The Lost Doctor's Soul - Chapter 24 - The best laid plans of mice and men

Have you ever entrusted a task to someone, then realized in hindsight that you were an idiot to do so?

“You were supposed to investigate all sneaky-like, not get drunk you dummy!” Kanako immediately started berating the laughing cowboy as he just pat her on the head and pulled out a bottle of milk from his bag. “Here *hick*, I got you a milk, kid.” he said as he walked away from a stunned and rapidly boiling Kanako.

“Huh, why the looong faces? Geez, you’d think it’s the end of the world or some’in?” he chuckled as he plopped down onto a bed.

“You… you investigated the priest at least, right?” Starlight asked, with a strained smile, getting a blank stare back from Vildost in return. I swear I almost saw her pop a blood vessel.

“Ah right! The silver lady!” he shouted out, slapping his knee. “Yeah, she’s got like 5 people with her, and they’re right next door! Now ain’t that a coincident?” he said, gesturing behind him.

Great. Well, at least he properly checked.

“Also, you can get food fromm allll the way to the left if you need it, there’s a bar too, place is packed.” he rattled off a few things he noted around the shelter, before glancing over at me for a second, then continued with talking about some small things that weren’t very important.

That glance felt a bit odd, it was a little too… meaningful for this thought-free drunk?

“Hey, busty demon lady?” he suddenly called Starlight out. “I’m not a fan of that moniker.” she hissed in response.

“Do you do deals and stufff? Like, what? Trades?” he ignored her, scratching his head.

Letting out an annoyed sigh, she said she did.

“Ah, cool cool.” He sluggishly nodded, before turning to the rest of the group. “Hey, so that golem coreeee thingy? If I split the ‘profit’ with the party, can I have it for now?”

It was a bold request, and honestly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to entrust something like that to a drunk… though, he’s not really screwed up even when he’s dead drunk? I didn’t have a firm reason to say no.

Kanako fumed a bit about it, but she was still fair and admitted she didn’t have a major problem. Arashi abstained, and Nisha just said he trusted him.

With the golem core entrusted to Vildost (but still by my side for safety), he gave us a thumbs up before rummaging in his bag for a bit. “Wait, I have it here… somewhere…” he pulled out a few empty bottles, some books, a flute, and a somewhat important looking letter. “Huh, oh yeah, I had this.” he muttered, before putting it on his lap and reaching into the bag again, pulling out a notebook filled with scribbles and doodles.

“Okay! So I have ideas, but I neeeed that… knooowledge for it!” he slurred, pointing at Starlight.

“My knowledge comes at a price, wrangler.” He seemed miffed by this, putting down his book before pulling out his purse and looking inside. It didn’t seem filled to the bursting at least.

“Yeah… ah! How about knowledge for knowledge!” he exclaimed, pulling that letter from his lap. Only now I realised that it had a special wax seal on it that looked like scales on a sword. It was already opened, but the seal was mostly intact.

“I found this near the priest, you see, and I think *hick* that it’s probably preeeety important~” he started talking, waving the letting with a proud smile.

“If you found something about the priest, then tell us about it already!” Starlight snapped, getting a tut tut from him as he tapped the letter against his hat.

“No no, you want this, right?” he asked, gesturing to the letter. “Then shouldn’t you tradee for it?”

Jesus, this man has balls. Bargaining with a devil so casually… I didn’t know if he was brave or stupid. I could tell that he was a lot more crafty than he seemed on the surface. While he acted like a drunk fool, he was too on point to be a fool… though that could just be because he’s a high functioning alcoholic.

Letting out a slow breath, Starlight sat up and crossed one leg over the other. “And how would I know that information is worth what you want to know?” she asked, with a smug smile.

“Wow, you trade info and don’t even have a system?” he replied with visible confusion. That definitely annoyed her.

“Fine, you’re not as much of an idiot as I thought, I’ll give you that.” she sighed, holding out her hand. “State what you want for the information and I’ll tell you if it’s worth the price. If no trade is made, I’ll erase what I’ve read from my memories.”

“The Golem core, I wanna know how we can use it~” he replied, giggling as he handed over the letter. So that’s what he had planned.

As annoyed as she was, Starlight still read the letter properly, pursing her lips before letting out another sigh. “You sly bastard…” she whispered, before leaning back and crossing her arms under her oversized chest.

“By using the golem core, I believe you mean to utilize it as a tool under your control and not just a rampaging construct with no loyalty.” she started, waving her hand. “What you want is to make the Golem recognise you as its ‘master’. To do that, you need to engrain your mana deep within the core. So you need to find a mage well versed in enhancement magic who’s willing to work with an illegal item like a golem core.” she explained with a shrug, as if that was a simple thing to do… it certainly didn’t sound simple.

“Kay, kay, I can see some potential brewing here.” Vildost replied, rubbing his hands together like he was getting hyped. “Alright *hic*, How do I do it without a mage?” he asked, slurring his words a bit as he tapped his forehead like he was thinking hard.

Starlight didn’t immediately answer, though she seemed to be calculating something as she squinted her eyes at him. “A golem core is a crystallised lump of mana where a self-sustaining high level elemental spell is imbued within it through the highest level enhancement magic… if you cannot formally establish control over the core, you just need to use a more direct way of controlling it” she answered in a wishy-washy way.

“So… ‘how’ is a secret?” Vildost asked, taking a sip. “We’re friends here, ain’t we pal? How bout you tell me how for a bottle of this good stuff?” he offered, holding up the bottle of alcohol… it wasn’t scotch or beer, so I had no idea what type it was.

“We’re not friends.” she shut him down. “If you’re willing to risk your life, you can just consume the core and hope you figure out how to control it before it kills you from the inside.”

Hearing that, Vildost looked quite interested as he took his notebook and scratched something off before jotting something down. “Kay, kay, we got some good stuff right there! But how do you eat something that big and hard?” he asked, pointing out that the core was slightly bigger than a tennis ball, and far too solid to bite into.

“I can just shrink it,” Starlight casually said. “Mana crystals can be condensed quite a bit, the only reason it’s that big is so it’s not too easy to misplace. It’s also a rather low-grade golem, higher grade golem cores are intentionally made as big as cannonballs at the smallest, if not the size of a fully grown adult so they’re harder for thieves to transport.” after saying that she didn’t seem interested in giving any more information.

When Vildost asked her to shrink the core, she asked for payment first, while Kanako and Arashi strongly protested it saying it was an exceptionally dangerous course of action.

At this point, I got a bit annoyed at the side-tracking and asked Starlight and Vildost what the information even was. The snakey cowboy just smiled like a bastard and Starlight stared at me.

[They’re after the sword. You can’t let them have it.] she replied in my head, reminding me about Millar’s sword that was all bundled up and casually tossed into the pile of my other stuff.

I didn’t know why she wanted to hide it, but I wasn’t planning on playing secrets at a crucial moment like this, not when it involved the whole party if they stood by my side. I was angry enough that Millar died and Milvarr was stuck in a deathtrap for a stupid sword.

“Whatever you need to say, you can tell everyone. We agreed there wouldn’t be any more secrets, didn’t we?” I told her, and she seemed quite annoyed at that, before sighing and lying down on the bed again like she was posing for a photo.

“That priest is after your sword, the sword I helped Millar acquire.” she explained, pointing at the sword I bundled with the rest of my belongings in a corner. “It’s an artifact called the Blade of Truth, one of a set of twelve that were made by the kobold smith Frete of the Dragonspire.”

That sounded rather impressive… and I felt a bit bad about not treating the sword very well, but I didn’t have any tools or training in maintaining swords. They weren’t exactly standard issue in the military.

“Frete of the Dragonspire? I’ve heard legends about her. To own a weapon made by one of the smith lords is every warrior’s dream.” Arashi excitedly spoke up, animatedly fidgeting and showing more emotion than I’d seen over the course of all of the time we spent together. “C-can I see it? I-I understand if that isn’t acceptable, sir Fischer.” she asked, and I didn’t have much of an issue so I reached out and grabbed the sword before handing it over.

“Is it really that good?” Kanako asked as Arashi gingerly unbundled it and looked at the sheathed sword, letting out a slow breath in awe. “Ah! I see mana in it! Were you hiding it with your antimagic? It doesn’t look very powerful… what does it do?” she rapidly asked, staring at it as Arashi unsheathed the dirty blade. Even Vildost seemed interested as he looked over and stared intently… or was he just staring into space and it was just me overthinking it?

“It would be completely useless in Armin’s hands. Its only power is to dispel mental effects and illusions, though the fact that it works on all such magic makes it extremely powerful.” Starlight explained with a chuckle. “Some people also call it the Illusionist Slayer.”

“I see… honestly, I’m fine with just giving them the sword if it means I don’t get hunted down, it’s not that important to me.” I said, wondering if that would be enough to get them to leave me alone. “You can’t hand it over to them!” Starlight was vehemently against it, however. “If those assholes at the Temple of Law get this sword then they’ll actually attack the temple of knowledge and steal their Divine relics!”

“Huh, I didn’t expect a devil would care so much about a temple.” I muttered, not sure what to think, but I only got a frustrated sigh in response.

“Wow, that sounds like a lot of fun *hick*, but my big boss likes those book-culties, so that's pretty bad.” Vildost even pitched in, giving a reason why he wouldn’t want such a thing at least.

“You can’t just hand over such a sought-after blade to people like that!” Arashi also protested, having started cleaning the dirtied blade at some point. “They’re the reason the prior owner of your body and that Milvarr you mention died, aren’t they?” Even she had a reason.

Kanako didn’t have a reason she could define, but also protested with a “They’re bad people!” which was oddly adorable.

“If weapon reason for fight, just give and no fight?” Nisha had a rather pacifist view, and I didn’t blame him, I shared the same view.

It seemed a majority of the party was very against handing over the weapon, even if I wasn’t very fond of the idea. Their points were valid, though, and there was no guarantee that this priest wouldn’t go after me even after possessing the sword. The idea that them having the sword would lead to what sounded like the start of a holy war was the biggest reason why I decided to follow the group’s wishes and not relinquish the sword.

I had so many questions I thought about asking, but I decided to make a list of what my main concerns were first and see how to address them.

1- I’m being hunted by this dangerous priest. Their monk companion is nowhere to be seen.

2- I need to retrieve Milvarr’s body for her rites.

3- I need to see the town guard about the rewards for handing in Oromar’s belongings.

4- I need to find answers for how to return home, and these answers might be in Lariatne.

All lesser questions and things I needed to do aside, I needed to get these done, but the issue was the storm… or confluence. We couldn’t go anywhere without the weather clearing a bit, and we need to make sure a wave didn’t happen while we were travelling.

After talking with everyone, they agreed to pitch in and help me, if I promised to help with their issues too when the time came. I had no issue with that, so a plan was quickly drafted.

Vildost and Kanako would keep track of the priest and learn more about them, Arashi and Nisha would follow my map and help retrieve Milvarr’s corpse, and I would go to the guard house and inquire about the reward. After that, we would all meet up and travel to town, where we’d earn some money to travel to Lariatne.

That was for after the storm, though. While it was still ongoing, the priority was hiding from the priest. If they used their position as a member of the temple of law to conduct an inspection (Starlight brought this up), then there weren’t many options.

While Starlight could open a sub dimension to hide in (magic that sounded incredible), I couldn’t use it because of my antimagic. Illusions wouldn’t work either for the same reason, the only possible option was a disguise but we didn’t have the tools for anything convincing.

In the end, it seemed that leaving the shelter was the only ‘safe’ option. I’d be at the mercy of the storm and Starlight couldn’t help because of my antimagic, but my chances were better… while it saved my life several times, this anti-magic has also been an incredible hindrance.

To my surprise, the whole party was willing to leave the shelter with me. Vildost volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on the priest and Starlight would stay with him, since she could help him find us if needed. The only help she offered otherwise were rather sturdy looking raincoats for each of us, likely made with her magic.

And so me, Kanako, Arashi and Nisha quickly headed out of the shelter after grabbing some rations, straight into the pouring rain and howling winds. It was so cold that I felt like I’d freeze to death without these thick raincoats (even if they’re just mundane plastic)… and I likely would, thinking about it.

The plan was simple: Search for another shelter and hide there. Even if the weather was awful, there shouldn’t be any complications.

“Well, it seems you’re quite predictable after all, aren’t you?” a stern voice called out from in front of us, cutting through the harsh storm… and as I saw the figures step out from around the corner, I knew that we just ran into the worst possible complication.

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