total of five years, so there had been about fifty years of in-game history since its release. The current year, as far as I remembered, was supposed to be the year 2172 of the Second Era. Even assuming the third Era began right after Azkazan's death, that meant FFO had happened several centuries ago.

I took a deep breath to steady my thoughts as I asked the next question.

"How long did the second Era last? How many years?"

"Uh… 2175 years."

"Shit." I dropped Norman back onto the ground as I lifted my palms to my head. If my heart had the ability to beat, it probably would've been racing by now. I was inside FFO, just several centuries after the FFO I knew. Sure, I'd wondered if that was the case, but the thought had never cemented itself within my mind. My attention was more focused on whether or not the world itself even matched with what I knew. A full five hundred years was a long time for things to change.

Empires could fall, history could be misremembered, and generations could come and go. People had short life spans, so did that mean every NPC I'd ever known was dead? What about my friends? What if I wasn't alone in this? If my friends had been dropped into this world as well, but several centuries before me, there was no telling if they were even still alive. Shit. Shit. Shit. This wasn't good.

"What about Blood King Azkazan? Do you know who he is?" Norman slowly shook his head.

"Fuck."