Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 80

Dante rubbed his eyes, trying to keep himself awake. He didn’t understand why he had even bothered to store a bed if he couldn’t use it.

To his left, was his slave master, or just master for short. He had almost forgotten how much of a sadist Victoria was. Three days without sleep, and now he was expected to fight. The treatment was unbearable.

Renewing his focus, Dante took stock of the two-wagon caravan in front of them. The wagons were pulled by two horses each, and were heavily guarded. Six melee combatant’s on each side, twelve in total, and three others with bows on the wagons themselves. There was also a fourth combatant on the second wagon, who was idly twirling knives as he sat in a relaxed manner. Other than those sixteen, there was one more potential threat, a random variable. Sitting somewhat close to the wagon drivers in the first wagon was an old man, unarmed, yet also completely relaxed. It was impossible to tell, but there was a possibility that he had some form of a magic Classification.

Victoria gently prodded him in the side, and the two of them retreated further into the woods from where they were watching. He also recalled Shade through his bond, a useful trick. The fox had been scouting the surrounding forest with its heightened senses to make sure there weren’t any other members of the caravan about, and hadn’t found anything.

Now far enough away, Victoria looked at him inquisitively. “What do you think?”

Dante did his best to look haggard. “I think I need a nap.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, then she dug into her pockets. She withdrew a very tiny pill. Seeing it caused him to flinch, the pill would be the object of his nightmares if he managed to sleep. Relucantly, Dante took it and ate it. He was instantly filled with energy and wide awake, yet tired at the same time. The feeling was uncomfortable, but it would suffice for the coming fight.

“Overall, it doesn’t seem to be that bad. I don’t have any confidence in succeeding though. I shouldn’t have too much of a problem with the regular combatants, but the old man and the one with the daggers might cause problems.”

Victoria nodded. “A decent analysis. For your first ambush I won’t give you much advice. Just do as much as you can and I’ll help you with the rest. Afterwards, we can talk about things that you can improve on, as well as tactics that you could have used. Honestly, you don’t really have a chance of handling this on your own. They are all veterans, and you’ll run out of mana before you manage to kill them all. I just want to get a feel for where your natural inclinations are in this first fight.”

Dante’s expression became unsightly. He had done the ‘try first, learn later’ method of teaching with Archie, and it definitely wasn’t pleasant.

Seeing his expression, Victoria rolled her eyes. “Just relax. Remember, you are in control of this fight. Everything is up to you to decide, on your terms. You aren’t fighting for your life, but to gain power. Prioritize your life and wellbeing over taking the lives of the enemy.”

He wanted to mention that he was fighting on her terms, and that everything decided was up to her, but thought better of it. What she said did change his perspective though.

“By the way, the reward for the wagons are 1,500 world essence each.”

That took his breath away. “1,500 each? For what?”

“There are some benefits to working as a hired killer. 1,500 world essence is the negotiated price for each wagon, the warlord wanted to give us gold, but I convinced him. There should be a sealed invoice from the seller for each, we just need to turn those in to get paid in essence crystals.” Victoria’s voice cut off as she became alert, and a few seconds later Shade trotted into the view. Through the bond he could feel that the fox was proud to have done its job, even though it didn’t accomplish anything.

Seeing the fox, Victoria relaxed. “The invoice will either be with the wagon drivers, within the wagons themselves, or with the strongest combatants. Be careful not to destroy them, even breaking the seal with render them null and void according to the contract.”

The fox pounced up onto his shoulder and dug its nails into his clothes to stabilize its position. He could feel how content it was. His shoulder seemed to be its new favorite resting spot. “Wont it be problematic if they are on the combatants? One unlucky slash would cost me 1,500 world essence.”

Victoria shrugged. “Aim for the throat.”

“Of course, if only I had thought of that.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

He was awarded with a glare from Victoria. “Let’s go.”

They easily outpaced the slow caravan as they followed alongside the road. There were a few forks, where the road diverted into two separate paths, but they knew that the caravan was headed to a stronghold north of them so it wasn’t an issue.

When Victoria had said that she wouldn’t give him much advice for the first ambush, she clearly meant that she wouldn’t give him any. He even had to choose the location for the ambush himself.

Choosing his spot – it was an area of the road that was completely overrun by vegetation, even the trees overhead were also the densest in the area, creating a thick canopy – Dante looked around and began to formulate his plan. The largest known threat was likely the combatant that was twirling a knife in a relaxed manner, and the largest potential threat was the old man if he had a magic Classification. It was also likely that he had specialized at least once, if not twice, since he was so old. Unfortunately, since the two of them were also sitting on the wagons, they were by far the most protected.

He started by creating and scattering weapons throughout the underbrush on the sides of the road. They would be a decent distraction for his opening move, and the rest could be called when needed throughout the fight. He had a few more ideas, like pit traps and trip wires that could be triggered with manipulate blade, but there was a time restraint.

By the time he set up, Victoria had already disappeared, likely by using some stealth skill to spectate the fight. Dante ordered Shade down from his shoulder, then told the fox to scout the surrounding forest for anything that might surprise him. That done, he hopped into the canopy overhead, doing his best to hide himself from view. Things would have been much simpler with a stealth skill.

In the canopy, he pulled out his enchanted sword and dagger, a created sword, as well as the glove he bought from Charlotte in Desas. The mana drain in his opening move would be extreme, so he would need to eliminate the two big threats, as well as the three archers as quickly as possible. After that, his speed should be enough to handle the rest of the infantry at his leisure.

About 15 minutes of constant worry later, he saw the first wagon round a curve and come into view. Dante rechecked his position for what had to have been the hundredth time, making sure that he was still carefully hidden. He also checked in with Shade, and was pleased that she still hadn’t stumbled upon unwelcome guests.

After making sure that nothing had gone awry, he waited. The wagons were agonizingly slow, but he was thrilled that none of them seemed to be worried with what was above them. Both the archers and the melee combatants on the side only casually scanned the forest periodically, everyone else was lax.

When the old man was directly beneath him, he made his move.

Dante fell to the wagon, using gravity instead of Blink in an effort to preserve mana. As he fell, the spare sword he made shot down toward the man twirling his knife with the aid of manipulate blade. Then he shifted his focus, pulling 5 weapons from the left side of the road, two shooting toward a single horse on each wagon, the other three aiming for each archer. Finishing off his attack, he activated both the artificer’s glove and Oppressive Will as he plunged his sword into the old man below him.

The sword sunk into the old man’s flesh as the awareness of the artificer’s glove activated. He immediately became aware of two knives shooting toward him. The dagger in his free hand flashed out blocking one as he dodged the other. The rest of his swords reached their destination and he heard two groans and the cry of two horses. One of them had been blocked. On the bright side, the heavy wagons weren’t going anywhere with a single horse pulling them.

Cries of alarm rang out around him, both from the surprise attack from the woods and from the effects of his Oppressive Will. Dante looked down at the old man beneath him to check his condition – still alive, and looking quite angry. Trying to dispatch him quickly, Dante attempted to twist the sword that was stuck in the old man’s chest cavity.

The sword was lodged in place and didn’t budge in the slightest, he couldn’t even yank it out. One look at the wound he inflicted and he could see why, it was surrounding with manipulated mana inside of the old mans chest. Not only was the sword stuck, but the wound didn’t bleed at all. He stabbed down with his dagger, aiming for the throat, but a wall of manipulated mana slowed the dagger just enough to stop the blow from being fatal.

Cursing, Dante jumped back as two more daggers flew at him from the second wagon. As he did so, the old man reached out his hand and an orb of fire enveloped it, uncurling into a large whip, which then shot toward him as though it was sentient.

In mid-air, and with no other means of escaping the molten whip, Dante Blinked, wasting the 30 mana. Things weren’t going well, and he cursed his stupidity. He had used his enchanted sword even though he didn’t have the opportunity to activate it with all his other skills, and now the old man was able to sustain himself with it lodged in his body. If it were one of his created blades, he could have broken it and destroyed the structural integrity of the manipulated mana, killing him in seconds.

Taking hold of Victoria’s advice, Dante blinked sideways, disappearing from his enemies view as he appeared in the dense forest. Then he used his remaining mana to shoot dozens of swords into his enemies as he retreated, only to be stopped by Victoria.

“Smart. I was just about to intervene.” Victoria walked out onto the road and her body flickered as she stabbed a dagger into those who were still alive. Not a single person was able to react before she got to them. When Victoria was done, she reappeared before him. “It wasn’t bad for a first attempt, that mage ruined things though. He was quite crafty.”

That was one way of describing it. The mage preserved himself with mana manipulation so he could take his killers life. “He was a regular mage? I hadn’t seen his skill before.”

Victoria shrugged. “A fire whip is a pretty common upgrade from the fireball skill. You’ll run into it quite often, since the fireball skill is so desired by magic Classifications.”

Dante walked up to those Victoria downed by the wagons as he recalled Shade. “Why is that anyways?” She took down twelve people, including the four wagon drivers, bringing his kill total to nine. Shooting the enemy with swords from the opposite side of the road was far more effective than he had thought.

“Although it is pretty weak, it has hundreds of upgrade variations, some of its rarer upgrades are ridiculously powerful. And since the skill is so common, magic Classifications will pick it up if there aren’t better alternatives just to see what upgrade can be attained through specialization. If they don’t get anything good, they usually disregard the skill completely, unless they need to accomplish some menial task like starting a fire.” Victoria indicated to the mage. “The whip upgrade is mediocre, not too good, not too bad. He likely didn’t have a decent skill to choose from when he specialized. It’s just the way of things.”

He hadn’t expected his question to be answered so thoroughly, but was thankful for it. It was a shame that he didn’t have such a knowledgeable person with him when he chose his Classifications and first skills. “You didn’t kill them?” All of the people that Victoria stabbed were still breathing.

“No, I left them for you. I don’t need the world essence.” Seeing his inquisitive glance, Victoria continued. “I poisoned my dagger.”

Dante grit his teeth and got to work. It felt dirty to end them like that, but he had already resolved himself to killing these people. “So, what did I do wrong?”

Victoria walked to one of the wagons and pulled off the canvas that covered it, revealing stores of food. “Quite a few things, but for your first time, and without guidance, you did well.” She tossed the canvas back down, disinterested. “Your opening move was strong, but costed you too much mana. You lost most of your element of surprise with your Oppressive Will skill, as soon as the man with the knife felt it he honed in on you. And you didn’t go for killing blows, you just attacked with the intention of injuring them.”

Victoria uncovered the second wagon, which was also was stored with food. “Your timing was also a mess, and you didn’t play to any of your strengths aside from your skills.” She turned to face him. “On the other hand, you did a lot of things right. Namely, running when you thought you may be injured, despite knowing that you could still take a few more enemies down.”

Done killing, Dante checked the wagons, then the bodies of all of the combatants, immediately storing anything he found to be of interest as well as any spare coins. He kept it discreet, but he pressed his glove on the wounds of their bodies as he did so, absorbing their blood. He found the invoices on the old mage and the knife twirler’s bodies. Fortunately, both were intact.

Seeing that he was done searching, Victoria pulled out a vial of powder and began sprinkling it over the corpses and the wagons. When she was done, Victoria pressed a bit of world essence into it to ignite the powder.

Victoria saw his interest in the powder. “Fire powder from the warlord. Everything we don’t keep is to be burned. A bit of a waste, but dragging it all the way back south would be close to impossible, and isn’t something the guild would agree to anyways.”

Dante drearily watched the roaring fire envelop everything. He couldnt help but think about what a waste it was. "I could have kept the food..."

"Yes, I'm sure you would have put two carts full of grain to good use." Victoria pulled out another one of those small pills and handed it to him. "If you want grain, there will be plenty of it."

Dante took the pill, looked at it, then looked up at Victoria. He did his best to look pathetic. “It’s going to be hard to take my nap if I eat this.”

Victoria looked amused. “Who said anything about sleeping?”