Arc II, The Journey For Knowledge

“You must have something more than… than just this.”

“Well, I have a sneaking suspicion his favorite candy may have been lemon heads. Either that, or someone kept giving him boxes of the sour stuff and he kept hiding it under his desk. But other than that… no.”

Lord Brighton sighed, running his hands through his greying hair. It had been almost a month since the **** on The Scarlet Hand’s headquarters, and they still had absolutely no leads on where Lifthrasir had gone during the ensuing battle, nor were they able to find even the hints of a trail to try and find him. It was like the man had just… vanished.

Granted, it was no surprise that the man was able to slip away during the battle. The guild had been more prepared for the Order’s attack than what had been anticipated for, and they had lost a good bit of time and advantage simply trying to breach the doors. William had figured Lifthrasir would have taken such an opportunity to escape, possibly through some sort of secret passageway leading away from the battle. So, when they finally managed to breach the inside of the guildhall and he felt confident about their forward position, William had given his daughter the task of finding that snake of an elf and bringing him to justice.

He wasn’t worried about her on the battlefield. She was a warden, and a talented fighter to boot. Whenever he would catch her practicing her magic or taking some practice swings with her warhammer, he saw not only his pride and joy, but the future of the Order and the possible bringer of peace to the Abyss. No guild-mage could possibly be a challenge for her, and he felt confident that by the end of the day Lifthrasir would be in chains.

What he had not anticipated was the guild having competent and intelligent fighters. Nor did he expect said fighters to be almost as strong as the Warden of the Golden Rose. However, when the dust settled and the battle calmed, Moira came back with a young man who was sporting a cocky grin and barely a scratch on him, while his daughter had clearly taken a few slashes from his rather deadly looking blade.

Apparently the young man was one of her peers at school, a person she had thought to have only been a mundane till his sudden disappearance about two weeks before the battle. She had thought his vanishing act was due to his **** at the hands of The Scarlet Hand, but it seems the young John Newman had instead joined their ranks. Apparently she had run into him near Lifthrasir’s office, and the young mage was strong enough that he managed to hold his own for several minutes. In fact, he was only clapped in irons now because he had surrendered upon the arrival of several other Order knights.

When questioned about said leader, neither John nor his fellow guild members had divulged any useful information, and the battle had been so chaotic that no one had even seen the leader of the guild during it. They were back to square one, and they didn’t even have a guild to follow to find him.

Thankfully William had been able to call on a couple of favors, and managed to get one of the Abyss’ finest detectives to help him out. While his knights and sages were rather skilled in tracking and pursuing, he had figured that this case would require a more careful and delicate touch, one handled best by someone in the investigation field. However, it seemed his hope was misplaced as a month had already passed by and still they had nothing.

He leaned back in his chair, letting out a sigh as he ran his hands through his stubble. ‘I really need a shave…’

“Sir, might I propose an idea?” the detective asked softly, and William lowered his gaze to meet hers. She was a young one for her profession, barely in her 20s at this point. Apparently she had started her career over in Japan, and after having a popular video game character being made based on her and her career, she chose to move to America to help bring some support to the wild Abyssal lands.

“Go ahead, Shirogane,” he said, motioning for her to continue talking. He knew that she was brilliant far beyond her years, and any idea she had would be a valuable one to consider.

“Well… I would imagine that a great deal of Lifthrasir’s guild members aren’t exactly the most happy with their prison sentence, right?”

William scoffed. That was quite the understatement. He had expected some pushback, some rebellion and a bit of fighting to occur after the guild members had been sent to The Blessed and Redeemed Correctional Facility, but the first week had apparently been near pandemonium. Turns out several of the guild members were not fully human, and had never existed in a place with magic dampers as strong as Blessed and Redeemed’s were. Apparently, when without magic many of the guild members turned instantly to ****, and many were killed by their once fellow guild mates.

“Well, I imagine that a few of them would possibly blame Lifthrasir for getting them in such a situation, or perhaps just be mad that he doesn’t have to share any of the punishment that they have to face.”

“Shirogane… are you suggesting we-”

“Sir, we are out of leads and out of options. I think our best bet is to find a guild member who is willing to work with us who can maybe give us some sort of insight on where to find their boss. In exchange we could offer a reduced sentence, or maybe even freedom if they help us catch Lifthrasir.”

“Shirogane, are you insane?!” William shot up from his seat, his hands slamming on the desk in front of him. “Those men and women are maniacs and murderers, and I haven’t a doubt in my mind that if we let even one of them out that they will take the opportunity to drive a knife into our backs!”

“Sir, we don’t know that,” Detective Shirogane said calmly, brushing some of her blue hair away from her eyes. “Many of the people in there are probably just like you and me, just with an askew moral compass.”

“They are corrupt, hence why they are cleansed within the prison,” William said with a slight edge to his voice. “If we let even one of them out, we risk releasing the corruption that each of them has within their hearts.”

“Sir… William.” Detective Shirogane sighed, removing her hat as she softly spoke, “I know… I know you know what you are doing, but I also know what I am doing. I have spent the last month tearing apart that hall from top to bottom and following every lead I had access to. It is just a simple matter of logic that we lack the knowledge or hidden skills to be able to find the man.” She took a slight pause, before reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a small leather bound notebook. “I found this a few days ago hidden away in the man’s bedroom behind a fake wall. Turns out he liked writing down his fantasies and dreams, and after reading through it I think that he might be more dangerous than either of us think he is.”

William raised an eyebrow before slowly taking the journal out of Shirogane’s hand. Quickly he began to flip through the pages, reading through the various scribbles the man had bothered to write down. Many of them were sexually charged, with many of the fantasies involving Lifthrasir doing some rather… aggressive actions towards a few different women. He wasn’t sure if the names were guild members or just people from Lifthrasir’s past, but it was quite obvious that he had some rather… disturbing tastes.

However, the more worrisome part was the various mentions of a secret plan, with many of the paragraphs referencing said plan turning into some sort of symbol based code that he could not make heads or tails of. However, the few parts he could read did seem to hint that Lifthrasir had the idea that an apocalyptic event would be happening soon, and that he was rather excited for this event to take place.

“Any ideas on how to translate these symbols, Shirogane?” William asked as he slowly thumbed through the pages.

“They appear to be a runic language, but I am not sure on an exact translation as of yet. Our attempts at translations with the knowledge we do have about the language have yielded nothing but nonsense, so we have reason to believe these symbols are merely standins for a differing code.”

“I see…” He quickly flipped to one of the pages where Lifthrasir wrote a list of things he would need to pack away in order to survive… whatever he was convinced was coming. “And what of this? Ravings from a madman?”

“Unsure, sir.” The detective carefully brushed some of her blue locks away from her eyes before tucking them underneath her cap which she had placed back on her head. “While it is very possible he was just deluded in this regard, the man had considerable resources and probably access to channels that we don’t even know about. It could be that something is about to happen, either by his own hand or by a colleague’s, and this event will be as devastating and destructive as he seems to allude to.”

“That is… troubling. But I fail to see how-”

“Sir, please. If this man is somehow going to bring about the apocalypse, or if one of his colleagues is going to do so, we need to use every resource we have available to us to apprehend him. I know that those prisoners in there are not to be trusted, and that there is a high likelihood that many of them will try to stab us in the back. But if we can outthink them and outplay them in that regard, then maybe…” She sighed before looking straight into Wiliam’s eyes. “Maybe we will finally be able to catch that rat bastard of a criminal and end his schemes once and for all.”

William stayed silent, his gaze locked onto Shirogane as he thought through her suggestion. She was young, and had not seen the horrors that William had seen over his many years serving the Lady. But she was brilliant, and she was one of the few outsiders that William would place such trust in. William gave a soft sigh, before lowering his gaze.

“Alright, Shirogane. You’ve convinced me. We will begin looking through the prisoner files tomorrow and see if we can-”

“Actually, sir…” The young blue haired detective smiled, reached into her satchel and pulled out a manilla folder. “I had a talk with your daughter about one of the guild’s members, and I think I might have a good lead on someone who can help us out…”

____________________________________________________________________\_

“You know, if you keep doing this every other day, I’m gonna start thinking you really don’t like-” John was cut off from the rest of his sentence as a fist slammed into his jaw, hitting him for a good 10 hitpoints as well as making him spin around like a top for a few moments. If it wasn’t for his Gamer Body trait, he was certain that hit would have not only broken his jaw, but probably set a few of his teeth loose as well.

‘I guess Dimitir has been working out,’ he thought to himself as he turned to look at his attacker. Ever since getting stuck in this hellhole of a prison by the Order, he had managed to make enemies with several of the Scarlet Hand guild members. Partially due to the fact that he wasn’t an official member of the guild, and also because many of them thought that it was John’s fault that Lifthrasir had disappeared. Mostly due to the fact that John was known to have been yelling at Lif a few moments before the Order began their attack, so everyone in the guild assumed that John killed Lif in the commotion of the battle that ensued.

Well, not everyone. But she was in the women’s part of the prison, and John really doubted that she wanted to talk to him.

Most of the prisoners were too absorbed in the whole issue of “being in prison” to even bother caring about whether or not John actually killed Lif. Most of them just left John alone while hoping that the “purification” of the Order would eventually kill John off. After all, a tenth of them had died when first coming into the prison, so there was always a high chance that one of the many cleansing rituals that the Order did would eventually be too much for John to handle.

At least, it would have been had it not been for John’s Gamer Body trait. Every poorly done cleansing test would just take away a few hit points or leave him with a status condition for a few hours, and with a bit of meditation, could be quickly undone. Sadly, those were the only major skills that he had available to him, as the Order used some sort of magical dampener that caused everyone’s casting skills to be switched off. The only exceptions seemed to be magical abilities that were just passive enhancements that could not be activated or switched off, such as John’s Gamer Body or the Seeker’s mana eyes. Additionally, since John’s meditation just happened whenever he relaxed without him having to actually activate it, it was still usable.

All of these benefits, while great in terms of keeping him alive, were not doing him any favors socially. Everyone else was walking away from the cleansings with scars and bruises, along with mental scarring that would chase them for the rest of their days. Meanwhile, any problem John had could just disappear with an hour of rest. This made all the members of the guild think that not only did he manage to kill their leader, but now the Order was going soft on him because of that.

Enter Dimitri: One of the more proactive members of the guild. From what John could gather, the man’s previous duties in the guild had been construction, mostly regulated to maintaining the headquarters and establishing sites outside of the city. He was actually one of the few that didn’t think that John killed Lifthrasir, as he told a few of his buddies (which John had managed to overhear) that Lif probably just took one of the secret passages hidden throughout the base. However, John was an easy target to pin the blame on for this whole situation, and by kicking the shit out of him, Dimitri was earning more respect and loyalty from the rest of the guild. As long as he keeps beating up John, keeps getting punished for it, and then the story of what he did passes around the guild, Dimitri would be set up to be the next leader of the guild, at least till they can find Lif.

It was moments like those that made John reaaaaalllyyy miss Frank. Sure, Frank was a dick, but he was, at the very least, an idiot. His bullying was just there as a means of entertainment, not as an actually well crafted move to help push forward an objective.

Plus, Frank didn’t hit as hard. Nor send goons after him with shivs.

Yeah, that was the most fun part about all this. Dimitri was easily too strong for John to take on. Maybe if he had his runes, or Mavis and Talia at his side, he could have taken on the hulking Russian. But no, going by just fisticuffs, Dimitri had the size, experience, and strength advantage to easily overpower John. But just beating up John wouldn’t push forward the narrative that Dimitri wanted, oh no. So instead he always had someone else attack him, usually one of the lower members of the guild who was more fanatically loyal to Lifthrasir and would probably never see Dimitri as the leader. Somehow these crazed assholes always managed to get their hands on a shiv or two before they tried to attack John, usually while screaming something like “Die, murderer!”

John would then respond by using one of the other skills not disabled by the magical dampeners; his Fisticuffs skill. See, turns out that his Gamer’s Spirit skill still worked, letting him obtain more skills through trial and error similarly to how he discovered runic magic, and this trial and error had managed to get him a second combat style. Now he could at least keep up with the crazies, usually knocking them out with a solid hit to the jaw before Dimitir would always step in to defend his poor fellow guild members from the haymaking outsider.

That was the story today as well. All that John was trying to do was to get up and go grab his dinner of mystery slop when suddenly one of the guild members jumped up from his seat and began slashing wildly at John. John responded with a few quick jabs and a right hook, and just as he was about to walk away, he managed to walk right into Dimitiri’s iron fist.

Slowly he picked himself up, spitting out a bit of blood (The one thing that his Gamer Body still let him get in terms of injuries), and looked at Dimitri. “Do we really have to do this today?”

“What, you think getting your cushy spot here in prison would get you away from the punishment of what you did to us?” he asked with a grin, earning cheers from the crowd that had gathered around them.

“No, but I was hoping we could do this tomorrow. Maybe before Warden Bourraeu gives his dumbass speech? Figured it would make it easier to listen to him if I were short a brain cell or two.”

+1% Damage Bonus

‘Oh good. He at least still has a sense of humor.’ That was, of course, one of the other benefits that stuck around despite the magical dampeners. He got to keep not only his Swordsmanship and Fisticuffs skills for fighting techniques, but also got to use his recently acquired fighting style of Combative Linguist. Essentially, as long as he could keep making jokes, jabs, and other witty remarks, he gets bonus damage that lasts till the end of combat.

Sure, it wouldn’t be enough against Dimitri, but John had gotten so used to talking while fighting that it really wasn’t something that he could just stop doing at this point. Plus it occasionally got a laugh out of Dimitri, which usually resulted in John getting a slightly less severe beating from him.

Just as John was sure that Dimitri was going to throw a haymaker right at his head, a loud buzzer sounded off and the thunderous sounds of marching feet filled the mess hall, along with the worried murmurs of prisoners as they quickly backed away from the Order’s guards now flooding into the room.

John watched as the knights slowly made a ring around him and Dimitiri, all of them focusing on pushing back the crowd of watchers while seeming to ignore John and his attacker.

It wasn’t until John heard a familiar slow clapping did he realize what was going on.

“Wonderful show, Monsieur Newman et Monsieur Polanski. But I am afraid I must cut off your little daily rendezvous.””

Micheal Bourraeu. The warden of “Our Lady of Grace Correctional and Rehabilitation Center,” and currently number five on John’s personal list of “Most likely to say Hitler did nothing wrong.” (Number four being one of John’s classmates who loved to draw swastikas but always claimed they were the hindu ones, the ones meaning “peace and love”). Ever since John managed to come out of a cleansing with no new scars or brandings, Bourraeu had made it a personal mission to put John through as many experimental procedures as possible while also being there to personally watch most of them with delighted excitement. John had gotten very used to being woken up at the ass-crack of dawn just to be strapped into a chair and pumped full of some brand new wonder **** that was supposed to purge him of whatever corruption they claimed still laid within him.

He turned to the warden and gave him an eyeroll. “Oh wonderful. First my lunch gets interrupted by Rasputin’s ugly cousin, and now Dicky the Wonder Warden is coming to take me away. Got a new fun and exciting treatment for me today, Doc?”

+1% Damage Bonus

+1% Damage Bonus

Bourraeu’s eyes narrowed at John, who took pride in the throbbing vein on the warden’s forehead. Always nice to have a physical sign as well as the bonus damage pop up telling him that his insults were landing properly.

“Unfortunately, no. It would seem that you, for some Lady forsaken reason, have a guest today who is quite keen on seeing you.” Bourraeu snapped his fingers, and quickly a pair of knights stepped forward and grabbed John roughly by his arms.

“Oh really?” John smirked, quickly sticking his tongue out at Dimitri before turning back to Bourreau. “And me without my blue suede shoes. Guess I’ll just have to make do with Prison Garb Orange, but hopefully me and my guest won’t clash.”

Bourreau ignored him, quickly yelling something to the guards in French. With great haste, the guards used their free hands to salute before dragging John away, but not before John called back, “Don’t worry, Warden! I promise I won’t tell my visitor about your erectile dysfunction! Your secret is safe with meeeeeee!”

+1% Damage Bonus

John laughed as he was dragged away out of earshot from the rest of the prison, quickly being taken through hall after hall at almost blinding speed. He could see the trip was doing its damage to him, with popups constantly coming up about losing hitpoint after hitpoint, but it was only one at a time so it hardly mattered. No, what John was more preoccupied by was the thought of who had come to see him, and who it would have been that would even be allowed to see him. Mavis and Talia wouldn’t be able to, and he doubted that the Order was going to give his mom any sort of permission. Maybe Wentworth? Then again, she made it clear that she and the Order did not get along in the slightest. Enkleman could have been a possibility, but the teacher seemed to be rather dodgy about his relationship to the Order as well.

The two knights and John rounded another corner, and before John could even offer a slightly witty response, he was quickly slapped down into an iron chair before having his arms and legs strapped down and clasped in irons. Then, as quickly as they had entered the room, they left John alone with…

With…

“Hello John. It’s nice to see you again.” She gave him a sly smile, cocking her head and letting her red hair fall just enough to show the small scar he had given her when they had last met on the field of battle. “How have you enjoyed prison so far?”