Luke sighed with relief and conjured two apples and offered one to the girl, who snatched it up without hesitation.
MANA 30 OF 34
He looked at her as she tore into the fruit. “Hey kid you gotta name?” The child looked confused at him for a bit them shook her head and continued chomping on the apple.
“Ah..oh, OK. how about Amy? Can I call you that, I need to call you something after all.” The girl eyed him suspiciously then shrugged.
“OK Amy it is then. I er I'm Luke by the way, you know just in case you need to know.” She shrugged and started eating the core, Luke started to halt her but then eyed her tiny frame, yeah she needed to consume all she could, so instead he rifled through Drolg's clothes, such as they were and almost spat out the mouthful of apple when he came across his coin purse.
The guy was freaking loaded! There must have been at least 50 copper coins there. He took that, his belt, the cudgel that was hanging from it and the stinky rough but serviceable jacket and headed back towards the creek. He wasn't wearing the jacket till it got a damn good clean. He gestured to Amy who got up and followed without complaint.
Luke wrinkled his nose in distaste as the grime from the jacket left a cloud in the otherwise relatively clean water. Being this close to a city there was no way he was going to drink it, but if it had only taken him a few minutes cleaning up the damn thing why couldn't thug nuts have done it as well? He grumbled to himself as he finished rinsing off the dirt from the garment.
Once he had finished cleaning the thigh length jacket he inspected it. The garment was actually in a fair bit worse condition than he had originally thought, with the grime seemingly filling in the poor weave and small rents in the cloth. It was lighter in colour too it's natural base seemingly tan, probably the fabric's natural hew.
It was still better than nothing so Luke splayed it out on a rock by the stream to dry out, then lay down next to it to drink in some of the sun and try to centre himself. He'd killed a man today. Well him and Amy had and OK it was self defence but still, his whole body felt numb to it. He wasn't sure that was a good thing but he guessed it was better than becoming a blubbering wreck, that would be a quick way to get dead. He sighed as he let the sun warm his bones.
Luke started. His body froze in panic. Apparently he'd fallen asleep but something had awakened him so he focused his energy on trying to hear what it was. He lifted his head from the rock and turned in the direction of the faint sound. There was a growl, a rough deep bark, low and threatening, then a muffled scream as a man seemingly on the wrong end of an attack got hurt.
A monster attack? His mind filled with hideous creatures, werewolves or demon hounds, hordes of the beasts. He shrank back in fear until he saw Amy crouching low in the foliage creeping towards the noise.
He hoarsely whisper shouted at her. “Amy! What the hell? Get back here.” She either didn't hear him or didn't give a shit as she carried on regardless. Luke grimaced, grabbed his new old jacket and shrugged it on over his soiled rags and crept after Amy wondering with each step what the hell he was doing.
Two men were battling against the biggest black dog he had ever seen in his life. It must have come up to the first man's chest, he looked like a vagrant, no better dressed than Luke was. He held up a battered round shield and was using it to taunt the beast as his partner was sidling round behind with a cudgel in his hand. Luke sat back for a second bewildered. What the hell were they doing out here? That beast would eat them for lunch.
The guy with the shield was already injured, a giant jagged tear in his calf muscle on his left leg that made it difficult to fend off the massive hound. He had a look of a man who was regretting his life choices and kept looking back to see if he could escape.
Just then guy number two gave out a shrieking rebel yell and dove towards the hind quarters of the wolf? Yeah, dog seemed to be understating it a bit. The cudgel smacked down on the wolf's left back leg and and the beast let out a yelp, snarled and snapped back at the attacker and caught his trailing hand.
The man shrieked for help but guy number one was high tailing out of there, limping and trailing blood with every step of the way even as his partner howled with agony. This attack had clearly not gone the way these guys had thought. Shocker!
Guy number two gave out a last feeble gargled whimper as the wolf bit into his throat killing the man. Luke grimaced but he guessed that was the way of it here, wherever here was. As he cast an eye out for Amy he thought back, he hadn't come across a single decent human being since he had awakened, not one.
He spotted Amy who had found a place in the undergrowth about fifty paces out from the attack, she watched as the hound ripped into guy number two's flesh, she didn't seem perturbed at all by the sight, Luke was glad he was able to keep his apple down, food was hard to come by here and he had made it a bad habit of throwing up every time he was attacked or almost died.
Luke sat there as the wolf ate a human being in front of him and hoped Amy had enough sense to stay put, he had no idea what she was about, he just hoped she was quiet and stayed out of sight.
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Eventually the wolf had it's fill and it limped away. It stopped about twenty paces away and snuffled under a fallen tree and some dead leaves and snatched up a mewling cub. It couldn't be but a few days old and Luke's heart skipped a beat.
Was that what the men were going for? The female wolf pulled out another cub, this one even smaller and Luke's felt a pang of remorse for the piteous creature. Clearly the runt of the litter and not long for this world.
The wolf nudged the cub with it's nose and whined at it trying to see if it could stand, but the pup just lay there barely moving. When it became apparent that the pup was going nowhere the wolf let out another whine of despair, then picked up the healthier cub by the scruff of it's neck and limped away.
Luke sat there looking at the abandoned pup for a couple of minutes not knowing quite what to do. His eyes drifted towards the dead man and he winced inwardly. He hated to do it but if the guy had anything of worth then Luke needed to take it from him. Clearly whatever he had on him he wasn't going to need it any more.
He went to check out the dead guy when a movement caught his eye. He turned and saw Amy making her way from her hiding place and creeping towards the clearing so Luke stood up and went to join her. She started at his movement and had the dagger up and ready in less than a heartbeat, teeth bared and ready to attack. Luke put his hands up in surrender and hoped it translated on this world. She spat in annoyance once she realised who it was then kept on moving towards the clearing.
“Jeez girl you are going to be an absolute terror when you grow up you know that?” Luke shook himself and trudged after her. Once Amy reached the spot where the fight took place she took a moment to look at the corpse then kept walking.
Luke felt a pang of sorrow as she carried on, what sort of life had the tiny child had that a mutilated corpse was nothing out of the ordinary? then she reached the abandoned pup, she knelt down and carefully lifted the tiny almost lifeless beast into her arms and petted him oh so gently. Luke had a bad feeling about that but his first priority was to scavenge what he could from the dead man, it was a nasty business but it had to be done.
The body was ripped to shreds and even now flies and other insects were starting to congregate around the gaping wounds. Luke quickly looted the corpse of what little it had but didn't linger. The smell of raw meat and human excrement was almost too much and all he had on him was a couple of copper coins and the cudgel, everything else was either covered in blood or all torn up, he spat to one side trying to rid himself of the tang of taint and bile in his mouth and went towards Amy, or at least away from the dead body.
Luke knelt beside the child holding the tiny little runt and murmured quietly. “I'm not sure it's a wise move to take the pup Amy, it's mother left it behind for a reason. I'm sorry to say this but I don't think it's going to survive for much longer.” He raised a hand towards her slowly but she backed away and growled hoarsely. “Mine!” Luke grimaced but nodded.
“OK if that's what you want then fine, I was just trying to warn you it might not last long that's all.”
Amy gave him a pained expression then turned and walked away. Luke shook his head sorrowfully and whispered to himself. “Fuck me.”
Luke followed Amy back towards civilization and back towards their broken and busted shelter. Luke had tried to warn her that it might not be the best place to head towards but when they got there, there was no sign of Drolg other than a brown stain on the dirt where his blood had dried in the sun.
Luke looked about to see if anyone was loitering about waiting for them but there was no one he could see. He shook his head in disgust. “Wow what a world.”
Amy sat down where she normally did, only where there had been a shelter now there was just a load of busted bits of wood. Luke looked around, actually less than there should be, it seemed like someone had taken the best bits while they had been away. Luke shook his head then sat down by the girl, he conjured up another couple of apples and they sat in silence as they ate, when they had finished the fruit Luke Sighed in resignation as he gazed at the almost lifeless pup and fished out a few coppers offering them to Amy.
“The pup needs milk and I don't know how to make it or where to buy it, can you get some?”
Amy slowly reached out her hand, there were ten copper coins in his hand and the look of awe on her face said it all. She gave him a questioning look of disbelief so he gestured for her to take the coins and smiled gently.
“Go on it's part of your share from Drolg. The coin is yours, you can take it.”
The child's hand shot out and the coins vanished as if they never existed, then she looked up at him waiting to see his response.
Luke nodded. “Good, I tell you what, I'll look after the pup while you're out getting the milk and I'll see if there's anything I can do to help fix it, OK?” Amy pulled the pup closer to her chest and spat. “Mine!”
Luke nodded. “Yep yours, I'm not going to keep him, just look after him while you get milk OK?”
An expression of doubt swept across the girls face as she thought on it, then she held out the pup and looked Luke in the eyes staring into him. “Mine.”
He nodded again. “Yours.” She nodded in agreement then let Luke take the pup. It was super tiny and barely weighed an ounce, it just lay there, eyes closed unaware of anything. Luke wasn't sure it would ever wake again but the milk wouldn't go to waste even if it didn't survive to drink it.
Amy was off in a flash as Luke gently placed the pup in his lap and wondered if he could conjure up a healing potion and thought it best to check out his stats first. Last he checked he only had 30 Mana after conjuring the two apples and thought it might take a fair bit more for something like that, but physically he felt good, great even, not an ache or pain anywhere it seemed level 3 was pretty epic.
STATS
RACE: HUMAN
MOD MAGE
LEVEL: 3
HEALTH : 34 OF 34
STAMINA: 29 OF 34
MANA 30 OF 34
Luke's eyes widened as he checked his stats and his face blossomed into a wide grin. “Fuck yeah! Max health. I thought I felt good.” With 30 Mana as well, it might even be enough for a health potion. Luke felt a twinge of anxiety for the poor pup and crossed his fingers.
“Additem health potion 1”
Luke was relieved to see the screen option for the potion appear but it was in red and there was no way he was going through that again . He tried again this time going for something not quite as powerful, the pup was tiny so if it worked it should help.
“Additem minor health potion 1”
This time it came up orange and Luke hummed and arred. “Fuck...so red's bad, like dead bad, so orange is bad but not dead bad? Oh shit I am so gonna regret this.”
He focused on the orange minor health potion and a small glass vial dropped into his lap. As he dismissed the console command he repeated to himself. “Please don't kill me, please don't kill me, please don't kill me.”
The world reasserted itself as he dismissed the console command and Luke's Mana dropped down to nothing, a spike of lightening shot through his brain and he felt his head spin, his stomach roiled and all the strength left his body as his stats plummeted. He blinked woozily as his screen popped up.
STATS
RACE: HUMAN
MOD MAGE
LEVEL: 3
HEALTH : 24 OF 34
STAMINA: 19 OF 34
MANA 0 OF 34
