Daylor sighed as he pulled on the pulley system that Bray had set up, using it to lift another large carved stone to fix part of the slowly collapsing wall. His arm aching from the hours of manual labour as they tried to get the towns defences into something that could hold off an attack, instead of falling apart almost instantly.
One of the towns work men on the scaffolding below, slot the stone into place making the pulley system go loose and allowing Daylor to finally relax his arms; as John came up to him with a plate of piping hot food and a steaming metal cup of tea, Daylor nodded at him in thanks and took the food from him, sitting on the wall and placing the tea next to himself.
"At least our strength stat should increase from this." John said to him as he sat next to Daylor, his legs dangling over the wall as he looked into the forest that stretched over the horizon up to the large river and continued on the other bank.
"What do you mean?" Daylor asked him, a look of confusion plastered over his face, getting a shocked response from John.
"I thought you have an adventurer's licence, this is a basic thing that even knights have knowledge of." John stated.
"Many of my lecturers didn't like teaching what they called the lower races," Daylor replied in a tone of distaste. "On lectures that were not examined or ones they thought they could get away with they sent people like myself to go do chores... Or gave us punishments for ridiculous things like coughing as they spoke."
"I am sorry… I had no idea," John said in shock, leaving a couple of seconds of silence before he spoke again. "There's a stats screen you can bring up, each stat will go from minus twenty to a maximum of around forty, the only one that cannot be increased seems to be the luck stat which people still don't fully understand."
Daylor listened to John as he took a large bite of the chicken drumstick that was on his plate. He placed the bone onto the plate, using the napkin under the plate to wipe his hand before he brought up the holographic menu. Now that John had spoken about it a new page appeared on his menu, the page simply stated "Character".
He clicked on the tab and was shown a display of himself, it showed his basic armour placed on him and when he clicked on the chest piece it a little pop up appeared.
"Basic captain half plate This armour is undecorated unlike most captain armour showing that this captain has yet to achieve his own name or any recognition. Medium armour +10"
He noticed that on his image there were quite a few empty slots, one above his head suggested it would be where his helm would be if he had it on, opposite the chest the empty box had a carving of a necklace imbued into it, and below that were two rings. Next to the neckless there was another box that seemed to be where his cloak would be. Daylor was confused as he realised people could wear more items than there were boxes, but after a second of thinking he assumed if people wore them the boxes for them might just appear like the page itself had for him a few seconds ago.
Below him is an image where two boxes showing both his rapiers; Sasha had decided he shall still use them until she improved his use of the bastard sword. Under the rapiers with a weird icon between the sets of boxes was his hand crossbow.
As he looked at the items there was a slight ding as another tab appeared at the menu simply labelled inventory. However instead of looking at the page he looked to the right of his equipment where his stats lay.
Name: Daylor Nulkura
Title: New Captain
Level: 2
Xp: 1,321/3,000
Stats: Healthy
Hp: 60/60
Dp: -
Strength: 1
Dexterity: 20(+1 gear boost)
Constitution: - 10
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: -10
Chrasmia: 20
Luck: Error
"Hey John, why does luck have an error? I take it that's why people don't know how it works?" Daylor asked, looking towards the knight with a raised eyebrow.
"What no it should have a number, it's just people don't know how to increase it other than giving it a boost from some gear, mine itself is a three," John said with confusion before shrugging, "You sure are an odd one captain"
For a few minutes both of them watched the forest in the distance as Daylor ate the cheese and bread left on his plate, before washing it down with the tea and sighing.
"It's been a few weeks now, have we heard anything from the other captains or the generals?" Daylor asked as they watched a cart leave the recently repaired gate that was attached to the bridge. The armoured men escorting the cart line showing that it was most likely supplies for the front line.
They watched the gate close behind the escort with ease which it didn't have the first week they were there.
"No sir. Just wondering why are we not getting Harald to summon an elemental to build it?" John said to his captain as he stood on top of the wall and stretched his legs.
"Because then our soldiers will be complacent and too used to not working, besides if I had just made them do drills everyday as my first action they would resent me. This way they will just be happy that they are not having to move stones the size of them, and as i'm doing it alongside them they are unlikely to snap that i'm making them do it. Also using them to improve the harvest seems the smarter option."
John nodded in agreement as they both stepped off and started down the steps from the stone wall, they walked past a group of peasants wielding spears, Ulric was showing them how to thrust and than watching how they attacked the dangling bags of sand in front of them, snapping at the ones who got it wrong before then showing them the mistake they were making.
In the middle of the town there was a barracks that had been falling apart when the group had arrived, the first thing they had done was replace the dry rotting wood pillars and completely replaced the roof. Using the beds and old pillars as kindling in the fireplace as they cooked each night as that's all the old wood could be used for.
At first the villagers had been weary and untrusting of the soldiers, But after they had started to help repair the town and with the odd jobs that needed doing around town the villagers had warmed up to them. Then most of the villagers fell in love with them after Daylor had gotten Harald to use the elementals to improve the harvest each day and with Guroks help the both of them were also bringing it in.
As Daylor and John approached the barracks they saw Bray showing some of the peasants wanting to become militia how to use a bow, correcting their footing and the way that they held their bows. John nodded at her as he opened the barracks door for his captain. Daylor walked in and towards his desk, sitting down as he started flipping through the paperwork.
His attention was instantly pulled away as the egg wrapped up in a scarf started to shake aggressively and crack. And a pop up came up on his screen.
"Companion page unlocked."
#########################################################
Back in Newport.
Inarus groaned as he walked through the academy grounds, Umla skipping alongside him as they were both covered in a green sticky looking substance. Inarus looked at his gauntleted hand with what could have been disgust as he inspected the green he had just wiped away from his face before muttering to himself. "Why Giant spiders?"
"Mmm their legs were tasty when fried though, should I tell Daylor to put that in his book when we see him next?" She asked as she then seemed to slip deep into thought, a look Inarus was not used to from her.
"Humm I am shocked you're not thinking he will die without us, you don't seem to think he is very competent." Inarus said as he turned to look at someone who stared at the two with disgust, after a few seconds the man turned away disturbed by the darkness staring back from within the armour.
"Nah, my prey will only die to me!" She replied eagerly. "And In combat he isn't competent when compared to me, but not many are."
Inarus didn't bother to reply to this, he had been listening to umla for the last hour after Khurda and Aiko had already walked back into town. Both had brought houses within the city and moved out of the academy, however Umla had decided without asking to move into Daylors spot in the room with Inarus.
"I am just sad that we only found the metal and that weird black ore." Umla complained, and not for the first time since they left the dungeon.
"We knew we were going in there for ore, it was to help Khurda set up his forge remember." Inarus replied as they entered the dorms and started to walk the hall to their room.
"Yeah but with our first dungeon we were only going in for a chalice and we found so much more." She moaned with an annoyed voice.
"Yes but we don't have the embodiment of luck beside us at the moment, so low level dungeons are not going to be overflowing with treasure." Inarus stated bluntly as he slipped into thought. "You know I have heard theories of some dungeons mutating, I have looked in the library since then and I really think that may have been what happened.
Umla was about to reply as Inarus opened the door, but then both of them stopped, hands going to their weapons. Standing in the room gripping a painting that Inarus knew belonged to Daylor was a cloaked figure, their back to the door. They had begun to turn at the sound of the creaking wood but their face was hidden under shadows and fabric, and before the two could run to engage the cloaked figure the figure lept out the open window.
Inarus ran to the window to look out, but could see nothing. Not even footprints or signs of disturbed bushes in the distance. They had vanished as if they were never truly there. Umla was instead looking confused at the painting, it showed a younger Daylor with a beaming smile and much longer hair, standing with his arms around a demon woman. She had a set of curved horns coming from her long purple hair and a large pair of wings, she seemed dressed in a hand tailored dress which matched perfectly with her bronze skin and she had a piece of purple fabric tied around her arm. Her red eyes seemed to shine with happiness through the shocking realistic painting.
"Who is this?" Umla asked as she looked up at Inarus with confusion.
"Someone who used to mean the world to him." Inarus replied as he took the painting from her gently and placed it safely back into the draw it had been taken from. "From a happier time for the little prince."
"Why do you call him that?" She asked, still confused.
"Humm you don't know? Well it's not my place to say." Inarus replied in his usual cold voice as he grabbed his kit to clean his armour. "We should get ourselves presentable and then tell the headmaster what we saw."
Inarus did not leave that up to debate and started cleaning his helmet which he lifted off his head, and with a stern look from his jewelled eyes sent the half-orc to wash off the blood from herself.