Skill Hunter: A LitRPG Adventure, page 47
Ike licked his lips. Oh. Yeah. That’s not good.
“I find that hard to believe,” the old man harrumphed.
“I wish I did,” Ike muttered. He took another breath, eyeing his core again. Eighty-five. Climbing toward ninety.
“What are we waiting for? Get him out of there. We should interrogate him. And if it is the city lord’s property, we should give him to the city lord! Who cares if the city lord stores property down here? The Abyss is technically within his territory, and it’s not like he’s taking any important land. Let’s just pretend we saw nothing,” one of the men suggested.
“What about the soul-draining array?” Tana pointed out.
The man waved his hand. “So what? If he wants to soul drain all the beasts down here, why stop him?”
“What if he wants to soul drain Abyssal?” Ike asked.
An old woman laughed. “Alarmist propaganda. Why would he do that?”
Ike stared at her. He squinted a little bit. “What?”
Tana shook her head at him. “They won’t listen. They dismiss everything I have to say.”
He shrugged up at her. Ninety percent. “So what? Let them die, then. Me, you, and Ket, we can escape together. Leave the dumb fucks to their fate.”
There was dead silence from atop the cliff. “Excuse me?” one of the old men asked.
“Yeah, you heard me. You dumb fucks can go die while we’ll get out of here. We fuckin’ tried, Tana. If they don’t want to listen, they can go ahead and get soul drained right into these puppets,” Ike said firmly. Ninety-five percent.
One of the old women turned to Tana. “Who is that?”
“Just a shitty little slumrat from the city. A shitty little slumrat who’s smarter than all of you assholes. Yeah, I fuckin’ said it. Come down here and fight me if you disagree, cowards!”
One hundred percent.
Light blasted up from around Ike. Purple lightning crackled all around him. He gazed the men and women in the eye defiantly, as a single number changed in his status menu:
Rank 1
…
Rank 2.
95
KICK ASS
Gold light shot up around Ike. Lightning flashed around him, interspersing the gold with purple. Ike grinned defiantly up at them as he ranked up, from Rank 1 to Rank 2.
Up on the top of the cliff, Tana gasped. “Gold and purple…?”
Ike stared the men and women in the eye. At Rank 2, he could definitively tell that they were lower rank than him. A few had strange, nebulous-feeling ranks that didn’t feel right—maybe Rank 2s or 3s who had fallen back to Rank 1 from lack of mana. But none of them actively had a higher rank than him.
“How—how did you rank up?” one of the men demanded. He stared into Ike’s eyes, and a second later, his eyes widened. “You aren’t using lunam?”
“He isn’t—how?”
“What? No way!”
“You can’t rank up in the Abyss without lunam!”
Ike’s eyes glittered. Ohhhh. I’ve found a crack. Rather than threatening them with reality, isn’t it easier to disarm this trap by incentivizing them with it instead? Besides… I bet I can make a quick buck right here, right now.
Ike stepped forward. “That’s right. I just ranked up in the Abyss. Without using lunam. Are you willing to risk angering the city lord—the city lord, who has not made a move to stop me this whole time, who doesn’t appear to care about this army at all—in order to regain your rank, or even rank up?”
The men and women looked amongst one another. One or two stepped back, strongly shaking their heads, but the rest stood at the edge, considering it. Not fully persuaded, but not willing to give up on the opportunity, either.
Well, they’re hunters, after all. Hunters and mages. When it comes to advancing and ranking up, rank never comes without risk. The only way to advance is to fight monsters of equal or higher level. The only way to get stronger is to put one’s own life at risk. When considering that these are all people who have advanced and ranked up to this level while living under that philosophy, it’s not that surprising that they’d consider taking the risk of the city lord’s wrath for a chance at regaining their strength. Especially when I’ve gone unpunished this far. Especially when we are a large mob of anonymous people, whom the city lord surely cannot punish all of.
It's not that any of this is absolute truth. But this is the way they’d think.
Abruptly, one of the old men jumped down the cliff. Grumbling under his breath, he rode down the dirt incline and walked over to Ike. “I’m in. What do we do?”
“For twenty gold, I’ll teach you,” Ike told him.
The man’s nose wrinkled, but he instantly handed over the gold. Ike palmed it. Interesting. He’s willing to give me the gold that easily? I’ll have to charge more next time. He leaned in to the man’s ear and whispered, “Just stand in the smoke and breathe it in. If you can still process mana, you should be able to absorb it the same as you used to.”
The man’s eyes widened. He walked into the smoke and took a deep breath. His eyes grew even wider, and his aura shot up. From the base of Rank 1, he quickly climbed to the middle of Rank 1.
“It works!” he shouted, startled.
The crowd perked up. Still hesitant, they nonetheless edged closer to the edge of the cliff.
A woman hopped down. Ike walked to the edge of the puppets to greet her. “Fifty gold and I’ll teach you the secret.”
She grumbled but reached into her pocket. “So? What is it?”
Ike told her as well. Her nose wrinkled in distaste. She harrumphed disbelievingly and walked into the smoke.
One breath. Her eyes went wide. She took another breath, and another. Her eyes darted to the man, and the two nodded at one another. Her aura, too, rose rapidly.
Ike nodded at the rest of the people on the cliff. “The first to come gets a discount! If you aren’t in the first three, start gathering wood! I’ll require wood for entry from the rest of you, on top of the price of entering the mana field!”
The men and women fought amongst one another. One burst free and charged down the cliff, followed closely by another two. Ike waited patiently. A woman in the back of the three suddenly shot ahead and reached Ike. She slapped fifty gold into his palm.
“Thank you very much. You two, I’m sorry, but I’m going to require wood on top of the entry price,” Ike said. He waved the other two away.
One of the men stepped forward firmly. He crossed his arms. “You are going to let me in.”
Ike raised his brows. “No.”
“Do you know who I am? I—”
“No.”
The man’s jaw opened and shut. No sound came out. He stared at Ike, eyes bugging out.
Beside him, the other woman who’d missed being third giggled, a big grin on her face. Tana stared in shock from the top of the cliff. She shook her head just a little, warning him against it.
Ike shooed him away. I’m stronger than him. He doesn’t even have the wobbly aura some other people here do. I don’t give a fuck about Abyssal’s internal politics, so who cares? I’m not going to stay here. Whatever petty revenge he tries, I can just walk away from it. “Wood, please. I’ll talk again when you come back with wood.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” the man growled low in his throat.
At Ike’s side, Loup growled, her hackles raising. The man flinched back, startled.
“Correction. I don’t care what I’ve done,” Ike replied swiftly. He waved his hand. “If anyone has wood, I’m willing to let more people into the mana field!”
The man glowered at him. Ike ignored him. When he realized Ike wasn’t going to budge, he stomped away, still fuming. Under his breath, he muttered, “You’ll regret this.”
Ike watched him go. His heart pounded instinctively, but his mind was clear and firm. He wasn’t afraid of the man. He had no reason to bow to his demands.
Once, he would have wavered. Bowed and scraped. Fled rather than faced down confrontation. But he wasn’t the same boy who’d barely survived under his uncle’s fist. He wasn’t the same kid who’d scraped hides and given up his wages to survive. He was as strong as his uncle now. Maybe even stronger, depending on how well his uncle had reached Rank 2. He had Unique skills. Powerful attacks. Incredible speed. The complete version of Lightning Clad. He looked up at the men and women at the top of the cliff and felt no fear.
I’ve grown stronger. I have no need to act the way I used to. Now, I can stand proud. Turn down those who think they can step on me.
A small smile played over his face. He took a deep breath, and felt the mana flow into him. I’ve changed. But I don’t think I mind.
96
MAKIN’ MONEY
After the first few people started absorbing mana and regaining their rank, the other men and women with Tana quickly climbed down the wall, bearing wood and gold. Ike received their fees. He placed the wood behind the next row of puppets, then tapped more of the puppets to meet their desires. He didn’t bother adding any whitefeather grass to the mana these people absorbed. He only had a few strands of it, and he had no interest in giving them the same bonus he had. Better to keep an edge over them, so even if they ranked up to Rank 2, he still had some strength over them.
Now that he’d ranked up, it was obvious to Ike that there were differences between the same ranks. After all, if someone let their core crumple in the ballooning stage, they wouldn’t have near the same mana capacity as someone who perfectly kept their core ballooned. This kind of defect is probably what keeps people from growing to the next rank, Ike realized. If he had a crumpled core and didn’t have the full mana capacity of a Rank 2, it would be near impossible, if not impossible, to reach Rank 3. He’d needed the full mana capacity of Rank 1 to reach Rank 2, after all. And, at a guess, the amount to which one failed to rank up perfectly would limit their further growth. If the balloon crumpled a lot, that mage would have an even harder time ranking up than someone whose balloon only crumpled a little, compared to someone who didn’t crumple at all, who would have the easiest time to rank up.
I think I ranked up perfectly. If not perfectly, then close to perfectly. I doubt any of these people still have the perfect rank after all this time languishing in the Abyss. Even if they hit Rank 2, I’m in no trouble.
Besides, with all these people absorbing the mana, I haven’t tapped enough puppets for any one person to rank up. The mana is split too many ways, and there’s no chance these people will cooperate to get one person to Rank 2. The only people who can reach Rank 2 are those who were previously at Rank 2 and backslid, not those who need to reach Rank 2 in the first place.
A few of the men and women stayed at the top. Most of them had inverted eyes, but one or two with ordinary eyes stood up there, refusing to take part in Ike’s scheme. He shrugged, unbothered.
Tana jumped down the edge. She jogged up to Ike and slipped him a small black ring. “Here. Use this to store your money. It can’t store much, but it can store enough coins to fill a chest.”
Ike blinked. He took the ring and stared at it for a moment, then shrugged. The first step is to inject mana, right? He injected a tiny scrap of mana into the ring.
A space appeared before him. As Tana had said, it was about the size of a wooden chest. Ike took out a single coin and held it over the ring. The coin vanished into the ring and appeared in the space within the ring. He passed his hand over the ring again, and the coin reappeared in his hand.
Huh. That explains where Ket was taking stuff out of all the time. I thought it was some high-level skill, but it turns out it’s just an item. Well, good to solve that mystery. Ike quickly transferred all his coins into the space. There was still plenty of room in the ring, so he added the heavier items from his bag. The majority of the stuff in his bag vanished into the ring. Ike grinned, very pleased. “Thank you, Tana.”
She blushed and looked aside. “It’s just a small one. It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s awesome! It’s my first ring like this,” Ike said, marveling at the ring.
Tana looked at him, shocked. “Really? It’s your first storage ring?”
“I didn’t grow up in a mage family, you know,” Ike told her.
“I know, but… sorry. That really surprised me,” Tana said.
Ike nodded at her. “Who was that guy who was all uppity at the start?” He pointed toward the man.
The man stood in the furthest corner of the mana field, up toward the part that Ike had originally tapped. Ike had deliberately given him the area with the least mana, not wanting to strengthen someone who’d sworn vengeance. He’d also charged the man a hundred and fifty gold, more than anyone else. But I didn’t disallow him entirely. If he doesn’t realize I shortchanged him, he might still be grateful that I gave him mana at all.
And if he does, then I’ve already taken steps to sabotage him growing stronger than me.
Tana swallowed. She only glanced at him before looking away. “He’s one of the king—that is, Lord Grelund’s, biggest supporters. One of the highest-ranked nobles in the land. Most people wouldn’t dare challenge him.”
“Well, I’m not most people,” Ike replied. Also, I legitimately didn’t know who he was.
Oh well. I don’t regret it. I’ve given in to bullies before. I’m tired of it. From now on, I’m not going to crumple so easily anymore. It doesn’t matter who someone is. If there isn’t a good reason for me to bow to them, I won’t bow.
If my life’s on the line, that’s different. But if they’re just an asshole with an inflated ego? Yeah. Fuck that.
Tana gave him an admiring gaze. “No. You aren’t.”
Ike looked out over his fields and sighed, happy. How nice. I help out people, get rich, and sabotage my enemy, the city lord, all in one fell swoop. What a beautiful thing.
“So… what’s your plan from here?” Tana asked.
“Oh. I don’t know. I kinda freewheeled this whole thing,” Ike said. He shrugged. “I’d like to tap all the puppets. The more puppets I tap, the less likely the city lord can do his thing. Honestly, if you want to return to the city and bring more people here, that would be great.”
Tana nodded. “That’s a good call, since they won’t believe me about the city lord’s plans.”
“Yeah. People are dumb. But they’re more than happy to make themselves stronger at any cost. So let’s go ahead and align that with our goal instead of trying to force them to see a truth they don’t want to see,” Ike reasoned.
She chuckled. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she glanced up at Ike. “You know, you might be smarter than most of these nobles who think they’re sooooo smart.”
“Pretention isn’t the same as intelligence. Only idiots think it is,” Ike said, giving her a look.
Tana laughed. She cozied up to him. Her hand brushed against his.
Loup shoved her way in between Tana and Ike, letting both their hands land on her ears. Ike scratched her ear instinctively, and she grinned big.
Tana sighed quietly. She scratched Loup’s ear as well. Loup leaned against her, giving her puppy eyes.
“She wants more scritches,” Ike informed Tana.
“She’s so cute,” Tana said. She petted Loup harder. The wolf bounced up on her and licked her face.
Tana giggled. She stepped away, then saluted Ike. “I’ll head back to town and bring more people here.”
“Remember, advertise the mana, not the problem we’re solving,” Ike said.
Tana nodded. She ran off.
A little prick scratched at the back of his neck. “She likes you,” Wisp murmured in his ear.
Ike jumped. He instinctively lifted his hand to smack the back of his neck, then forcibly lowered it. His skin crawled. With all his might, he refused to think about the spider crawling over his body. The spider he hadn’t felt until now. “I, uh. I don’t think so. I’m a slumrat, and she’s a princess. She’s got a prince out there for her, or something.”
Wisp chuckled. “Open your eyes. The heart wants what it wants. Besides, she’s not a princess anymore. Just a pretty girl who likes a handsome boy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Who? Not me,” Ike said, rolling his eyes.
“Are you kidding me?” Wisp said.
“What? I’m not hot. Girls aren’t interested in me,” Ike said firmly.
Wisp sighed. “You’re not a slumrat any more, Ike. You’re a mage. Plus, we get more attractive when we rank up. You know that, right?”
“Really?” Ike asked, startled. How ugly was my uncle if he still looked like that at Rank 2?
No, no. I’m thinking of it wrong. It’s just that rank doesn’t improve our looks that much. Wisp is overstating it.
“Yeah. It’s true. Ranking up enhances your whole body. Everything from your bones to your skin,” Wisp confirmed. “How do you think I ended up so adorable?”
“Adorable? More like a maddened jungle child,” Ike muttered.
The little pricks at the back of his neck grew sharper. “What was that?” Wisp demanded.
“Huh? What?” Ike asked, looking around.
Wisp chuckled. The pricks lessened. “It’s a good thing I have a sense of humor.”
“I deeply appreciate that about you,” Ike agreed. “By the way, can you get off my body? I don’t mean to be insulting, but I’m terrified.”
“Oh? Good.” The pricks vanished. He no longer felt Wisp.
Ike smiled for a beat, then froze. His whole skin crawled. He shivered, intensely uncomfortable. Oh shit. Now that I can’t feel her, she could be anywhere. A spider, crawling anywhere on my body. Oh gods. Oh gods! No! It’s so much worse!
