Chapter 428: The Hunt for Night V

“How’d it go?” I asked Iona. We were back at the inn after a long day of getting shit done, sitting around a lovely meal.

This [Innkeeper] was great! Being right on a major road to a major city had to help with their levels.

She was all smiles, it must’ve gone well.

“Excellent! No leads on Night, but I might have an answer to our housing.”

“OOooh! Do tell!” I squirmed happily in my chair, eager to hear what Iona had to say.

She pulled out a blank piece of paper, and began expertly sketching an outline of Sanguino and the surrounding area.

“I spent the day talking with different people, getting a feel for what the rules are in practice. To make a long, complex story short, with our levels, if we can successfully settle in one of these three places, we’ll be allowed to homestead.” Iona circled three spots on her increasingly-detailed map. “Now, they’re all wilderness, and we’ll need to build, or more practically, protect builders while making our place. We can’t wreck the local wildlife too badly, the colosseum has something of a claim on them, although it sounds like Fenrir would be allowed to become the local apex predator. We also need to stay out of these areas because we’re too high level, whereas these places will utterly murder us.” Iona circled several different places as she spoke, using fancy twists of her quill to easily distinguish the areas.

She grinned at me.

“Now, that’s the simple part. Here’s where it gets nice. There are bonuses for growing crops.”

Iona paused, looking me in the eye, a smile dancing on the edge of her lips.

“Like mangos.”

“YES!” I pumped my fist in the air. “I knew I loved you for a reason!”

Mangos! A whole grove of mangos just for me! Sure, they were going to be a ton of work, especially with my lack of skills dedicated to growing them, but MANGOS! All mine!

Well, okay, not all mine. I needed to share them with the rest of the Eventide Eclipse.

Goddesses, it sounded like a dream.

I didn’t exactly have a deep suspicious streak in me, but it sounded too good to be true, to the point where even I had questions.

“What’s the catch? We can’t be the first people looking to settle down in the area. There’s a whole damn city of people right there.”

“Levels, relative risk, and price.” Iona said. “The local apex predators in the area are hovering around level 600. Need to be punching up significantly to be allowed, the zones we’re not allowed to try have creatures that are almost our level. You think the average person can strike it rough in the wilderness with a level 460 vine Ent, when they’re required to fight them at 256 or 300? Heck, do you think the average person wants to fight for their life?”

I nodded.

“Excellent points.”

Iona wasn’t done though.

“We also need to pay a hefty amount just to attempt to cut a slice of it out for ourselves, and that’s before construction costs come in. Here’s my estimate, after I’ve padded the going rates generously then doubled them.”

Iona wrote out a number with seven figures in it, and my eyes practically bugged out of my head.

“I thought we weren’t going to be building a castle.” I said.

Iona snorted, and changed the leading 1 to a 7 with the stroke of her quill, and added an extra 0 to the end.

“We’re not. This is what a castle costs… before we take upkeep and maintenance into account.”

I stared at the numbers and sighed.

Easy come, easy go.

I reviewed the map.

“This is going to sound completely insane, but… I want to live forever.”

Iona gave me a bit of a side-eye at that. She knew that, and I knew she wasn’t the biggest fan of the idea. I was convinced I’d turn her to my way of thinking before she died of old age, so I wasn’t too concerned about it. I’d already gotten her to see Immortals in a mostly neutral light, even moving to Sanguino with me! Just one small step left.

“I wonder if we can also build a, I dunno, reinforced bunker deep underground to help survive the next Immortal war? Like the hideout we found in the Pekari lair.”

Iona’s side-eye intensified.

“I thought you’d be out there, helping people.”

I nodded.

“I probably will be. But there’s no reason not to also create a bolthole for ourselves, for Auri and Fenrir, for anyone who can’t protect themselves. If we can offer a small measure of shelter to others, why not?”

Iona clicked her tongue disapprovingly.

“I’m willing to entertain the idea, but keep this in mind. You’re going down the exact path, following the exact logic that starts these Immortal messes in the first place. First is a home. A large tract of land for you and yours. Alright, that’s reasonable, everyone wants that. Food, water, shelter, all the necessities. But then you’re looking to the future and claiming conflict is inevitable, and you’re taking steps to prepare yourself. When you, and everyone else, is preparing yourselves for this conflict, it’s guaranteed to eventually generate it. What’s next? A larger bunker? Prepared weapons? Gems acquired from Amber for defenses? Getting your own private set of guards? One step leads to the next, and soon you’ve built a whole fortress, warily eyeing all the other fortresses that have been built out there, wondering which one you’ll end up fighting.”

She had a point, but I disagreed.

“So instead we should do nothing? Watch as all the other so-called fortresses rise all around us, and wonder which one will end up putting a sword to our throat, demanding we cooperate or die? I feel like my position and proposal is being misrepresented. I’m not proposing a castle, fortification, or base. I’m proposing a hidden underground bunker where we’ll be explicitly out of the way, letting the titans pass overhead, praying that our structure is sound and that we can still leave to help those who need it. Better than rolling over and dying, yeah?”

Iona held up a hand.

“Peace. Your position isn’t entirely without merit. I just wish…” She trailed off, looking to the sky where the Ash clouded the moons.

Iona sighed heavily.

“I just wish for peace.

That we could live together in harmony. That Immortals wouldn’t find the need to try and knock over each other’s sand castles, or if they did, that they could confine themselves and not hit the rest of us in the collateral.”

“Well, that’s simple.” I flippantly replied, trying to direct the conversation in a less contentious direction.

“Yeah?” Iona asked with an amused smile and a quirk of her eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Take over the world!”

That got a smile back on Iona’s face, and we laughed.

“Enough about my day! How was yours?” Iona asked.

“Blah! Terrible!” I said, giving her the quick rundown of where I’d like to start working, and my logic behind it.

“Then I got to the library, and I got nowhere. Everyone writing these lineage books seem to be interested mostly in their own particular branch. If I see one more Valerius, the Kind, turned by Calpurnia, the Heart of Magic, turned by Drusus, the Shadow of Darkness, I’m going to go insane.”

“What’s wrong with Drusus?”

I groaned and held my head.

“He’s one of five what I’m calling terminators that I’ve found so far. There’s no record of who turned him. Or her. Records are spotty, and my attempts to find anything out about Drusus or any of the other terminators get ancient stories where they’re an old vampire already. The one book I found more directly addressing him… or her… speculated that they didn’t exist, the records are that bad. A few of the genealogies I’ve found terminate on Calpurnia. It’s a mess.”

Iona patted my shoulder, and gave me a side-hug.

“Hey, nobody said this would be easy. Keep at it! I’m sure you’ll find something.”

I groaned.

“And this is one of those things that I just frankly don’t trust someone else to do properly. Gotta do it myself. I have annoyed the [Librarians] asking for directions to various places, so it’s not like I’m being dumb at it. I just wish this was easier.”

I shrugged.

“Hey, at least the levels are solid. No complaints there.”

I looked doubtfully at a decrepit, practically falling apart foyer. It was at the bottom of an apartment building that had to be run by a high-level [Slumlord].

If they didn’t start at a high level, simply owning the place would’ve power-leveled them to untold heights. The building was broken in a few places, and the few windows that had been given attention were boarded up instead of repaired. The door across the street was half-broken, barely an impediment against either people or the elements. A swirling long blue… snake with whiskers and five legs… was artfully graffitied along all the buildings in the row.

I checked the address, and checked the location again.

Yup. It was a match.

The street was about as promising as the building. A group of teenagers were loitering on the street, all wearing blue headbands. A beggar wasn’t even trying to ply her trade, simply resting on the side of the street, out of the way. I could see an addict passed out in an alley, and the local tavern was doing… I wouldn’t call it a brisk business first thing in the morning, but it was certainly open for business and being patronized. A few ladies were walking back and forth on a corner with a light out, plying their trade. The light being out really helped their chances, or so a little mean corner whispered to me. The air reeked of desperation. A small community was huddling in one of the omni-present city tunnels almost directly under me, ekeing out a living.

I mentally readjusted myself.

I’d volunteered to work in the slums. In the poorest part of the city. It wasn’t like I could expect it to be bustling and looking great. It wasn’t like I could expect space and luxury, of clean buildings and patrolled roads. I wasn’t going to shy away at the slightest hint of adversity. This was how a significant number of people lived their lives.

I shuddered as I went through the door, spotting some roaches bailing as they detected me.

[The World Around Me] was a cursed skill. It gave me a perfect picture of the walls.

Of what was living inside the walls.

‘If you can see one roach, there’s a hundred you can’t see’ was an understatement.

[*ding!* [The World Around Me] leveled up! 74 ->75]

Bless the giants. All praise the mighty [Runesmith] Jiwa, and their ceaseless work on crafting a peerless magic system.

I knew the rune for [Immaculate Purification], but I resisted the impulse to whip out one of my spellbooks and simply cast it. Instead, I quickly, carefully, and accurately traced the rune out in the air with [Lepidoptera], funneling power and mana through it once it was complete.

Cleansing magic washed through the space. The dust was cleared from the air, small breaks and splinters were repaired, screws were tightened, animal scat purged, and a thousand and one other things done that saved me hours of scrubbing and sweeping myself.

Unfortunately, the cockroaches in the walls were left with gleaming, shiny-clean shells. I shuddered again.

How much would I need to pay an [Exterminator] to make a trip out here, today? Could I get a high level [Exterminator]?

Time to find out.

I ended up paying way more than I expected to get rid of the bugs. In one part because the [Exterminator]

demanded extra for the location, and three parts due to the sheer scope and size of the issue, along with paying him to prevent bugs from coming back.

Fun. But now roaches wouldn’t be running over my foot while I worked.

I went outside and made a construct with my wizardry, a glowing sign advertising my business.

Dawn’s Healing! Free of charge.

I didn’t mention the donations part. People here were poor, needing every penny, and a request for a donation might be seen as a demand. That, and they needed their money a LOT more than I did. I was rolling in funds, to the point where I was planning on how to build my own mansion. People here were planning which meal they were skipping if they were lucky.

It wouldn’t be fair or right to take even a single arc from them.

I added some pictures indicating what I could do, including the classic symbol of healers - the hydra under a willow tree. I wasn’t sure if everyone here could read, and I wanted to make sure I was accessible.

It wasn’t like I could make any direct money here.

I went back inside, and took stock again.

The place was clean, but it wasn’t nice. It was now a mostly empty room, without a chair, desk, bed, or anything. I was going to look into furniture once I let things settle out a bit, see what was needed, and critically, test if I could leave a chair in here overnight or not.

I popped four books out of [Bookwyrm’s Hoard], carefully put three of them on the floor in a stack while I held the fourth, and split my mind into three.

The first book was almost entirely blank, and I was calling it my big book of signatures. The only ‘payment’ I was asking was for anyone I helped to sign the book. According to Iona, that would create a record for the taxman, which is how I’d get ‘paid’ in the end.

Sounded ripe for fraud, but I wasn’t going to poke at that too much. One thought process was looking at the door, trying to look alert and ready for whoever decided to poke their head in first.

To my utter lack of surprise, I went daydreaming instead of focusing on… nothing really.

Iona featured prominently.

The second was a single book I’d been allowed to checkout from the library. I could do four things at once, why not take a fat book from the library and continue my research?

The third was another one of my spellbooks. I briefly contemplated making a ‘poisons and miasmas for getting rid of bugs and mice’, buuuuuuuuuut that could be easily misconstrued. And was more than slightly illegal.

Plus, I’d never been taught how to make poisons with wizardry. Wasn’t one of the commonly taught classes for obvious reasons.

Instead I looped back round to a long-term project of mine - armor in a book. A sheet of metal was easy enough to conjure. A curved sheet was a little more complicated, then there was the entirety of armor construction theory…

Which was the fourth book I had. I’d gotten a detailed look over my years as a Ranger and a Sentinel on what armor should look like, but I didn’t know how much of it was critical, and what were compromises to construction. If I knew which little bolts and rivets were simply for fastening, and making sure they weren’t serving a secondary purpose, I could make a simpler design.

Screws and rivets were hell to properly design into a magic mandala.

My goal was to end up with a book filled with multiple sets of gear for myself, and a few spares for Iona and possibly Fenrir if I got that far, along with noting a few easy runes I could slap on each one. It wasn’t as good as owning a whole set of gear myself, but we frankly didn’t have the money for it.

My attention snapped back to Pallos, out of my daydreaming, as the first person entered my little clinic. A middle-aged woman, looking tough as nails and like she could spit fire.

With the System, maybe she could!

“Hi! Do you need something?” I asked with my best cheerful friendly voice. New place! New people! Hopefully I’d be here a while!

She made a little twitch as if to spit on my floor, but didn’t.

“Free healing? What’s the catch?” She practically growled.

I held out my big book of signatures.

“Just sign here!” I said.

I got another round of suspicious looks before she relented.

“Fine.” She said.

I felt like I was barely getting her to agree in the first place, and a detailed, thorough investigation as to what her issue was wouldn’t be welcome. Instead, I pulled up all my knowledge of human anatomy and healing up to the forefront of my mind with [Astral Archives], [Imbued] a [Nova Lance], and hit her with it.

[*ding!* [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] leveled up! 110 -> 111. +80 Dexterity, +80 Vitality, +80 Speed, +240 Magic Power, +240 Magic Control, +240 Mana, +240 Mana Regeneration per level from your Class! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration per level for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Magic Power per level from your Element!]

[*ding!* [Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri] leveled up! 475 ->476]

[*ding!*

[Parallel Thoughts] leveled up! 176 ->177]

[*ding!* [Imbue] leveled up! 188 ->189]

Yay! Levels!

Some of the stress lines around her eyes vanished.

“Thanks.” She muttered, immediately turning around and leaving.

“Wait!” I shouted after her. “My book!”

I swore as she completely ignored me, heading down the road. I wasn’t going to chase her to collect her signature… but this looked like it was going to be harder than it sounded.

At least I’d gotten a solid number of levels, and I was one step closer to finally being able to level [The Dawn Sentinel] again! Auri’s leveling rate was insane, and I was looking forward to getting free levels off of her sooner rather than later.

It was a few hours before my next patient came in. Dude was old, hunched over in clothing that had been worn for months on end, trembling slightly. His beady eyes darted all over the place as he came in.

“Hi! How can I help you?”

“Heal me!” He demanded, not mincing his words in the slightest.

“Make your mark in my book first!” I demanded right back, opening my big book of signatures to the first page, jabbing at the top. I offered up the quill with my other hand.

He snatched the quill from my hand, looking over it.

He then bolted for the door.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and moved.

The floorboards creaked as I took three steps forward, deftly snatching my quill back from him. Adding insult to injury, I opened the door for him, brushed his arm slightly to heal him just in case he had some serious issues, then gently ‘helped’ him the rest of the way out.

“And don’t come back!” I yelled as he stumbled through the doorway, slamming the rickety wood shut behind him.

Humph. Good riddance.

His shakes were still there, and that was enough to distract and interest me from a medical perspective. I’d smashed healing through his entire body. Whatever was causing that either had to be degradation from old age, mental, or some flavor of curse or other System effect that I couldn’t break just due to healing magic.

I should keep an eye out to see if other people had a similar issue.

A roughly 10 year old boy came in next, far higher level than he should be. I wasn’t going to let a poor initial impression stop me.

“Hi! Do you need healing?” I asked.

He mutely nodded, and I held out my book and quill.

“Alright. Just make your mark right there, and I’ll get you patched up.”

He scribbled in my book, a small, neat, almost hesitant mark, and I healed him.

[*ding!* [Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri] leveled up! 476 ->477]

I narrowed my eyes at the notification. That wasn’t just me. Auri was up to something again. Wasn’t going to complain, I was on final approach to leveling [The Dawn Sentinel] again.

He nodded his thanks, and bolted out the door.

I smiled.

There was good to be done here. There were people to be helped.

Nothing would stop me.

A week passed by, and we were all starting to get settled in. I’d leveled [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] a few times to 115, although the [Librarians] refused to let me try and ‘eat’ the entire shelf, no matter how much I promised I’d put them all back. I cursed myself for asking first, instead of begging forgiveness… although I was going to be here a long, long time, no sense in getting myself banned from the library. Iona made her arrangements with the local temples, and saying she was delighted to find that the moon goddesses had a dedicated temple in Sanguino would be putting it mildly. It was a small one, the two of them not super popular in a city with an eternally overcast sky, but they had one.

Having a powerful class dedicated to reading let me blitz through the entirety of Sanguino’s genealogical section, and related texts. Most of my time was frankly spent searching for the next pile of books to read. It helped that I was building out a ‘network’ of vampires so to speak, and once I hit an already-known vampire, I could scrap the rest of the trail.

All terminators. Not a single ‘full’ legacy, stretching back all the way to one of the three progenitors that had existed in my time, let alone Night himself.

I had two options that had a strong chance of succeeding that I could think of, before I went to one of my more desperate long shots… or gave up entirely.

The first was to suck it up, and start going over tax and financial records, what little existed and were public. Night was old, and in Remus had enjoyed a privileged position of near-endless wealth. Exterreri seemed to have laws against that, but I was gambling that he was still near the upper crust of society. That was a rarefied circle, difficult to find and break into, but he should be there.

I could try to, say, consult property records or the like to see if I could find unusually well-placed people or families, and then poke around them to see if Night came crawling out of a coffin.

The other was a bit more dangerous, but perhaps faster. I could just flat-out walk to Ranger Headquarters, poke around, and see if I could find the Sentinel meeting room… or wherever Night met with people. Even if I couldn’t find Night, if there were underground tunnels, I could follow them - often from above ground, thanks to [The World Around Me] letting me see the edges of underground tunnels - to see if I could find Night’s residence, and Night.

Cross-referencing the addresses the tunnels went near with the property records could be a nice one-two punch, but the whole thing sounded daunting.

If I got lucky and managed to see a Sentinel in the wild, I could ask them to pass a message along to Night that Elaine of Arminium, known as Dawn, was looking for him. That might, hopefully prompt something. That relied entirely on luck, and I wasn’t going to sit on my laurels and wait for it to happen.

Not that I had laurels anymore. Left behind in Remus, like everything else.

On a more exciting note, the Eventide Eclipse were gearing up to try and claim the stretch of land that looked ideal. There was just the minor issue of a level 600 or so wyrm living there.

Iona and Fenrir were still doing recon, and I’d changed gears on what spellforms I was designing and making.

We were planning to stake our claim in three days when a group of men, all wearing blue headbands, came into my clinic.