“What a fucking mess,” muttered Nate.

  The corpse of Guard Inspector Koriolos lay on the floor, slowly bleeding as the remains of his body continued to die. With his soul energy drained away, he was already dead. The organic husk that had once housed the man just hadn’t yet caught up to that fact yet. Nate couldn’t decide if that was gruesome or merciful. He also found that for once, he didn’t particularly care. Since coming to Galle he had killed plenty of monsters and beasts in Dungeons, and a couple of hundred demons in the Fourth Hell. However, his life or death battles with other humans had been limited to less than twenty individuals. He was including those that he had helped Kiri with in that number. Four, back in Helmfirth forest. Then perhaps another ten to fifteen escaping his recent kidnapping, though only the Mana Suppressors, Fabien and Caroline had been by his own hand. When he thought about it that meant he had killed a third of his kidnappers. Now there was another to add to that list and similarly to his feelings after Fabien and Caroline, he found he didn’t care.

  The lack of an emotional response was something he would need to keep an eye on. For now, though, he had other priorities. Moving to Jacque he knelt to look at the man's arm.

  “It’s broken, right?” he asked, trying to draw Jacque’s attention away from the corpse in the room.

  “Yes it’s….you killed him. That’s…that’s not good. They will come looking for him. They’re going to execute us for this!” said Jacque, already starting to get hysterical.

  Nate lay a hand on the man’s shoulder, avoiding the broken arm, “It will be fine. I will clean this mess up. You don’t need to worry about that. Focus on me. Your arm, is it broken?”

  Jacque finally started to calm down, nodding as he glanced at his arm, then back at the corpse of the Inspector. Rather than hysterical or frightened, the look on the ex-Professor’s face was quickly shifting to anger and perhaps a touch of hate.

  “He broke my arm when I refused to help him enter the workshop. Only then did he search me!” Jacque hissed back before leaning forward to spit on the corpse.

  Nate doubted there were forensic-type Classes in the System, but it didn’t matter anyway. When he was done there would be nothing left of the corpse but ashes and even those would be scattered.

  Looking up he glanced at Kiri and nodded towards Jacque’s broken arm. When she gave him the nod of approval he created a Life Drain runic array, drawing energy from Kiri to fuel Jacque’s healing. It took over five minutes, and a decent amount of soul energy from Kiri, but finally the man's arm was repaired and the three of them stood over the body.

  “What’s the plan, then?” Kiri asked.

  Nate took a second to change a couple of the runes on his robe to his Sound and Obfuscation runes. With that handled, he created two new runic arrays. The first used Illusion and Shape to let him create an Illusion around himself. Powered by Conceptual Intent, he created a layer over the top of himself that made him look like Koriolos. He took a few steps around the room, making sure the illusion held and flowed with him, before turning back to Kiri and Jacque to get their opinion.

  “That is seriously creepy,” commented Kiri with a small smile, the whole situation clearly not bothering her in the slightest. He could accept that she was always like that when it came to threats against him. Ruthless is the word he would’ve used, but merciless fit almost well.

  Jacque on the other hand looked like he was in shock, “It was so quick. The copy is almost perfect! Ideas! Clothing that changes colour to fit your mood. Recreating the appearance of the symphony to accompany the music! I could make a rune for this, right? Right?”

  Nate smiled, the expression mirrored on the illusion covering him. He was just happy that the man seemed to be adjusting quickly to the situation. For a moment there, he had some serious concerns about how the Runecrafter would handle the fact that they had just killed a guard and were about to dispose of the corpse.

  “You can,” he replied, keeping it simple.

  “In your free time,” added Kiri. “Don’t forget we’ve got quotas to meet.”

  “Right. I’ll just leave this to you two then,” Jacque replied, shooting one last angry glance at the dead body before heading into his room in the workshop.

  Nate glanced at Kiri who gave a small nod, “I’ll keep an eye on him. You know what you’re doing?”

  “He was seen entering the workshop. As a Guard Inspector he is probably well known enough that if he goes missing others will come asking after him. If the last place he was seen going was here, who do you think they will suspect? I’ll go for a wander. Make sure he is seen elsewhere for the next couple of hours. Then I will get rid of any evidence,” he finished with a wave in the direction of the body.

  “Alright. I’ll be monitoring you from here. What a shit day,” Kiri grumped.

  With their plan sorted out, Nate activated the second runic array he intended to use. Mana and Obfuscation were spun up to hide the fact that he was using mana from anyone capable of sensing it. With the final pieces prepared and his Sound rune available if he needed to imitate Koriolos’ voice, he moved to the corpse. His sphere of awareness didn’t detect any Orbs inside the body and he wondered if the fact that the Guard Inspector had a Fragmented Embodiment was a factor. Orbs weren’t guaranteed, but at three classes, the chance of one forming from the remains of the Class Core should’ve been decently high. Shrugging, he moved the body into his spatial storage and headed for the door.

  Stepping outside while keeping the door open, he activated his sound rune and called over his shoulder, making sure others on the street would hear him.

  “If I have more questions, I will be back. Don’t make it difficult for me next time or there will be hell to pay.”

  He thought he got pretty close to the sound of Koriolos’ voice, but he was working off his own memory. Without his high Intellect Stat it would likely have been impossible to remember the sound so precisely. With that handled, he began to stroll the streets of the Capital, making sure he was seen throughout the Merchant’s District while privately lamenting the need for this act and the utter waste of his time.

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  After two hours of pointless wandering. he finally ducked into an alley. After making sure he was alone, he activated his Skill. With his Farsight Sphere of Awareness he checked his destination in the sewers was clear before using True Teleportation. The smell that instantly assaulted him forced him to scrunch up his nose. Changing his illusion to simply hide his presence rather than change his appearance, he added a Mana Obfuscation runic array to hide the mana he intended to use. With that handled, he dumped the corpse of Koriolos on the ground. Taking a moment to sit down and rest his legs, he swapped a rune on his robe again, copying it from memory like so many others. It was just easier to use the runes stored in his robe than spin up the mana structure for the rune as well as powering the rune itself. With the Acid rune stored in his robe he spun up a runic array combining Acid and Shape. He didn’t want to get any of the substance on his robe, even if it would likely resist quite a lot of the damage and repair itself. Two seconds later, he regretted not including something to control the smell as the scent of the melting corpse began to waft towards him. Desperately, he spun up a third rune from memory, creating a small breeze to blow the fumes away from him.

  It took longer than he would’ve liked to completely destroy the body, the bones proving particularly resistant. He lamented both the loss of time and the cost in mana as he had been forced to empty two mana gems between maintaining his Illusion runic array for so long and now controlling three runes in the sewers. But after another hour, he had finally finished cleaning up the mess. Spending a moment to cleanse himself of any lingering smell as well as any moisture from the sewers, he teleported back to the surface, heading for the Adventurer’s Guild. He had a session with Evindal. It was time to finally learn his first Life spell. The contradiction of cleaning up a death before going to learn about life was not lost on him.

  *************

  “Most healing makes use of soul energy,” Evindal explained to him.

  Nate had hoped they would launch straight into the Spellform so he could get this lesson over with and return to the University. Instead, Evindal had pulled him into a room, set up a warding so they wouldn’t be overheard, before detailing the underlying principles of healing.

  “Specifically, it makes use of the target's soul energy. The reason for this is simple. The soul energy remembers the shape and position of the body and the organic materials that it is made up of. Most healing then uses that template, with the appropriate spellforms, to power the reformation of the damaged areas.”

  “How does that work for things that shouldn’t be there but are?” asked Nate.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like, let's say you have a weird growth that shouldn’t be there. Would the soul energy remember it and try to reform it?”

  He was obviously thinking of something like cancer. That was just one example that sprung to mind, though. There were a plethora of other issues and conditions that would likely appear natural, if the soul energy in an individual was keeping track of the current state of a living creature.

  “Good question and…I am a bit surprised you jumped to it. In those cases, there are spells or skills that allow a more direct control of what is taking place. You can use other templates, like your own body, for example, or rely on knowledge skills to help guide you. Before you ask, that is how other Classes that work with organic structures function. For example, my Plant Weaver Class includes a knowledge Skill that lets me understand, to an extent, the best way to develop and care for plants. Trees specifically, in my case.”

  “Is that common for Elves?” Nate blurted out, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  Surprisingly, Evindal’s pale face split into a smile rather than taking offence.

  “It is. We live in Groves, at one with nature around us. Many of us tend towards Mage-type Classes, focusing on affinities like Life, Plants, Water and Light. There are, of course, exceptions and we do have a warrior-caste in our society,” replied Evindal, pausing when he saw the look of concern on Nate’s face. The elf must have guessed the cause as he continued. “It is a choice. No one is forced, Nate. Many simply see it as their duty to help protect our Groves. They choose to do this in the way they think is best.”

  Nate nodded a little, “Is it…peaceful?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes we go decades without any issues. We do, however, experience periods of strife. The lands to the North of our Groves are some of the wildest I have ever seen. Many beasts reside there. Some are powerful enough to threaten even us. Occasionally, a new sapient beast will rise, causing shifts in the hunting grounds and pushing some towards our Groves. Such is the nature of life. It adapts. A lesson I want you to internalise if you wish to walk down this path.”

  “I will,” he replied, already considering that line of thinking. Life adapts. Living art. Adaptive living art? It sounded complex, but rather than putting him off that made him even more interested.

  “Now, onto the Spellform. This is a Common Spell called Lesser Healing Wave. It requires a constant flow of mana. I know you’re an expert at crafting. Let us determine if you have a similar aptitude for Spells.”

  Evindal was about to draw up the spellform when Nate waved at him to stop.

  “Just create it in the air. I should be able to copy it.”

  Copying it turned out to be both easy and challenging. The moment the spellform had been created, Nate could see how spells differed from his runic creations. He’d known that spellforms were effectively replicating enchanting using only mana. It all came down to the individual's Magic Control Stat and, of course, practice and memory. Memory was a factor because you needed to recreate the exact shape out of mana in the air. He supposed that for others they might be able to get around that requirement with practice and repetition, but for him, with such a high Intellect Stat, he could simply remember the shape. That was at least true for simpler spellforms, like a Common grade spell. On the other hand, while his Magic Control Stat was decent, it wasn’t amazing. Every time he tried to create the simple loops required of the spell, small bits of his mana would try to escape. It didn’t help that Conceptual Insight would occasionally hum at him as he recognised the Initiate-tier Sigil for Life within the spell structure. Only the fact that the spellform was relatively simple allowed him to copy it on his third attempt.

  “That was both impressive and a little disappointing. Most students take longer to correctly create the spellform. On the other hand, I thought you would do it even quicker. You’ll need to spend some time practising and potentially raise your Magic Control Stat. Especially if you’re aiming for an Epic-tier Life-Mage Class.”

  Nate nodded agreeably, even if in his mind he knew he was aiming for the Legendary-tier Lord of Life Class. There was no point getting into a debate about the likelihood of that, or his work on figuring out how to attempt to evolve his Primary Class beyond Mythic. He and Kiri still had time to figure it out.

  With the admonishment from Evindal to spend some time practising, he took his leave of the Adventurer’s Guild compound, returning to the University with a few quick teleports. As he crossed the well-kept grounds, enjoying the smell of grass and the sight of the greenery, he considered everything he was working on. There was developing his Life affinity, his ongoing crafting work to protect himself as well as support his and Kiri’s budding mercantile empire, his art, the University subjects, making some time for Britt, and now learning spells. It felt like he was juggling too many things. On top of that, he was about to venture out on another Dungeon run in a few days time. He was just thankful that they were going with Null and Britt, which meant he could spend a little time with his kind-of-girlfriend. In addition, Evindal had agreed to accompany them, which meant his spellform lessons would not languish. Hopefully when they returned, he would be almost ready to move to the Advanced grade for his Combat subject. With those thoughts, and the preparations he needed to make for the Dungeon run on his mind, he headed for his room. There was time for a little more crafting. He thanked his lucky stars he had Frick to manage so many of his simpler crafting requirements. With a smile on his face and a final glance at the setting sun, he entered his room and got to work. No rest for the wicked, he supposed.

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