The Sixth School Ch. 043

"And your father?" Greg posed.

"Too busy," Shalia replied briefly, not looking at the boy.

A smile crossed Roka's expression. "I'd be happy to host the two of you," he said. Shalia couldn't be too sure, but she got the sense that there was a predatory gleam in Greg's eyes as he uttered the words...

***

Greg had a small smile playing on his face even as he hummed a tune from his former life. There was no rush to his steps as he walked through the noble district in the city of Torrin. That isn't to say that he was walking aimlessly. He had a plan. The only reason he wasn't rushing was because he'd played this dungeon so many times that he knew where his targets would be and how long they would be there. And given that he was already so close by, he saw no need to rush.

Despite the toll that every dungeon dive had on his soul, the dungeon is the only reason that Greg has thus far been able to keep from being swamped by everything he was being taught by the healer. The amount of information one needed to imbibe just to be a basic-level healer in his teacher's eyes was mind-boggling. From different types of herbs, both poisonous and restorative. To different types of beasts and their anatomy. To different types of ailments, their symptoms, prognosis, and different methods of curing them. All this on top of the language and writing lessons that continued to this day. By now, Greg had mastered enough of the human tongue to be able to converse comfortably with someone and write it with very few grammatical errors. The healer's focus had shifted from the human tongue to the second of the three languages she wished to teach him, the origin tongue.

It required that Greg give it his all every single day that he went in for lessons, otherwise, he'd just flounder. At the very least, the dungeon interspersed the lessons with some adventure, such that it didn't turn into an endless slog. Not to mention the incalculable gift of time. On the days that Greg felt like he hadn't quite gotten everything that he should from the healer's lessons, he would rent a room inside the city and use the dungeon time to go over everything that he had learned that day. It was like being given an extra fifteen or so hours to the twenty-four that others got. If not for the fact that dungeon dives took a lot out of him and thus left him feeling tired and lethargic the next day, it would have been the perfect solution.

Greg got to the door to the Merchant's house and calmly walked inside. It was still before the thirty-minute window in which Zarra would be left alone in the house. And so, Greg wasn't at all surprised to find the Merchant and his wife, along with the mountain of muscle that was the Merchant's bodyguard in that first room. The merchant and his wife who had been arguing about something or the other, went quiet and turned in his direction. Greg, however, didn't look at them. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the mountain of muscle. A smile crossed his face as he reached his hand forward toward the man. Had the man been allowed to keep his memories from previous dungeon runs, then the man would have panicked just from seeing Greg. He, however, didn't. After all, Greg had nothing in his hands and was standing all the way across the room. And given how scrawny he was compared to the giant of a bodyguard, he didn't pose that much of a threat!

Swoosh!

Swoosh!

Swoosh!

That was the first and last mistake the bodyguard made in this iteration of the dungeon run.

Before any of the three present, most especially the bodyguard could register what was going on, Greg's hands turned into a blur. The first reached out to grasp something before him. Before its fingers could fully close around thin air, the soul bow appeared in his firm grasp. The ring on his other moving hand flashed, and in one smooth motion, Greg drew an arrow from the storage ring, nocked it on the bowstring, drew, and released. This motion happened three times before the others in the room could even understand what was going on. By the time the merchant panicked and jumped to stand in front of his wife, three arrows were sprouting from the bodyguard's face. The giant of a man was still standing as if his mind had yet to register that he was dead. His expression was calm, not because he didn't fear death, but because his mind hadn't even been given the chance to comprehend that he was about to die before he did. There was a loud thump in the room as his body finally fell backward onto the floor.

Out in the real world, Greg was strictly forbidden from trying to circulate or make use of his mana. This was because his conscious manipulation might interfere with the natural formation of his pathways as intended by the healer's method. This, however, wasn't the real world, but a make-believe one made up by the system. And the dungeons usually allowed Greg to make use of any innate traits he had in the real world, within the dungeon. Greg was not yet their equivalent of a tier-one mage in terms of core and mana pathways out in the real world. He, however, was half a step into the first tier. And as a half-step first-tier mage, while he couldn't cast any spells, Greg could use his mana to operate the weakest of magical items such as the low-grade, tier-one storage ring he had on that he'd bought from the dungeon shop. That's why, unlike the first time that Greg summoned his soul bow, this time he had the ammo to turn the weapon into a true threat.

Months of using the soul bow as his exit strategy whenever he saw that he would fail in his mission or things were going in a way that he didn't want them to, had also granted Greg an unexpected boon. After about the fiftieth time of feeling the soul bow drawing the mysterious energy from him, Greg had wondered if he could control it, and how much the bow drew from him. Greg had extensively experimented in the subsequent dungeon dives and had come to figure out a few things. The first was that, the bow would only start drawing from him if he kept holding the bowstring for more than three seconds. The next discovery was that while drawing the bowstring with an arrow nocked wouldn't bring the drain down to zero, it would cut it down by almost ninety percent. It took a while of thinking before Greg figured out why this was. With an empty bowstring, the bow would try to fashion an arrow purely out of the energy that it drew from him. With an arrow nocked, however, the bow would instead try to infuse the arrow with the energy it drew from him. A process that was not only slow but limited by the fact that his arrows didn't seem capable of holding that much energy, to begin with. Greg didn't know if it had something to do with the size of the arrows or the material it was made of being a limiting factor.

The final discovery was that drawing on the empty bowstring for a long time wasn't necessarily a death sentence by itself. The reason why Greg had died all those times that he did so was actually because of his lack of control. The bow would naturally draw on the energy from him but Greg needed to tell it when to stop. By drawing on the bowstring without telling the bow when to stop, Greg's soul had become like a leaking barrel. His soul had been leaking energy until it became critically compromised. The system would thus step in and end the dungeon run before Greg could do permanent damage to himself. As such, the more refined Greg's control over the mysterious energy became, the less danger pulling on the empty bowstring would pose to him.

The only thing that Greg so far remained unable to do anything about was the thick aura of bloodlust that suffused the area around him whenever he used the bow. While it was good at cowing his weaker-willed enemies into submission, it also had the downside of announcing his presence to his potential targets. Greg wasn't as yet a marksman. This meant that for him to be reasonably certain of hitting his target, he'd have to get close to them. But at close distances, those he was after were more likely to pick up on the bloodthirsty aura of the soul bow. This, however, was an issue he could only deal with over time. The soul bow had been infected by the real Roka's anger and resentment and there was no way of quickly cleansing it of the same. Greg would just have to 'tame' the bow over time until it acknowledged him and would work with him as its master.

Dismissing the bow, Greg turned to the merchant with the small smile that he had shown the bodyguard right before he killed the man. "Word on the street is that you have an open position for a bodyguard," Greg spoke in a tone that, while cheerful, only caused the hearts of those present to be chilled with fear...

***

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