Chapter 7 - Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Lilith

 

Walking down the street in the dead of night, with only the faint glow of the magical lamps along the streets, I mull over what to do next. There is a major choice I must make before I can really do anything else, should I stay or should I go? Incidentally, the same words I’m mumbling to myself to the tune of an old song from my past life. “♪ You got to let me know now, should I stay or should I go now, this indecision’s bugging me now, if I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double. ♫”

 

After some time I came to the conclusion that I won’t really be able to learn much if I just escape back into the woods. I no longer have the guarantee of shelter, so it might be difficult to find a place where I could even take time to research, assuming that the RPG system could even provide me with enough information to do much alone in the woods. I need to look over it more but so far I feel like I can accomplish little in this world without interacting with others.

 

I need to learn the language, especially. I can’t find out how to get magic training till then, also I need combat practice, sword training too probably.  As far as learning the language I can’t think of a much better place than a city full of people, unless... There is a school system? An idea pops into my head, perhaps I can pretend to be a child and have someone teach me how to speak! 

 

My excitement becomes tempered as I recall how heavy my body felt during my escape from the cage, even if I learned to move properly, the moment someone tried to interact with my body physically they would notice. It’s not uncommon on earth for adults to pick up children for various reasons. I don’t believe I could avoid an adopted parent picking me up without suspicion.

 

With a hefty sigh, I give up on the idea, for now, realizing if I am going to stay, I need to find a relatively safe place to study and experiment. It would be best to find something before the sun rises, even if temporary. During my wandering while contemplating whether to stay, I seem to have found myself in the poorer part of the city. Notably, there are some people strewn about, mostly in alleyways. ‘How many people are homeless here?’ the thought crosses my mind in frustration, feeling sympathy towards them.

 

As I continue walking, my pace slightly faster due to feeling somewhat uneasy and watched, I pay attention to a few multistory buildings, the thought that this place seems like it used to be more prosperous crosses my mind as I approach one of the buildings. While very run down now, the remnants of its fancy architecture are plainly visible. There looks to be a hole on the corner of the upper floor.

 

The magical lamps are notably dimmer in this district, but I still feel hesitant about attempting to enter the building within their view. Instead, I decide to make my way through some alleys, look for a place to climb onto the roofs from, then make my way to the tall building and enter through the hole in the top floor. Making my way into the alleys most of the sparsely scattered residents seem to ignore me.

 

As I approach a corner near a promising small building with a rather isolated alley, where I can climb to the roofs unnoticed, a man in ragged clothing grabs my ankle as I pass, almost causing me to trip. He says something to me but I can’t understand a word. Focusing my receptive telepathy as I look at the angry expression on his tired face.

 

‘...or I won’t let go.’ I only catch the tail end of his sentence, frustrated, I yank my foot harder trying to escape his grip. It’s not enough, and he growls something at me, in my mind, overlapping the spoken words with an echo ‘Are you deaf? I said you shouldn’t be here, give me a few coins and I’ll forget I saw you.’

 

Looking over him, he seems unarmed and in somewhat bad shape. I decide perhaps I can just scare him away, I reach under my cloak and draw one of the swords. Not as smoothly as I would like but in the dark, I hope my clumsiness is not noticeable, or at least less noticeable than the glint of the blade reflecting starlight as the end of it is pointed up against his chest.

 

His eyes grow somewhat larger as the realization hits him, yanking my foot again his grip gives way easily. Taking a step back I continue to face him, watching for him to make any moves. Instead, he dives off to the side from his sitting position, pushing himself off the ground, he gets up and skitters away almost like a cartoon character.

 

With a deep sigh I awkwardly, but carefully, re-sheath the sword, looking around in every direction I confirm no one else is in sight. Making my way into the dead-end alley, I focus on making my palms and the soles of my ‘boots’ have the grippy fuzzy tarantula spider feet texture and begin to awkwardly climb to the roofs of the smaller buildings.

 

Looking around while staying low, I look for any indication that someone might be able to see me, before slowly making my way across the roofs towards the cluster of multistory buildings. As I near the building with a hole in the top corner I estimate it to be 3 ½ stories, or at least, that much taller than the shorter building I’m moving across now.

 

Standing next to the tall building, I take a deep breath before taking the short hop onto its wall. Luckily I had no issues sticking to it, however, a couple of bricks came loose and stayed attached to my right palm. I clumsily wobbled trying to regain my balance. I pushed my palm and the bricks back into place, I was able to remove the grippy texture of my palm with less concentration this time. Lifting my hand slowly away, the bricks shifted but remained in place.

 

Reapplying the grippy texture I continued my awkward climb uneventfully for the most part. Reaching the top of the building I peered into the hole, not much could be seen, it was extremely dark. The setting moon did cast some faint light around the hole, I could see the immediate surroundings were clear. Thinking I’d already come this far I decided to slowly make my way in. I leaned up against the wall and slid down it into a sitting position, having to readjust the two swords on my waist somewhat to sit comfortably.

 

Wrapping my arms around my knees and resting my head on top I peered into the darkness of the room while pondering what to do first, right now. There were many things I could experiment with for my shapeshifting, I still have abilities that I have not yet read the details for. And ones I haven’t tried. ‘Internet Search’ comes to mind, though I’m slightly afraid of getting lost in procrastination land.

 

Nevertheless, the temptation is rather high. Let’s start with just a simple test. Not really knowing what to do I try doing what seems to work with the other elements of the status screen and focus on them while thinking of them as if I’m clicking a link. I find myself greeted by the blinding white impression of a blank browser tab within the ‘augmented reality’ hud that seemed to accompany the status page. 

 

Squinting my eyes out of habit did not really help, but I continued anyway, I focused on the generic-looking search bar and on just one word, ‘test’. “It worked!” I accidentally exclaimed, catching myself midway through lowering my voice to a whisper. Looking at the results I couldn’t help but chuckle at the list filled with internet speed test results. Thinking ‘Eh why not, let’s see how fast Divine Internet is.’ I went through the first result, curious to note my location was detected as the town where I used to live. Slightly disappointed it wasn’t confused or something. The results of the test were equally mundane, ~350Mbps down, and ~200Mbps up.

 

My curiosity peaked a bit as I looked at the upload, and I thought to try and login to my old Google account. Interestingly, I was only thwarted due to two-factor authentication. Thinking of other things I could try, I remembered an old yahoo email I had, with no two-factor auth, unfortunately, every login attempt was denied with the reason of incorrect username or password, even though I was sure it was right. As I went through every account I could remember I was greeted with the same error. I even tried making new ones, which seemed to work, but logging in gave the same result.

 

Eventually, I gave up on that. The sky was just beginning to lighten as dawn approached. I could see slightly further into the room now. It looked like a storage area, though most of the items I could make out seemed like broken worn furniture, some empty wooden boxes, with a couple of ragged-looking tarps strewn about.

 

Looking back to my status screen I decided to start giving it a bit more of a look.

 

 

I can’t help but feel annoyed as I stare at the ‘training required’ under spells. This would be so much better if I could learn magic with points or something. Maybe? As is, I know nothing about it. A translation spell would be really helpful. 

 

Let’s see what this is… ‘Ruler of Blood’

 

Blinking at what I am seeing, not that it really helps, for an image in my mind, the words “It’s glitched out.” escape my lips in a whisper. The first line is readable though, ‘Domain over Terror, Hatred, & Death’ reading the line induced a bit of a shiver within me. What exactly does Izanami expect of me, I wonder.

 

Sure enough, when I open ‘Ruler of Lust’ something similar greets me.

 

The readable phrase at the beginning runs through my mind as I read it, ‘Domain over Compassion, Love, & Desire.’ As I ponder the meaning, I recall before being transported here, that Izanami talked about love and hatred within me, and… as I ran through the events in my head I remembered, she specifically mentioned the power of Lust and Blood. Honestly, I was too shaken to really consider the meaning at the time.

 

As I started to recall the timeline of events from my meeting with her to my appearance in the cabin and actions since I can’t help but facepalm at myself. I really do feel like a stupid protagonist, it’s hard not to with all the stories I’ve read. I console myself with the fact no ‘real’ person is going to be as cool as someone in a story. I’m no— 

 

Pardon me while I quickly google something. As yes, here we are, I’m not a badass vampire like ‘Selene’ from Underworld, or— ...mmm yeah, or ‘John Wick’, Hmm, yes, comparing myself to a revenge crazed action movie protagonist on a murderous rampage seems completely reasonable. I giggle a bit at my stupid thoughts.

 

I think to myself, ‘Can I get a refund? I want to be in a romance novel instead, please. Maybe one where I’m the cliché beautiful Duke’s daughter being romantically whisked away by a handsome nobleman.’ Thinking about it for a moment, I’m probably more like to trip and hit my head like, uh, like— Another moment. Ah yes, like Katarina Claes. I sigh heavily thinking that I’m probably as much of a clutz as her. I muse to myself, ‘Why did Izanami reincarnate me again?’

 

‘To trip and fall on a rock and hit my head? Ah yes, makes perfect sense.’ I chuckle lightly as I continue down this path of self-deprecating thoughts. “At least I can do mildly entertaining things like this,” I say quietly to myself as I reach my arm up, and turn my hand into a giant, and fuzzy, emphasis on fuzzy, ‘it can’t creep me out if it’s fuzzy enough,’ I think trying to convince myself. Err… where was I? Ahem, yes, I turn my hand into a fuzzy tarantula and using the string trick separate it from my arm as it slides down through the air till it lands on the floor. 

 

I absolutely did not spend the next 30 minutes driving it around like a remote control car. NOT, AT, ALL. Don’t listen to anything the other narrators might tell you. Can’t trust the lot of em’. 

 

---

Elicia

---

 

I was furious. “What do you mean I can’t leave the city? You just let the 12 people ahead of me through!” I angrily yelled at the guard. I had been waiting in line for nearly an hour with no mention of this despite them clearly able to see me.

 

“Sorry lady, I can’t let any women leave the city.” the guard replied to me, sounding annoyed.

 

“Why only women?!” I replied in frustration.

 

 He replied to me in a flat tone, “For your safety, ma’am.” I didn’t know how to react, should I punch him or laugh hysterically?

 

In the end, I did neither, I simply walked away, hoping to find someone else to actually tell me what is going on. So much for leaving early in the morning. I had hoped to be on the road by now and make it home to my parent’s house within a couple of days. I had just wanted to get away from all of the mess with my group’s deaths, and privateer work with the guild for a while.

 

Speaking of the Guild, I decided to make my way there and ask around. I started with the reception desk, but no one knew anything. The story was the same at the commission and disbursement desks. By the time I’d started to hunt down and ask the secretaries of the department heads, it seems word had gotten around and the liaison of military affairs actually found me instead.

 

He asked me to follow him to his office to discuss the situation. I obliged him, and before long I found myself in a chair across from him in front of his desk. The door was closed and just the two of us were in the room. He was the first to break the silence.

 

In the hallways, before asking me into his office, he had fully introduced himself, Mikael Anchier is his name, he is the Rimewallow Privateer Guild’s Liaison for Acreisia Military Affairs. In other words, any contracts or jobs from the military for our region are passed down to him, where he then manages them for the guild, who assigns them to people like me.

 

I was expecting him to say something about the reason why women, and me by extension, aren’t allowed to leave the city. Mikael looks me in the eyes and asks, “So, you were the first one to encounter the ‘Red-Eyed Spider’?”

 

I was a little taken aback, at first I asked, “The who?” but then it quickly hit me, ‘her’. Those red eyes flash in my head and for a moment I remember being pinned against a tree, face to face with that monster, those red eyes, the pain of the spear, the feeling of the rough bark against my back.

 

“Are you alright?” I hear the words echo in my head, as I snap back to reality. “Miss Elicia are you alright? Mikael asks me once again.

 

“Ah, uh... Yeah. I just had, a… flashback. Y- you are talking about ‘her’ aren’t you, the girl with red eyes, white hair and black wings, or, the last I saw her hair black as night and no wings, but those, same.... red eyes.” I reply, with a slightly wobbly voice.

 

Looking at Mikael, he seems to be considering his next words, curious about what he called her, I ask, my voice still a bit wobbly “W- why did you call… ‘her’ the ‘Red-Eyed Spider’?”

 

Without breaking eye contact, Mikael calmly answers, “The guard outside her cell reported being bitten by a large, red-eyed spider, before falling unconscious from blood loss. He was found in her cell, bound and gagged in her place, with the door still locked. No one knows how she escaped. A heavy steel grate was ripped out of a window, destroying a part of the wall. The roof of a neighboring building was torn up soon after.”

 

I wasn’t sure whether to be afraid or impressed, actually, I was definitely more frightened. To think she managed to escape from such a place, and such restraints, and made short work of a Miscreated guard. Now ‘she’ was loose in the city? Mixed emotions battled within me, I want to escape, fearful of meeting ‘her’ once more, but I also want ‘her’ to pay for murdering my group and destroying my life.

 

A monster like ‘her’ needs to be destroyed. I had thought of Kharius as the diligent and cautious type, careful and cunning. If he was unable to contain her, it would be stupid to try and capture her. I think we were lucky and caught her off guard. I can’t imagine she’ll be captured so easily again. I don’t understand why they’re not looking for her instead of keeping— 

 

“Miss Elicia?” I’m interrupted from my thoughts by Mikael.

 

“Ah- yes. That’s—” I take a deep breath, “a lot to process. Why… isn’t there a search party out looking for her? Who knows how far she could be already! Why are women not allowed to leave the city? If you think that would stop her—“

 

Speaking in a very blunt manner, Mikael interrupted me, “We have reason to believe she can not fly well enough to escape. Whether her wings are damaged, or she just can’t for some reason, we believe she may still be in the city. As for yourself, you are one of only a handful of people who have seen her face. If her hair color can change, why not her eye color also? I am putting you on a mandatory contract to assist in the search for her. Refuse and consider yourself expelled from the guild, and your retirement stipend revoked.”

 

---

Meanwhile in Rimewallow

---

 

As Elicia was busy being conscripted into the search for the ‘Red-Eyed Spider’, the so-called spider was being driven around the top floor of a seemingly abandoned building like an RC car by Lilith, as she made ‘vroom’ and tire screech noises, despite a spider having neither an engine nor tires. Meanwhile, the results of last night’s actions continued playing out.

 

The noble family belonging to the victim of the thugs Lilith had interrupted and killed was in the midst of discovering his and the thug’s body. Meanwhile, the noble employing the thugs was similarly in the midst of discovering Albert’s dead body, left behind, naked in his bed, just as Lilith had left him.

 

Roulant Goodmond stood over two tables, one of which had his relative, Godefray’s corpse laid upon it. To the other side, a second table laid a thug in the employ of the house of Freedwell, a long-time rival. His arms crossed as he stared at Godefray, he breathed out a heavy exhale, before turning around and saying coldly to his lackey behind him, “I want Humphery Freedwell to be looking at one of his kin, dead on a table, by the end of the week.” before walking out of the room.