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An Otherworldly Scholar - 273
🕑 Added 2025-11-14 19:51:55 +0000 UTCThe tunnel went on for a long time. Without [Foresight], I might have lost track of time. Other than the occasional scratching sound of the rats against the stone floor, there was complete silence. Holst moved like a shadow, and Talindra had silenced her hooves with leather sandals. At some point, and without a word, Jorn’s agents took a side exit. Prince Adrien’s men followed shortly after. The three of us kept going until we reached a stone wall with metal rungs embedded deeply into it. Ten meters above our heads was an opening lit by the warm light of fire.
“Let’s go.”
I climbed the ladder into an old, windowless room with a fire pit and a boiling cauldron. A familiar man was removing the embers and got up as soon as I entered the room. The fire shone against his metal gauntlets concealed under his cloak. He seemed to be waiting for us.
“Captain Garibal, I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I greeted him.
The man gave me a polite bow.
“Prince Adrien has prepared countermeasures if things get out of control, Lord Clarke.”
The uncomfortable feeling of being on the edge of the precipice receded. Having the backing of the royal family felt great, although Talindra and Holst gave me an even greater comfort.
“Please use these, it is carnival night… again,” Captain Garibal handed us handcrafted masks. A wendigo, a wolf, and a bird.
I could tell from a mile away that they were made by a low-level artisan. The seams were durable enough, but the materials were cheap, and they lacked that ‘masterpiece’ vibe even Ginz at level twenty could give to his creations. They were perfect for passing unnoticed among commoners.
I grabbed the wendigo skull, Talindra the wolf head, and Holst the bird mask.
“Does this make me look fierce?” Talindra asked, showing her profile.
“Yes,” Holst replied, somehow making the ‘yes’ sound like an ‘absolutely not’.
Captain Garibal nodded and walked to the room’s only door. In the vestibule, ten royal soldiers stood, their uniforms hidden beneath long cloaks. Given their mana signatures, they were in their high thirties.
“Do you know where to go, Lord Clarke?” Captain Garibal asked.
I nodded. [Foresight] served me like an extremely accurate GPS. We were a couple of hundred meters from the location of the anti-nobility rally, deep in the East Ward. I didn’t expect the royal family to have a safe house here, though.
The lookout on the door signaled us to approach and opened it.
“Good luck,” the captain said.
Holst and Talindra stepped out, but I fell behind.
“If you have days off, take a trip to Farcrest. I know a craftsman who makes really good prosthetics,” I said, pointing at Captain Garibal's empty sleeve.
He gave me yet another of his polite bows.
“Let’s hope things slow down after the coronation.”
Without saying more, I followed the faun-eared wolf head into the main street. The East Ward was unrecognizable. The streets were as pothole-ridden as ever, but paper lamps and festoons made of old fabric hung between buildings, covering the night sky almost completely. Just like in the inner city, artists and performers fought for the most crowded corners while the inns and taverns kept their doors open to itinerant partygoers. As soon as we stepped outside, the sharp smell of offal and onion hit my face.
Holst was more than happy to move out.
“What if we are the only ones at the rally?” Talindra whispered near my ear.
“Then we won’t have to struggle distinguishing guilty from innocent,” I replied.
Prince Adrien had assured me he was only interested in the rally's organizers, not in the people curious about their message. Given the stakes, I hoped he was telling the truth for both our sakes. So far, he seemed legit when it came to keeping the peace in the East Ward.
I led the way. We passed countless food stands until the crowd became sparser. The anti-nobility rally was scheduled to take place near the city's edge in an area notorious for its blacksmiths and tanneries. I understood why the party didn’t take place there. The odor of the tanneries wasn’t pleasant.
Neither Holst nor Talindra complained, but I noticed their wrinkled noses.
We stopped in the alley's shadow and examined the surroundings. Masked figures dressed in all the colors of the rainbow slowly poured into a warehouse, barely exchanging a glance with each other. There were way more attendees than I expected.
Prince Adrien’s agents were nowhere to be seen.
“Last chance to back out,” I whispered.
“If I take even a step back, I won’t be able to sleep thinking about what happened in there,” Holst replied.
[Foresight] told me the event was about to start.
“Remember, we are not here to fight. Let’s stick together. If something goes wrong, let’s watch each other’s backs until Prince Adrien and Lord Jorn’s people arrive,” I said.
Holst and Talindra nodded.
We crossed the street and entered the warehouse through the gap in the sliding gate. The place was dimly lit by a few torches and old Lightstones. I counted two hundred people clumping around a stage made of old crates. Some wore masks, while others walked with their faces uncovered. Most were dressed as the everyday commoner at the East Ward market, but I noticed some Librarian robes and expensive fabrics.
I walked to the corner to have a panoramic view of the warehouse and leaned against the wall. Talindra and Holst stayed close but not so close that others would notice we were together. Given the dim light and the number of people, [Foresight] was the only thing keeping me from losing them in the crowd.
There was a small commotion at the front, and a crow-masked man climbed the old crates. I held my breath, but the man remained silent, simply looking at the audience. Talindra gave me a nervous glance, but I gave her a reassuring smile.
Whoever the crowman was, he knew how to build suspense.
“It’s good to see you here tonight, both the new faces and the old ones,” he said with a magically amplified voice. His voice was higher-pitched and nasal than I expected. “Have you been enjoying my potions? Haven’t you been leveling up like I told you would?”
There were a few cheers from the crowd.
“That’s good to hear. Don’t let those so-called nobles say you are defective. Ever,” the crowman continued. “It’s not your fault you don’t have an armory of enchanted items ready to help you level up. They don’t realize it, but they are the real coattailers here, not us! Who are they to say they are better when they have coffers of gold ready to buy the most exotic materials in the kingdom while we skin rats?”
The crowd roared again, but the sound quickly died.
“It’s okay, you can show your anger,” the crowman continued. “I have a couple of Scholar friends casting a Silence Dome around the building. We could be butchering a pig and nobody would notice, so go on, scream for me, Cadria! Let me hear the injustices you have faced!”
The crowd laughed and applauded as the crowman continued performing on the stage. His message encapsulated the main objections commoners had to nobles. Firana had articulated them even better than the masked man. He continued his speech when something else caught my attention. As the people continued dripping into the warehouse, I caught a glimpse of a hockey mask.
My body moved on its own, and I cut through the crowd until I found him.
The Sound Bandit.
What was he doing here?
I stood by his side, shoulder to shoulder. He was shorter than me, shorter than I was even before the ‘stretch’ I had experienced when I became a high-level Sage.
“You survived the explosion,” I whispered in English.
My words startled the Sound Bandit. He examined my mask, and I did the same. I couldn’t see anything through the holes in the hockey mask, and he seemed to be wearing a balaclava underneath. His only response was an affirmative grunt. A very juvenile grunt if I had to guess, just like those I used to hear in detention.
“Are your ears still ringing?”
Another grunt.
“Up close, you are rather short, aren’t you?” I taunted him.
Grunt.
The crowman raised his hands to silence the crowd.
“...I know, I know. It’s been a while since I handed off my potions. I’m really sorry, but gathering the ingredients takes time. The royals and their thugs really want to keep them away from me.”
The crowd swallowed the man’s words without hesitation. With a movement of his hand, four big men brought crates from the back of the warehouse. I stood on my tiptoes and looked through the forest of feathers, little bells, antlers, and fake animal ears.
“These are for you! A gift! From me, to you!” the crowman continued as the purple potions were revealed. “There’s plenty for everyone! Drink one! Bring another for your friend!”
There was something circus-like about the man’s performance.
The mob pushed forward, and the Sound Bandit was dragged along. This was bad. Didn’t they know about what happened during the selection exam with the corrupted potions? I opened my mouth to warn them, but stopped short.
The first rows had already drunk the contents of the vials.
“Don’t overdo it! You won’t sleep for a week!” the crowman shouted. “Don’t push! There are more in the back!”
I turned around just as two more men entered the warehouse carrying the same unmarked crates full of potion racks. After the first push, and seeing there were enough potions for everyone, the crowd calmed down. What surprised me the most was the crowman’s control of the situation.
“I have heard you, I really have done it, and I know you have questions. Who am I to go against the designs of the System? After all, it can see the contents of our souls. Well, I say the System is wrong.”
Some gasped, others were too busy trying to get their hands on a potion.
“I say we are being lied to! I say the System was created by and for powerful men and women who want to keep us down and enslave us. Don’t you think it’s strange how the Bard Song shows us a remote past where we hid like rats? Isn’t it like it wants to convince us that’s the truth? Well, I say it isn’t. You, members of the Library, must know how far into the past written history goes. Why is there no record of anything older than a thousand years ago? I will tell you why. It’s because the System wants us to forget its origins.”
I blinked, trying to make sense of what the crowman said. He was factually correct. The Lich had told me that the System had been created a thousand years ago, according to the Ebrosian calendar, but the initial versions killed all the users. Only runeweaver earthlings could know that, because only the System Avatar had that information.
A whisper rose among the crowd until the crowman raised his hands.
“Our spirits aren’t weaker than those of the Imperial Knights, and the nobles, and those who reach high levels! The System is colluding with the powerful to keep us oppressed; they are two sides of the same coin,” he said, pulling a Red Crystal from his cloak. “Worry not, worry not, worry not. Nobles might have the System, but we have one of our own. They looked down on us, thinking we couldn't figure it out. Let me tell you, they were wrong.”
I expected a stir, a protest, but the crowd exchanged curious looks.
The crowman had them eating right out of his hand.
Red mana swirled around the attendants’ bodies as the potions took effect.
“Progress can’t be stopped. We will have our own System, where our achievements will come from our efforts and not a Class given to us by an evil intelligence. This will be the System of the weak, the needy, and the helpless! And it will make us strong as we have always deserved!”
The crowd roared even louder than before.
The Sound Bandit was nowhere to be found. I turned around to regroup with Talindra and Holst. There was something wrong with the whole rally. My gut told me to get away while I could. My brain was too busy thinking.
How many Runeweavers are in the kingdom right now?
The System remained silent.
Regardless of the line of thinking I explored, the solution was only one. It took a Runeweaver to create anything similar to the System, but Runeweavers were exclusively earthlings. There were more earthlings in Ebros than I expected. Byrne, the Sound Bandit, and maybe the crowman. I wondered if there was more.
The crowd pushed forward, stretching their arms towards the Red Crystal.
Were the promises what had them hooked, or was it the potions? No one seemed to care about how blasphemous his words sounded. I couldn’t get my eyes off the crystal. It was alive.
Red Crystals meant Zealots.
Zealots meant Quest subroutine.
Quest subroutine meant System.
Why would the old System want a new System? Was Byrne strong enough to control the Quest subroutine? To create a new System?
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t see the whole picture.
The human tide pushed me towards the stage.
“I know you want it, but please, be patient! Creating a System isn’t an easy task, even less with our enemies trying to sabotage our efforts,” the crowman said. “They are here with us tonight! Prince Adrien’s very right hand is among us, hidden, pretending to be one of us!”
How did he know I was there? I couldn’t tell. I only knew that we needed to get out.
It was as if someone had dumped a bucket of icy water on my shoulders, but I repeated to myself that, as long as I had the mask on, nobody could recognize me.
The crowman raised his voice in anger.
“He who killed our companions in that fateful explosion not a moon ago is here! He who pretends to be our friend but only feeds the royal’s war machine! Lord Robert Clarke, Thane of Farcrest!”
The crowd echoed the man’s anger, but nobody looked at me.
I stopped fighting against the human sea.
“Let me give you a taste of the future! Let me show you a System that would reward effort without discrimination! We are not what the System tells us, we are what we make of ourselves!”
The Crystal shone, illuminating the dim warehouse like it were a particularly red afternoon. At first, nothing happened, but then, the attendees started looking around, their gaze lost as if they were looking at something that wasn’t there. I knew it was a prompt. Then, a red mana swirled around my body, sticking to me like a swarm of bees. I moved my arms trying to get rid of it to no effect.
“There he is! Prince Adrien’s most loyal man!”
I exchanged a glance with Holst. He moved his hand like turning a prompt, and a red square with golden letters appeared before him.
System Quest - Kill Lord Robert Clarke, Thane of Farcrest.
Rewards - 1 Rank S skill, 3 Rank A skills, 5 Rank B skills, 10 Strength Points, 10 Dexterity Points, 10 Endurance Points, 50 levels.
The rewards will be assigned depending on the individual contribution towards the goal. No time limit.
Comments
Ben Bass
TYFTC! Ooh boy, this is going to be interesting. Creating their own system, I wonder if this is JUST the quest/Zealot subroutine which is trying to save or separate itself from the main body of the system?
Weird_Medic
I can't remember if the skills were ranked with letter in the system we are familiar with. Anyway, the one that programmed the new system should have read things other than solo leveling copy.
