Approaching the entrance to the small city I decided to forgo the healer act as I presumed that drawing attention to myself in a larger population would easily lead to problems in my explanation. So instead I entered by paying the 3 silver toll, like any other middle-income Dracon. By comparison, it was a rather ridiculous price considering an entire bag of the red corn kernels the size of my torso was 1 copper piece and there were 10 coppers to a silver.

It was no wonder the farmers bartered and used small mana crystals when trading at the stalls I found along the road as even the smallest copper currency was beyond their daily usage. Luckily I healed a quasi-noble and was paid 6 silver coins, which thinking about it now must have been vastly below normal considering it would only allow entry into a town twice.

Either way as this would hopefully be the only time I intended to stay in a town full of depressing segregated lizard people it would have to do. Quickly I realised my own stupidity. if it was 3 coins to enter how much would it cost to stay at an inn? I gave up on the idea of resting and relaxing for a day after looking at the ludicrous prices and began my task. With system identify activated I scanned the surrounding people looking for a target and much to my dismay not only was it not hard to find there were multiple choices.

I was looking for a person listed as a murderer and in the crowd of people, I could spot several. I thought my search might be harder because not a single farmer or worker I encountered on the way here had this Alignment tag but alas a city filled with higher cast solved this problem.

Now the system-less might be wondering why a murderer tag might be bad so I will explain. the murder tag only appears after a very specific set of circumstances are met and require the killing of an unarmed, innocent that is in no position to fight back. Killing for revenge, fighting over treasure and even backstabbing an equally powerful team member won't cause it, neither will self-defence or fighting in a war. It requires nothing less than purposefully killing a person whose strength is that of a child in comparison to one's self for no other reason than self-satisfaction.

The second material I needed for my class was some form of dragon blood. the higher quality and purity the better. however, since there are no lesser dragons in this layer let alone true dragons I would have to choose to purify dracon blood, a lot of dracon blood. Out of the multitude of murderers, I picked the one with the lowest level and least flashy outfit before following him with space eye.

While a few people picked up the mana vibrations related to magic, without sufficient knowledge on the spacial aspect they did not find the spell itself nor trace it back to me. As the sun set the murderer scuttled into a sleazy bar because, of course he would. Nearing the end of my disguise period I used earth magic to detect a relativity remote entrance into the under town canals.

After confirming it was the one for water and not sewage I slipped into it and replaced the cover. The next several hours were a combination of watching this lizard jerk get wasted before drugging a woman and taking her to bed, just another reason to make this man disappear. It was the early hours of the morning when my target exited the building before walking into the markets and stealing some breakfast from a small stall. Judging from the face of the stall owner this is either a frequent occurrence or my target is known as someone not to provoke. unluckily for him, I don’t give a fuck and his days are numbered.

During my time underground I was not unproductive. I had prepared the ritual to condense and purify the blood as well as a teleportation ritual involving 22 mana crystals to capture my target. All I had to do was wait until he was alone which coincidently happened when he went to the toilet. With a subtle pop, the target appeared suspended, restricted, pantsless and silenced in front of me.

Despite knowing this particular person was the scum of society I could not bring myself to take his life. All the planning I had done and times I had repeated the act in my mind over the last few hours could not prepare me for the moment in reality, so I fell back on my last option. I cast simple mind magic, a form of self-hypnosis that turned off my emotions and made me complete whatever task I had to do.

It was as if watching a film wherein I was detached from the actions but was still seeing it from the view of the main character. There seemed to be silent scream as the space enchanted blade pierced his heart and a twisted use of healing magic was applied to create more blood instead of healing the wound. The blood pooled in the circular bowl I had carved beneath before glowing and condensing.

The whole situation would appear, if viewed by an outsider, to look like some form of sadistic blood ritual to an old god. Eventually, the blood stopped flowing and the man's eyes glazed over. In the now silent room, a pale blue screen appeared informing me that I had gained a level. The blood in the bowel finished condensing into a single solitary orb and the spell wore off.

As the reality of what I had just done dawned on me, I threw up. I knew I shouldn't but in my desire to escape the consequences of my actions I cast a fire spell to burn the corpse, a space spell to destroy the ash and another mind magic spell to lock the memories deep within my mind. I finished the final memory spell and the world went dark.

I reawakened in a room surrounded by a ritual I knew I had completed and a drop of refined low layer dracon blood but no recollection of what actually happened, despite trying I could not remember anything after setting up the obviously used space spell. Bewildered by the lack of memory and afraid something might have gone wrong I stored the blood and left the cavern.

I wandered out the town gates on high alert constantly wary of being followed. I almost attacked when the guard stopped me and returned my dropped coin pouch before reminding me to be careful of pickpockets. it the very same coin pouch that currently contained both the blood and dungeon core I needed. It took almost an entire day to recover to a somewhat normal state and let my nerves relax as I wandered westwards towards the nearest elven town that happened to be in the princesses kingdom.

Over the course of the next week, I wandered the roads regularly swapping between a dracon and elf appearance to make it almost impossible to track me. Along the way, through my interactions with farmers and other travellers, I discovered that the princess had started a quest to annihilate a bandit group that happened to live in the local forest. apparently, they had stolen something very precious from her. From the subsequent discussions, it became clear that she had returned to the cave and after finding it vacated believed I had been stolen by the group in question.

Changing my direction after hearing that she had blockaded the roads I proceeded into the forest knowing that in the current situation anyone found on the road without papers would be viewed as suspicious. I luckily found a small stream and followed it looking for a suitable location to camp. Eventually, after spending most of the day following the water I found an ideal camping location with open trees and flat ground. the only problem was the three naked elven corpses hanging from a rather large tree that had the bandit marking branded on their chest.

Knowing this was either a perfect chance for me to finish my class advancement or that I was completely screwed and surrounded by the military I sent out an earth pulse to see which was the case. The scan returned nothing but small animals so I began setting up the purification blood ritual. Despite the fact, the bodies were not living they had not been dead for too long either and having three of them would provide enough material to ensure that the ritual would be completed without a problem.

Three hours later and I had the final part needed for my class and the corpses had the appearance of dried mummies. I rolled the two orbs of blood in my hands one dragon related and the other pheonix related while wondering how I managed to obtain the first. nothing came to mind and after an hour I gave up. To ensure no evidence was left behind I burned the bodies to ash and destroyed the ash with a space spell, which left a strange sense of Deja vu, before leaving the camping location and heading into the night. There was no way I was sleeping at the scene of the crime.