Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 44

The man leading the group hacked angrily at the underbrush. “This is bullshit! Sven, get your shit together. This was supposed to be my day off.”

“Shut your mouth Eric, all of the Trackers are having problems picking up a scent.”

Eric slashed into the underbrush even more vigorously, taking his anger out on the vegetation. “Almost a week of non-stop fighting, and for what? Where are the spoils? Where are the women? All I get for my services is a day of walking aimlessly through this Goddess damned forest with a Tracker who can’t track for shit.”

He waited for a response, but no one said anything.

“Are you bastards even listening?” Eric spun around to berate the others, but he came face to face with Dante instead.

Eric jumped backward in shock, but it was too late. Dante slid his world essence filled blade between the man’s ribs, piercing directly into his heart.

The entire party dealt with, Dante began rummaging through their pockets. He found plenty of useless items, mostly weapons and a small number of coins, but he couldn’t find what he actually needed; a map.

Letting out a sigh, Dante pocketed the coins, checked the corpses for new Classifications, which they didn’t have, then Blinked back to the treetops.

It had been almost a day since he left Archie, and the entire forest had been infested by combatants. He wasn’t sure how they all could have gotten ahead of him but assumed that he must have somehow gotten turned around, which is why he needed a map so badly.

To his relief, the liquid that Archie had given him had hidden him from the Tracker Classifications. It actually made the Trackers a detriment to the groups that they were leading. His pursuers were just a ragtag group of injured combatants, some even missing limbs, and they completely dropped their guard. They assumed that the Trackers weren’t picking up his scent because he was outside of their range, which meant that he could easily hide in plain sight.

All he had to do was Blink behind them one by one, silently killing each combatant without alerting the ones who were walking ahead. So far, he had already killed four groups, but none of them had a single map.

Dante continued to move through the forest’s trees, eyes scanning the ground for movement.

Only an hour of hopping through the treetops later, he found yet another group of six, and thankfully the Tracker was leading. It meant he could finally enact his plan, which he had been holding off on thus far in favor of stealth.

He stood over them for a moment, watching their tendencies carefully, but none of them seemed concerned with their surroundings. None of their weapons were even drawn, they just grumbled as they followed the Tracker forward.

Dante let out a sigh, his pursuers were pathetic. Not only did they not even pay attention to their surroundings, but he was pretty sure that he hadn’t even run into a single specialized combatant after dealing with Archie’s group the previous day.

If he didn’t know better, he would assume that the Calmans were just trying to feed him world essence.

He waited until the last group member passed the tree he was standing on, then Blinked down and slid his blade into the combatant’s heart while holding his hand over the dying man’s mouth to keep him quiet. After waiting the few brief seconds for him to lose consciousness, he gently lowered the corpse to the ground.

The entire process only lasted around ten seconds, and as soon as the corpse touched the ground, he moved to the next person in line. Slowly working his way forward until he finally came to the Tracker.

For the Tracker, his plans were different altogether. He knew for a fact that they weren’t combat Classifications, their blood didn’t make a Tracker Classification symbol appear on his glove, so it made them by far the safest to capture alive. No skills meant no surprises.

Dante Blinked to the Tracker’s side, choosing to first disarm him of the sword he was cutting through the underbrush with. He slapped down on the tracker’s wrist, holding back slightly to stop himself from breaking a bone and causing him to scream.

As soon as the weapon was out of the Tracker’s hand, he used the Tracker’s moment of hesitation to stuff a rag into his mouth. After that, Dante jumped him, using his superior strength to quickly subdue the Tracker; first wrapping the makeshift rope around his mouth to hold the rag in place, then tying the Tracker’s hands behind his back, and finally tying his feet to the knot that held his hands.

That done, Dante stepped back to admire his work. The Tracker was struggling on the ground, but to his surprise, the makeshift rope actually held.

The makeshift rope, and the rag for that matter, were both acquired by cutting up the clothing of the men he had killed earlier that day. He thought that it would be sufficient to hold a rag in someone’s mouth, effectively gagging them, but he didn’t think that the rope would actually be strong enough to subdue someone. Trackers were weaker than he thought.

Dante pulled out the black sack as he walked over to the Tracker, taking out the hair and eye dye as the Tracker screamed into his gag.

The Tracker became terrified as soon as he pulled out the jar and vial. “Relax, this probably won’t hurt.” The Tracker stopped screaming, but his terrified expression didn’t change. They both knew how their encounter would end, there was no way of getting around it.

Dante opened the jar of hair dye, it was the first time he had looked at the hair dye, and it seemed to just be a thick black goop. Scooping out a tiny amount with his finger, he applied it to the Tracker’s hair. The effect was instantaneous, as soon as it touched the hair, the black coloring seemed to shoot into the Tracker’s roots, then spread slowly out to the rest of his hair.

Alchemy is amazing… and something I need to learn about in the future.

Judging by the Trackers calmed expression, the hair dye hadn’t harmed him. Next, Dante opened up the vial. The stopper itself was connected to a small tube inside of the vial, and he found that by pressing gently on the rubbery section of the stopper, he could make the liquid come out one drop at a time.

Dante walked up to the Tracker and tried to hold the man’s eye open with his fingers. The Tracker resisted his touch, moving out of the way and trying to stop him from gaining access to his eye.

Dante let out a sigh, he couldn’t blame the Tracker for resisting. He would do the same. “Hold still, or I'll scoop out your other eye.” The threat didn’t sit well with him, but he needed to test the eye drops before he used them himself. “It shouldn’t hurt.”

The Tracker gave a slight nod, then allowed Dante to hold open his eyelids.

He held the eyelids open with one hand, then with the other, he carefully let one drop fall. As soon as the clear liquid hit the Trackers eye, the man recoiled, blinking his eye several times in an attempt to get rid of the foreign substance.

For a moment, Dante thought he was in pain. But then the Tracker looked up at him, one eye brown, the other black. The change was incredible, the eye looked completely natural. It wasn’t pitch black, the iris looked exactly like it should, making the dye even more useful than he had been expecting.

Dante sat with the Tracker in silence, waiting almost an hour for any kind of side effects to kick in… or poisons, but none came.

After verifying that the substances were somewhat safe, Dante cleared his throat. “I’m going to ungag you. Don’t scream, or I will kill you. Nod if you understand.”

The Tracker nodded eagerly, more than happy to have the gag removed. He moved forward, untying the rope that was around the man’s mouth, then pulling out the gag.

The Tracker turned sideways and spit vigorously. “For the love of the Goddess, where did you get that? It tastes like a decaying corpse…” The Tracker’s words seemed to remind him of what situation he was in, and his mood visibly dimmed.

Clearing his throat yet again to get the man’s attention, Dante began to question him. “How did your group get so deep into the forest so quickly?”

“Last night we were put on a massive caravan that was pulled by tamed creatures and dropped off on the forest’s edge.” The Tracker’s lack of hesitation in answering surprised him. But the news that the Tracker had given him, if true, was good. It meant that he hadn’t gotten turned around like he had thought.

“How many other groups were sent out?”

The tracker hesitated for a moment in thought. “Uhh, I think they sent out a few hundred of us. So, somewhere between fifty to one hundred groups.”

Dante rubbed his eyes. Between fifty and one hundred? He had been expecting something around that range, but it would have been nice to get a more precise number. “Where are the nearest towns?”

“Other than Kenguard, Ironstead and Grimspeak are the nearest settlements. Ironstead is around thirty miles in that direction.” The man nodded in the general direction that Dante had been heading in. “And Grimspeak is about fifty in that direction.” This time the Tracker nodded slightly off to the side, in a completely different direction.

The information was invaluable, not as good as a map would have been, but far better than nothing. “Which would be safer for me to pass through?” He needed to stop for supplies, and it was unlikely that he would be caught if he was disguised his hair and eyes.

“Grimspeak would be safer, not only is it more populated, but House Calman doesn’t control the territory. They still have strong influence there though.”

He thought it over, a higher population density meant that it would be easier to hide. And even if the Tracker was deliberately leading him to a trap, it shouldn’t be an issue if he was careful and disguised. “Last question, do you feel anything strange from the two things I gave you earlier.”

The Tracker shook his head, then began trying to hobble away. “No, I feel fine.” He began to struggle against his ropes even harder, becoming far more frantic while his eyes started watering. “I-I’ve been helpful. Please, don’t kill me. I can’t die here, I have to take care of my family.”

Dante let out a sigh. Something about killing this Tracker, who was completely restrained and struggling for his life, felt so inhumane. It wasn’t a feeling that killing the other combatants had brought him. But he couldn’t let him live, even if the Tracker didn’t tell anyone, he had already seen the hair and eye dye. Materializing a small blade in his hand, Dante lunged at the Tracker.

“My wife is pregnant!” Dante paused, his knife only an inch away from the Tracker’s throat. Tears were streaking down the Tracker’s cheeks. “Please! Without me, there will be no one to take care of her or the baby.” He began sobbing. “I swear, I won’t ever speak of this again. Please…” The last please was barely a whisper.

The dagger hovered over the man’s throat.

Is my life really worth more than his? He has a family. People who rely on him. While I have… no one.

“I’m sorry.” Closing his eyes, Dante slid the dagger into the Tracker’s throat.

He sat in silence, eyes closed and unwilling to move.

I may not have those things yet, but one day…

Gritting his teeth Dante reached forward with his knife and scooped out the black eye. He then put it in the sack so he could dispose of it later, someone finding it would only give him away.

It took him a moment to recover, but eventually, Dante stood up from the Tracker’s body.

Opening up the hair dye, he rubbed a small amount into his hair. Then opening up the vial, he placed one drop in each eye.

He destroying the dirtied weapon, then created a new blade. This one wide and flat, and he looked at his reflection in it.

It was hard to believe, but he looked… normal. Handsome even. His facial features were no longer overshadowed by his ghoulish hair and eyes. It was hard to believe that he was the person staring back at himself in his reflection.

Dante destroyed the weapon and set off toward Grimspeak.