My captor was sleeping. The perfect time to take him out. But I held back from immediately jumping him. He was always wearing his magical robes and trinkets, sleep being no different. Some of those had to be enchanted to protect him. Like that golden shield, the last thaumaturge had to protect him. But now I knew, the city mages were much less skilled in their artificing.

Thankfully I had [Owl Senses] to help me out. It was easy to spot the energy flowing from his body. It was not so easy to differentiate. What was there to protect, what to retaliate? I let my gaze go through the tent once more. A desk with a few scribing tools and the Thaumonomicon, my cage and the occupied bedroll were the only things inside. But I was more interested in the canvas. It exuded magical power as well. Too bad. I should not mess with it yet. I had wanted to take a look outside and see how much time I had but now I was forced to act. I gave myself half an hour to figure out Traitor’s trinkets.

His right hand was hidden under the blanket so I carefully pulled up the cover to take a look. There were two rings on it. His left, on top of his chest, held another three. Then there were his robes. I did not expect all of these to get in my way but I could only really figure out one item per [Eldritch Shift] and even then only with more time than I had right now. So I decided to carefully prod them with my shadows. I was playing a dangerous game here, but I wanted to do it. I wanted my revenge.

The rings on his left hand showed no reaction. They sat loose enough for me to carefully wriggle them off his fingers using my dark tendrils. One by one they dropped on the ground next to me. No reaction. So far so good. His right hand was more difficult to get to. And one of the rings did not budge at all from his finger. I just had to hope it would not be a problem. Hopefully, the robes would not get in my way. I did not trust myself to take them off without waking my target.

It was time to strike. I had killed enough orks to know their anatomy was similar enough to humans for me to just cut open his throat. Which I did. Silently, [Sneak] active to its fullest, my talon slid into the ork’s skin. Deeper and deeper, until it was fully submerged. Blood was pooling around it, slowly dripping out of the wound. No magic shield got in my way. I expected him to have one but maybe taking off those rings really paid off. I tensed my muscles and then, with one swift motion, ripped open his throat. Blood shot out of his neck and started soaking the ground. Wide eyes stared at me, filled with panic and anger. Then, a red and green shine wrapped around the wound and before I could blink, the skin was back together.

My talon still sat on his neck keeping my target silent through [Sneak]. It was almost amusing how his mouth moved and not a sound came out. I slid my talon back around and dug in once more. The anger steadily growing in the ork’s gaze turned once again into panic and pain. More blood spurted everywhere. My body was getting splattered but I could not allow him to survive this. I met his eyes waiting for the glow to heal him once more. Moments turned into seconds, seconds into minutes before finally his body stopped struggling. I did not ask at that moment why he never tried to strike at me with his hands. Maybe he had panicked too much and was frozen in fear. I at least hoped so. As the life left his body, a notification rang out.

~ding~ [Assassin] reached level 50. 5 Attribute Points awarded. Congratulations! For reaching the third milestone in your class you gain +1 DEX and +1 PER. Please choose your final milestone Skill!

Wow. That was a lot of levels! And final milestone Skill? It did not say final milestone though. Maybe the next one would do something different than give me a new Skill?

~ding~ Please choose one of the available Skills. Failure to do so will result in a milestone Skill being selected automatically.

[Warped Truth]

[Winged Death]

[Trusted Leader]

Those sounded awesome. And a bit weird. There were only three Skills this time and they seemed to have nothing to do with the ones I had been offered before. I took a look at what they did.

[Warped Truth]: An [Assassin] avoids detection through stealth and lies. You take that one step further. Change reality such that the truth is what you want it to be.

[Winged Death]: Your species is truly specialized in the way of the [Assassin]. The only weakness the lack of ranged weaponry. Use your wings to mitigate that and strike at your target with feathers wrought of pure essence.

[Trusted Leader]: A group needs guidance. You understand what makes them move, now you have the tools to guide them for your purpose.

Those were some strange descriptions. Only [Winged Death] seemed understandable. It looked like [Trusted Leader] built off of [Mingling] and [Warped Truth] maybe off [Eldritch Shift]. Then [Winged Death] had to be related to my other two [Assassin] Skills. The one I immediately ditched was [Trusted Leader]. It sounded like something a leader of an underground organization might want, not an owl looking for freedom. The other two though seemed both a good choice.

[Winged Death] was a straightforward ranged attack not requiring me to use tools. Or so I deduced from the description. It was unclear how far it could go. Reading it again, it only said ‘strike at my target’. The lack of ranged weaponry being mentioned was what made me think it had more reach itself.

[Warped Truth] on the other hand seemed extremely promising. And just as edgy. ‘Change reality such that the truth is what you want it to be’. Yeah. Absolutely. This sounded like something a level 50 should not have access to. Which meant, it had limits not mentioned in the Skill. Maybe it was temporary or had a tiny range. Or it cost a huge amount of energy. Or all three combined. All in all, it sounded like a scam. A cool scam, but this was my life. If this had been a video game, I would have saved and tried it at least but like this? No. It was too risky. I had taken too many risks recently. I wanted the Skill to improve my attack options. It would hopefully also mitigate the need to invest in Strength too much. I could imagine being unable to cut through a target with lots of Constitution or thick armour. But I wanted to invest in my magic Attributes. Magic was just too awesome to pass up.

Speaking of, there was a magic book just over there without an owner. I needed to figure out how to carry it along more easily. First, though, I dumped my points into Wisdom, bringing it up to 30. And the one extra went into Intelligence. With the two bonus points from the milestone, my status looked pretty strong by now.

Species: Great Eagle Owl (fledgeling)

Age: 0

Name: Fio

Gender: female

Status: sapient, healthy, mana enriched (major)

Level: 14

Class: [Assassin lvl 50], -

Strength: 15

Constitution: 12

Dexterity: 23

Perception: 23

Intelligence: 31

Wisdom: 30

AP: 0

Skills:

Racial:

Utility: [Owl Senses lvl 5], [Preening lvl 3], [Owl Stomach lvl 4], [Soundless Flight lvl 4]

Offensive: [Solid Grip lvl 4], [Intimidating Screech lvl 4], [Owl’s Shadow lvl 6], [Aerial Combat lvl 4]

General:

[Maths lvl 4], [Identify lvl 4]

Assassin:

[Sneak lvl 5], [Surprise Attack lvl 4], [Mingling lvl 3], [Eldritch Shift lvl 5], [Winged Death lvl 1]

I was still soaked in bloody splatters. It would be difficult to fly like this so I used my shadows to wipe it off as best I could. Then, I picked up the rings and brought them over to the Thaumonomicon. Maybe they could help me out? It was not feasible to wear them. I could not get them past my feet. But studying them might let me learn something useful. The last ring still on the dead ork’s hand was cracked and had lost its lustre. As soon as I touched it crumbled to dust. This had to be the one to heal him. It looked to be one-time use. Unlucky. I would have loved to have a get out of jail card. Another one, on top of [Eldritch Shift].

My loot gathered at one place, it was time to plan my escape. I was at a meeting of thaumaturges looking for a beast killing an ork patrol. And I had a dead body right here. If they spotted me, it would be lights out. A lot of the other orks should be at a similar level of power to this guy. I did not like my chances in a fair fight. That reminded me, there had to be a wand. I went through Traitor’s clothes and sifted for more valuables. And truth behold, there really was a wand. It looked very similar to the one I had owned before, but it was fully filled up. I also found three foci, one of them the lightning ball shooting one I owned before. He had taken that, but not my wand?

I dropped them with my things and decided to take a closer look at the tent. It was magical, that much was obvious, but in what way? I could easily lift the flap and stick my head outside. And from there it was very obvious to my senses what it did. It prevented intrusion. It was entirely made to stop others from coming in unwanted. I could take all the time I needed to figure out how to transport my loot. Well, not all the time. Someone might be able to break the magic. It looked to be not very strong and there had to be a key of sorts to let the owner inside. Once they missed one of their fellow thaumaturges, the whole Circle might come down on me. And maybe they might just bomb the tent. I had to hurry.

At least it was still deep into the night. I saw a few other tents nearby between the trees. Very familiar trees. This was the grove I had set up camp first after coming to this valley. The one with the greatwood trees. A few of the tents were lit up from the inside, some orks still working. I could not spot the node from here but I felt it not too far away. The tents were placed separated between the trees in a circle around it. Thaumaturges really loved their privacy, huh?

I returned back inside. It would be difficult to get storage magic going right now but I wanted to give it a try. At least the attempt to Breakthrough with [Owl Stomach]. If it did not work on the first try, or maybe the second, I would carry the things into the trees one by one and hope nobody would spot them.