Chapter Forty-Three


    Eric Delrosa had been probing the Nidaros underworld for a while now. It turned out there wasn’t anything organized at all about Nidaro''s crime. There were criminals, something close to what you might call gangs, except the locals called them dark guilds.


    They were adventurers unaffiliated with the adventurers’ guild who had turned to banditry. The town didn’t have an official slums, nor was it very dangerous. Eric was able to learn of a dark guild headquarters in town, an open secret.


    Eric sauntered into the western part of town, moonlight and warm ember torches casting shadows on the road and buildings that looked like eldritch monsters.


    A blonde-haired elven ranger in green leather was casually rolling dice on a small wooden table directly outside the door to a two-story wooden building. Amber eyes flicked upward, and a frown appeared on the elf’s narrow features.


    “Keep walking if you don’t want to get hurt, human.”


    The elves melodious voice was touched with a dark undertone.


    Eric smiled at the elf,


    “Take me inside.”


    Immediately, the elf rose and opened the door, leading Eric inside.


    Inside the building there were displays of various monster and animal heads. Display cases held weapons inside them, and rugs with various abstract patterns were lain across the wooden floors. Orbs of soft light hung from the ceiling, giving the whole building a warm feeling.


    Not at all what you might expect the lair of a vicious group of murderous adventurers to look like. In the main room, adventurers lounged, tossing cards onto the table. Voices could be heard before even entering the room.


    “We need a score, supplies are runnin’ low.”


    A grunt was the reply,


    “Could always set up a toll road, tha’ usually works.”


    They didn’t get much farther as the elf led Eric into the room. The three bandits looked up. One was clearly a mage, wearing robes and a staff leaning against the chair he sat on. He was human, thin and tall, with a mop of brown hair, and a scarred face.


    His eyes were a dark brown, and currently they were wide with surprise at Eric’s presence.


    The second was a woman, ashen haired and wearing bright chain male, a massive sword leaning against the wall near her. She would have been lovely if it wasn’t for the fact that one side of her face had a nasty burn scar across it.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    The third was also human, in dark leathers and two daggers on his belt. His hair was like tree bark, and his face was like a beaten plumb. A hood lay around his head, ready to be pulled up at a moments notice.


    Before any of them could move, Eric tapped his skill.


    “Do not move.”


    Eric smiled as each of the adventurers in the room froze, faces morphing into deep scowls.


    Eric looked around and found a cup and a wine bottle on a table; he filled the cup up with the dark red liquid and took a sip. He smacked his lips experimentally,


    “Cheap stuff. You might be wondering what I’m doing here. It’s okay, I would be too-” Eric rubbed his hands together before pressing his glasses closer to his face, “Suffice to say, I am your new leader. Don’t bother disagreeing; you can’t.”


    Eric chuckled wryly. He settled into an open seat and leaned back, swirling the wine in the cup.


    “You serve me now. See? Just like that. Now that we’ve settled that, I have a task for you all. I want to know everything you can tell me about the forerunner in this town and the castle he resides in.”


    ***


    It turned out there was a way into the castle. A few days of digging turned up the blueprints, which weren’t easy to find, but the elf, whose name turned out to be Eledin Fairbright, had turned them up in an old book he found in the library.


    There was a tunnel that led to the castle’s library. Getting to it was the problem, as you had to dive into the ocean on the beach below the castle. Then, emerge through an underwater tunnel. Unfortunately, the tunnel had been sealed off at the back of the library by stone.


    What he needed was a skill to get through the stone without causing a huge ruckus. This too, proved easily solved through spell scrolls. Eric hadn’t known it was possible, but there was a profession where you could imbue paper with certain skill effects for a one-time use.


    The usefulness of these was that anybody could use the scroll. They also tended to be expensive depending on the grade and the skill imbued. Rock shaping at D-Grade costs a decent chunk of SC. Despite that, he bought two of them.


    Luckily, Eric had gotten a huge amount of SC from his deal with Misaq before the System descended.


    Buying the scroll was easy, and Eric did it through the elf. Just in case things went awry, Eric wanted to do as much as he could through proxies.


    He also bought scrolls of water breathing, one for each of them. He wanted the others as shields more than anything, and he doubted he would need them.


    The plan was simple: They would take the underwater tunnel to the castle library, use a scroll of rock shaping to get into the library and make their way to the forerunner chamber to deal with him.


    There were a couple of hangups to this plan. First, he had no idea what this forerunner could do. That bothered him. He didn’t like not knowing, not at all. He used a spear, and he felt like it was the one he needed, but he wasn’t sure.


    He had confirmed that Elgin was D-Grade, if at its peak. With that, he wasn’t worried at all about taking him. His skill would work on him just fine. The spear did worry him.


    Some mythical items had their own spirit and were bound with those that didn’t actually have a spiritual skill. The caveat was that if you ever got access to a spiritual skill, you could no longer use the item.


    Eric wanted that spear. But he had no spirit of his own, and if he wanted to have a chance, he needed to catch Elgin by surprise. This plan was the best way to do that.


    He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose again, sighing.


    If this didn’t work, he was in real danger of death, and that troubled him.


    Eric had learned one fact about life long ago, even before the System cemented it: With no risk came no reward. Eric had no other options.


    Ambrose Severen would come for him, and without that spear, Eric had little chance of defeating him. Such was the disparity between those with a spiritual skill and those without. If he had known this sooner, he would have never turned down the spiritual skill that had been offered to him earlier.


    But guides to the System were guarded treasures, and those offered for sale were beyond his means. Mistakes happened; he had made one.


    Now was the time to rectify them.