Grey looked over toward the door. His mind was spinning. If the king wasn’t the only BOSS he had to defeat in this Instance, then anyone might be his enemy.
The way things started with Esmeralda and Valdris, one would have thought that they could have allied with one of them until they had to fight with both of them. Was this Instance like that as well?
If that was the case the ones breaking in right now were certainly the Church and the Holy Knights. In which case, that fake unicorn riding guy would be the one Grey had to defeat most likely.
But it wasn’t like he could just start swinging. What if he was wrong? That would definitely cause a lot of problems.
Grey walked over to King Cami’s corpse and shook his head. He had wanted to take the man’s spear, but it was nothing but a mangled mess right now. For obvious reasons, Grey felt it was smart to continue not using his fang daggers, both in order to hide the number of trump cards he had, and so that the Church didn’t try to take his head just for having a vampire-related item. So he had wanted to replace Megan’s sword with something better.
Seemed he wouldn’t be so lucky.
’Do I have time?’
Grey looked around and then his eyes landed on the battle axe he hadn’t melted through.
--
Name: Great Axe of Torax
Rarity: Rare
Class: Established
Accepted Type: Linear
Restricted Type: Branching
Description: An axe of bloody cleaving.
Abilities: +10% STR on downward cutting motions. 5% chance of brief stun lock on downward cutting motions.
--
’Not bad. Since it’s in the Established Class, its durability is definitely on another level.’
It didn’t seem like the numbers were all that much more impressive. But the difference in weapons of Classes was usually not in their percentage increases, but instead in the stat caps they could allow.
Grey’s tail capped out at 100 STR, but if he had an Established Class tail, maybe it would be double that.
BOOM.
The doors to the armory finally gave out completely and the Holy Knights came charging in... just to find a bunch of corpses and a young man standing with a smile on his face and an axe over one shoulder.
"Well, took you all long enough. Right. This king’s here, his guards are, well... everywhere. If you want to count up the number of limbs you’ll probably figure out how many I killed. Please and thank you."
A familiar behemoth of a man came to a stop in front of Grey. He looked from Grey, to the king and his guards, then back toward Grey. His face looked like it had been put through the wringer. All his glory had been snatched up by the child in front of him and he didn’t even know what to do with those emotions at all.
It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so ridiculous.
"You... killed all of these people, man?"
Grey was speechless when he heard the man speak. What was this southern Californian drawl he had going on? Could you copyright an accent? Because it definitely felt like there was at least some cultural appropriation going on here.
It wasn’t lost on Grey that he was making this internal joke about a man with a blond afro, but hey. Not every joke was going to be a great hit.
Contrary to popular belief, he could control his mouth.
Sometimes.
"That would be me." Grey said with a nod.
"Unbelievable."
An awkward silence fell.
"So is there going to be a reward for all of this?" Grey asked. "You know, hazard pay or something. This was all very dangerous and such."
The man blinked and instead of responding directly, held out a hand. "You can call me Sir Pebble. We’ll take you along with the rest of the former prisoners and fighters to be questioned at our camp, then we can decide how to move forward from here."
"Forward?"
"Well you displayed a Holy Frame, that must be assessed anyhow. You are clearly blessed by the goddess and must be treated as such, man."
Grey raised an internal eyebrow, but he ultimately decided not to fight it.
"Sure, I guess."
One of the Holy Knights tried to take the battle axe away and Grey side stepped him.
"I’ll be keeping this, thanks."
The Holy Knight frowned, but Sir Pebble held up a hand.
"Leave it be. Clearly he doesn’t need the axe to take your head anyway."
"True. Reasonable man, reasonable man." Grey said with a grin. "Well, off we go."
...
It took a lot longer to "go" than Grey would have wanted. They spent hours turning over every nook and cranny of the dungeon, leaving the former prisoners packed in like sardines in carriages with tarps thrown over them.
Grey managed to escape the fate, but not by much. He still had to smell the body odor from a slight distance, sitting in the driver’s position of one of the many carriages.
’They’re taking way too long. At this point they’re not even looking for stowaways or more prisoners, they’re looking for something important.’
Grey half wondered if the object he was looking for in here was the helm, but maybe he had hoped things would end too easily.
If Grey had to make an educated guess, he bet that whatever Baron Giyoto wanted was exactly what these Holy Knights were spending so much time looking for.
And judging by the beaming smile on Sir Pebble’s expression when they finally got ready to leave, Grey would bet his left nut that they had finally found it.
’Convenient. If it took that many of them to find it, it would have taken me forever too. Now I just have to steal it.’
Was Grey even sure of anything he had just thought? Not even remotely.
Did it matter?
No.
He was flying by the seat of his pants, remember?
The carriages eventually set off down rocky roads and a city torn to shreds. This must have been what the inquisitions looked like in the past, because this place went from what should have been a kingdom to a ruined point on the map.
"How?"
A voice came from behind Grey.
He turned back and into the darkness that was the canopied carriage to find a woman he recognized.
Megan.