Duskbound

Chapter 79

"If you're going after the rest of those champions, you should do it immediately," Torwin said between bites of sausage. "I'll delay my return home as long as possible, but I already sent messages ahead about the corruption. I can guarantee I'll be receiving orders to report everything in person in the next few days."

"Don't you want some of the seeds for yourself?" Velik asked.

The old hunter chuckled. "I've got a decades-long career of hunting monsters and you would not believe how rich that has made me. Don't get me wrong, those champions are easy money if you're strong enough to kill them, but I don't need it. And Jensen definitely doesn't. His family is rich enough to buy a god. We're here to get him experience, and that's been done. Go, clean up the mess, get paid for it, and fund your new life."

"And then what?"

"Well," Torwin said slowly, drawing the single word out. He stared down at his breakfast and took another bite while he thought. "You've got the skills and temperament to be a professional monster hunter, I think. You've got some gaps in your practical knowledge, but there's no denying the talent for it. I'm not sure you realize how much of a feat it is soloing a champion elite at level, let alone higher, not to mention clearing an entire dungeon."

"It's not like it was easy," Velik said dryly.

Torwin snorted. "People won't believe you if you try to tell them what you did. It's too preposterous, even for someone with a unique class and racial subtype like you've got. I can vouch for you and sponsor your registration if you decide to try, but you'll still have to do your time as an iron. No one gets around that."

"An iron?"

"Iron-ranked. It means you'd be a probationary member. Most monster hunters work in groups, and the guild has to know that you can carry your own weight, follow orders, and not recklessly endanger the rest of your team. I imagine they'll have to come up with a few new tests for someone as strong as you are. It's not often new applicants are higher than level 15."

When Velik didn't immediately respond, Torwin hastened to add, "If you're interested, of course. You've got plenty of other options. Mercenary work if you don't mind fighting other people instead of monsters, or you could attach yourself to a wealthy house like Jensen's. There's probably twenty or thirty notable ones that take on retainers."

I don't even know what to say to that. I understand what the words mean, but what would I actually be signing myself up for? What obligations does being an iron-ranked monster hunter or a retainer to a powerful family come with? Will that leave me any time for myself? Do I even need the support of some organization? Would they help me figure out what this class orb means?

"There's something else to consider," Torwin said. "Your friend who had the quest—"

"Not my friend," Velik muttered.

"She got—what? I thought… Well, regardless, it seems that Morgus isn't quite done with her. When we finished purging the corruption, she got a new quest to locate whoever or whatever put that dungeon seed in your path and stop it from ever doing anything like that again."

"I still don't understand why I got roped into that," Velik said. "I didn't do anything to save the towns."

"True, but you did destroy the dungeon that the seeds were coming from. We treated the symptoms, but you purged the disease out of the frontier. Besides, when a god grants you a reward through the system, the smart thing to do is to offer praise, accept the gift, and shut your mouth."

Velik couldn't help but chuckle. There was certainly some sense to that advice, though he couldn't think of a reward he'd want less than a class orb for that cursed class that had taken over Chalin's life and turned him into a monster. He still wasn't sure how that had all come about, whether Chalin's new monstrous class had pushed him to seek out and consume other people, or whether the dungeon core had formed in the very beginning and taken him over. Perhaps it had been a bit of both.

Finding whoever had dropped that seed there and ensuring that they couldn't ever cause that kind of harm again sounded like a worthwhile goal, now that he thought about it. Sildra's quest was important to him, but the simple truth was that he didn't have the first clue how to go about it. It had taken ten years to find Chalin again, and he'd only been a few hundred miles away.

But maybe Torwin knew someone who could help. "The class orb," he said, "do you think it's a clue? Is that why the quest rewarded it to me? Could we use it to find whoever left that dungeon seed behind?"

"We as in you or me? No, I doubt it. Somebody with a different class and access to a set of skills we can only dream about might be able to. Once someone figures out where to look, that's when people like us get sent in to narrow things down and take care of the problem."

"And do you know somebody like that?" Velik asked.

"Well now." Torwin grinned. "That seems like the kind of resources a guild or noble house might be able to offer, doesn't it?"

"I don't know," Velik told him honestly.

"Ah. Right. Perhaps a place to round out your… ahem… education before anything else."

"That would be a good start."

They both sat silently for a little while, pondering the discussion and finishing up lunch, or breakfast, in Velik's case. Finally, Torwin said, "This might be a problem better posed to Jensen. I'm sure his family has access to tutors and instructors on all sorts of subjects. The question is which ones you could buy the services of without indebting yourself to the Alderworths."

If there was one thing he didn't want, it was to have obligations to some noble family. Working as a mercenary or a guild monster hunter was one thing. Those were jobs. He'd maintain his independence and could walk away if he needed to. But there was no doubt in Velik's mind that if he let some noble get his hooks in him, it would end poorly.

"Education, independence, revenge," Velik muttered.

Torwin said nothing, though Velik knew he'd heard every syllable. He just ate his last bite of food and drained the remainder of his beer. Whatever he thought of Velik's plan, he wasn't willing to offer an opinion. He just stood up, glanced around, and sighed.

"I'll talk to Jensen and see if he has any ideas. It's probably better to keep you away from him, anyway. His father's already going to be a handful to deal with since he decided to go a different direction with his class evolution. There's no need for you to get dragged through all of that with us, but maybe we can give you some ideas for some independent instructors. You'll probably be a few weeks behind us, anyway. Things should have cooled down by then."

"How will I find you?" Velik asked.

"Oh, just ask around at the guild hall. Someone will get a message to me. Now, I'm going to go roll my lazy apprentice's ass out of bed. Good luck claiming the rest of those champion seeds. I would advise you to hold onto them when you arrive in Cravel until you can have someone appraise them. Figuring out how much they're worth can be tricky. It depends on a whole bunch of stuff, not just level."

"Solid advice," Velik said. Then he surprised himself by adding, "It was good working with you. I don't usually have any help keeping the monster population under control. You and Jensen took a lot of pressure off me."

"It's my job," the old monster hunter said simply. "They paid me for it, though I doubt I'll be getting any thanks this time around. I'll see you in a month or so."

With that, Torwin walked across the room and ascended a staircase. Velik sat at the table for another minute thinking, then snickered when he heard an outraged bellow overhead followed by a loud thump as something heavy struck the floorboards.

Clean up, cash out, and start living my life for myself, he thought. Yeah, that's a good start. But someday, we're going to figure out who started all this, and we're going to make him pay.

Unconsciously, his hand strayed down to his hip pouch where the class orb containing Chalin's class rested. He wasn't sure how, not yet, but he knew it was a clue, one he intended to follow to the very end. If Sildra intended to complete her quest with him, she'd have to get a lot stronger a lot faster.

Plenty of monsters left. With the source dried up, she can handle defending the towns, what's left with them. Maybe it'll be enough.

Ignoring the loud arguing coming from Jensen's room above his head, Velik stood up from the table and strode out the front door. The work wasn't done yet.

End of Book 1