'Great, I'm here again.' Shiv looked around at the void, still amazed at the pictures painted by the stars and stupefied by the pure vastness of his surroundings, despite his best efforts.
"Try to close your mouth instead of gaping at the awesomeness of my home. You ruin the scenery and it isn't very heroic looking." The man yawned, "I do see that you are starting to take things seriously, though. That warrants me to do the same. I will reward you for your efforts up to this point. And of course, what better reward is there aside from…" He waved his hand and a small table with two chairs appeared. There were two cups and a kettle on the table. "Having tea with me! Come on, have a seat." He said as he took a seat himself.
Shiv was suspicious, but walked over to take a seat anyway.
"I have been working on something for you with my tea, buddy, but it isn't ready quite yet. You wouldn't be able to use it as you are anyway. That's what this tea is for." He picked up the kettle and poured a pure black liquid into both cups. Once he set the kettle down, he started drinking from his own.
"You want me to drink this stuff?" Shiv wrapped his hands around the cup but recoiled when it burnt him.
"Come on, hero. Drink up. You need this."
At the man's urging, Shiv growled and quickly grabbed the cup and poured the burning liquid down his throat. For the moment that he could taste, it was all Shiv could do to stop himself from gagging. He didn't have to worry about the putrid taste for long, because his taste buds were quickly burnt off. The molten liquid seemed to slowly ooze down his throat, burning every inch of it. Once it got down his throat, it seemed to spread out to every crevice of his body. He felt like he had become magma. The pain was constant and didn't go away. Shiv looked at the man with a dark look and opened his scorched mouth to say something, but his suited conversant was already speaking.
"And there you have it. Sure, it was artificially induced, but it is the real deal. Congratulations, hero. You now have [Celestial Body]. It is quite literally the body of a god. The most notable feature is that you have a really big stomach now. It'll take you a long time to figure out how to fill it all the way up, because you won't feel any hungrier. It'll be hard to force your body to consume the amount of nutrients it is now capable of holding. Though it'll be funny to see you puke trying. And generally speaking, your body is stronger, takes less damage and will slowly heal itself. There is one bit of a downside though… the rate at which you consume nutrients passively is five times greater than it was."
Shiv, trying to digest everything that he was just told, opened his mouth to ask a question, but the man at the table across from him looked at his watch.
"It was nice having tea with you, kind of. It is time for me to go, though. Get out there and eat up, hero."
***
"You look like a corpse when you sleep." Briggs informed Shiv the moment he opened his eyes.
"Huh?" He sat up and looked around with a scowl. He'd worry about the supposed 'gift' later.
"You never move, your breathing is almost impossible to detect, and you don't mumble or talk at all. It's the complete opposite of how you are when you're awake."
"Huh." Shiv yawned, not really paying attention to Briggs, who was oddly talkative.
After staring into space for a good while longer, the two had gathered the rest of Briggs' men and spent the next hour setting up camp inside the castle eating, tending to their wounds, and then searching the royal treasury. It had been empty. With much disappointment, they had turned to sleeping soundly. Except for Briggs and the lookouts chosen to make sure nobody sneaked in and killed everyone while they slept.
Briggs couldn't sleep for a different reason, however. He was emotionally torn up about the princess' death. He just couldn't get her last moments out of his head. They haunted him throughout the night, while Shiv slept like he was dead.
"Do you not feel bad?" Briggs asked while Shiv stood up and stretched.
"I feel bad. Everything is sore." Shiv mumbled and grunted while he worked a cramp out of his leg.
"No, I mean… no. You don't." Briggs shook his head and looked back at Shiv with renewed determination.
Shiv shrugged. He had no idea what his short ally was talking about, and everything in his body was hurting, which was distracting. "Say, do you guys have a name?" He pulled some bread out of his inventory and began chomping on it without stopping in his stretches.
"A name?"
"Yeah, your army or mercenary group or whatever. Does it have a name?"
"Ah, yes. We're called Revenge."
Shiv laughed. "That's not subtle at all! How did the royals never suspect your group of anything?"
"Why would they?" Briggs' genuine question ended the conversation. They got packed and gathered the men, getting them ready to move out. There was another city belonging to this kingdom just a few days' travel away.
***
First, they stopped at a certain outpost in the woods outside of the capital, where Shiv reunited with Blaze and Uriel.
"Hiya, kid. How are ya feeling?"
"I'm good!" Blaze seemed to be back to her usual cheerful self, which filled Shiv with no end of joy. He helped her out of her bed and made sure she was skilled enough at using her crutches to be able to travel.
He was satisfied. And so, they began traveling.
***
"This place is a dump." Shiv declared as they walked down a stinky street filled with beggars and hungry folks.
"You can thank yourself for that." Briggs was right beside him, eyes roving everywhere, taking in every detail.
"What, because I built up that monopoly on farms around the capital?"
"Yes." Briggs gave a beggar that had gotten too close a dangerous look, causing the man to fall in his desperate attempt to back away. "This place will actually be a lot more of a challenge to destroy than the capital was."
Shiv gave him an incredulous look. "But the capital had the most powerful mages."
"Wrong. The princess hated killing things, so she didn't take advantage of the XP farms."
Shiv stopped. "Did you just say… XP farms?"
"You've never heard of them?"
Shiv had a vague memory of someone mentioning one, but shook his head.
"How did you get so powerful before you destroyed the capital?" Briggs was shocked.
"I farmed! I harvested a lot of plants. Like a whole lot."
"That's… insane. XP farms are… actually, I'll just show you." Briggs changed directions, moving down a side street, and Shiv quickly followed him.
They walked for quite awhile until they had reached a very smelly portion of the city that put all the other cities Shiv had been to to shame. It looked the same as the place they'd just been, until they turned a corner and Shiv found himself staring at another wall. 'I feel like I should knock all of these down. That should be my new mission. Destroy all walls.'
Shiv followed Briggs to a gate, where a noble with a group of his guards was talking to the guard who looked to be in charge of the gate. They got into range of the conversation just as it escalated. "Of course I'm allowed in there! I have the money right here."
"I'm sorry, sir. M'lord told me not to let ya in. You've been barred because of yer, uh, because ya caused some trouble at a party. M'lord said ya would know what I'm talking about."
"I most certainly do not!"
"Well, I'm afraid I can't be letting ya in, anyways. M'lord said ya could come back and try again in a few days." The guard said with a respectful tone.
The noble did not appreciate being barred from entering, and made sure the guard knew this before turning around sharply and leaving with a huff.
"We're not going to talk to him. We just want to take a look, not participate." Briggs led Shiv just out of sight of the gate guard, then created a rope of ice and tossed it to the top of the wall. He tested it with a sharp yank, then climbed to the top.
Shiv grabbed the rope and hissed at how cold it was. 'First, I grab something too hot, and now something too cold.' He put a hand on the wall and made some handholds appear all the way to the top, then began climbing. 'Woah. This is easy.'
At the top, he was rewarded with a view of the XP farms.