He feigned confidence as he took a step back, speaking as though he understood, as he tried to guess Vol's motivations.
The Yarmdon people were raiders. Murder and robbery were at the very centre of their makeup. It was who they were. It was only the lawmen, under the rule of the Earls, that kept their towns from devolving into dens of murder. But there were no lawmen here. Another dead body amongst a town of nearly a thousand corpses? It would not be noticed.
Vol's strides were larger than this man's. He was nearly a full head taller than him, despite his youth. He took three long strides across the snow, to match the fur merchant's one.
His axe was already in range, and the man was raising his hands, looking for the sword sheathed at his waist, a look of disbelief on his face, as though he simply couldn't fathom the hostility.
"Wait—" He started to say, but Vol's axe was already crashing into his face. The same move that he had done on the soldiers, a practised move. His axe hadn't been sharpened in days, but it did not matter. The blade shattered the skull with a sickening crunch, and the man's life was ended in an instant.
Vol allowed the body to fall to the floor, into the snow. He'd gone for the face in the hopes that the blood wouldn't ruin the man's clothes. He had on a thick pair of fur gloves and a nice fur hat that would be of interest to him.
Already the blood was pooling though, even in the snow. Before it could drench the clothes, Vol grabbed the man by his legs, as his limbs twitched in rigamortis, and he dragged him – legs held high to keep the clothes free of the blood – towards the trunk of the nearest tree.
He used the boot rope that held the man's boot fur in place, and tied him to the lowest of the branches, suspending the body off the floor, allowing the blood to drop from the caved hole in the man's face, and onto the snow below.
!! SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT!
OPTIMAL QUEST 'SLAY THE FUR MERCHANT' COMPLETED!
REWARDS DELIVERED:
+1 STRENGTH
+1 STAMINA
+1 WEAPONS PROFICIENCY
Vol heard the rewards, and acknowledged them with a grunt. They, of course, were his true reason for killing the man. As the fur merchant had said, it was the furs on his back that Vol was interested in. Since the man was offering them to him anyway, it would have been easy to let him live.
But with strength being offered as a reward for his death? Vol did not hesitate. He focused on the interface that hung on the edge of his peripheral vision, and inspected the updated state of his stats.
STRENGTH: 36
AGILITY: 10
STAMINA: 11
CHARISMA: 3
WEAPONS SKILL: 6
STRATEGIC SKILL: 1
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: 2
He read through them, seeing that his weapons skill had already increased by 20%, and his stamina by 10%. If these stats worked just as easily as the System claimed they did, then he was getting stronger at an impossible rate. His strength increase was what thrilled him the most, of course, and he still had that other quest at the back of his mind, of a thousand axe swings, promising yet more rewards.
As he looked, he noted something else. His charisma had gone down to 3. He was sure that he'd started at 5, hadn't he?
SYSTEM ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: AMUSEMENT. VESSEL IS HANGING A HUMAN CORPSE UPSIDE DOWN AND IS SURPRISED BY A CHARISMA DECREASE.
CHARISMA EXPLANATION GIVEN: CHARISMA, UNLIKE MANY OF THE SYSTEM'S STATS, WILL BE BASED ON INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE VESSEL AND OTHER HUMANS. NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES MIGHT FOLLOW THE CHARISMA DROPPING TOO LOW.
Again, Vol grunted in acknowledgement. It made sense. That was how it worked in the real world, after all. He dismissed the interface from in front of him, and returned to what he was doing.
The man's blood had spilt on his coat, if only a little. The true victim had been the man's hat. By now it was well and truly ruined. Vol slipped the man's coat from his shoulders. It looked large. He spread it out in front of him, hopeful, before trying it on.
Slipping his arms through the sleeves, it seemed like it might work… But then it caught, as he tried to pull his shoulders into it. He struggled with it for a moment, but the truth was relentless. The fur coat was far too small for his large frame.
"A pity…" Vol said, giving up on it, allowing it to join the floor with the blood. He tried on the gloves next. Those, at least, fit, though they were a tight squeeze. As for the contents of the man's pack… Deerskin, several rolls of it. They would keep him warm at night, but they wouldn't do much for him in the way of clothes, unless he used one as a cloak.
"Ah… Now this might do," he spread one role out in front of him. It was larger than he would have expected from how tightly it was rolled. It was long enough to go from his shoulders all the way down to his knees. He took the leg sections, and, stealing a bit of string from the man's pack, he fastened them in place over his shoulders.
His front was still exposed, where the cold reached through the holes in his shirt, but that wasn't much of a problem. The true trouble would come in an evening, when the winds dropped – and at least now he had a means of surviving the night. A simple dugout of snow, and a roof of spruce bows, and then his bedding of deer skin blankets – he would sleep well on that.