Duskbound-Chapter 132 - Book 2, 53
It was just after noon when they entered town, much to Velik's annoyance. They'd made abysmal time getting to Dansworth, entirely on account of how the other hunter was too weak to do more than walk sedately after his ordeal trapped in the cave and climbing up the cliff. Velik honestly could have gotten them both to town faster by carrying the man the whole way.
Fortunately, it turned out that the time hadn't been wasted. The hunting team had been out on the water all afternoon, trying to find scalewarks, and had just returned to town for lunch. Their missing team member showed Velik the way, and he found himself in a tavern that reeked of fish—not that the rest of the town smelled much better. A dozen people were scattered around the place, all focused on their meals.
Milly was sitting at the bar, her forehead resting against the palm of her hand and an untouched plate of fish with some greens on the side. Two men and another woman not dressed anything like the locals sat at a nearby table, all glumly picking at their food. Looks like things aren't going well for the bronze team.
"Hey, you shits!" the hunter Velik had rescued yelled. "Think you're funny just leaving me behind, don't you?"
That got everybody's attention. "Carle?" one of the hunters at the table gaped. "You're alive?!"
"Damn right I'm alive! You assholes couldn't be bothered to even look for me?"
"We looked," Milly said, her voice cracking. "We've been trying to find you for two days."
"Doing what? Sailing around in circles," Carle demanded. "I'm just lucky someone actually had the stones to go poking around where the monsters live."
Velik hadn't been planning on rescuing anyone when he'd gone in there, but he figured there was no point in correcting Carle's story. The guy wanted to be indignant, rightfully so, and Velik was happy to let him. What he wasn't content to do was wait for the argument to be over. He stepped past Carle and slid onto the empty stool next to Milly.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice low and angry. "Haven't you ruined enough of my year already?"
"I have a letter from your father," Velik said. He could have made the argument that Milly had done just as much to make his life miserable as he apparently had to her just by existing in her general proximity, that she'd taken a much more active role in it, but he wasn't interested in having a loud, petty fight that would serve no purpose besides providing lunch entertainment for half a dozen strangers.
He fished the letter out of his pack, pleased to see that the water seal on it had worked as expected. It was some sort of alchemical oil rubbed into the leather to make it waterproof, combined with a weak enchantment that prevented anything, even air, from getting through the mouth of the bag. For as much as he'd paid for it, he would have been extremely unhappy if it had failed.
"No way Dad would have sent a letter through you," Milly said as she snatched it out of his hand.
"There was an… emergency. I was the only one available, and I only did it because he has some information I want."
Best not to get into specifics. I don't know if any of these hunters are corrupted.
She broke the wax seal on the paper and started reading, stopping occasionally to shoot suspicious glances at Velik. He stared back placidly while Carle and the other three hunters had a heated background argument. At one point, Velik got drawn into things enough to hand off the sack full of scalewark fins to the man, but otherwise he remained silent and motionless.
Milly must have reread that letter three or four times before she finally folded it up and stuffed it into her pocket. "I can't leave," she announced. "There's still work to be done here."
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
"I already killed the scalewarks for you."
"One pod of them," she agreed. "We've taken out three of them ourselves. More and more just keep showing up."
"I don't have time to wait around," Velik said.
"Not my problem," she said back.
"Your team can stay and keep working without you. My deal with your father specified bringing you back to Cravel safely."
"And I'm telling you, I'm not leaving until the job is done. So what now? We both know you're a higher level than me. You can make me if you want. Is that what you're going to do? Just bully and intimidate everyone around you by throwing your weight around until you get what you want?"
"What?" Velik was confused. "No, of course not. Why would you think I'd do that?"
"That's what your kind always does," Milly told him.
My kind?
"With epic classes," she clarified, seeing the look on his face.
Is that why you've been so awful to me, because you were jealous that I have a better class than you? Lady, I'd have happily traded it for a common laborer class to keep everyone back home from dying. My family, my friends, my whole life would have been better if I'd never gone into those dungeon ruins.
It wasn't worth arguing with her, and he didn't feel like he needed to justify his existence to some petty little woman who'd built her entire opinion of him on nothing but assumptions. Velik had done his job here well enough. Milly knew her father wanted her to return home, and if she didn't want to go, he wasn't going to fight about it.
New n𝙤vel chapters are published on freeweɓnøvel.com.
"No, I'm not going to kidnap you," Velik said, his voice harsher than he'd intended. "I don't give a fuck what you do, Milly. If you don't want to go back, fine. You're an adult with a bronze rank in the guild. You get to make your own decisions. Do me a favor and write your father a letter back so I can show that I found you and you refused his orders."
"Like I'd do you any favors," she sneered.
The temptation to punch her in the face was growing stronger the longer the conversation lasted. It wasn't even to force her to do what he wanted, but just because she was so damn aggravating. If anyone had ever needed to get popped one in the mouth, it was Milly. He restrained himself, though, and tried one last time.
"You could at least do it for your father, so he knows you're alright."
"Dad knows I can take care of myself. Now, if you don't fucking mind, I've got a job to do here, and I don't need you hanging around trying to take more of the credit for it. How am I supposed to build a reputation as a capable monster hunter when some asshole wannabe-gold blows into town and starts doing my work for me?"
The next thing Velik knew, Milly was laid out on the floor with blood pouring out of her nose. He looked down at her, then turned his gaze to the rest of her team. They were half-risen from their seats, but none of them had gone for their weapons yet. Whether they were waiting to see if things would escalate before stepping in or just afraid to tangle with him was open to debate, but as long as they stayed on their side of the room, he'd leave them alone.
"Maybe learn when to stop running your mouth," Velik advised her. "Your daddy isn't always going to be around to save you from yourself."
Then he stepped over her and walked out of the tavern.
* * *
The return trip to Cravel went smoothly, but Velik was dreading talking to Pevril again. There was no chance the man was going to just accept that Velik had upheld his half of their deal without Milly in tow, but at the same time, if he actually had kidnapped her, Pevril would have used that as an excuse to avoid paying up anyway.
That's what I get for trying to make a deal with that asshole. I knew what he was like, and getting that parasite out of him didn't change him one bit. This whole idea was a disaster.
There was no chance he was getting any instruction on how to use that class orb to augment his own class from his former instructor now, not that Velik would trust anything the instructor had to say on the subject anyway. But one way or another, he was going to drag the information he'd been promised out of Pevril. He'd already won against him when he'd been under the monster's control. Now Pevril was down two legs. Velik could beat him again if he had to.
It would just be so much easier if he didn't have to. Perhaps foolishly, he hoped it wouldn't come to that. If possible, he wanted to avoid burning all of his bridges with the Monster Hunters Guild, but he'd been patient with their organization long enough.
One way or another, it was time he started getting something back for all the time and effort he'd wasted on them. He'd risked his life, multiple times, for their stupid rules and their political games, and even though he knew it wasn't the true guild pulling those strings, after meeting the real Pevril, Velik had no reason to believe they wouldn't have done the same things for different reasons.
After all, there was a reason nobody had realized their guild had been infiltrated by monsters for years. The victims of the corruption just kept acting like themselves in public the whole time, so why would the guild as a whole behave differently now that they were free of that influence? Even if they were better about how they handled things, better wasn't the same as good.
One way or another, he promised himself again as he ran back to the city.
