A major malfunction must have happened to my failsafe if you were able to access this room. Now that it has come to this, I would like to begin by apologizing. I was not exactly honest with you. The image of a professional state mage I portrayed was not exactly genuine. I am a mage, just not one associated to any government body after my departure from the Elven Republic. My departure was not a peaceful one and involved quite a bit of classified intel leaving with me so I could also be called a fugitive.

I was genuinely surprised by this, Ruvyn being a fugitive of sort. But it did make sense now that I thought about what Charlotte spoke about to Laura all those years before. I filed this bit of information away to ask if I ever meet Laura or Ruvyn again and continued reading the note, hoping for some sort of direction I could take back to stability.

I apologize again both for the lie then and now a favor I need from you. The classified intel that I spoke of and all of the items within this storage space need to leave it. This location is already compromised and an expert team of enchantment breakers will make short work of my security. I am not asking you to carry all of this away without destination. You will find a map in here, use it to head to the place that was marked ‘old dog’ and there will be someone to meet with you and keep you both safe. That is all that need to say, goodbye.

I put down the note, confused whether I should be happy for a lead or anxious that I still had no clear answers, and was immediately set upon by Layla.

“What did it say?”

“It was from dad. He-”

Before I could continue, Layla was already jumping up and down in place.

“Really, what did he say?”

“I was getting to that. He said that he and mom went ahead to do something and we have to go meet him at a place.”

Layla slumped when she realized that her parents won’t be meeting her anytime soon, but perked herself up.

“What are we waiting for then? Let’s go.”

The small bundle of energy and strength grabbed my arm and just dragged me up the steps back to the platform. I planted my feet firmly down and used a quick burst of [physical enhancement: lesser] to stop the excited girl.

“Wait. We don’t even know where we are going. I need to get a map. And dad told us to bring along all of this stuff too.”

“Alright. You get the map, I’ll carry the things.”

A small factory line was created. I would check through the boxes for the map and Layla would carry out the ones that I went through.

The first box held a pair of arm guards made from a criss-crossing weave of metal bands. The next held some more dusty books. The third had a collection of cylindrical devices that looked an awful lot like pipe bombs.

It might have been just my imagination and they were just metallic potion flasks, but I still gave Layla a warning about being extra careful with that box.

The last box showed that Ruvyn was a supporter of guns instead of the traditional elven bows. The content was what appeared to be a pair of revolvers without any hammers. They had parallel engravings on both side of the barrels. A few of the symbols that I recognized were basic [Morph runes] that changed when connected to a certain [enchantment base].

Both had fairly large cylinders that detached upwards completely instead of just sliding to the side on hinges like I expected of normal revolvers. Other peculiar details were that each cylinder only had four chambers and the chambers themselves were square and not round.

With the guns out of the box, I could see that there was another box in there. It opened up to reveal a set of eight rectangular blocks with a rune for fire, wind, earth, lightning, bare casting mana, illusion, holy and aether.

I put the guns and their ammo back into the box and told Layla to be careful again.

With all of the boxes under the the tarp removed, I could see a hidden plank beneath it all. Curiosity naturally had me flip it open and revealed a weapon.

The zweihander was, in a word, massive. The thing was at least a head longer than Ruvyn was tall. The blade was almost as wide as my head and thicker than two of my fingers. it was mostly silver with a strange ivory like texture to it that made the whole thing seem like a piece of bone.

Along the groove in the middle of the blade was a line of repeating golden runes that I did not know the meaning of. More of the same golden runes were present on the black strip of the leather that wrapped the blade from between the parrying hooks and handle.

The guard was fairly simplistic being just a very thick piece of metal with a large blood grey gem in its center. Compared to that, the pommel was much more complicated and potentially dangerous for the user.

It was constructed from the same bonelike material of the blade and shaped into tiny and spikey vertebrae connected together to form a short tail of sort. I sat there thinking of how one would wield this thing without the pommel cutting onto their forearms.

Before long, Layla went back in for her next box.

“Ooohh. That looks so cool. Are we taking that along with us too brother.”

Her little exclamation took me out of the little fugue.

“Yeah, we are bringing that with us too. I’ll help you with this one, it might be a little too heavy.”

I was just about to pull the thing out from its place when Layla simply pushed past me and went to grab it.

The sword lifted up to about her knees before she dropped it and turned to me with a sullen look. The temptation to snort in amusement was high, but I held on and just silently lent her a hand.

We managed to drag it all the way back onto the platform and I was only slightly sweating like a pig. I went back down to look finish looking for the map. After some digging and cursing Ruvyn for hiding it so well, I found it sitting on the back of the book I first saw.

Once we were ready to leave the hidden chamber, I faced a new problem: How to make the platform rise again.

I went with the simplest solution of just turning it off and on again, and removed the rock and placed it back.

This, surprisingly, worked and we were soon back to the ground floor of the empty tower. Tim’s words came in through the darkened entrance in a masculine voice this time.

“There you are. Where did you go? Me and Oli were looking everywhere for you.”

I looked to see that Tim has lost the initial hanging arms from before and only sprouted a head on his belly to talk with.

“There was a small storage that I had to take stuff from. Now I need you to load this stuff onto your body to see if it works or if I need to work out some other way to transport them.”

“Wait what? What am I? A freaking minivan?”

“You might be? Just pick up the things Layla and me hand you.”

“You sure you guys can carry that stuff? I can always morph a longer limb in there to do it all.”

“Nah. we got it.”

“Alright. Child labor for the win, I guess?”

We were soon finished up with the testing and got good results for once that night. Tim could carry all of this stuff without anything dropping and some hay over his corpse body is good enough as insulation.

Transportation covered, I pulled out the map and a compass from one of the survival packs to settle navigation. Ruvyn already helped out quite a bit with noting down where we were and where were supposed to go and I only had to realign the map with the compass for accurate directions.

From the house on the border of beast man territory, we had to make a south-western trek into the Unknown to meet this ‘old dog’ figure and somehow get in contact with Ruvyn or Laura again.

The trip itself should only take about a few days, but where we were going had me a bit worried. The Unknown was not exactly prime real-estate that I wanted to check out on our trip.

Travelling and worrying about the risks involved would have to wait for tomorrow. Walking through the night was obviously not an option for the sane.

I went about collecting some wood for a new fire, this time a lot more assured of my safety with Tim and Olivia around.

Over my calm walk towards the treeline, I double checked to make sure Tim was thorough in his ‘clean up’ and kept an eye out for anything I could use as bedding for the night as well.

I came back with wood, but nothing to sleep on, unless the wood counted.

Soon a fire was going again and we were in a nice little circle in front of the tower. I was the only one visibly relaxed in the soft glow of the fire.

The dead Tim and Olivia does not have a real sort of expression besides a deadpan and Layla was once again hiding behind me from the former two.

I decided now that we had a small bit of reprieve to go and comfort her some more and genuinely this time instead of the previous excuse to distract myself.

“Hey Layla.”

I shook her lightly and she turned to me.

“Don’t be too afraid of them. They don’t mean any harm.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they are my friends.”

“Heh? How are they friends? They are scary monsters.”

“Well, they are scary, but did they hurt you?”

She closed her eyes and scrunched up her forehead in effort before turning to me.

“I guess they didn’t. But the stories Mom told me said that bad things have skulls on them. They have A LOT of skulls.”

I chuckled a little at that.

“See, those stories aren’t real. They ar-”

“HEY. Mom is not a liar.”

The sudden indignation had me raising my hands in placation immediately.

“No, that’s not what I meant. Mom didn’t lie. It’s just the stories are not completely true and she might not know that.”

“Alright...”

She still looked a little miffed.

“Anyways, back to what I was saying earlier, they are not bad, Ok?”

“Ok.”

“And they have names too. So no more calling them that or this.”

She perked up, visibly interested.

“Really? What are they called?”

“The big one is called Tim. The floating staff is Olivia.”

And now she looked disappointed.

“Those names, they sound lame. The monsters in mom’s story are named way cooler.”

“Because they aren’t monster names, they are people’s name.”

“How is that different?”

“Uhh. You know what, never mind. Just remember you don’t have to be afraid of them and that’s enough.”

“Ok. And you keep talking to them. Can I talk to them too?”

“Olivia can talk to you. Tim cannot.”

“Why? He talked to you earlier.”

“Well, he only speaks in monster so only I can.”

“Ah, right, when can I learn that too, that would be so cool. I can get an awesome dragon pet.”

I could only chuckle nervously.

“Maybe later, Ok?”

“Ok,” she yawned loudly, “where are we sleeping?”

The question reminded me of my failed quest for bedding.

“Wait here a bit while I get something soft.”

And so I left Layla at the campfire to search for a bed, or what might pass as one, for the night. Leaves were a possible option, but such an amount was not something that I had any intention of scavenging for.

I was wandering around the clearing for a little while before I remembered that I already have what I needed in the tower. When I got back to the fire, I saw that Layla had actually listened to what I said.

She seemed to be talking to Olivia and Tim, though still at a distance. I stopped within earshot of them and caught a bit of the conversation.

“-an he really do that?”

“Of course. Demonstrate, Tim.”

Tim moved his snake like lower body into better view for her and from between the cords that made it up emerged two compressed corpses.

They started to fill out and extend slowly to reveal their original form of two orcs. Then they started swinging at each other in a sort of mock boxing match.

Layla was pretty immersed in this and followed the boxing with little fists of her own to match the fighting figure on her side. Eventually, the one she was focused on landed a large hit and took his opponent down.

An orc referee popped up to start the count, dubbed by Olivia.

“One… Two… Three…-

-Eight… Nine… Ten.”

The count was finished and the ref raised the winner’s hand high in the air to celebrate. Layla cheered too and was quick to ask about what was it that Tim showed her. Olivia relayed the answer.

“It is a sport called boxing that originated from Tim’s home.”

“But why? There weren’t any boxes there.”

Tim rumbled with laughter when what Layla said was translated to him.

“He said that he does not know the reason it was called that. It is just what he knew people referred the game as.”

“Oh, ok. Can you teach me how to play it?”

I resumed my fetch quest for bedding while Olivia threw together a deeper explanation on boxing with the rudimentary knowledge he had.

I finished the makeshift bed of tarp over hay when Layla was just about to have a boxing match with one of Tim’s goblin corpses.

“Alright. That’s enough, I just made a decent bed and I don’t want you stinking it up by messing around with Tim.”

My reminder of Tim’s body odor had him immediately retract the dummy and made Layla fumble for balance after her missed swing. I was a bit too sleepy at that point to acknowledge her glare and just pointed to her side of the ‘bed’.

I woke up next morning to the warmth of the still burning fire and the sun just peeking out from the horizon. Layla was still sleeping soundly so I left her be to go check on Tim and Olivia.

They were engaged in what i could guess was magic practice. Though this was fairly different from what I did with Ruvyn.

For one, the magic school was obviously necromancy with how the two look and the overall negative feeling I got when I scouted with my own mana senses.

Secondly, Tim’s own mana usage was self generated and not ambient manipulation like mine so there was an interesting experience to me to feel mana being discharged into the environment.

Tim was in the middle of drawing up a pretty large and complicated magic circle when they noticed me and turned around.

“Hey, you’re up. Give me a minute. I’ve been up all night working on this so just sit back and watch the magic.”

Tim continued his work and soon started to drop off some weird parts of animals and blood on specific parts of the circle. A minute or so later and it was apparently finished.

Tim backed off and stood looking proudly at his creation. Said creation started to emit a sickly green smoke that swirled around the entire formation with increasing density.

Soon enough, the whole thing had a solid look to it and then cracks started to appear on them. Piece by piece, the outer shell fell down to reveal a black set of full plate armor. I did not know much about necromancy from Ruvyn’s lack of materials on the subject, but summoning a set of armor was not what I would associate with a spell from that school.

My judgement seemed to be a bit premature when a deep blue glow was emitted from within to highlight the bones that the armor covered. The weird blue glowing death knight turned towards its creator and kneeled. Without any visible sign from Tim, the undead stood up from its kneeling position and took up arms by my side.

“Alright, what’s up with thing?”

Tim seemed to space out while looking at Olivia before turning to me.

“Well, you know, I was bored last night and needed something to do. So practicing magic was a good way of killing time. Plus I now have a babysitter for you two that can physically handle you guys without giving you any sort of blight or plague.”

“OK. Why knight though?”

“Playing with the kid was fun and she seemed to really like swords so I got her one on this thing. Win win.”

“Alright, mind asking it to fetch us something to eat.”

“Uh. I can, but I don’t know what is edible here and it knows as much as I do. Soooo.”

“Fine, Just order that to guard Layla with Olivia. I need some muscle with me if something too big to hunt pops up.”

“Alright.”

Tim waved goodbye to Olivia before turning and slithering after me.

“So. Know where you are going or are you getting me lost again like always.”

“Come on, it was only a couple of times.”

“Uhuh. A couple of times right in your neighborhood. But seriously though, is this just more wandering until we run into something like before? Because Layla can get hungry pretty fast and I am not sure how the reaction to my death knight would be.”

“You have a point there. Hm. Well, there is that one large lake that we went to that always seemed to have some deers around.”

“Can you even cook deers? Those things are fast, muscles must be really tough from that. And these ones are probably magical too so. Magically tough?”

“Well, I can try, since I don’t know anywhere else with immediately available food. Plus, I could always try for fish at the lake.”

“Kay.”

We increased our pace towards the lake while Tim filled out the time with little titbits on how he tweaked the [summon undead; superior] to produce a less threatening and ‘cleaner’ death knight.

The lake soon came up and the deers already running away told me what the fish plan would be better.

“Alright, looks like we are fishing then, the deers are all spooked.”

“Ok. do you even have a rod for that?”

“No. Probably not going to need one. I’m going electric fishing after all.”

“Ah. Alright, good luck with that. I’m pretty useless underwater and swimming with me is probably a big no no.”

I shrugged and took off my tunic and dove into the lake. I was couple of strokes in and just got rid of the cold with a small dose of fire mana above my skin when I felt a thump from the shoreline.

I brushed it off as nothing and continued on. Soon, I was out pretty deep and most sounds from the shore was blurred out by the lapping of waves.

The bit of solitude and quiet was much enjoyed for me to center myself. My goals have been derailed once again.

The first was finding Tim. That was accomplished pretty handily by luck. I was set on just riding out the time with Ruvyn and Laura until I am prepared enough to go exploring around. Now I was somehow chasing after Ruvyn and Laura to drop Layla off.

Frustration bled itself out through a sigh. Tim had wanted stability more. I wanted to see where I can reach in life. Criticised him a lot for not dreaming bigger or having proper goals. Now I could at least see why he just want things to go a bit constantly.

I stopped the moping short and dove deep down for some fish. I found I was not the only hunter in this body of water.

While I was having a little time for myself up on the surface, an anurn has sneaked up on me from below. The man sized frog toad hybrid was perfectly camouflaged from those above with its wardy brown exterior blending with the dead foliage in the lake and was only revealed to me by its fleshy mouth slowly opening to grab me.

I reacted a bit too soon and activated [lightning body] for a moment. A lot of the smaller fishes around me were floating belly up and the anurn entered a more alert state.

It was not deterred by a challenging prey item and was rearing up to possibly attack me. Its belly inflated. I knew what was coming.

I was not going to let it spit that corrosive and, importantly, explosive secretion all over me and already had a [burst shot] ready in my hand.

The squirt of brownish liquid that resembled that of a squid’s never made it far out of the amphibian before its collision with my diminishing ball of fire.

Contact between the two resulted in a great explosion occurring right in front of the monster and stunning it for a good while. Enough time for me to swim in for the finisher.

I made sure to grab it right under the lower jaw and above the very strong legs. Sure of my hold, I applied a healthy dose of [lightning body] until I felt no thrashing left from the thing.

I did not confirm the kill or try to lift the heavy offender up from its slow sink to the bottom and just went back to retrieve the collateral damage edibles that was the fish.

A couple more repeat dives were needed to retrieve all of the fish, but I was soon back on dry land again.

And looking at a decapitated buck with his head a thick red paste and sitting next to him was Tim trying to dislodge some sort of crystal from a rock.

“Alright. What happened?”

“Hm. Let’s see. When you swam off, this thing right here.”

Tim gestured towards the dead deer.

“Decided that it was smart to start trying to get rid of me. I’ll give it to him, he was allowed to be a bit bold since this thing is the biggest hirsine I have ever seen. But I have killed plenty and am still at least three times its size. Still charged me after I didn’t back up. I would have just absorbed it like every other one I ran into, those horns are really good when compacted into a core. But you needed meat so I dodged it, grabbed a nearby boulder for a weapon and here we are. I am kinda stuck with this though, don’t have leverage to pull it out.”

“Ok~. I know you like your stories detailed, but you could have made it shorter and not waste my time.”

Tim just shrugged.

“I know, I could, should, but didn’t. And you spent quite a while doing electric fishing. Wasn’t that supposed to be fast?”

“I just ran into an anurn. Fought off that ugly to return to this ugly.”

“Very funny. Where is the thing though?”

“Didn’t bring it back, it was fat like you too.”

“Double tap just to make sure, huh? Anyways, we are done here right? Fish and deer are good for food in my book.”

“Yeah. Let’s just get back, fish is good for me, but dragging that. Uh. Hirsine thing back is too much work so do what you want with it.”

I walked on ahead with my food while Tim stayed back to finish his.

The expected panic from Layla over Tim’s undead creation was not there to greet me when I arrived at camp.

Layla, with her toy armor and sword, was fighting the death knight, armed with only a broken tree branch in its hands. They were really going at it with Layla ducking in and out of its guard, trying constantly attacking and the knight pretty deftly parrying all of her shots despite the awkward angles Layla was striking from.

My own presence proved to be the feather that tipped the scale.

Layla must have spotted me and turned to greet, exposing herself to a knight that was still tunneling on her. The actual greeting she gave me was greatly diminished in enthusiasm after she had to pick herself off the ground and pick out leaves from her hair.

“Good morning, Brother. Where have you been?”

“Good morning to you too. I was just out getting us breakfast.”

I pointed to the fishes and she just grimaced.

“Will they be bad like the things you made yesterday?”

“Well, do you have anything else to eat if they are bad?”

“Um. No?”

“Then does it matter if they are good or bad? Just keep playing with that knight while I cook.”

She let out a quiet “Ok” and made off to play with the knight. I got myself busy with cleaning the fish and skewering them. Tim returned to camp too a bit later.

“So how’s cooking going?”

“Pretty fine, got food over fire, so now I just have to wait. Managed to get those horns out of the rock?”

“I did. Haven’t done anything to them yet though, it takes a while to process that stuff so I’ll do it tonight while you sleep.”

“Hey. Can I see that again?”

“You mean the antlers? Sure.”

Tim forced out from his body the set of milky white and slightly transparent antlers.

“Ok. We could sell these somewhere if they build into what I think they do.”

“Alright. So I am going to just keep these and do nothing with them?”

“Yeah. and go pack up the stuff like yesterday first. The food should be done for me and Layla then and we’ll just eat while travelling.”

“Alright, just remember to consult Oli when you navigate. Getting lost in the forest is different from getting lost in a city.”

“Alright, alright.”

The sun was a quarter to the top when we finally set off. Tim with baggage and Olivia on his back. Me and Layla with fish on sticks in our hands.