Blasphemy Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Outsider     ……………………………………….         The distant horizon looked as the black endless void. Sky as always, dark and muddy gray as the twilight.  The grayness in the sky kept on rolling but there could not be seen a single cloud or fog.   There was no day or night, not even the notion of time.   The forest, it had already lost all of its vitality of forest years ago. Towering trees, only the body and the thick branches remaining in them. Hanging on the trees were the faint traces of web like of spider, but they could not be the spider cobweb. No spider could survive here.   The ground everywhere was mora.s.s, full of gray mud, occasionally emitting one or two air bubbles from them. Occasionally, there would be skeletons of G.o.d know what creature floating up engulfed in mud.   The atmosphere was damp, cold wind, blowing with it the stench of the dead forest.   Here was the world, paradise for death and devil.   Skeleton Love had no idea how long has it been in this forest. It cannot remember where he came from. He just had the memory of that “Rogge” named creature that gave it its name. Love felt the instinctive loathing of the name; however, it had no idea where this feeling came from. It wanted to spit just thinking of the name. Spit, ah it felt familiar to this word, but it could not recall how to spit. Of course skeletons can spit.   It was bleak here, the skylights mottled on the ground and in its body through the branches of the towering trees. Love just wanted to get out of this forest, but as to why it wanted and where it wanted to go, it had no idea. I guess it was an instinct.   Love can at times feel the faint trace of the energy from the “Rogge”, the person from up there. Love also knew that it couldn’t refuse the commands of Rogge. This world had many things that Love didn’t understand. But this energy made it comfortable, making it more powerful, but it was too little, it felt as the helpless traveler in the middle of the desert that only had a drop of water at time to quench the thirst.   Love, extremely hungry and thirsty, was carrying a rusty knife, and aimlessly wandering in the forest, it itself had forgotten where he had gotten the knife.   It was very careful to avoid a number of local areas where its instinct warned, that there existed powerful and evil beyond its capability. However, Love was extremely clever, and while facing the general skeletons, it always came with some clever way to defeat them. It was so forceful to defeat them because with them they carried the energy that can satiate its hunger.   It has forgotten the day when he found some fine quality bones, and it used those bones to fill the empty place in his 24 ribs. Love felt that his ribs should number 24. This patching of his ribs had led to exhaust his energy that he had been saving. If not for the timely energy transfer from the Rogge, he didn’t know if he could confront his first Zombie.   The fight had been going for a long time. Zombie’s strength was not that Love could compete with. And after paying with three broken bones, Love finally realized that he cannot overcome the Zombie with the direct confrontation.  Love keeping its distance, kept on circling around the zombie, and every now and then occasionally cutting the rotten flesh from the zombie.   By the time Zombie fell, Love had less than 20 ribs in him.   When the skeletons and zombies meet they didn’t seem to mind each other and did not hara.s.s each other, however, what Love couldn’t understand was that whenever, he saw them alone, he did whatever it took to beat them.   “I am hungry”. Skeleton kept on thinking.   There was no idea of time, and Love was constantly wandering. He didn’t know how long he had wandered, didn’t know how long he have to.   Forest there seems to have no end.     ……………………………………….     After the fight at the small building, Rogge was interested in the skeleton that could feign death. In the dead of the night, on the second floor of the building, often a person and a skeleton stood eye to eye staring each other. However, after trying numerous times to mentally communicate without any result, Rogge finally lost interest in it.   Rogge didn’t now where the rusty knife of the skeleton came from. He tried to study for a long time but did not get any results, so he no longer tried to get into the bottom of it.   The Weather was getting hotter day by day, and before he knew, two years had already pa.s.sed.  Now he had to leave Magic Academy. The exam was in few days. In the past several months, he had read more than 30 volumes of history of the continent. The majority of it was bunch of adventure, travel biography, and all kinds of notes as such.     ……………………………….     Emmett had pa.s.sed the magic exam three months ago, was now working towards the developing himself as a Magic Knight.  After all, he was too wasted as the magician considering his big body.   Kate was training under his father to become powerful Rank Five Knight, from the perspective of Feith, the father and son seems to be in the path of becoming the Dark Knight.   As for the Lawrence and Franco, instead of being idle, they have been improving their fencing. What more unusual was that, instead of chasing the women, art and wasting money on wine most of that money was used to own good equipment, so that their strength increased far more than their actual Rank.   Few people are really not aggressive by nature, but are forced by the situation. After the fight of the small building, there were the situations when some body tried to seek and seize the daughter, some people would jump out to help and brutally attack. The sword and the rose the mercenary, while small, was not even a third-rate group, but the head of of the group (the Mage who died by the hand of heavy knight) was known as a magnanimous person. Moreover, Qiwei had her own charm and her pursuers were numerous. There were many mercenary that knew the truths were seeking the revenge.     …………………………..    The weather was hot, the people were moving as their will had dried up. The day of the examination, in the examination room Rogge showed the two finger flame magic to the examiner to fulfill the requirement of the exam, letting him to pa.s.s the examination. He was rewarded with the mage robe and in the afternoon he went to the mage guild to register, officially becoming a junior magician. After pa.s.sing the exam, if he wished he could be recruited as the Rhine city magician and withdraw the monthly allowance of 5 gold coins. But after going through the belly full of history books, Rogge had entirely another idea.       ……………………     'Bang' a few gla.s.ses heavy touch together.   'We brothers have not been together for a while, the grandmother, is full of killers, come, today we drink till we fall over!!' Emmett looked more like a bear rather than a true knight. Kate too raised his gla.s.s high and drank it in one breath. Kate had a macho face, with the look of righteousness, was now flushed with the alcohol. As for Florence and Franco, their looks were pretty handsome. But were considered ordinary in the n.o.bility as the n.o.ble ladies were pretty good.   This group of people had faced not little risk together this year, which lead to the forging of a deep friends.h.i.+p.   “Brothers, tomorrow I will go to Farborg fort to join the guard there. Alas, we cannot keep in gathering like this. But later you guys must often come to visit me there; certainly the travel expense is not that much.” At that Kate had the look of frustration in his face.   Franco said: “Farborg, that fort is close to the Demon forest. There are many thieves and monsters, I heard that recently Rowen duchy also frequently had small band of scout pa.s.sing through that forest to reconnaissance. You have to be careful”.   Kate took the sip of wine and said: my father insisted on me going there to acc.u.mulate the military exploits; he said this will be good for me. Moreover, the regimental commander of the knight garrison of the fort and my father are bosom friends so he will take care of me. Last time he visited the family, he gave me a black elf breast plate.”   “Brothers, Farborg is a good place!” Rogge said with spirit. He stepped in the chair, drinks flying, said: that place is close to the demon forest, close to the front lines, there will be many adventurers! This time Kate will be there as a captain……. Ah? Is it Platoon leader? It doesn’t matter, isn’t the regimental commander your family friend? We can have a good development there. You people think about it, those adventurers, monster hunters, and even army, what do they need? Weapons!! We have weapons, do we not? It is not good to do what every body is doing, there are many restrictions, but why do we have to limit ourselves to the restrictions? Think again, those who enter the demon forest how do they earn money?  Yes, they hunt monster for their nuclei and fur and sell for money. We do not have that strength to hunt monsters at the moment, but we can purchase their game. These things, to Feith, are perfect material for the magic items. Then we sell those items back to those adventurers, we just sit there not taking the risks and just taking profit over and over.   Lawerence also came into the spirit. "Farborg have the population of 200,000, the beautiful women are likely to be in quite a numbers. Kate at that is an official there so we don’t have to live like this rather as the grandchildren of the kings. I'm okay with the Rogge’s plan, I will partners.h.i.+p with you. ”   "When it comes to taking risk your eyes s.h.i.+nes brightly, hasn’t the last time, that girl you had not enough, ah?" Emmett laughed and stared at Lawrence.   "MOM, why am I so unlucky, pulled legs at me to say h.e.l.lo. Made me unable to touch any woman for a month, grandmother, and later could not even taste her for all my trouble! ”Lawrence gnashed his teeth.    "That girl, have you still kept her shut?" Franco asked.   "Of course, I have kept her, how could I let her go so easily. How about it brothers, lets go to my place later tonight”   The people in the table gave obscenely smile.     ……………………………………   The people kept on drinking wine around the table. There beside Kate, were unemployed, trying to get along. And hence, agreed to go to the Farborg Fort together, and open a weapon shop to purchase and sell the goods to the adventurers. Kate went first, and as for the remaining people packed their goods and left together after few days. Feith, was already dragged under the water by Rogge, but his lab stuff will take some more time for it to move.     ……………………………………….     It had been Months in the transit, and several drunken people staggered out of the pub, their long robe stained with wine. When they reached a dark street, several people dressed as masked adventurer suddenly jumped out, and circled those few people in the middle.   "You sc.u.m, deserve to die! Today I will avenge the grievance for Qiwei."   Hearing this people surrounded by those masked adventurers sighed, this opening, they have heard before, at least seven or eight times till now.   Several masked men flas.h.i.+ng their weapons rushed towards the people in the middle of the circle, and one magician in the sidelines began chanting incantation.   Suddenly a crossbow arrow flew like lightning and entered the chest of the magician, Rogge, now was known as the mage killer. Several other surrounded people took out weapons from under their robe; their action didn’t slightly exude of being drunk. Moreover, under their long robe, they impressively were fully armed.    With the tacit understanding, they rushed together to meet with the attack of the masked men as the past month. The masked men were shocked and rolled away to avoid the attack and fell into the road side ditch narrowly escaping the sudden attack. The people in the long robe immediately broke through the siege and fled. The masked men were sprinkled like a bag of soy beans, letting the ambush go belly-up, only to watch them disappear into the night.