The sword pierced the goblin on mark, but didn't take its life. Realizing that it will die soon, its expression turned sinister as it crawled forward to the girl's direction.
The girl who was about a metre away from it, threw a powder at the crawling goblin. The goblin breathed in the powder and felt increasingly tired, but with conviction it still crawled forward and reached the girl who was paralysed in fear. It raised its dagger to stab at the girl's heart, with all its strength.
Inches away from her chest, the dagger stopped. The goblin felt the strength in its hand vanishing. It looked up to see a fair hand, stopping his hand from moving further. Gazing further up, it saw the eyes of the reaper, a pair of black eyes with a ring of yellow colour in the middle. It saw that lightning was coursing through the yellow ring with rising intensity. For the first time in its life, it felt true fear, a primal form.
The reaper removed the sword from its back, and held onto its exposed spine with the other arm, as he whispered coldly:
"[Static Shock]"
It was truly unlucky to have a strong life force, as only at the end of the extremely painful shock, did it die and vanished out of existence.
Anger was clouding Charles's mind, the closest person to the house, didn't even budge to save the child. At the least, four to five people could have reached faster than him, but it was only him, even now that came into the house. He calmed himself, afraid that he will lose control. He looked at the child with cobalt blue hair and turquoise eyes with black pupils, a cute face and fair ivory skin. She was breathing heavily and staring at him with a thankful smile.
He smiled in return and said: "Clever girl!
If she didn't throw what seemed to be a 'sleeping powder', Charles could never have reached on time.
He enquired: "What is your name?"
She replied in a cute voice: "Ava! What's your name, brother?"
Charles remembered that he didn't have one for his identity.
"I don't have one yet. Why don't you give me one?"
Looking at the yellow- ringed black eyes and the now mild lightning that coursed through it, Ava didn't feel paralysed, but a warmth that brought her happiness and comfort.
"Your eyes are sparkly! I think Spark is a good name. Oh! I have a better one, Sparky!" said Ava with a cute laugh.
Just as he was about to laugh, he got an alert from the system:
[Name: Sparky accepted permanently]
He almost puked blood from reading the message.
'Shit!'
After conversing a bit with Ava to relax the tension and if possible, shield her mind from all the violence, Charles decided to confront the 'human' villagers.
"I'll be back!" said Charles and left the house.
Coming out, he saw that the house was surrounded by the villagers. They looked at him in awe and admiration, while their eyes that held scorn shifted sometimes to Ava.
"Why?"
A simple question.
...
The sky cracked with lightning and thunder, the dark sky appeared even darker, cold winds blew out the bloody smell from the village. The rain poured down slowly.
After the corpses were cleared, people returned to their homes and some went to pubs. Charles sat by the doors of Ava's house, as he looked at the falling rain, blurring whatever left of the village, after the darkness engulfed it.
He felt the presence of Ava behind him and asked without turning back:
"You can sleep with peace of mind. No monsters in beast or human form will harm you while I am here."
Ava hesitated first and then came by his side and asked the question in her mind staring into his eyes.
"Are you not afraid of me, brother? I might bring you bad luck, if you stay with me."
"No!" He replied the first thing that came to his mind.
"Are you hungry?" asked Charles with a smile on his face, looking into hers.
"No!" replied Ava. But Charles had his share of similar experiences in his previous life. Hence his smile became wider and he stared at her without blinking for some time, until he broke the silence.
"I can give you food, but you should give me the ownership of this house for two days. How about it?"
"Will you kick me out, if I agree?" asked Ava while trying to hide her panic.
"No!"
"Then okay!" replied Ava in relief.
Standing up and looking at her, Charles said:
"Its a deal then! Go inside, close the door and take a nap. I'll be back with the food in an hour."
Ava still couldn't believe his words, still she forced herself to do what he said.
As the doors closed, Charles set Ava's home as the second base and returned to his original body.
...
At Novark Manor,
Charles woke up and just as he was about to check his harvest from the goblin slaughter, Roger called him for dinner. Feeling starved, he went downstairs for dinner.
At dinner, he was bombarded with questions to satisfy the concern of his sister and the butler. But they took the speed at which he ate as a sign of recovery, and didn't disturb him further with questions. Charles wanted to east fast, check his loot and return to the waiting Ava.
To not make it a weirdly silent dinner, he asked what happened after he scolded Claire and lost consciousness. Learning how he got the hot pain on one of his cheeks , he was totally embarrassed and his sister went further in ridiculing him.
He also got to know that Claire invited Princess Veronica the twin sister of Rebecca and the top genius mage of her generation, for protection from his 'brotherly guidance'.
Over with the hearty dinner, he excused himself and went back to his room, before asking the butler for a highly nutritious and delicious meal for two persons, to be brought to his bedroom.
...
Once, he was in his bedroom, Charles checked the [inventory].
The system had already passed information regarding how the kill is looted, when the first goblin vanished. The corpse/loot can be modified in two ways:
1.System processed loot with products being of uniform quality.
2.Manual loot collection
The second one meaning, the corpse will be left alone and Charles could use it however he want. By default, it was processed by the first method and Charles didn't find a need to change it.
In the [Inventory] he saw,
[Inventory: Vital potion (G0R1) *24, Vital potion (G0R2) *1]
Charles knew that he killed 24 goblins below or at Lv20 and 1 above Lv20. So he figured that Lv11 to 20 corresponds to rank 1 and the next ten levels correspond to rank 2 and so on till some limit.
He took out two vitality potions one of each rank and found that both had the same appearance, a translucent red colour. He placed the rank 2 back in [Inventory]. The system only gave a general description to the item.
[Vitality Potion (Grade 0): Used to heal damages. The extent of healing increases with the rank.]
He drank the one in his hand. The taste was not bad, but the effects stunned Charles. He found the vital energy in his body increasing as he tried to accumulate life-force from the sudden influx of the vital energies. The effects of the potion subsided completely after 5 minutes or so, but he took nearly half an hour to accumulate the life-force from the remaining vital energy.
Charles opened his eyes from meditation and a smile was plastered on his face.
"Good things come to good people, I guess. My life-force recovered to a bit more than half of my peak prowess."
He once again checked the system for anything new and saw two new options: [Synthesis] and [Map]. He checked [Synthesis] first and suddenly his mind was filled with information on the usage of this function and its limits.
Charles was excited as he did the first thing that came to his mind. He chose the [Synthesis] option and in the screen in front of him, two empty boxes were present. He imagined reciting and sending the data into the box, and did the same with the other.
Now, the two boxes seemed to be filled with the same script and under both were written 'Basic Cultivation Technique for Squires'. After the two boxes were filled, there appeared one more box and an option [Synthesize]. Charles clicked [Synthesize] and the content in the two boxes transformed into dim red light and melded into each other and flashed after which it turned bright red and drilled into Charles's mind. As, expected he found, the product was an improved version of 'Basic Cultivation Technique for Squires'. He went through it briefly, but had a sudden vague feeling that something is seriously wrong with the initial cultivation technique.
He wasn't given time to ponder on this, as he heard someone knock at the door.
"Come in!" he said.
A maid entered, after placed a tray containing two meals and cutleries by the bedside, she stood aside. The maid was a mature lady and she looked very beautiful, especially in the maid outfit. But Charles mind was filled with a depressed little girl, watching the door and waiting for him. He informed the maid that the tray be removed in the morning, when he leaves the room and told her to leave and let Roger know that no one must disturb his recovery.
After the maid left, he stored the entire tray in the [Inventory] and laid down in a comfortable position on the bed and closed his eyes. Then he started the session and materialised at the second base: Ava's home.
...
Ava was losing hope as half an hour had passed after the time Sparky said he would come back at.
"Sparky might have thought that I am a monster. He left me like the others, my parents and Granny Beth" She whispered to herself in desolation, to avoid the pain from keeping up a false sense of hope.
The tragedies she experienced had made the little girl not only mature, but pessimistic too.