Overlay - Part 22

“You really are quite mysterious.”

Examining him I said, “You seem to have a question. Ask it.” Then I added, “I won’t punish you.”

He was hesitating but finally said, “What is it that you are after?”

Alice was still hanging out on the bottom floor and she shouted out, “Hamburgers, we still need hamburgers!”

“As for what we want. That is a not really that complicated. I suppose it can be summarized with ‘A pleasant life’. Alice had only really known hardship and I guess the same goes for me. I want us to know happiness. Even if that means having to do some drastic stuff.”

Azar had explained a lot about the Jental and I currently felt that it was missing some of the features we needed. I would probably have to work hard.

“A pleasant life…” said Portman. He ruminated that sentence for a moment before breaking out in to hearty laughter. “You know I think I had completely misjudged you. But I don’t think things will be as easy as you want them to be. You might have to end of conquering this city to get that pleasant life that you want.”

“That would be horrible.” I looked over to Alice. That might actually be what I had to do. With our levels and abilities it would be hard to life anywhere normal. Even if I didn’t conquer the city I would still need to do many things to make it a good place for us to live.

After a while of thinking I took out a list that I prepared and handed it to Portman. “I would like you do purchase these things if they are available. Its ok if you don’t know what some of them are. Try to get the food stuffs back here by the evening. It will be possible that me and Alice won’t be here then but just leave it in the pantry.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Pay a visit to some of the High Nobility.”

He looked over the list and said, “I’ll do my best to find these.”

Once he was done I called over to Alice, “Come on, I think we need to go start a revolt.”

“Sounds exciting. Will we be fighting anybody?”

“Quite probably. I don’t imagine the High Nobility are going to like what I plan on doing.”

Our first destination was at the edge of town. This area still had nice looking buildings but they were a bit more run down and less well maintained. There was a building that I was looking for. When I arrived we stopped outside the front door.

I knocked and was greeting by a familiar voice, “coming.” A moment later Azar opening the doors. He looked surprised to see me there. “Uh, Jack, what are you doing here?”

“Yes, I would like to talk with your father. Is he home?”

Azar shook his head, “No, dad is not here. The army has been on high alert so he won’t be home for a while.”

“Ah, yes, my fault I’m certain. You would say that your dad is a good person, yes?”

Azar nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yes, the best.”

“Excellent. He sounds perfect. Can you lead me to him? Actually first…” I quickly invited Azar to my party.

“Sure, I can lead you to him. Is there something you want from him?” Said Azar as he accepted my party invitation.

“For now it is a secret. If I revealed it too soon then it would be a surprise.”

I had Azar lead me through the city toward a section that was clearly designed for the military. There were many people here. The soldiers all looked nervous as they saw me approaching.

May of them drew their weapons but I just walked past them ignoring it. We headed through the barracks to one of the rooms. Inside Azar called out, “Nikias, it’s me Azar, are you here?”

There was some scrambling an a man stepped forward. He was maybe thirty, well build but not exactly handsome. He had a gruff look but was he not glaring at me I think he would look friendly.

Among the other soldiers he was reasonably high level, 12 which was pretty good considering.

However he didn’t back down as he stepped between me and his son, “What do you want to Azar?”

I nodded, “Good, you are like I have been lead to believe. You will definitely do. Please accept this party invite and then follow me. I promise I will do no harm to your of Azar.”

The man was clearly contemplating what I said but when I promised not to hurt his son he seemed to finally relent. He might be willing to fight to the death to protect Azar he wasn’t going to throw his life away just to oppose me.

He accepted my party invite.

“Excellent. Alice grab Azar, I’ll take Nikias. Oh, and you two should keep your mouth’s closed. You wouldn’t want to bite your tongue off.” Alice did I instructed and lifted up Nikias effortlessly.

Then before any of the other soldiers could do anything about it we were gone. As our near full speed there was nothing anybody in the city could do about us. In mere minutes we had left the city and were now far outside the city.

Once there we could speed up not needing to worrying about navigating the streets. The wilderness that we were heading was some place I noticed on our way to the city. A swamp that had been full of monsters. We had taken a short cut through it and it had been disgusting. But there was powerful monsters there.

When we finally stopped our two carried people fell to the ground. They seemed to be suffering from horrible motion sickness.

Azar managed to recover quickest. “Where, where are we?”

“Grandmoor swamps is what I believe this place is called.”

“But that is like 100 miles from the city.”

“Yeah, that feels about right.”

“You ran us here?”

“That’s right.”

“How powerful are you?”

“You can seem my level clearly can’t you?”

Nikias was also beginning to recover as well. However his composure was still quite pale. “What are you planning on doing to us here?” He coughed.

“Isn’t it obvious. I plan on level you two up. What better place to power level than this swamp. I don’t think there is any place better anywhere nearby.”

“Why? Why are you doing that?” He seemed a bit angry at me.

“Why?” I grinned, “Because I plan on making you the King.”

The two of them were just gaping at me but Alice burst out into laughter. She had already been aware of my plan but watching their reactions had caused her to lose control.

“What? King? Me… that is impossible.” Nikias couldn’t seem to process what I had told him.

“Sure, it is possible. Get you some levels and you won’t be able to be assassinated. Then I can force the high nobility into exile and make you the King.” I nodded to myself. It was an excellent plan, well maybe not excellent but acceptable.

“That can’t possibly work. The High Nobility control everything. Maybe if you became king it would work, but me, impossible.”

“Are you happy with the way things are?” I asked. He didn’t response.

“Don’t worry.” I said, “Unlike when I did this your lives won’t actually be in danger and you will be able to eat good food when you are done.” After all I wasn’t a monster like the Demon King was, well not in the same way.

“Monster killing time!” Said Alice excitedly.

“Make sure they are involved a little. I think they gain experience faster if they actually do most of the fighting.” I had a few of weapons that I had brought with me.

The weapons were, relatively speaking, weak weapons. However they were made to be easy to use and designed to be hard to cut your own head off with.

“Azar, do you have any combat related jobs?”

Azar shook his head, “No, I’ve done some practicing but I don’t have any jobs.”

“What kind of job are you thinking of acquiring?” Because of the versatility of my Gladiator job it was reasonably easy to train people if different jobs, at the very least the initial rank in the job.

There was some pondering before he finally said, “It is cool to have a big sword.”

“A big sword…” I grinned, “That is great. Do you want an extremely big weapon? I can make you one but it won’t be ready until tomorrow. I’ll let Alice handle both of your training today.”

Alice nodded and said, “Follow me.”

She lead the two of them off into the swamp. They were still trying to come to terms with what I was asking for them. I was glad they didn’t ask the problem I didn’t really have an answer for. It was if that Nikias hadn’t wanted to be king. That would have been a problem. But he saw the problems in the city was well as anybody and must have wanted to fix things.

With them gone I went off. There were bigger monsters farther into the swamp. I needed to find one with a really big piece to turn into a weapon. After a while I found a giant insect, at least three times bigger than me.

I was able to take it done quickly. I needed to avoid damaging its carapace too much so I had to hold back a little.

After I had defeated it I broke down the insect taking each of the pieces and cleaning it thoroughly. With the different pieces I began my first craft. It was a large sword which was mostly hollow in the center making it lighter than it should be. However the first attempt was probably a bit too big for Azar.

If he was going to be a big weapon wielder than large was good but I would need to slowly work up the size of the weapon. Because of that I made several different sizes, some of them quite large.

I buried most of the weapons for Azar to use in the future while I took the smallest one. It was still a very large weapon, a giant two handed sword for a kid like Azar. I could easily swing it in one hand but that was an oddity. I could swing the largest weapons that I had made in one hand.

It was getting fairly late by the time that I was done. I checked the status of our two trainees. Alice had done well. Nikias had gained two levels and Azar had gained three. Alice probably could have done it faster but doing that would have put the two of them in mortal danger.

I showed up where they were training. I could see that both Azar and Nikias were exhausted and panting. Alice of course was perfectly fine.

As I landed I clapped my hands and said, “That is good enough for today. I don’t want to press you too quickly.” The looked glad to be done and collapsed on the ground.

Nikias while collapsed called out, “Why do I have to be king?”

“Well if Azar can think of somebody else that would be better suited to be king then I will accept them instead.”

Azar shook his head, “No, my dad would make the best King.”

“See, now here you go. I made a sword for you.” I handed the sword over to Azar who tried to lift it and was barely able to hold it.

“Alice you can take Nikias back now. I just need to spend some time with Azar trying to get a job to use the sword.”

“No, if Azar is staying then I am too.” Said Nikias.

“Your call.” I said. “Now Azar, follow me and I will teach you how to use a sword that big.”