Chapter 39

Riven’s demand made Jalel chuckle. The silver-haired man shrugged indifferently, waving a hand about the room with a loud snort. “What is there to say? I cannot remember the specifics.”

It was a blatant lie. Riven didn’t know why this stranger would lie to them, but Jalel hadn’t even attempted to hide it. He just didn’t want to talk. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t? Perhaps not, but the feeling he was getting from the snobbish smirk on Jalel’s face made Riven consider him a liar.

Riven paused, immediately shifting his posture and considering the man for a moment. Whoever this guy was, Riven really didn’t like him. “I see. Well, since you’re rather useless to us and haven’t wanted to share whatever is inside those bags after I saved your pathetic life, I’m done with you. You’ve insulted my minion numerous times and told me to leave her behind to die. We’re parting and going our separate ways; I wish you luck in getting back to wherever the fuck it was you came from.”

The abrasive, even somewhat aggressive stance Riven took caught Jalel off guard—and it was obvious in his face despite the defensive glower he shot Riven’s way.

Jalel tapped his fingers along his shins, clearly not liking the idea of being left behind to fend for himself, then shrugged. “Fine. It won’t hurt to tell you what I know—what isn’t off-limits to tell you, anyways.”

Riven shot him a disgusted look and turned, reaching down for his few belongings and beginning to pack up. “Get fucked.”

Jalel’s face grew even paler as he realized that Riven was serious. “Wait…this dungeon can’t be traversed by just—”

“I said, get fucked. You’re on your own, and I’m sure you’ll do a fine job by yourself considering how I found you,” Riven cut him off with another glare. Hoisting his wooden staff up and nodding to Athela as the demon chittered a long-winded laugh, he nodded toward the bolted door of the tower’s top room. “Let’s go, Athela.”

“Wait!” Jalel started to get up but stumbled back and fell against the wall as Athela rushed him—stopping halfway between where he and Riven stood while she displayed her hostile fangs that began dripping cold, necrotic venom, leaving black droplets along the stone floor as she slowly crept ahead.

Jalel was terrified and began to scream, and Riven snapped his fingers with a command to get her back. “Athela, don’t attack him. He’s a jackass, but we’re not murderers.”

“But we are murderers!” she argued with a disappointed humph—not letting her gaze leave the potential meal. “We already killed all those people in the tutorial, and we killed that other warlock, too! This man is no different—let me eat him! Please?!”

Jalel’s eyes went wide, and his knuckles turned white as he clenched his hands into fists. The outfit he’d put on after escaping, an outfit he’d drawn out of the bag, was made of leather and had a small knife in the side of a belt…and his fingers seemed to itch as they slowly went over to where it was sheathed.

Riven smirked, unintimidated by Jalel’s action, and shook his head. “No, Athela.”

“Please?!”

“I said no.”

She gave him another humph, then backed up and went to rub against Riven’s leg. “Okay.”

The color came back to Jalel’s face, and his hand dropped to his side. He just stared at Riven for a long moment before he cleared his throat and gestured to the bag. “What if I pay you to escort me out of here?”

Riven had been reaching for the door again, but that last statement gave him pause, and his frown deepened. The wind outside began to howl with a stark, brief blast of air before dying down again, and he turned to glance at the other man with suspicion.

“I thought you needed it to buy your way out?”

“I’ll be the one to worry about that. I just need to leave.”

There was another long pause. Eventually Riven lost that staring contest, faltered, and sighed. “What do you have to offer?”

Grudgingly, Jalel turned and stepped over to the large sack he’d taken with him. Opening it and rummaging around, he pulled out a smaller green sack that was tied with brown rope. He tossed it over to Riven, frowning. “Is that enough? You can use them at altars that will spawn in your world to buy items.”

Riven gave him a flat stare, then opened the bag in his hands. The bag jingled lightly, and, peering down into its contents, Riven saw a good number of copper, silver, and gold coins—each of them with the same insignia he’d seen on the system’s provided coins a minute before. There were likely a couple hundred in there, and Riven’s eyes narrowed while he shifted his weight and placed the sack in his backpack. “Altars? Are they like shops?”

“Kind of. It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but collecting these coins will allow you to exchange goods directly with the system, and it’s common currency in the core realms. You get these coins by killing certain monsters, completing quests, or mining ore and enchanting it in a specific way.”

“Really…” Riven glanced back down. Assuming he could use these to buy things in the outside world, money would be very important. “Athela, is this true?”

The arachnid nodded. “Yup! It looks like Jalel has fewer restrictions than I do when it comes to information exchange. Now that you know, though, I can confirm what he’s telling you is right. Altars to the system can be used to buy goods from them as long as you have Elysium coins.”

Riven evaluated the man for a time, then glanced over to the bag he still hadn’t looked through. “I also get my choice of one item from that little treasure bag of yours.”

“I can’t do that! I need it to pay off my debts!”

“Then you’re on your own. Assuming you even know the way out, it may be hard to leave.”

Jalel hesitated, fidgeting slightly while looking out the window at the gloom of this nightmarish place. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and then clenched his fists in anger. “Fine. And yes, I know the way. Get me to the exit, and you’ll have your choice of one item from the bag. Just one.”

“Now we’re talking. So, Jalel, knowing that you’ve been here and explored more than I have…I want you to lead us to the center of the city, where the statue of the bearded man with an axe is. Only after that can you show us the way out.”

Jalel paused hesitantly to think and then slowly nodded. “Why do you want to go there?”

“Do you know where it is?” Athela asked while eagerly getting up on her hind legs to paw at the air. “We’re supposed to finish a quest there!”

Jalel gave the demon a sour look, then bent down and picked up his bag to throw it over his shoulder. “Yes, I’ve seen it before. I’ll take you to the statue, but I will not go near it. After you do whatever it is you need to do, I will lead you to the entrance as you escort me and kill anything that tries to attack us if we can’t avoid it. I assume that if you leave the dungeon through my exit you’ll be transported back into your integrating world, but I can’t be sure. The system is picky with newly integrated civilizations and doesn’t let you off world this early most of the time; your case being here in Negrada is pretty unique. Anyways, is that a deal?”

An odd request to not go near the statue, but Riven nodded and reached for the door. “What did you mean earlier by buying your way out of here? About paying your debts?”

Jalel frowned even more deeply and dusted off his shoulders as he adjusted his posture with a humph. “My family owes money… We borrowed too much from a loan shark. It’s a long story I’d rather not talk about.”

The last dead bolts on the door were unlocked, and the heavy wood swung open a second later as Jalel motioned toward the spiral staircase descending downward into the depths of the tower. Moisture was collecting from the ceiling, leaking through the old stones and dripping onto the stairway below. “Be careful not to slip. We’re going all the way down to the ground level. Then we’ll be heading to the statue, and from there we will make our way to the canal, where a boat is hidden on the river of blood and tethered underneath an outcropping of rock. After that, it’ll be easier to traverse the city. The river of blood is safer than land.”

“KAJIT HAS WARES!”

*CRASH*

Riven was so startled by the zombified ghost’s appearance that he let loose a torrent of blood magic in the form of instantaneously summoned Bloody Razors. The magical projectiles blew through the image of the ghost and crashed into the opposite wall, not even fazing the decrepit woman as she laughed and giggled—pointing at him while his chest heaved up and down.

Jalel and Athela fared no better, with Athela now perched upside down on the ceiling—hissing at the ghost threateningly, while Jalel had fallen backward over the bag he’d dropped and smashed ass first into the ground.

“You again!” Riven spat while glaring up at the floating ghost with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. “Goddamn it, stop scaring people like that! It isn’t funny!”

The ghost, however, thought it was quite funny, and black ichor dripped from her laughing, rotten mouth while her patchy hair drifted around her. Her semitranslucent state made her frail, bandaged body look even thinner than it’d been when he’d first stabbed the woman upon entering Negrada. “I very funny, you just no have humor. But that not why I come! I come for best price you find in hellscapes! How you like knife?”

Riven’s brow furrowed and the other two remained quiet as his eyes tracked down to where the ghost was pointing at the newly acquired sacrificial dagger on his belt. “The knife? This one?”

He held up Sanguis Foedus in the dim red light of the room.

The ghost nodded with a smirk. “You like, yes? I take as special price, yes? I misplace other prize I sway you with, so I take this one instead!”

[Sanguis Foedus has been forcibly relinquished from your control.]

The ghost snapped her fingers, and instantly the dagger he’d just acquired was in her hands. The bond between Riven and the item also snapped, the disconnect causing his body to shudder slightly. Dumbfounded and confused, he grabbed at his waist and then quickly conjured a Wretched Snare that blasted out toward the spirit—but it merely fell right through her image as she laughed at his attempts.

Athela came next, spraying the ghost full-blast with red threads that didn’t affect it, either. Jalel, meanwhile, just stared, confused and scared, huddling with his bag in the corner of the room near the door.

“Hey, bitch! I don’t know who you are, but that dagger belongs to my master!” Athela waggled an angry arachnid limb at the cackling ghost, who sat clutching at her sides. “Give it back!”

More than anything, Riven was just confused. “Athela, doesn’t magic usually work on spirits?”

“Of course it does!”

“Then why didn’t mine work on her?”

Athela shot him a look, then glanced back at the amused ghost, who now was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the stone room. “I don’t know.”

Kajit, however, had an answer. She lazily rolled over onto her side and gave him a disgusting belch, then gestured at him with one of her gnarled hands. “I haunt you when you touch wooden ring, yes? Wooden ring powerful curse onetime-use item. You pick up, curse transfer to you. Strong death magic curse. You see: I now reside in soul structure like fly on hippopotamus bum. To get Kajit out, you must pay special price.”

Riven gave the ghost an incredulous look, and then glanced worriedly toward Athela.

“YOU GOT HAUNTED?! When did that happen?!” Athela asked in a bewildered sputtering of words.

“Right after we got sent into the hellscape.”

“AND WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!”

“She seemed harmless earlier and only appeared once after I killed her physical body.”

“BEING HAUNTED IS A PRETTY BIG DEAL, RIVEN! And not many spirits can do that kind of thing! She’s likely a gods-damned phantom!”

“Bleh!” The ghost held up her right hand after pretending to inspect the nails that weren’t there. “I phantom, yes, but fear not, spider demon creature. I cannot eat soul even if try, even while haunted. Soul is too solid and likely eat me back, even before binding to great maw.”

The spider blinked twice, then hopped down off the ceiling and stared curiously up at Riven from the floor. “Oh, really? What does she mean by great maw, Riven? It appears there are things you haven’t told me yet since rescuing me yesterday.”

It likely meant only one thing. Riven frowned, not wanting to discuss such things in front of Jalel if the man already had such a poor opinion of warlocks to begin with. Riven wanted to get out of this damnable place, and he wasn’t sure someone like Jalel would lead him out willingly if they knew he had a piece of original sin in his soul structure.

He cleared his throat. “That’s a story for another time.”

“Yes, yes, now we talk about special price!” Kajit tossed the dagger over her shoulder, and it blipped out of existence, vanishing into thin air after a small portal of black swallowed it whole. “I take dagger now for my price, and then your price is next!”

Riven was beginning to get annoyed and crossed his arms, not so much threatened by the being in front of him but rather irritated by the way she’d just snagged the fancy dagger he’d been awarded. “So, to be clear, you’re residing in my soul now?”

“Yes, yes.”

“And you can’t harm me?”

The ghost paused, then shook her head. “No, no. I can harm but can’t eat soul. Complex death magic I explain another time if special price is paid. I even teach you like student. I once a great witch before I die and go to hell! Even if you stupid ape with noodle arms, I still teach!”

She beamed a brilliantly decrepit grin his way while wiggling her eyebrows. “Want to hear special price to take dagger back? I leave soul complex, and you learn death magic as Kajit’s student?!”

He stared her down for a time, hands still clenched in frustration. Ugh. This was not going to be good, was it?

Riven slowly nodded. “Tell me what this price you keep talking about is.”

Her smug look slowly turned upside down and into a frown. “You free Kajit’s sister’s soul from Tower of Fates before leaving hell.”

[New Quest Obtained: The Tower of Fates—Kajit, a phantom whose decaying corpse you happily stabbed a couple times back in the day, now is asking for your help. The Tower of Fates, a spot in existence accessible from hell only by those with significant prophetic abilities, holds Kajit’s sister captive. She wants you to get her sister out before you leave the dungeon. Failing this quest will no doubt result in the loss of your newly acquired dagger, an incredibly angry spirit, and the loss of knowledge otherwise obtained concerning death magic. As some free advice from the administrator, I would highly recommend you not decline trying, though…because otherwise you’re probably not going to make it out of this room alive.]