The Gregory

I look at the boy standing right in front of me and looking at me with his eyes filled with fear and calmness. He was the scout earlier, and he reacted differently upon my arrival in their camp. He didn't look at me with malice, like I am some enemy, but rather he somehow showed relief, and I can see all of that from this tree.

"So, what's your answer, boy?" I can see his fear and calmness fighting in his eyes. His right hand is trembling, and I can even hear his heart beating fast. He looks too young to be with these thugs who went astray. Is he at the age where he should be doing an apprenticeship, or does that thing not exist anymore?

"W-Will you kill me?" His voice is shrouded with fear, yet he manages to ask the thing that makes him scared. I walk away from him and head towards the fire, as they appear to be cooking some stew. I took the ladle and started stirring the stew.

"What do you think?" I ask him without looking at his eyes. It is not that he can see my face and its genuine emotion. I continue stirring the stew, and I start taking a sip from the ladle. "Do you think you've done enough and are now ready to head for the afterlife?"

He doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he sits on the fallen trunk of a tree and takes his short swords out. He then stares at the fire.

"I think you can." He is too calm in the face of a life-threatening danger, if I say so myself. He must have been used to this life that he was leading with these people and their whatever jobs. "You killed them easily, and they are stronger than me."

"Do you want some of this stew?" They cooked the stew with a lot of ingredients, and to a starving person like me, it does look appetising. So, I look for bowls or anything that can hold a helping for myself, but instead, I can only see the large clam shells that are sitting next to a rucksack. This will do then. They don't have any utensils, so they probably sip on these clam shells. I took two ladles of the stew and gave it to the boy. At first, he looks like he will refuse, but he eventually takes it.

"Why would you do this?"

"The answers are simple; this will go to waste if we don't eat this. I am starving, and isn't it much better to talk this through while eating?" He just stared at me and didn't say anything again, but unlike earlier, his fear was slowly fading. "The answer to that question of yours will always be the same, and that is a no."

"Why?"

"You're too young. I know a lot of people who put being an adult as their goal in life. They thought that it was the time when they could start life. It was sad, to be honest, but who am I to say something like that? We have different circumstances." I took a sip from the shell, and happiness filled my heart. My first meal after hundreds of years.

"But why did you kill them?"

"Hmm... the big guy behind me tried to hit me with all of those muscles. He didn't even think twice that he could kill me with that." Aside from the fact that he showed hostility, he also disrupted my plans. He can just let me go if he is not willing to help; he went on and on with it because he wanted to hurt or possibly kill me. That is too much malice.

"How about her?" He darts his eyes to the woman I punched earlier.

"She added some fuel to the fire. If they work well together, why not let them do their thing in the afterlife?" He becomes quiet again. It is understandable; I just killed his comrades, and the killer is sitting in front of him, answering his serious questions while eating the stew his comrades were cooking.

"How can you see me? Is that an enchanted artifact?" he finally asked. I thought no one else would notice it, as if this type of blindfold was a norm now.

"Yes, it lets me see things." The answer is simple, but it clarifies things. How long will they let someone stare at them without seeing their eyes? Isn't that a weird situation?

"Are you one of those miners?" I placed the shell with the stew on my lap, and then I extended my hands towards him, and he could see my thin fingers.

"They are hard-working people; do you think these hands are proof of that? But you tell me, since you brought this up, why are you looking for those miners?" Whoever hires these mercenaries to look for the escaped miners, they are trying to keep their mouths shut for good. If that is the case, they know some important things that this person won't allow to be revealed.

"Sir Feron was an owner of a few numbers of mines around here, the Death Stop, and then three days ago, one of the miners complained about a barrage of mana that suffocates them underground. It was not a normal amount, but the miners were ordered to go through since a high volume of mana indicates that there are enchanted artifacts buruied and unused and their mana has been going everywhere. You'll get rich if your got yoursefl one." He stops talking and he takes a piece of bone from his robe's pocket.

"It wasn't artifacts, but rather, they were skeletons with a necromancer's mana. It wasn't moving, but when Sir Feron ordered a mage to nullify the necromancer's mana, some bodies exploded and killed some of the miners; some even awakened and tried to kill the miners."

"Then those miners escaped? Is the usage of dark mana a taboo?" He nods, and all I can do is look at him. It was my fault.

"They hired us to kill the escaped miners since the mage who nullifies the necromancer's mana was his son, and a mage that nullifies mana and fails is bound to be a humiliation in the family, and candidate for a death row list because of the possibility of harming the people of Gregory. Sir Feron doesn't want that." I guess every action has its consequences, no matter how I think of things thoroughly. I still failed to keep this isolated as much as possible.

I keep on eating the stew from the shell, and then I stand up and look for all of the sacks that they possess. They may have an extra piece of clothing for me to change my clothes. I've been walking with the tattered clothes that I've slept with for hundreds of years. Disgusting.

"Do you have anything to do with this?" I stopped looking for clothing and looked at him. He is a smart child; he can connect things and create an assumption, but he was too direct. He didn't know much about me, and my appearance in this place was too strange for him, but he managed to ask this despite the conflict inside him is visible from his eyes.

"No." I told him a lie. Let's see if he can deduce it.

"Your blindfold is made out of the high mountain butterfly silk, and the only compatible enchantment for that is a mana-concealing enchantment. There are only a few of them, and its production was banned due to the high demand in the black market where necromancers have access to." That is a good story.

"I am not a necromancer," which is actually true. "Why do you think that I am a necromancer?"

"You can withstand the dark mana here, which I find suffocating even if I wear a lot of enchanted equipment."

"Say, Luan, can you keep a secret?" He becomes alarmed as he unsheathes a small sword that he owns beside him. Necromancers are heavily demonised based on his reactions, and I find it interesting. What happened in those hundreds of years for the necromancers to gain notoriety? "As I told you before, I am not a necromancer, but I do know how to use dark mana more effectively than them."

"That's not convincing."

"I can convince you, though, if you can keep a secret, and if you don't, I'll be the Sir Feron of your life." He didn't respond, but he stayed alarmed. "Now, kneel."

His body drops on the ground, and all I can hear is his grunt and the short sword that fell on the ground. There are only a few people who can perform such spells, but the necromancers who affiliate themselves with evil shouldn't outstand the devils. This clarifies that I am not a necromancer, but how can I clarify that I am not an evil person? I nullify the force spell, and I open my spatial storage and grab a mana potion.

"Here, take this." He looked at me with a confused look, and it is evident that he has a lot of questions in mind through his eyes after he just witnessed what I did. "This will be a secret, okay?"

I continued looking for an extra piece of clothing from the sacks, and when I saw a nightdress, I immediately grabbed it. It doesn't look new, but at least it wasn't tattered, unlike the clothes that I saved. Now, I need to take a bath.

I gather the rawm ana around me and do a mana detection; with this, I can locate an energy source that continuously moves in one direction. The air has continuous energy, but since we are in a forest, it doesn't have a particular direction, and in most cases, a forest will always have a river nearby due to the water accumulation from the rain, and it also affects the growth of the forest because water provides moisture for ,th,e health of the forest to foster life.

After a few changes within the direction, my skill detects a small stream nearby, away from the barren land, that the boy called Death Stop. I look at Luan, and he remains sitting on the ground with the mana potion in his right hand. He is staring at me, but he seems so confused. It may take time to recover fr,om the force spell since it also drains your mana, because by the end of the day, the force spell dictates the gap between two people—it's foe dominance.

"I'll just head to the stream nearby; if you decide you want to tag along with me, you can head there after you recuperate your energy." I started walking away from him and the camp.

After a few moments of walking, I reached the stream. It has clea,nander that I can even see the rocky bottom of the stream. Iank to it at first, and then I started cleaning my face and my body. The water is cold, but it feels refreshing. This is something I should have felt after waking up from that slumber and not confusion.

In just a few hours, I've done a lot of things and heard a lot of things. I met people, killed most of them, and befriended one of them—not that I can even call it friendship. I grew up in a place where I could do things however I liked, as long as I knew what I was doing was good or bad, and those people died because they deserved it. I understand that their agenda was to hunt people blindly, and yes, they were blinded by money that even talking to them, seeking help, is somehow impossible if you are just a random stranger. They can be cautious, but they can't be hostile. It only means that killing is a norm for them, that even the innocent one is a target, especially the big guy.

I shouldn't have pondered ponder over that thing, but Luan's eyes made me think of why wanteden want to sleep in the first place.

I wet my hair thoroughly and pretty much clean myself, and after drying myself, I wear the night dress I got earlier from the camp. I looked at the camp, and I think, Luan doesn't want to join me he hadn't move out of the camp. He must have released that emoton. It is understandable he just met a random person who showed a lot of madness.

It can't be helped. If he doesn't want to, I can't force him. Now, it is time to head out, as I've heard, Gregory is a nice place to visit, especially it is near, I am hungry, they hate necromancers, and they have a citizen that goes by the name Sir Feron.