Random Portals

Sorin smiled. He was able to procure the most skilled assassin in this region. Once this pesky Domain Holder was dealt with and he obtained another domain, he would no longer be considered the weakest of the Domain Holders. Then he will have no reason to fear those beneath him.

He frowned when the assassin used some sort of ability that kept him from watching. Sorin was warned that might be the case, though he wouldn’t admit he was too weak to see through it, especially with a guild liaison present.

“It seems Necros has activated his signature move. It won’t be long now.” The Guild liaison said.

“Good.” Sorin was contemplating on just killing the liaison once the job was done, so he wouldn’t have to pay the other half of the fee. He was just a human, after all.

The liaison spoke up, taking Sorin from his thoughts. “The Guild would be interested in why and how the spider Queen would join forces with a low level nobody. If you could shed some light on the situation, the Guild would be willing to compensate you accordingly.”

Sorin wasn’t about to tell him it was because Steven had a domain. He knew the guild would never take on a job like that and was fixing to come up with some random excuse when the human appeared still alive, though barely. The assassin, however, was nowhere to be seen.

“Your assassin failed!” Sorin hissed. “Send another quickly. He is almost dead!”

The Guild liaison’s eyes bulged. “F- failed? No, that can’t be right....”

“Send another.”

It took a long second for the Guild liaison to gather his composer. “Lord Sorin, with all due respect. Necros was the best assassin in this region. If he is dead…”

“Does it look like I care? If you don’t hurry, the human will recover! I don’t care if you have to go yourself. I want the job done!”

“Are you certain Necros is dead?”

Sorin took a long breath, then snarled, trying to keep from shouting. “The human is currently being nursed back to health by the spider Queen along with that traitorous Wisp, and your assassin is nowhere to be seen, so unless he fled, then he is dead.”

“Lord Sorin, did you say he had a Wisp?” The Guild liaison asked.

“Are you daft!” Sorin shouted, standing up from his throne. “Send another fucking assassin before I rip your head from your body.”

Sorin seen the liaison fiddle with a ring. He darted towards him, but was too late as the human vanished into thin air.

“Ahhhh. HUMANS! So damn pathetic!” Sorin went on a rampage, smashing his skeletal guards to pieces. Only for them to regenerate after a few seconds later.

Lester watched as his Guild ring crumbled to dust. He winced internally. The higher ups would not be happy he used the ring, and for good reason. Lester knew how pricy they were, as he had to pay for part of it out of pocket. But Sorin wasn’t playing around, he would have surely died there. He had to inform the Guild of this immediately. Normal targets didn’t have a Wisp. The presence of the spider Queen was already risky. And Necros was defeated…

The guild receptionist let out a gasp and all eyes turned to him.

“It’s fine. I’m on guild business.” Lester said holding up his guild badge.

“Sir, teleportation is forbidden on Guild property. Even if you are a Guild member.”

Lester sighed. The receptionist must be new. “Sorry, but I don’t have time for this.”

He headed for the stairs.

“Sir. You must sign in. Sir, you can’t just…”

Lester paid no mind to the receptionist. He headed to speak to someone in charge. It was unfortunate that the ring sent him to the closest Guild hall, but there was nothing that could be done for that at the moment.

“Sir!”

Lester looked down at the receptionist, who was now blocking his path. “Ma’am, I am on urgent guild business.” Lester held up his four-star Assassin's Guild badge for emphases, but the receptionist didn’t seem to care or understand.

“You will need to make an appointment, just like everyone else.”

“Look miss! You must be new around her, but this here is a four-star badge! I have…”

“What’s going on here?” A guard asked.

Lester smiled, “finally! I need to speak with someone in charge. I have urgent business with the Guild in the Capital.”

The guard narrowed his eyes. “Which capital?”

“I’m unsure what you mean by that?” Lester said, taken aback.

“Which capital?” The guard repeated.

“The Guild capital! In Aspen, you know the main branch of all the Assassin’s Guild.”

“And you expect me to believe you are from the Guild headquarters?”

“Here,” Lester handed his badge to the guard. “This should confirm everything! Now please, I need to speak to someone in charge.”

The guard’s eyes widened when he saw the four stars, and Lester knew he was finally getting through to him, but before he could speak, another guard popped up out of nowhere and took the badge.

“Four stars, huh? It’s a bit odd to have a four-star Guild member out here in the middle of nowhere, and unannounced. We will need to get this checked to make sure it’s not a fake.”

Lester opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words. He had not been treated this way in over thirty years.

“Sir, please take a seat over there.” The receptionist said, “We will be with you when we get time.”

Lester wanted to knock the smirk off the receptionist's face. He could kill her in front of everyone here and get nothing but a slap on the wrist from the higher ups.

He took a deep breath and started towards the seat, but turned back. “Just so you know, the information I have is quite urgent, and Guild headquarters will want to know why the information was delayed.”

The face of the receptionist paled, but she didn’t say anything, Lester sat and patiently waited, he knew he would take most the blame, but there were several witnesses to this encounter and the guild would do a thorough job before dishing out punishments.

Lester wasn’t sure how long he sat there trying to figure out how to explain what happen to Necros. Having a max level assassin fail against a level nineteen target was insane. He knew the blame would somehow fall on him. He looked up as he saw an overweight man wearing glasses walking towards him.

“Lester Gallion, I do apologize on behalf of this Guild hall for your treatment. There is a war going on and security has been increased. I will see as the guards are properly…”

“Never mind all that,” Lester said. “I need to speak to headquarters immediately.”

“Yes, of course! We are getting the room ready as we speak.”

Lester almost asked why it wasn’t always ready. But it seemed he was truly in some backwater village at the edge of a swamp. The very same swamp that housed Dungeon lord Sorin. If it wasn’t for Sorin being one of the seven Dungeon Lords, then he doubted the Guild would have bothered with a job this far out. He wanted to get as far away as possible, but with the goblin war all the roads were closed. Even for someone of his status it could take a month before he could even begin heading home.

It didn’t take much longer before he was being led to the communication room by this Guilds president. “Mr. Gallion, if you need anything at all, just ask for me and I will take care of it personally.”

“Will do.”

It was obvious the president was nervous. It was likely no one from the Guild headquarters had ever come to this branch before.

When Lester entered the communications room, the first thing he noticed were two people. “I need some privacy.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gallion, but we don’t have any Essence stones strong enough to power the orb.”

Lester sighed.

“I can assure you that they are bound by oath and…”

Lester held a hand up. “Its fine. I have the Essence stones. I doubt they have the mana to form a proper connection, anyway.” Lester noticed the two mages sigh in relief as they hurried out. Once everyone cleared out, Lester walked towards the Orb and pulled out an Essence stone. The communications Orb sat on a pedestal as if it was some prized position. Touching the Essence stone to the Orb, it crumbled as the Orb began glowing a light blue and floated up. A second later, the entire room lit up, and a hologram and the receptionist in the capital appeared.

“Oh! Hello Mr. Gallion, would you like me to connect you with the Domain department?”

“Yes Alma, that would be great, thank you.”

“One moment, please.”

The next moment, the orb turned black, and the hologram dissipated.

“And that is what you call a professional receptionist.” Lester barely got the words out before the Orb flashed with blue light and a hologram of a man sitting behind an ornate wooden desk appeared.

“Lester? What’s going on?”

“I had to use the guild ring,” He noticed his boss’s eyes narrow, but he continued before he could say anything, “Also, Necros is dead.”

“What!!” Lester’s boss jumped from his chair. “I need to know everything down to the last detail!”

Steven woke up to a massive migraine. his head was ponding, and he felt like utter shit. It was by far the worst he had ever felt since coming to this new world.

“Master, you're awake!” Nev said as she ran to his side.

“I am, though I feel drained,” Steven mumbled. “What the hell happen?”

“I’m sorry I don’t have any stamina potions. As for what happened, you were attacked by an assassin.”

“Stamina potions.” Steven’s head was still spinning. Opening his inventory page, he went over to potions.

~Potions

Dark vision x1

Healing x2

Stamina x2

Mana x1

Throwable~

Root snare x1

He didn’t have the strength to complain about his potions running low as he pulled out a stamina potion and downed it.

Within seconds, he could feel the effects as his exhaustion began to fade. Steven opened his undead tab. Sure enough, he now had a Draugr in his inventory.

Steven took a deep, calming breath. He tried to open the description but nothing happen. He quickly stopped messing around with the Draugr tab, afraid the assassin would somehow get out.

“Where is Silvia?” Steven asked, looking around. All that met his gaze was glowing mushrooms, vines and an excited spider Queen.

“She went to speak with the adolescent Wisps.”

“Oh, I wasn’t aware she could speak with them. Anyway, I just wanted to ask her what to do with the assassin in my inventory. Do you have any ideas?”

Nev looked thoughtful for a long moment. “I could most likely kill him but it would be a difficult fight that void trap shard he has is something I’m unsure how to deal with,” the Queen stood there arms folded in deep thought, “we could set a trap for him as soon as you released him and then I should be able to keep him on the back foot so that he couldn’t activate that shard.”

Steven pondered on this for a while. After a moment, his head shot up. “Got it. I’ll just leave him in inventory until we meet up with Sirus again, between the both of you the assassin shouldn’t be an issue.”

“I prefer to work alone, but if Master wishes it, I can work with the half Naga. It would be safer for you, after all. Captain Sirus is a strong warrior. Though we could surround him with drones. Necros is a powerful assassin, but he is just that, he is not meant to take on multiple foes.”

“Let’s run this by Silvia when she gets back and see what she thinks.” Steven then looked around. “So, what do we do now?”

“I’m sorry Master Odling, I don’t know. Normally I would start killing our way to the next floor, but Silvia said to stay here while she spoke with the Wisps."

With nothing else better to do, Steven pulled out his Chaos spear. A bit of practice wouldn’t hurt. He also reflected on the fight he was in. Well, it was more of a one sided slaughter. If he couldn’t of tricked the assassin, he would had definitely be dead right now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to kill the assassin. The guy had been surprisingly nice for someone that was trying to kill him. He asked Nev about this as he was worried he was being affected by some sort of magic. But she said Necros was just a likable creature. Nev also mentioned that Steven was the first target he had ever failed. Steven thought about that, there were several things he could have done differently, for one he never even used his ring of summons that could have bought him some time and he could had possible sent Necros to inventory without having to get beat to an inch of his life. Although now that he thought about it, he didn’t even know his attacker was undead till at the end, which raised even more questions.

“Nev, are undead a common thing.”

“I wouldn’t say common, but they are here and there, though most stay on their continent. The undead race is not a popular one. Very few even know Necros’s true identity.”

Steven asked several more questions while trying to get a good feel for his spear. He didn’t know how to practice exactly and could really use someone to teach him, but just stabbing it around was helping him get a better feel for it, he was tired of being so helpless. He amazed himself with the ease he could wield the spear; it had to be because of his increased stats. He had doubled and then some all his stats since coming to this world. He was unsure if that meant he was twice as strong and fast now, though he could definitely tell the difference. Steven eventually grew tired of swinging his spear around and pulled out some food. He offered some to Nev, but she declined, saying she would go get something once they reached the hidden path where it was safe for her to leave him. Steven nearly told her to go ahead, but if that Necros fellow somehow got out of his inventory, he wanted Nev close by.

“By the way, could you bring me some more food and potions when you go out?”

“Yes, of course, Master! I can send some drones out now if you would like.”

“It’s fine. I still have a bit of food left and a few potions. I just don’t want to run out.”

“What sort of potions and food do you want?”

Steven then went on to explain what he wanted. Nev told him she would have to go to the half Naga to get the dark vision potions and a few of the other things like stamina potions. Since she was a monster race, stamina and mana potions had no effect on her.

Steven waited, then waited some more for Silvia. At one point Nev talked him into practicing his Spider King form, but with his mana regeneration being halved, he didn’t stay in that form long. After that, he discussed what his plans were regarding his attribute points, which was basically shoving everything into spirit. Nev agreed. With enough mana, Steven would be nearly impossible to kill. Though Nev said a strong enough foe could easily by pass his defenses. Steven had to agree. Even if he had over a thousand mana, he didn’t think it would stop someone like Necros from killing him.

Steven had pulled his bed from inventory and was lying on it with Nev when Silvia finally returned.

“I do hope you too haven’t been breeding!” Silvia said in a motherly tone.

Steven shot up from the bed. “We haven’t done anything! Just been waiting for you. What took you so long, anyway?”

“I was negotiating with the young Wisps, and we have come to an accord. We will have safe passage through this floor.”

An adolescent Wisp flew right up to Steven. “Uh, hello little guy.”

The Wisp didn’t respond. Instead, it darted right towards Steven’s chest. He was taken completely by surprise the little wisp impacted with his chest, immediately vanished.

“Silvia! What just happened?”

“Well, the deal I made with the Wisps…”

Steven stopped paying any attention to Silvia as dozens of other wisps appeared and began darting at his chest. He saw Nev move to stop them but stopped before doing anything. Each Wisp that touched him vanished. It didn’t take Steven long to figure out what was happening. The Wisps looked like a steady stream of light as they flew into Steven. His mana began to decrease rapidly, and he was at a quarter of his mana before he knew it.

“Silvia! My mana!”

He understood they were going into his inventory, but the speed at which they were doing it was only increasing. There had to be thousands of them lined up at this point. Steven watched as Silvia jumped in front of them and began glowing brightly, but it was already too late for Steven. His mana was only at a sliver and with in seconds he fell to the ground unconscious.

“Oh, Master is not going to be happy with you.” Nev said.

“Yea… I kinda messed up.”

Nev picked Steven off the dungeon floor and laid him on the bed. Several lights hovered around him and thousands more floated behind Silvia.

“So, what’s all this about?”

“They want revenge.” Silvia said, while staring at Steven’s unconscious form.

“What do you mean? And on who?”

“I’ll explain when Steven wakes up.”