Free Web NovelChapter 103: Murder Is A Habit [I]
Mirela felt a cold shiver run down her spine that had absolutely nothing to do with the winter weather as she wrapped her arms around her own chest, slowly shaking her head.
’What’s wrong with him?’
Her Master was completely losing his grip on reality.
He was treating his life, and the world around him, like it was a grand elaborate joke.
He had disconnected from the emotional weight of his existence... He was a gamer again and everyone else was just code.
’Did something happen that he didn’t tell us...?’
He lowered his hands, adjusting the collar of his coat, and continued walking down the street as if nothing strange had happened.
At the very end of the main road, looming over the snow-covered rooftops of the town, was the portal.
It was a massive swirling vortex of jagged blue and white energy, easily forty feet tall.
The sheer density of the mana leaking from the gate distorted the air around it, sending freezing shockwaves down the street.
That was the entrance to the Haunted Winterlands.
"Are we going on foot, Master?" Mirela asked nervously, having to raise her voice to be heard over the howling wind of the portal. "The snow inside looks very deep."
"No," Klaus replied, his eyes scanning the busy street leading up to the gate. "We need a ride."
He spotted what he was looking for almost immediately.
Rumbling down the center of the cobblestone road was a massive heavy transport carriage.
The wood was reinforced with thick plates of steel though it didn’t look very designed to survive the brutal conditions of the Winterlands since it had horses.
Klaus didn’t hesitate. He stepped off the wooden sidewalk and walked directly into the center of the street, planting himself right in the path of the approaching carriage.
The driver, a burly, bearded man wrapped in thick furs saw the lone figure blocking the road.
He yanked hard on the heavy leather reins, bringing the massive dire-horses to a sliding, complaining halt just a few feet away from Klaus.
"Hey! Are you blind, you suicidal rat?!" the driver roared from his elevated seat. He leaned over the side of the carriage, his face red with anger. "Get the hell out of the road!"
To emphasize his disgust, the driver hocked a thick glob of spit directly down at Klaus’s face.
Klaus didn’t even blink. He casually tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left and the spit sailed past his cheek, landing harmlessly in the snow behind him.
Klaus smiled up at the furious driver.
"That’s a nice carriage," Klaus noted pleasantly, his tone conversational. "What are you hauling in the back?"
The driver sneered with his grip tightening on his heavy whip.
"I am hauling high-grade survival supplies and magical heating cores! They belong to my Lord, who is stationed at a forward camp inside the Winterlands! So beat it, you filthy punk, before I trample you into the ice!"
Klaus raised an eyebrow. "Your Lord?"
"Yes!" the driver barked proudly. "Lord Varhem! He is a high noble of the Capital! His supplies take priority over your miserable life! Now move!"
The word hung in the freezing air.
Noble...
Mirela, standing safely on the sidewalk, saw the exact moment the switch flipped in her Master’s brain.
The cheerful, relaxed smile on Klaus’s face didn’t fade, but it twitched as a dark, terrifying shadow fell over his dead eyes.
"Lord Varhem," Klaus repeated softly with the name tasting like ash on his tongue. "A noble... How incredibly convenient..."
Klaus didn’t reach for his sword... He didn’t waste time channeling a long incantation, and he didn’t give the driver a single second to react.
Klaus simply raised his right hand as his palm faced the man on the elevated seat.
He tapped directly into the deepest reserves of his mana, bypassing the standard elemental flow and drawing purely on his raw intent.
[Wind Magic: Piercing Gale.]
BOOM!
A massive compressed shockwave of violent wind erupted directly from Klaus’s palm. The blast was so incredibly powerful it cracked the frozen cobblestones beneath his boots and kicked up a blinding cloud of white snow in every direction.
The concussive force hit the driver square in the chest with the power of a runaway siege engine.
The man didn’t even have time to scream.
He was violently launched backward off the driver’s seat. He flew through the air, carried by the furious gale, sailing over the heads of the panicked horses.
He slammed directly into the wrought-iron fence bordering the street behind the carriage.
SHLUCK! CRUNCH!
The impact was horrific.
Three thick, jagged iron spikes atop the fence punched cleanly through the driver’s back, tearing through his ribs, his lungs, and his heart.
The rusted, bloody metal points erupted out the front of his chest, pinning him securely to the fence like a morbid human butterfly.
The driver’s head slumped forward as he was dead instantly.
A heavy sickening silence fell over the street, broken only by the steady dripping of dark, hot blood falling from the iron spikes and melting into the pristine white snow below.
The surrounding townsfolk... Merchants, mercenaries, and beggars froze in absolute shock. For three seconds, nobody moved, then the screaming started.
"Murder!" a woman shrieked, dropping her basket of bread into the snow.
The street erupted into total chaos.
The townsfolk scattered, shoving past each other in a desperate, terrified stampede to get as far away from the dark-haired killer as possible. The merchants abandoned their stalls, diving into alleyways.
Klaus didn’t look at the fleeing crowd. He lowered his hand with his expression returning to a state of absolute, bored indifference.
He stepped over a puddle of slush, grabbed the metal handle of the carriage, and smoothly climbed up into the elevated driver’s seat then he picked up the heavy leather reins that the dead man had dropped.
Klaus settled into the padded leather seat as he turned his head, looking down at Mirela.
The Beastkin was standing on the sidewalk, her entire body trembling violently. Her knees knocked together, her hands clamped over her mouth as she stared at the bloody impaled corpse hanging from the iron fence.
"Well?" Klaus called out cheerfully over the howling wind. "Are you coming along?" freewebnøvel.coɱ
Mirela slowly turned her wide terrified eyes toward him as her breath came in short, panicked gasps.
"Master..." Mirela whimpered, a tear slipping down her cheek. "You... you just murdered someone. He was just a delivery driver. He didn’t attack us."
Klaus looked at the corpse pinned to the fence. He tilted his head with his dark eyes analyzing the dead man as if inspecting a piece of broken furniture.
He turned back to Mirela, offering a casual dismissive wave of his hand.
"What?" Klaus asked, his tone completely lighthearted and utterly devoid of human empathy. "He’s just an NPC, Mirela. He respawns, or he disappears. I don’t really care... The world put him here to give us a carriage."
Mirela gulped with the cold dread completely paralyzing her heart.
She didn’t know what an ’NPC’ was as the word sounded foreign and meaningless but she understood the context perfectly.
Her Master no longer saw the people in this world as living, breathing human beings with families and lives.
He saw them as disposable objects.
He saw them as obstacles to be removed, or resources to be taken. .. He had become a monster wearing a human face give or take.
"Now come on," Klaus ordered, his cheerful tone dropping away, replaced by a cold, sharp edge that brooked no argument. "Or I will leave you behind in the snow right here."
Mirela didn’t want to get in the carriage.
Every single survival instinct in her body screamed at her to run away, to hide in the tavern and wait for Serra and Zephyra to return but she wanted to...
Trembling uncontrollably, Mirela stepped off the sidewalk.
She grabbed the metal handle and clumsily pulled herself up into the driver’s seat, sitting as far away from Klaus as the narrow wooden bench allowed then she hugged her knees to her chest, keeping her eyes firmly glued to the floorboards.
Klaus smiled, satisfied with her compliance.
He raised his arms, gripping the heavy leather reins tightly.
"Hyah!" Klaus shouted.
He brought the reins down hard, snapping the thick leather against the backs of the massive dire-horses.
The beasts roared with their hooves tearing into the frozen cobblestones as they surged forward, pulling the heavy transport carriage down the street at full speed.
Klaus didn’t steer them toward the town exit, instead he steered them straight ahead.
The massive, swirling blue and white vortex of the portal loomed in front of them, radiating an intense, freezing aura that distorted the very fabric of space.
Mirela squeezed her eyes tightly shut, bracing herself for the impact.
Klaus didn’t slow down. He kept his foot pressed firmly against the wooden floorboards with his dark eyes locked onto the center of the vortex.
He didn’t feel fear.
’I hope I get some good skills from the souls of the monsters here...’
The heavy carriage crashed through the boundary of the gate.
The world flashed in a blinding explosion of white light, and the sounds of the outpost town were instantly silenced, replaced by the terrifying endless roar of the Haunted Winterlands.
The transition through the portal wasn’t just a simple step from one location to another. It was a violent tearing sensation, as if the very fabric of reality was being shredded apart and stitched back together in the span of a single heartbeat.
Mirela squeezed her eyes shut as a blinding flash of blue and white light consumed the carriage.
The air pressure dropped drastically, popping her goat ears, and the familiar mundane sounds of the outpost town were instantly replaced by a deafening roar.
The Haunted Winterlands didn’t welcome them, it immediately tried to kill them!
They materialized out of thin air, ten feet above a frozen, jagged wasteland. The massive transport carriage, moving at a full, reckless sprint, was suddenly devoid of a smooth cobblestone road.
The four heavy horses screamed in terror as their hooves hit a patch of slick black ice and their legs buckled instantly under their own massive weight.
"Hold on!" Klaus shouted over the howling wind.
He didn’t grab the reins. He let them go, reaching across the driver’s bench and grabbing Mirela by the thick collar of her winter cloak.
The lead horse tripped, snapping its front legs with a sickening crunch, and plowed face-first into a massive, jagged snowdrift.
The sudden, violent deceleration caused the entire steel-reinforced carriage to flip forward.
CRASH!
The sound of splintering wood and groaning metal echoed through the freezing wasteland as the carriage collided with a massive naturally formed spike of dark blue ice jutting out from the ground.
The driver’s bench shattered into a hundred pieces.
Klaus didn’t wait for gravity to take them down. He channeled a burst of wind magic into his boots and kicked off the collapsing wooden frame.
WHOOSH!
He launched himself backward into the air, carrying Mirela with him. They flew clear of the rolling, disintegrating wreckage and Klaus twisted his body mid-air, ensuring his own back was facing the ground.
They landed hard in a deep bank of pristine white snow with Klaus absorbing the vast majority of the impact while keeping Mirela securely tucked against his chest.
A hundred yards away, the ruined carriage finally came to a grinding halt.
One of the dire-horses lay dead, its neck snapped, while the others thrashed wildly in their broken leather harnesses, screaming into the blizzard.
Mirela gasped for air with her heart hammering against her ribs. She looked up with Klaus was staring down at her as his dark eyes were calm and entirely unbothered by the catastrophic crash.
"Are you hurt?" Klaus asked.
Mirela quickly patted her arms and legs, shaking the snow from her dark hair. "I... I am fine, Master. The snow cushioned the fall."
Klaus nodded. He let go of her cloak and sat up.
The environment hit them instantly.
The one-eyed bartender hadn’t been lying. The cold in the Haunted Winterlands was not natural. It didn’t just bite at their exposed skin; it felt like a living, malicious entity trying to claw its way into their chests...
It bypassed the heavy wool and fur of their coats, sinking directly into their bones. It was a soul-freezing aura which a leftover curse from whatever ancient decaying monstrosity had died in this realm centuries ago.
Mirela immediately began to shiver with her breath forming thick clouds of white mist.
Klaus stood up, dusting the snow off his dark trousers and he looked around.
The landscape was a desolate, terrifying nightmare as the sky above was a swirling vortex of gray clouds and falling snow.
The ground was dotted with dead frozen trees that looked like reaching skeletal hands, and massive jagged spikes of blue ice jutted out of the ground at random intervals.
"Well," Klaus smiled with a grin spreading across his face. "This looks like a great place to farm some experience." freewёbnoνel.com
Before Mirela could respond, a low, rumbling growl echoed through the blizzard as the thrashing of the surviving dire-horses abruptly stopped.
Klaus turned his head. Through the thick veil of falling snow, several pairs of glowing, neon-blue eyes appeared.
They were circling the wreckage of the carriage.
The predators stepped out of the whiteout, revealing themselves.
They were Corrupted Frost Wolves.
These monsters were massive, easily the size of the dire-horses they were currently hunting, but they didn’t look like normal animals.
Patches of their gray fur had rotted away, replaced by jagged, protruding shards of living ice that served as organic armor.
Frost spilled from their jaws with every breath, and their eyes held zero intelligence... only a rabid supernatural hunger.
There were five of them. Two were tearing into the dead horse, while the other three turned their glowing blue eyes directly toward Klaus and Mirela.
"Stay behind me," Klaus ordered.
He didn’t sound worried, rather he sounded genuinely excited.
Klaus reached down and drew his iron sword as the metal hissed loudly against the scabbard.
’I don’t think Metal Magic will be the most optimal here...’ He thought, honestly with Soul Mana and Wind Magic, Klaus had honestly almost forgotten about his commoner affinity.
The alpha of the pack, a massive wolf with a thick ridge of ice spikes running down its spine, locked eyes with Klaus.
It dug its heavy, clawed paws into the snow and charged.
The beast crossed the distance in a matter of seconds moving with terrifying speed. It leaped into the air with its massive jaws unhinging to reveal rows of razor-sharp icicle-like fangs aimed directly at Klaus’s throat.
Mirela screamed.
"Master! Dodge!"
Klaus didn’t dodge. He didn’t raise his sword to parry the attack, and he didn’t channel his wind magic to blast the creature away.
He just stood his ground, planting his boots firmly in the snow, and raised his left forearm like a shield.
The Frost Wolf clamped its jaws down on his arm.
CRUNCH!
The sharp ice fangs pierced straight through his heavy winter coat, slicing through his skin and burying themselves deep into the muscle of his forearm.
Dark crimson blood immediately spilled onto the white snow as the physical force of the bite pushed Klaus back a half-step, but he didn’t fall.
Mirela watched in absolute horror, her hands flying to her mouth but Klaus didn’t scream. He didn’t even wince.
He looked down at the massive wolf hanging off his arm with its fangs buried in his flesh, and he started to laugh.
’So the skill actually works huh?’
He focused his mind inward and he felt the pain, but he also felt something else. The passive skill he had extracted from the Were-Hound... Beast’s Vitality activated instantly.
A deep, surging warmth flooded his injured arm.
The torn muscle fibers forcibly knit themselves back together around the wolf’s fangs as the bleeding stopped in a matter of seconds.
The raw supernatural stamina recovery pulsed through his veins, overriding the physical trauma entirely.
’It works perfectly,’ Klaus thought with a wide grin stretching across his face. ’I don’t even need to waste mana on dodging minor mobs anymore... I can just tank them.’
The Frost Wolf let out a confused, garbled growl around Klaus’s arm. It tried to pull back, sensing that its prey wasn’t reacting the way a human was supposed to react.
"Where do you think you’re going?" Klaus asked the monster.
He raised his iron sword high above his head.
He didn’t bother using his brilliant white Soul Mana since he didn’t need it.
He brought the blade down in a brutal, savage vertical chop, aiming directly for the wolf’s exposed neck.
SQUELCH!
The iron blade cleaved through the thick muscle and bone with devastating force. The wolf’s head was severed completely from its torso, but the jaws remained locked around Klaus’s arm in a death grip.
Klaus casually reached over, pried the dead, severed head off his forearm, and tossed it into the snow.
The puncture wounds on his arm were already closing, leaving behind nothing but faint pink scars that were rapidly fading.
The remaining two wolves saw their alpha fall.
They didn’t retreat... The cursed magic animating their bodies drove them into a frenzy... They charged at Klaus simultaneously, one rushing his left flank and the other diving for his legs.
"Come on!" Klaus cheered, stepping forward to meet them.
He swung his sword in a wide horizontal arc. He caught the first wolf right across the muzzle, shattering its icy armor and sending a spray of dark blood across the snow.
CRACK!
The second wolf dove low, biting at his thigh. Klaus simply stepped into the attack, bringing his heavy combat boot down in a vicious stomp.
