Dissonance 7 – Weapons and Wiles

The weapons in the sparring room came in wood, steel and blunted steel varieties. Practicing with sharp weapons may not have been the most advisable, but if someone died playing with knives, that wasn’t the company’s problem. Well, except for the part where they had to potentially take care of the body. If anyone got injured, that was a money-making opportunity for the inhouse healer.

The sparring room was currently in use. Eldred could smell that fact before he saw it. He had been too busy with his own accomplishments during that first session, but Eldred had the displeasure of repeatedly running into that half-ogre Avari had described. Otto was a creature of lard and rancid stench. His suit was always dirty, marked by the trails of fingers swiping off sauce and fat.

Seeing a half-anything was a bit of a rarity. Magical traits were passed down not through biological genetics but through nourishment of the soul. Effectively, this manifested in the child having looks of both parents, but the species was that of the mother. That was such a fundamental bit of biology in Iridescia that even Eldred remembered it.

For every rule, there were exceptions. Sometimes the seed was just that powerful or the mother that weak. It could also happen randomly. Eldred did not know what the likelihoods were, nor did he care. Whether he had a full-ghost or half-ghost child eventually really did not matter to him in the slightest.

Even as half an ogre, Otto was admittedly huge. Though he was fat, that fat wasn’t an inefficient draw on a weak physique. He was two metres of muscles and momentum, swinging a wooden club at one of his henchmen. To Eldred, the motions seemed brutal. There was no grace behind those strikes. Grace would have taken force out of them anyhow.

The henchman, one of two with Otto on that day, was swiftly beaten into submission. Though the goliath, a tall, light blue-skinned species of almost but not quite humans, was a hulking brute in his own right, he was all the same sent to the mat. “You better pick up the pace!” his boss grunted. “I paid for your Cultivation, so I want to see results! Now stand up, you’re looking like a pathetic beta.”

“Y-yes, boss,” the goliath stammered and swayed back to his feet.

Otto turned partly to Eldred, then did a double take. “Oy, it’s the scrawny boy!” he mocked. “Still feeling special ‘cause you’re all ‘dissonant’?” The two henchmen offered supportive giggles to their boss’ mockery. “How far along are you on your Cultivation, mhm? Probably will take you–“

“I’ve finished my first Core,” Eldred responded bluntly.

“Huh?!” Otto shouted.

“Uhhhhh…” The second henchman, an orc of the green-skinned variety, was counting weeks on his fingers. “Didn’t you say you got your first Core after 4 and a half weeks, boss?”

“Yeah! Which is really fast!” Otto declared. “He’s obviously a liar! Let’s not be around this lying beta bitch!”

Eldred stepped aside. The quicker Otto’s rancid presence was removed from the sparring room, the better. Despite being out of the way, the half-ogre was heading right towards Eldred. The shoulder bump was 100% intentional.

Eldred was almost as surprised as Otto when he managed to stand his ground. That kind of body check should have sent him stumbling, given their sheer difference in weight. Raw physique, however, was no longer the only or even primary determinant when it came to their strength. All the shoulder-check achieved was Eldred turning out of the way at his own pace.

For a brief moment, Otto showed the wide-eyed truth of his feelings. Fear made his eyebrows quiver and his mouth hang. Eldred just stared back.

“You better run,” Nyx hissed, her voice a faint melody.

Otto continued towards the exit, his pace accelerating. Once the door closed behind him, Eldred and Nyx were all alone. “Did you just use your banshee voice?” he asked.

“A little,” the ghost lady responded, back to her even tone. “As much as I dared without drawing from you. Did it work?”

“It did,” Eldred responded. “Let’s just try not to make a habit of it.”

Though multiplying the fear of one’s enemies was a powerful tool, the banshee’s cry was not such a precision instrument. It affected anyone who heard it. If Eldred hadn’t been fearless, even he would have found the chill in his blood.

It was not a good power to use around allies.

“I shall not,” Nyx promised, then turned incorporeal again.

‘One has to wonder what level of death glare she gave Otto,’ Eldred thought. ‘I do really love this woman… having my favourite person in the world literally bound to me has its perks.’

While humming a happy melody in honour of how wonderful his life had gotten, Eldred turned to the weapon stands. They had everything here, from the common longsword all the way to some kind of weirdly curved double-axe kind of thing that Eldred couldn’t wrap his hand around. Was it supposed to be thrown? Kept in a constant circling motion? Wouldn’t that get exhausting really fast?

Eldred took a sword, a sharp one, and gave it a testing swing. He had liked the feeling of one in his hands when fighting the Cannibal Golem. The reach had been nice, but the weight of this one was different. That weapon had been a knife clad in ectoplasm, not an actual sword.

A strategy that he was unlikely to repeat. The ectoplasm blade had been effective against that enemy, but broadly speaking it wouldn’t be of much aid. Certainly, it wouldn’t be worth the investment of fuelling Nyx and tying his banshee down with channelling it. Not when he now had his own powers.

Eldred was tempted to ignite the blade. Knowledge of how long that would take stayed his hands. He wasn’t testing weapons to train his Core, he was testing weapons to buy one for the upcoming mission. After that, he would learn how to utilise it. From all he had been taught, mastering several kinds of weapons with one’s Core took years and he felt like this was the sort of thing he could not prove them wrong on.

Sword in hand, he stepped up to a mannequin made out of ballistics gel. The swing felt good, the moment of impact not as much. His edge alignment had been off, greatly diminishing the cutting force behind the weapon.

“You are too close,” Nyx informed him. “Utilise the reach.”

Taking the feedback in stride, Eldred took a half step back. The ballistics gel regenerated, energy pumped into the alchemical object by the local Pulsar. He swung again. The tip of the weapon carried more momentum behind it, making for a more satisfying impact. The edge alignment was still off though.

“You can say it,” Eldred remarked when his banshee said nothing. “I do fight like someone who has never swung a sword before.”

“There is no need for me to say what you know.” Nyx playfully swirled around him, the gesture clashing with her ever-sad smile. “You are your own harshest critic. That is what lets you excel.”

Eldred closed his eyes and tilted his head back, enjoying the gentle scratches of her slender fingers. “You’re too good for me.”

“Mhm… no,” Nyx only entertained the idea for a tiny moment before placing a kiss on his cheek.

A couple more swings with the sword later, Eldred returned it to its position on the weapon racks. It had felt alright, but he wasn’t quite satisfied. “Any recommendation?” he asked his banshee. “What do you think fits me?”

Nyx hovered away from him, inspecting the various weapons all around. Her hand hovered about the grip of a sleek blade for a moment. It was not quite a rapier but not a longsword or katana either. An estoc, Eldred believed, was the technical name. She backed off after casting a forlorn gaze over her shoulder.

Ever-alluring, her form swerved right. The urge to pull up that black pencil skirt came back with a vengeance. Eldred obliged it a little bit, casually strutting over to get a view of her ghostly white ass. His banshee didn’t even glance back at him. Instead, she simply curved her back to emphasise her cheeks a bit more while she scanned for another weapon. He helped himself to a handful of her warm, firm flesh.

Reluctantly, he let go when she had made a choice. “It is a brute’s weapon, but perhaps it suits you?”

“Calling me a brute?” Eldred scoffed as he watched Nyx pick up the axe. A chilling stream crept up his spine, ending as a mildly unpleasant cold, like a dusting of unmelting snow on his skin. Once the weight of the axe had transferred to his hands, the feeling subsided.

“You are certainly not a man of finesse,” Nyx drifted two arm’s lengths away from him. “A lone wolf approaching his prey, slowly but visibly, that is your nature.”

Eldred tested the weight of the steel instrument. The head had a nice heft to it, present but not overbearing. He turned towards the dummy once more. The axe came down, cutting deep into the ballistics gel at the shoulder, going all the way down to the bone. Ripping the weapon out again after was a slight hindrance, but not enough of one that Eldred minded.

A couple more swings covered the practice piece in cuts and gaps. An axe required less thought than a sword, though it paid for that in speed and flexibility. All the same, Eldred was quite fond of it. It was a straightforward weapon.

“How about this?” Nyx carried another suggestion to him, drawing from his vitality to give herself the carrying capacity to do so. It was another sword, but notably shorter, broader, and heavier. Eldred certainly liked the weight to it. He still struggled with proper edge alignment though.

He gave multiple weapons a try. By the end, he could say with certainty that he preferred weapons with a decent amount of weight and moderate range. A knife was too little, a longsword too much.

All of that was his feeling after testing against an unmoving target in an environment where he was allowed to recover his breath. Eldred was not uneducated enough to make the mistake of thinking this was reflective of how he would be allowed to move in the field. This did give him a shortlist of weapons he would try during actual combat, that was all.

Certainly, Avari would allow him one last expense from her savings. If this went well, which Eldred was convinced it would, he would have her repaid in a few days anyhow.

‘I did get quite lucky to have a woman with spare money as my second haremette,’ Eldred thought. Where exactly Avari got her wealth from, he still did not know. She was from some kind of wealthy family, she had made that much known, but the details she kept for a day she felt like disclosing – her words.

The door to the sparring room opened suddenly. “Smells like ogre in here!” a female voice retched. Eldred turned his head to see a mildly familiar face.

It was the twin-tailed receptionist. Her black hair bounced alongside her springy steps. For all the energy in her gait, her hand was waving around in front of her face in an effort to clear the air. Attractive features were scrunched up into an expression of mild disgust. Long sidelocks, crossed bangs, and strands that had escaped from the deliberately messy style of her twin tails all framed the cute heart-shape of her face. Her eyes, one red and one blue, focused on Eldred.

Finally surrendering to the futility of the act, the woman pinched her nose shut. “At least it’s not thick enough to taste,” she said. “Was Otto in here or what?”

“Earlier, yes,” Eldred confirmed. “You have found work for me?”

“Yeah,” the clerk answered. “Ready to do a little bit of common grunt work? Be the hero in a fantasy tale?”

“I am not in this for the heroics, but I won’t complain about it either,” Eldred responded.

“Then listen to this: one of the guilds that the New Foundations does referrals for has a portal into some medieval realm.” The female corporate worker shrugged. Her moderately sized breasts bounced lightly, betraying the absence of a bra. “Eyes are up here, tall guy.”

“Perhaps, but these are also very interesting,” Eldred unashamedly lingered on her boobs for a moment before focusing on her face again. “A parity, between them and the jewels that are your eyes.”

Said jewels did a large roll. “Want to flirt or want to work?”

“I suppose one should come after the other.” Eldred returned the weapon he currently held to its proper place, as he had done with all the others before. There was no need to make extra work for others. “Do you have a number? I can call you after the job.”

“I do and you’re not getting it. You are not worth my time.”

‘That rings a familiar note.’ Eldred shrugged. If she changed her mind later, she would have to ask him out, otherwise that was the end of that interaction. “As you say… the job, then?”

“Right.” The woman took her hand off her nose for a moment, then pinched right back down. “How does one half-ogre reek this much?” She shook her head. “Anyway, the portal is owned by a company that specialises in buying up soil.”

“Soil?” Nyx asked, a bit dismissively. “They buy dirt?”

“Food ain’t growin’ on trees, ghost lady,” the short woman responded. “Soil is valuable to Iridescia.”

“Why?”

“What, you don’t kno- Oh, right, ghost amnesia.” The excuse spared Eldred the shame of asking, not that he cared much about looking idiotic. “Chuck soil into the void at the edge of the city and you grow the amount of land that exists in our interstice. Might as well make that good soil too so we can grow tasty crops.”

“I see.”

“Alright, so, they want the ground and the local king happily gives them access to it, but in exchange they have to help keep his realm in order and aid in expanding it. Typical Iridescia trade agreement: we take the resources and in return whoever is lucky enough to deal with us gets to come out rich and powerful. Everyone is happy, except for the enemies of whoever we support.”

Eldred nodded along, all of that was so standard to the Iridescian mindset he didn’t question any of it. Everything was a business exchange. Some people got lucky, some people did not, some people had talent, some people had not, some people had will, some people had not, and the first step to change any of that was to accept current circumstances. Everything else was just a denial of reality.

“Here’s the part where you come in: the main force of that company is all tied up doing mercenary work, same as the army of the king. Some goblins took the opportunity to raid the alchemical stockpiles the king bought from Iridescia. You’re going to kill the goblins and get the potions back. Easy enough, right?”

“That is easy enough,” Eldred agreed. “What’s the pay?”

“Decent. Nothing much for an upstart like you but also not little.”

“How long is it expected to take?”

“If you give chase to the goblins right about now, just a day or two.”

That worked just fine for Eldred.