Aaaaah… so goood.

It’s so good. If I wasn’t tasting it just now, I wouldn’t believe it.

When the pirates die I receive a rush of mana from them, and it tastes really good. The quality of the mana is something I’ve never tasted before, purer than the mana I’m emanating right now and in such a big amount at each time. Each time a raider die I get a rush of mana. I could become addicted to that thing.

That’s probably why dungeons want adventurers diving in them. To get their rush of mana, like a fix for a drug addict. I must make sure to not succumb to the pleasure. I won’t stop consuming it, it’s too good, but I must savor it and make it last and don’t make an overdose. Can I do an overdose? And if I don’t want to run out of the stuff I must ration it, I have the Marms for that.

That’s something else. When a sapient being dies in my domain - in addition of the tasty rush of mana - I receive a bunch of knowledge, like for the other creatures or plants, but more. It’s probably because the sapient creatures have a lot more knowledge in them. I think I get a bit of their knowledge while previously it was more a regain of locked knowledge.

When a pirate dies, I get a part of his knowledge. That’s how I learn how to speak, or rather how to understand speaking people, write and read. I also learn a lot about the region. The island I’m on is considered part of an archipelago. The Joqua Archipelago is seldom visited by sapients because it’s out of the principals merchant routes. It doesn’t offer natural shelter, so pirates didn’t make a hideout out of it. Plus the Maria Island, the one I’m on, is one of the most secluded in the archipelago, it can’t be seen from any of the other islands. But the archipelago is known amongst seamen to shelter a few villages of poorly civilized islanders. Some merchants decide against the odds to deviate a bit from the major merchant routes and come there, occasionally.

This group of pirates, known as the Blood Ram’s crew, decided to come here and enslave some islanders to sell as curiosity and rarity in the slave market of Martok. I only know it’s a big city in the south.

I learn unimportant things about each pirate, like their names, age, the names’ of their relatives and friends and other useless stuff like that. There is still some information that can be of use, like the names and relations of the chain of command and the fact that there is seven Second on board and that only their chief is a Third.

I wasn’t sure to be able to take them, but it comes out that I’ve already dealt with two of the Seconds.

Speaking of which, I didn’t kill all the pirates, some of them are still swimming in the cave underground. I need to finish some preparations before flushing them. And if I kill them all, I will be out of test subjects and out of tasty doses of mana.

I start to dig some tun-

-

I stand in the royal castle of Kueop. I’m not in the throne room, I’m in the royal children bedroom.

The children are in front of me, hiding behind their mom. The nanny is lying dead between us. Their grandfather, the king, died three days ago, as well as all their family. When I’ll kill them, I’ll be done with this country royal family.

“Please no! Don’t kill my children! Please! I don’t know what my father did to you, but please, please, spare the children, they are innocents! Kill me if you want but not them! I’ll do anything!” The woman is pleading, kneeling in front of me, her children shivering in fear behind.

“Sir.” I turn to look at Julia, she’s still with me, but the last months have taken their toll on her. Half her face is burned away, with the left eye and part of her hair. I see something in her right eyes, a shimmering light. “Sir, it’s enough. The children have nothing to do with it.”

“They're part of this family, they must pay.”

“If you really want this Sir, I won’t stop you. But it will lower you to the same level as the king.”

“Which king? Janu or Dornau?”

“The one you killed three days ago. If you do that, you’ll be even lower than Dornau. I don’t want that, you’re too precious to me. If you kill the children you’ll never be yourself again and I don’t want to lose you.”

That last declaration makes me shutter. She’s right. And that’s what I’ve been seeing in her look the last few month. Sadness, not for what happened to Maria, but for me, for what I’m about to become. There is also fear, fear that I became a monster worse than my enemies. I can’t do that to her, she’s been with me for so long, she was nothing but a slave at the beginning, but she’s more now.

While I was reflecting on myself, the woman, the heir of the crown of Kueop, didn’t stop sobbing at my feet. I kick her.

“You’re right. I won’t kill them.” I grab the future queen by the collar and hold her face near mine, her feet are padding in the air. “I won’t kill you either, but you need to raise those children to be good persons.”

“Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, if I heard that they're becoming bloodthirsty tyrants, I’ll come back and finish the job.”

“Yes Sir, I’ll raise them good, they’ll be good rulers I swear on my life.”

“Shut up. I still have something to do here, bring me to your father secret office.”

“Secret office? He doesn’t have one.”

“Don’t lie to me, I know he had one, all kings have one. Don’t force me to look for it, or I’ll have to damage the castle even more.”

She takes one child in each of her arms and leads the way to a secret passage hidden behind a tapestry in the child room, it is linked to a lot of other secret passages. Well, they’re not so secret anymore, I made holes in enough walls to reveal some of them.

When we’re in the secret office I order her to look for documents, Julia is doing it too. The children are crying in a corner of the room.

After half an hour Julia hands me a pile of documents, I examine them and one of my worst feelings is almost confirmed. I can see there that Janu was warned by a ‘third’ party where and when Maria would be at the time of her abduction, and the detail of her escort. Someone made sure Janu would know, so he could plan her kidnapping.

-

-nels on a low…

What’s that! A memory came back to me when I was conscious. That’s the first time. So I took my revenge against Kueop, but there was something more about the situation. My quest for revenge didn’t end there. Did I manage to finish it? I can’t know, none of the pirates I killed had information about this. Either they’re taking enough interest on the matter, or it happened too long ago or too far away for them to know.

I can see that the memory took only a few seconds to play in my mind, but it covered almost an hour of my previous life.

Anyway, I have other things to do right now. I resume digging the tunnels under the lake where the pirates are drowning and reinstall the trap. It will be ready for the next pirates.

As a matter of fact, the pirates at the village are starting to organize a new group. The few pirates that were standing guard on the hilltop entrance went back to the village to report some strange events. It seems that ‘there was a big strange sound’ and when they went down the stairs to see what was happening they only saw a ‘fucking close wall and no sound at all’.

The cells are ready. I flush the water out of the pirates’ lake. The water flows with pirates in different tunnels and goes through different grids. Once the pirates are in their cells I close the waterway. I’ve put some airway to allow them to breathe, and each of the cells is set with a low stream of water and a blackberry bush. I don’t want my prisoners to die from hunger or thirst, plus that will allow them a bit of hygiene. Except that, it will be all torture, complete darkness, no other sound that the flowing water and each time they want to eat, they’ll sting themselves on the bushes thorns. I will take care of the pollination myself, I learned a trick for doing without the bees, I only need to make the pollen grain flow in the air, it’s just more mana consuming than using the bees.

Having those prisoners here will allow me to do experiments on sapient beings without endangering the Marms.

Actually, they are discussing if they are trapped here. They found out that I closed the access to their cave, and if some think that I will reopen it after the pirates leave, some are afraid to never see the sun again. For one of them, it will be the case, a Marm is about to die of its wounds shortly after going down in the cave.

The mana this Marm releases at the moment of his death is not as tasty as for the pirates. I think it’s due to the fact he isn’t as afraid as the raiders. He dies almost at peace after seeing the statue’s cave. That makes me think that if a sapient creature dies brutaly the mana is tastier. I will do my best to take care of the Marms so that they number grow and more of them die, but I will not care on the maner of their death.

At the moment of his death, I put in place a little show. I send a ray of light coming from the middle eye of the statue and hitting the dead body. The Marms are surprised by this and step away a bit, I wait for them to make a little more place around the dead and absorb the corpse. I then make the ray of light flickers and disappear and make all the light stones emit a flash of light before going back to normal.

The Marms are kneeling in front of the statue, praying how great the ‘Goddess’ is. I’m supposed to be the Goddess, I have mixed feelings about that. They are praying me, giving me mana directly, and that’s good, really good. But they are thinking I’m a woman. I should have seen that coming, having a statue of a woman… I can only blame myself on this one, a Goddess. A God yes, but a Goddess...

Anyway, I can see they are confused I ‘took the soul of Voln in my care’ but not the ones of the other dead Marms. They are now praying for the souls of all the Marms on the island. Alright, I comply and put on a little light show and absorb the corpse of the five Marms that died on the hilltop.

For the Marms and pirates that died on the hilltop, I didn’t get enough mana to feel a difference with the other creatures that die in open air. I guess that explains further why dungeons are underground, that plus the fact it’s easier to claim the environment. I was reborn directly underground too, that must be part of the explanation.