chapter 58

I look over the piece of paper Jojo gave me. pretty standard stuff, race, name, family, close friends and acquaintances. typical information you receive when getting an assassination request. his name is elandrel, a lion beast kin. his wife died young and he has cut off relations with his family, no kids. 52 years old, middle aged for his species.

this man did something horrible to my family, I'll make him pay for it. I'm tiered of waiting for this, I'm going to leave immediately. well, almost immediately. i ask everyone to meet up in the living room of the big house in an hour while i prepare to leave. i grab money, roughly 10,000 jaers, and a couple weapons out of my vault.

when i get to the living room an hour latter i am greeted by all the girls and my family members.

"so, I just got a big job. and I'm going to leave soon, latter today actually." jack

"are we coming with you, or what?" aria

"it is an assassination type job, the only ones here that are trained for an assassination other than me are Johanna,

Lynda, and laura, and laura is more of a jack-of-all-trades, and where I'm going would be very limiting for chain and rope

type weapons" jack

"so the only one your giving the option to come with you to Johanna, as the rest of us are not properly trained this mission" Lynda

"yes, that sounds about right." jack

"and a powerful mage that can flatten cities in under a day won't be useful because?" Lucy

"i need the body, preferably without being completely decimated. you'll be fine with me being far away for as long as 2

month right?" jack

"yeah, of course. I'll be fine for about a year before i start to get negative effects as i am now." Lucy

"good. so, what do you say Johanna?" jack

"i am pretty sure i know what this particular job is about, you could do it much more effectively than me, you have more

experience after all. just make sure he dies painfully for me alright." Johanna

"i planned to do that from the beginning." jack

"before you leave i would like to talk to you sir." alfread

"fine, I'm leaving in an hour. i would like a movement speed buff if you could Lucy." jack

"of course." Lucy

you have been affected with a movement speed buff. +100% movement speed for 3 days

Lucy casts an air elemental spell infusing my limbs with the shaped mana, buffs are one of the few spell types that i

really struggle with.

"oh yeah, old man, I'm appointing you as my main adviser" jack

"i just retired! i don't want to go back to work so soon!" old man

"you are the person i trust most, naturally I put you in that position" jack

"fine, I'll do it." old man

while the old man was grumbling i go back to the dungeon with alfread.

"what would you like me to do while you are gone?" alfread

"continue experimenting on other goblins, record your observations in the notebook i gave you after you learned to read

and write." jack

I had taught him enough about psychological and soul magic for him to carry out experiments on his own two days ago.

"yes sir." alfread

"also, I've been meaning to ask something. have you noticed anything about yourself that is different than other

goblins?" jack

"hmmm, i guess i have very little sex drive, and i don't need much sleep guess. i will record my future observations"

alfread

"good" jack

"if I may ask sir, why haven't you kept any of the other like me?" alfread

"none of them have displayed the same curiosity as you, always having a lot of instinct remaing. which makes me

question my earlier idea about what the soul and the mind really are." jack

"very well, if i may ask, can we have a duel before you have to go. I'm starting to get a lot better at it." alfread

the duel he is referring to is one of the mind, basically we attack each others minds until one of us, always me, gets

through to the others mind. it has an effect of increasing stats, primarily mental ones. I'll have to look into that part

when i get back.

"sure, let's see what you've got" jack

i through my mind at him viciously while he goes into defense, pushing back at me. he makes a little bit of head way

before i push him back farther. it continued like that for around 10 minutes where he would push me back a little a i

would push him back a little farther before i finally managed to break into his mind, once there it is insanely hard to get

pushed out. this is actually an improvement for him, last time it only took me 9 minutes.

"you're getting better" jack

"you're till holding back, sir." alfread

"naturally, I would kill you if I went full strength." jack

50 minutes latter i am saying my goodbyes before i start to run back to the city, maybe the railroads are back up and

running, it would save me a lot of time, and i want to finish this quickly.

the buff Lucy gave me will cut the travel time from the village to the nearest city from 3 days to 1 and a half. the buff that

Johanna could give is significantly more than that but it requires me to be close to her.

after running for several hours it gets close to nightfall, i have been running for about half a day, and i stop to rest. i

haven't slept in the last 3 days after all. i make an area of soft ground for me to sleep on using some earth magic and lay

down, falling to sleep instantly. only to be awoken 5 hours latter by growls all around me, I'm circled by a pack of wolves.

that in itself is strange as last time i was in this area their were no wolves, this pack is new.

i growl a bit while showing, through psychological magic, that i am not a threat to them. i quickly leave as 5 hours of

sleep is long enough for me. i have very few interruptions for the next day of my journey. finally making it to the outside

of the city i sit down and observe it.

there seems to be three factions, one based in the east, one in the south west, and one in the north. each of them seem

to take up one third of the city. i know the mafia has most of its territory in the north so that's the one I'm going to go to first.

when i arrive at the base of operations i find several low ranking creatures running around but when they realized i was here they all stopped and looked at me for a moment before chatting excitedly amongst themselves, I'm pretty famous amongst these people after all.

"someone take him to the boss, NOW!" manager

soon some fox came up to me and beckoned me to follow it. after following it for a couple minutes i am lead to a door.

after opening the door i am met with a booming voice.

"WHO DARES oh, what a pleasant surprise." mafia leader

"it's been a while" jack

"that it has, so what do i owe the pleasure?" mafia leader

"I'm just passing through, thought I'd check up on the city, seems to be developing nicely" jack

"if you call this developing, the damn place has fallen into chaos." mafia leader

"i want you to call a truce with the faction run by the old military brothers, their personal friends of mine. they owe me

their lives and their children's lives." jack

"you mean the one my boys have named the army? you are the one their working for? this is the best! HAHAHA. you see

we've been in a three way tie between us, the army, and whatever is controlling the creatures spawned from the

dungeons that popped up in and around this city." mafia leader

"why the army?" jack

"because of their military like training and organization" mafia leader

"likely my fault, i gave them an effective training schedule which likely lead to them being more powerful, which is a plus

in the long run." jack

"ah, so that's what you're doing. building an army now aren't you." mafia leader

after talking for a couple hours i take my leave for the faction in the southwest, as that is apparently where 'the army' is

taking residence.

end chapter 58

so, the reason I added alfread to the story was because I wanted jack to have a partner in his magical experiments, and I thought the only two types of people that he would trust with something like that are either someone who is absolutely bound to secrecy about it or a child of his that is also an ancient, and even then he would closely monitor him/her. as jack is far from having children right now, I went with the first one.