Chương 30: Chapter 107: Regroup

Speaker, urgent news. What could possibly be urgent enough to pull me out of breakfast with the baron? Laniston is gone. What does that mean? The building. The people…. It's just gone. … The library? Gone. The prophet? Gone. smacking noises What the abyss are you doing standing there, mobilize EVERYONE! What abou- EVERYONE! The three of them were seated at a rough-hewn inn in a backwater village stationed in the lush greenery of the rural Ring.

Food was cheap and plentiful, and there was a salt deposit nearby so everything tasted fantastic. It was a great place to lay low and regain a few dozen pounds. Gods knew Jason needed them. The only sound for a quite some time was the mellow thonk sound of a wooden spoon tapping the side of a wooden bowl. Eventually, Will broached the subject that had been on his mind for a few hours now.

"Shouldn't they have treated you like royalty?" Will asked while Jason wolfed down a stew.

"They did, at first," Jason said, plucking the collar of his gold embroidered shirt that hung loose around his thin neck.

"But then they wanted me to use these dead guy's body parts as sacrifices and take…gods knew what class. I asked what it was, they said it was a prophet of Granesh, with a direct line to their deity. Great honor, and all that. Well, one of them let it slip that the direct line might be something of a two-way street, and frankly I didn't like the idea of a deity being all up inside me, so I respectfully said I didn't want to do it." Jason motioned over his face with his hand.

"That's when the mask started coming off. All the 'young master' talk and luxury just kinda faded over time. They got pushier, so I dug my heels in further, and before I knew it, they were withholding food in exchange for my 'good behavior'. You don't really know someone until you deny them something they want, my dad always said."

"I was wondering why they didn't just shove me into the Trial with the sacrifices they wanted me to take, though," Jason mused, pointing at Will with his spoon.

"Like what happened to you."

"There's ways to leave the Trial via the merchant caravans that travel through the area, not to mention as you are, you'd probably get killed."

"Oh." When will thought about it, once Jason dug his heels in, they shifted their priority from getting him his Class to breaking his resistance. They wanted to erase the idea of disobedience before they gave him the means to run away. That took time.

"More please." Jason said, holding up the empty bowl, allowing Will to refill it from the pot they'd ordered for the table.

"…Do humans throw up when they eat too quickly?" Loth asked from where she was flipping through an ancient tome, prompting a feral hiss from Jason.

"Why don't you let that first one settle, Jason?" Will said, pulling the new bowl away.

"It's not gonna do you any good if it's on the floor."

"You suck," Jason said, but didn't force the issue.

"You being in the condition you're in…" Will gesture to his friend.

"Is gonna make this next part a lot slower than I was hoping." They couldn't blitz their way back up, that was for sure.

"Not much I can do about it." Jason said with a shrug.

"We could probably put enough fat back on him in two weeks, but the lost muscle will take longer." Loth said. Maybe if he had high resistance and Strength…but that would mean he was already in the Trial.

"What kind of Class would you like?" Will asked, hoping Jason would pick something in the Warrior Archetype that would make the Trial safer for him.

"Hype Man," Jason said without missing a beat.

"I'm not sure that's-""No, you don't get it, drifting from inn to inn, people paying me good money just to tell stories about you?" Jason said, pointing at Will.

"It suited me just fine. I enjoy it, I'm good at it. I wanna be a Hype Man." He glanced around and lowered his voice.

"I'm pretty sure the wenches were hitting on me."

"You're twelve, they were taking pity."

"Thirteen, thank you very much." Jason said, preening.

"You've been gone nearly six months.

"Oh yeah. You didn't get any taller, though." Will said, measuring Jason against himself with his hand.

"That's because you got taller." Will glanced at Loth, who nodded. He then glanced down at his sleeve, which had, without his knowledge, creeped from stopping at his wrist, to stopping a couple inches further back. He'd kind of assumed it had shrunk a bit from being doused in blood and sweat. Well, alright. I'm not sure that Hype Man is a known Class, though." Will mused. Known Classes were ones whose Sacrifices were common knowledge. Most common people didn't need the services of a Hype Man.

Although I highly recommend it.

"Sounds like a Charm Archetype, most closely related to a Herald or a Bard. Something in between the two." Loth said, flipping a page.

"Actually, two of the key Sacrifices that can make a Herald were in the monastery, being the Glory Eagle, and wood from the Tree of Empires."" Really?" Will and Jason asked as one. Loth nodded without looking away from tome filled with the church's secrets.

"I assume they wanted the Class they gave Jason to enhance his natural storytelling ability. The third Sacrifice they had on hand was some kind of Saint who had found a way to surrender their body to the will of Granesh. Presumeably."

"Gross." Jason said with a scowl.

"Sooo…if we found Jason a Bard Sacrifice, then…" Will mused.

"The Class might not be called Hype Man, but its abilities would be the closest we could get to what you've described." Loth said.

"…Without spending years and endless wealth testing on random civilians to get the exact Class." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"…I'll take it." Jason said.

"Whaddya got there, anyway?" Will asked Loth.

"It's a list of your siblings that the church has killed."

"WHAT!?" Will demanded, grabbing the book away and scouring the list of names until he found one that stood out to him. Henry Green Shot with an arrow in the Abyssal caves of the 1 st Escaped pursuit but never resurfaced. Presumed dead. I remember him, Will thought, vividly recalling the skeleton he'd had that wonderful one-sided conversation with during his Establishing Quest. He'd had an arrow in his ribcage.

"I guess Jairus wasn't lying to me." Will mused, tracing his finger down through the hundreds of names of dead people he'd never meet.

"There's the one on the second floor." Will mused, his finger coming to a stop.

'driven into the wilds of the second floor. Never resurfaced. Presumed dead.' Will remembered the mangled headless corpse in the meatlocker he'd been strung up in. The one that had given him a strange sense of déjà vu. All the – for lack of a better term – Deceiver corpses Will had met were 'presumed dead', save for the one in the church basement. This led him to believe that the church didn't just leave the corpses where they lie.

They gathered them up and disposed of them somewhere so that other – for lack of a better term – Deceivers didn't stumble across the bodies of their siblings. But the question was: did they destroy those corpses or did they store them somewhere?

"You look like you're plotting something." Loth said, leaning on her palm.

"You think the grudge of a thousand half-snake children cut down in their youth would be enough to curse a Relic?" Will mused.

"Say a tomahawk, as a random, nonspecific example."

"Not really my area of expertise." Loth admitted. Whose area of expertise would…

"Billy-bob." Will said.

"Yes, sir?" The spirit butler asked, rising from the floor with a polite bow.

"Gods!" Jason shouted, dropping the bowl of stew he was sneaking out of the pot. The young Hype Man glanced back and forth between Will and his undead servant, seemingly deciding whether or not to run.

"Same question." Will said, pointing at Billy-bob.

"A small percentage of my makeup is comprised of those who have served high-ranking members of Granesh," Billy-bob said.

"To my knowledge, the bodies of Deceivers are cremated and placed in special urns for storage, as their ashes have latent miasma and will contaminate the land around them with the essence of the Immortal Serpent."

"So they still have some juice."

"That they do, sir." Billy-bob said, nodding.

"Would they be willing to help a brother out and destroy the church of Granesh?"

"Most willing."

"Stevie. Noob." Will called his other two ghost butlers, who rose out of the ground, awaiting his word.

"Get me a primo tomahawk." Will said, pointing at Stevie. Stevie nodded and vanished. Will turned his finger on Noob.

"Scour the Ring for Sacrifices that might work with Sourdough. You know what I want done with it. Also grab Jason a high-quality Bard Sacrifice. Preferably stealing them from the church of Granesh if you can, but I'm not picky." Noob nodded and vanished. Will turned his finger back to Billy-bob.

"Do you know where these ashes are stored?" Billy-bob shook his head.

"I'm sorry, sir. I only know what I do through hearsay and conjecture. The location is never spoken in front of servants."

"I'm on it," Loth said, turning back to the massive stack of the most important books and letters she'd… freed from the Church's information wing. There were thousands more with lower priority. Loth's insects had torn the entire monastery apart, brick by brick, both to uncover any potent secrets they might've had (and there were some) and also to erase any evidence of exactly what had befallen the monks.

As far as Will knew, the library was currently heading towards Loth's home den with a drawing of her, and the bricks of the monastery were being tossed into a bottomless pit one at a time by a line of insects.

"Figure out who or what I would need to concentrate the energy of a thousand pissed off ghosts sealed in urns. Then bring it to me." Will said to Billy-bob.

"Right away." Billy-bob said, bowing before he sank back into the floor. This trip to save Jason might just have fringe benefits, Will thought. He knew he was going to have to destroy the church of Granesh as it was, and the most immediate move was becoming more clear.

"Since when do you have three ghost butlers!?" Jason demanded, wiping up spilled stew.

"Since the fifth Floor." Will replied, taking off the gauntlet and checking his left arm. He wiggled one of the stubby digits emerging from his newly regrown wrist. Only a few more weeks.

"Gross." Jason grunted. Will wiggled his middle stub at Jason.

"Seriously, put the gauntlet back on before I throw up." Jason said, blocking his own vision with his palm. Will rolled his eyes and strapped the gauntlet back over his healing hand.

"Did you hear?" Will's ears picked up a couple of tavern-goers whispering to each other.

"The church of Granesh is mobilizing…Everything they have, they're scouring the ring like a wildfire, searching every town, village and city for heretics." Will glanced up at the two, a mud-covered laborer and a well-traveled messenger sharing the news over a pint.

"But I mean…everybody worships different gods. Aren't most of us heretics by their definition?" The laborer said with a tired shrug.

"They don't have enough power to declare half the world heretic, and even if they did, they'd be starting a war they can't finish. We'll be fine."

"No, they're not declaring war on everyone. I heard they're looking for someone or something in particular, and the numbers that I've seen…Way more high-level Climbers than anyone thought they had. They've been keeping their total strength close to the vest, that's for damn sure, but for this mobilization, I heard they're even bringing Saints out of retirement…and it's a LOT of them."

"What are you thinking?" Loth asked.

"Whether it would be a smart or stupid idea to try to hide inside the ring of their expansion." Will said, making a circle with spilled stew. Presumably the church's forces were expanding outward from their military arm of the Church of Granesh, Bone Mountain. Hiding under their nose might be clever. Bone Mountain was likely within striking distance of where they stored the ashes of all the Deceivers they killed, too. If Will could get inside their search line and wait there until the time was right…

"Smart in the unlikely event that you could pull it off, but most likely stupid." Loth said. They will leave a small contingent to watch for changes in any town or village they go through, and also offer the locals a reward for information on any unusual activity. Our current party lacks the Abilities needed to blend in effectively enough to hide." Will frowned. She was 100% right. The odds of getting spotted were far higher than the benefit of being able to launch a sneak attack on the crematorium.

"Strategically, the most ideal move is to hide in the south Ring," Loth said.

"The population primarily worships Holdna there, and the military arm of Granesh moving through will be met with stiff resistance, as it will be perceived as a hostile takeover, regardless of their stated intent. The Graneshians will take offense to this resistance and escalate to violence, which will in turn galvanize the local population, creating a nice little warzone to conceal yourself in, where the majority of the population will hide you simply to spite their occupiers."

"…yeah, but I don't want thousands of civilians to die to hide us," Will said, thinking of Leon, the general store owner in Ashwood. Most of them were level 1-10 civilians who had gotten out of The Tower before they got killed. There were millions more Leons out there just living their lives. Will could not abide drawing them into his war on the church.

"It's the most strategically sound choice, not necessarily the most ethical." Loth shrugged.

"What could we do to raise our chances of going unseen inside their search line?" Will asked.

"Well, if we avoided coming into contact with any other people while we wait, that would greatly decrease our chance of being discovered. There's an uninhabited forest in the valley north of Bone Mountain, that's known for being especially cold because it lies in the shadow of the mountain."

"Grubs?" Will asked as he worked out the plan. Loth nodded.

"I could do that." Will turned to Jason.

"Would you endure cold and eat nothing but salted grubs for a couple weeks if it meant you could give the church a bloody nose?" Will asked.

"Abyss, I'd do it for a year." Jason said emphatically. Will turned and flagged down the serving wench, placing two gold pieces on the table, causing her eyes to bulge, along with Jason's.

"Could we get a bag of salt and a bag of pepper, and where might we purchase a cast-iron pan, a small keg, and wool? Cloth?"

"Sheepskins," Loth added, turning back to her research.

"And some sheepskins."

"G-general store, sir." their serving wench stammered, pointing.

"I'll get right on that salt and pepper sir." She stood there for an awkward second, seemingly deciding between a bow and a curtsy, before she caught herself, heading back into the kitchen.

"Dude, you're rich!" Jason whispered to him.

"These are practically worthless above the Second Floor," Will said, twirling a gold coin between his fingers.

"But yes. I am rich."

"You do realize our shopping list will give a hint as to our intended destination?" Loth said.

"They'll think we're going outside the Ring. It'll send their attention away from the south Ring to the outer reaches, so maybe there won't be a war." Will explained.

"Fair enough, but I'm asking for some scrimshaw knives too, then." Loth replied. The cold outer reaches were known for their scrimshaw artwork, since the beasts that roamed their land were so enormous. Scrimshaw knives made from good inner ring steel were in great demand in the outer reaches and could ingratiate them with a community rather handily. Not to mention salt and spices.

Loth intended to buy some scrimshaw knives, making their shopping list point directly into the outer reaches, so that would be the first place the Church of Granesh looked, wasting time and effort scouring the frozen wastes, achieving nothing.

"That's such a blatant misdirect, you think they'll buy it?" Will asked.

"Organized religion is not the place to search for critical thinking." Loth said.

"…What are you guys talking about?" Jason asked with a frown.

"…I thought he was smart." Loth said.

"Eh…" Will said, waggling his hand. Jason kicked him under the table.