“Speaking of Dragon Dust,” said Rhyes, nodding toward a nervous looking man standing on the corner.
“Dealer?” I asked, looking at the young man,
“Probably, he is a criminal for sure,” he said, tapping the side of his face near his eye. “The Goddess Issara shows me the truth. If only that were enough, we should not have to wait long for him to break the law, just keep watch.”
“How would you know he was a criminal without the blessing?” I asked, curiously about how he was have done this before.
“See how alert he is, looking around nervously?” Rhyes asked me to which I nodded. “What does he have to be so nervous about? What around here could make him that nervous? The dead fish? Possible but unlikely.”
“Okay, that’s one tell. What else do you see?”
“Look where his hands are,” said Rhyes.
I looked at the nervous young man again. He was thin and gangly, probably in his late teens if I had to guess and he had messy brown hair and rather gaunt looking eyes. I focused on his hands as Rhyes suggested, he had one in his front pocket while the other kept drifting to his back. In the real world, I might have thought he had a gun but here it was more likely a knife or dagger. “You think he’s armed?” I asked.
“Almost everyone is armed around here, it is the ones that hide their weapons you have to watch out for, sneak attacks are more effective than any guard or patrolman like me would like them to be,” explained Rhyes.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“You tell me,” said Rhyes, smirking in an annoying manner that I didn’t appreciate.
I looked again at the drug dealer. I tried to look closer at him, but nothing stood out to me until I looked again at his eyes or rather his cheeks just below his eyes. Were those scales?
“The scales are a big tell you have got a Dragon Dust addict on your hands. It makes them very dangerous if they have already started to scale. Dragons are wild beasts, it is only the ancient ones that ever develop real intelligence, the lesser drakes and the like are . . . they are not simple, but they are more inclined to follow their baser instincts. When you mix humans or any other race with Dragon the results can be really volatile. This lad is most likely stronger than me, even at a lowly level 12 as he is.”
“Dragon Dust makes you stronger?” I asked.
“It makes you everything in small doses as well as being a highly prized alchemy ingredient, the problem is, it gets abused like you would not believe,” explained Rhyes.
“I believe you,” I replied. “Is Dragon Dust illegal?”
“Yes and no,” he answered. “Dragon Dust itself is not illegal, the problem comes with how it is obtained. Legally, it can be purchased from any apothecary or collected directly from the source if you have the strength to do so. Unfortunately, for men such as this young fellow, it usually involves stealing it from adventurers or the king’s hunters which means the death of said adventurers and hunters. The brave ones will steal it from an apothecary but that exposes them to a lot of risks, this is the city that never stops moving. Anyway, once they have it, they reprocess it with the goal of making it go further. To do that they cut it again and again with some rather unsavory magical ingredients that warp the effects and often poison the user. This means whoever prepared it is responsible for whoever dies from their batch.”
“Do you think this kid is really the one making it?” I asked.
“Probably not, but that does not mean he is not an accessory to any deaths caused by the brand he is selling illegally or the deaths during the acquisition of his product. We will arrest him in the act then we can press him to get to the source,” explained Rhyes. I watched his eyes narrow, “Here we go, buyer coming in.”
I followed his gaze to see a very pretty woman, maybe a few years older than me,
I watched in morbid fascination as the girl smiled and waved at the dealer, skipping a few extra steps to get to him just a little faster. I watched as the girl hugged him, exchanged a little talk, her hands took his in hand, and there it was, a flash of gold, money changed hands.
“I will arrest the dealer, you get the girl,” ordered Rhyes, all business at the moment.
No time like the present to test my new spell and try to learn something new while I was at it.
“By order of King Leopold, the 8th, you are both under arrest. Surrender immediately and no harm will come to you,” warned Rhyes loudly.
The girl looked terrified, looking every which way for an escape. Just as she was about to try to run, the dealer shoved her in the back toward us before turning to run himself.
“Why do they always run?” Rhyes griped, running after him.
The girl seemed to think this was her get out of jail free card and tried to walk away only to be cut off by my spear blocking her path. “Sorry miss, but you’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, but sir, this is all just a big misunderstanding. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she tried to protest.
“And the Dragon Dust in your pocket there?” I asked, motioning to the large pocket in the clean apron she wore.
She flinched.
“Now, surrender,” I said.
“But sir, this is just a big mistake, he is trying to frame me,” she tried once more to defend herself.
Now I was getting frustrated, I really didn’t want to hit this woman. Call me weak if you will but I hate to even think about striking the defenseless, let alone a woman. I was running out of options and knew I needed to do something soon. Then I remembered part of why I was here, I wanted the chance to learn the spell ‘Order: Surrender’. I felt for the energy that was part of my existence in this world, pulling on it subtly and guiding it to my throat. I spoke once more, the image of this girl surrendering in full at the front of my mind. “Surrender,” I commanded clearly and loudly, a wave of magic radiated from my mouth passing over the girl and continuing on for a few feet before petering out.
The girl changed slightly, waterworks began to spill from her eyes as she dropped to her knees her arms up in surrender.
And now for the last step, I chanted the 5-second spell for ‘Holy Shackles’. When I finished my spell, I watch slightly mesmerized as bands of pure light surrounded the girl’s wrists and ankles, then a thin band of light formed connecting the wrists and another for the ankles. She also now bore the debuff ‘Captured’.
That wasn’t too bad at all. The flashing exclamation in the lower part of my user interface suggested I had possibly succeeded in learning one of the spells I was also after. Focusing on it for a second popped open a system message window.
You’ve learned the Law and Order spell ‘Order: Surrender’
Order: Surrender
Level: N/A
Experience: N/A
Spell Duration: 30 seconds
Spell Cast Speed: Instant
Spell Mana Cost: 25
Spell Effect: You have an additional 40% chance to cause a non-combatant or weakened target below 10% health to surrender.
That was exactly what I was hoping for, and best of all, it was cheap. That also made sense to a certain extent. Warriors typically don’t have much in the way of a mana pool so their spells, or similar spells as was the case for me, had to be cheaper to use.
With the girl in custody and Rhyes busy chasing down the dealer I was left to wait and let my eyes
explore the Fish Market once again. There seemed to be a steady crowd of shoppers passing through, going from stall to stall, most of them appearing to be citizens and not players.
“Out of the way,” shouted a voice from behind me.
Startled, I spun around with my spear at the ready and aimed at the source. It was an older man pushing a handcart laden with fish. For the first time, I noticed the familiar glow and swirl of a World Tree portal a few streets away back in the direction the man came from.
“I said move, moron,” the man yelled at me again. I looked at his nameplate,
I frowned but took one of the girl’s arms in hand and move both of us from his path.
“Mind if I ask where you came from?” I asked the fishmonger as he grunted and pushed his cart forward.
“Isle of West in the Fresh Water Sea of Cay,” he answered gruffly.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“It is a fisherman island in a large freshwater sea, what more do you want to know?” he asked sarcastically, continuing to push his cart forward.
I decided to leave well enough alone, the man was clearly not in the mood to talk, I’m sure the blubbering criminal wasn’t helping.
Rhyes returned a few minutes later with the dealer in tow looking fairly roughed up based on the really low health bar.
“He resisted?” I asked.
“They always resist,” replied Rhyes. “Some more than others. I see you succeeded.”
“Yessir, even learned the ‘Surrender’ spell,” I added.
“Good, let me send up a flare to get these two picked up,” said the patrolman, pulling a small tube with a string dangling from the end of it. He held it above his head, aiming skyward and pulled hard on the string, sending a bright green flare into the dark sky above.
“Does the color mean anything?” I asked.
“Green is for prisoner pick up, Blue is for out of control magic, Yellow is for patrolman needs assistance, Red is for murder, and White is for invasion,” he answered. “There are a few others, but they are so rarely used . . . anyway, those are the main ones.”
“Do invasions occur often?” I asked.
“Often enough, every now and again someone will get a bug up their backsides about something Root City did or did not do and decide to do something about it. People die, property is damaged, and whoever is responsible is eventually captured and sent to the deep dark to rot.”
“What is the deep dark? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned it,” I asked.
“A prison,” he answered simply.
I motioned for him to continue but he shook his head. “No can do.”
“So, I noticed there is a portal down that way,” I pointed down the street the fishmonger came from.
“Yeah, the Fresh Water Sea of Cay, never been there myself but I hear it is as dark and dreary as can be. Always raining and cold but the fish that come from it are delicious,” he explained.
“Is that why there is a fish market here?” I asked.
“That and three more nearby portals that lead to watery provinces. All popular places for fishing,” he answered, his eyes scanning the area.
I hadn’t really paid much attention to all the questions I was asking but I forgot that Rhyes was actually at work right now. He was doing his job and I was distracting him.
Once I did take notice I chose to try and mimic him, scanning the area, looking for any sign of crime. But I couldn’t imagine anyone stealing a fish except for maybe a stray cat.
It was barely a ten-minute wait before a prison wagon, pulled by a pair of black and white Clydesdales arrived, a dwarf guard in the driver seat. “Rhyes, saw the flare, who are our customers today?”
“Riley, good to see you. You made good time today,” he replied. “Dust dealer and customer.”
“Right then, put them in the back with the other riffraff,” said Riley, tossing a ring with a single key to Rhyes.
“I’m Bye-bye, nice to meet you,” I said, offering my hand to the dwarf. When he took it and shook it the small man nearly crushed it.
Rhyes just grinned, having caught the key. He took hold of the two prisoners and marched them to the back of the prison wagon and out of sight.
“Nice to meet you, I am Wagoneer Guard Riley, but you can just call me Riley, never been much for formality. Suppose that might explain why I am still just a Wagoneer after almost a century on the job. Anyway, what are you doing with Rhyes?”
“I’m observing him, trying to learn a bit from him. He’s very good at his job,” I added at the end, I figured it couldn’t hurt to talk him up a bit to the other guards.
“Was not always the case but he turned himself around. Proud of that I am,” he replied. “But why are you observing him? Never heard of an adventurer observing a guard before.”
“I serve the Goddess Issara,” I answered, causing the dwarf to bow his head and mumble a prayer. One of these days I will have to ask someone about that prayer.
“Blessings upon you, my lord,” said Riley, finished with his impromptu prayer which I was beginning to think was some kind of compulsion, maybe from Goddess Issara herself. I just couldn’t see so many people worshiping the same Goddess of Justice.
“None of that,” I insisted immediately. “Just Bye-bye is fine, and I’m following Rhyes around to learn from him. Serving justice is about more than I thought it was, I’ve already learned a lot from him.”
“Good for you, lad,” said Riley.
“Alright, we are all set here,” said Rhyes, returning and tossing the key to Riley.
“Well then, it was nice chatting, but I should probably start toward the magistrate’s office with this lot, getting awfully full back there,” said Riley, taking up the reins and giving them a shake to move his horses forward.
Rhyes motioned for me to follow him, continuing his patrol. Just as before, I tried to mimic him as he moved about. I heard the expression ‘keep your head on a swivel’ before, it was popular with cop shows, but I don’t think I ever understood what it meant before now. The man was completely alert, any sudden motions drew his attention, people coming in and out of buildings were spotted and watched at least momentarily before he moved on. Even with the Blessing from Issara giving him the ability to spot criminals he still observed everyone around us as we walked through the crowd.
We were about five streets away from the Fish Market when I saw something new and unexpected. An elderly woman leaning heavily on a cane was walking through the crowd, regularly bumping into people, apologizing and continuing on down the street. I don’t know why it caught my attention. I didn’t have the ability to see crime like Rhyes did and he wasn’t reacting at all.
“Hang on a second,” I said to Rhyes, getting him to stop and face me.
“See something?” he asked, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.
“You saw something then?” I accused, seeing the look on his face, feeling a little heat in my voice.
“Maybe, what do you see?” he asked.
I frowned but looked toward the elderly woman, nodding in her direction. “I don’t see anything, but something looks off about that.”
“It should,” said Rhyes. “That old woman is very successfully using a bump to pick the pockets of those she bumps into.”
And just like that, the woman took on a red tinge signifying she was a criminal and immediately notifying me of a new subskill.
You have learned the ‘Perception’ subskill ‘See Injustice’
Perception
Level: 25
Experience: 1.39%
Skill Range: 12.50 yards
Chance to See: 16.25%
Chance to Identify/Track: 23.50%
Subskill: See In
justice
Skill Effect (Passive): Enables you to see better criminals
“Do you want to arrest her or shall I?” Rhyes asked.
“I’ll do it,” I said, my irritation forgotten and replaced with a hint of excitement, especially as I do believe that red tinge surrounding the woman suggested I had learned a subskill of my ‘Perception’ skill.
I carefully approached the old woman as she continued down the street, bumping into anyone that came just a little too close. I was trying to spot the actual crime when she did, but it seemed she didn’t pick the pocket of everyone she bumped into. Was that intentional? Or a failure?
Approaching her from behind, I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. I never saw the blade coming.
Chapter 5
I literally saw red as blood filled my right eye even as I staggered backward away from the old woman. Except she was no longer an old woman.
I was using my ‘Acrobatics’ skill to my maximum capability to try and put distance between us but she just kept coming, scoring the occasional glancing blow.
Acrobatics
Level: 39
Experience: 68.11%
Combat Movement
Dodge Chance: +19.50%
Skill Stamina Cost: 5 per second
And where was Rhyes? With his level, he should have easily been able to handle this. Unfortunately, as she kept pressing me, I didn’t even have a chance to see where he was or what happened to him that he wasn’t helping me. For a moment, it crossed my mind that this might have been his plan all along and that I was being setup.
World Tree Online: The Duchess of Hammers: 2nd Dive Begins Page 7
