It has been half an hour since Ian and Karl ate the apples. Currently, the granny is scanning Karl's body in an isolated room. Ian is waiting on the ground floor as Karl is being examined. He is looks bit annoyed. Mostly, due to the irritating sounds that people are making all over him.
When transporting Karl from the venue, his wounds reopened and started to bleed heavily. Ian made a swift decision and admitted Karl in a nearby public hospital. Public hospitals are crowded but he never imagined this much people. People are literally fighting for beds in the hospital. Majority of them are adventueres who are wounded during adventurers. This hospital is pretty close to the city gates. The adventurers who are poor enough that they cannot afford federation's hospital fee come here.
Ian had to pay triple the normal price to book a private room for Karl.
SLAM!
The main door opened as few elderly nurses bring 3 stretchers with critical patients. Ian just glances at them and prays for them in his heart. Every one of them has life threatening wounds on their bodies. Missing multiple organs and open wounds. It felt painful just by looking at them.
These adventurers are the ones seen by Karl when he was going to complete bet given by Joselina. Only 3 of them survived, one female two males. Just as Ian was praying to the Horizon for their well-being, a nurse calls his name. "Sir Phirsecot?"
"Yes?"
"Here are the reports on the patient." The nurse hands Ian a paper. Ian reads the paper and makes troubled expression.
Karl lays open the bed. The examination took an entire hour. KNOCK!
"Come in!"
Ian walks in the room. "How was the scan?"
"Pretty boring for me. Fun for the granny. As I had to stand naked for an hour in an empty room while she watched." Karl says it in a sarcastic tone.
Ian's expression doesn't change.
"What's with that look?"
"We don't have much time. It is getting worst." Ian passes the report to Karl. Karl reads it but doesn't understand much.
He reads few words like [Life force- Critical level.] [Mana quality diminished.] [Mana recovery below than expected.] [Level 3 Elixirs or Potion no longer applicable.]
"What the hell is this?"
"According to this report, your remaining life force is depleting at a faster rate than before due to you overexerting your body too many times." Ian explains.
"What is this? Level or potion thing?"
"If you take a certain amount of medicine too many times. Your body would start to develop a resistance towards the medicine's effects. It seems like your body has developed a resistance to mana recovering elixirs."
"How much time do I have?"
"A week at most. After that your internal organs would slowly deteriorate and stop functioning leading to death." Ian tells Karl honestly.
Karl grabs his own head. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!" He slams his hand on the bed. Ian watches as Karl throws a tantrum.
After a while Karl calms down and Ian asks him in a low voice. "Are you scared of death?"
Karl remains silent.
Ian pats Karl's back. "Listen, everybody dies at the end. What matter is-"
"Shut up!" Karl slaps Ian's hand away. "I am not scared of death. I am scared of dying without completing my goals."
'Not again.'
This surprises Ian. He expected Karl to be scared of death. Like normally, Like everyone. But reason of scared was quite different. "I-"
"Leave me alone for a bit." Karl cuts in.
"Y-Yes." Ian leaves the room.
Just as he steps out of the room, his watch vibrates. He taps on the screen which displays a message from Arnu Chamber. Written as [Sir Ian. I have found all possible information about the sword that you purchased.]
[Not now. We meet later.] Ian replies.
A black hover stops lands in the front-yard of a luxurious mansion. It has a nice fountain and few hundred yards of plain grass area. Ian gets out of the hover and a young butler with light brown hair bows at Ian.
"I am Jora. I will take you to my lord."
Ian doesn't even bat an eye at the butler. This doesn't bother Jora as he takes Ian inside the mansion. The mansion itself is quite smaller than the treypin's mansion. It has two large wooden doors at front and all white walls. At entrance, It has a standard grand staircase which leads to the second floor. But Ian follows the butler to the right corrioder which leads to the dinning hall.
In the hall, there is a small dinning table. Enough to accodmate 20 people. Aneer is sitting at the far end of the table. The butler indicates Ian to have a sit. Ian stares at the table for few seconds before taking a seat.
"I am pleased to have you in my little house. Hope you like it."
Ian remains silent.
"Uh-haha. As you wanted to meet in person. I thought we could talk over lunch." Aneer says it with a cheeky voice.
"Unnecessary. Just do what I pay you for and we would go our own ways."
"Oh, come on! Don't be so distant. Your father and I used to work together all the time."
Ian slams the desk. "I say this once and only once. I am not my father. I don't care about your little politics."
Aneer feels a cool breeze coming from Ian's direction. 'Father like son, huh?'
"If you say so." Aneer claps his hands and the butler passes a folder to Ian.
Ian opens the folder and sees the picture of the Talwar that Karl bought.
"In my 40 years of experience as the host of the Silver Chamber, I never saw a useless weapon as this one. The price that your 'retainer' paid is simply ridiculous."
Ian gives a death stare at Aneer.
"D-Don't even think of getting a refund." Aneer misunderstood Ian's death stare.
Ian flips the page and sees a picture of some old ruins.
"Few adventurers found this sword some deep cave, near the Garkolle Plains."
"Garkolle Plains? Near the red border?"
"Yes, it is quite close to the red border. In the deep cave, the adventueres found this old ruins of some castle. It looked a decade old, everything in those ruins were already rotted or crumbled below the ground. Surprisingly, an adventurer found this blade pierced deep into a skeleton's chest area. This was the only thing they found which was in usable condition."
Ian flips the page and sees the picture of a skeleton lying in an old rotted wooden bed. There is no blade in the picture but a mark of an object piercing through the ribcage was clearly seen. Ian observes the skull of the skeleton and points at it's teeth. "A vampyer."
"Indeed, the skeleton belonged to a vampyer. Although, we couldn't uncover the linage or the household of this vampyer but looking at the sheer size of the skeleton, even a child could identify that this vampire was noble of the purest blood."
"Was this sword used by a vampire?" Aneer laughs out loudly.
"H-How can a vampyer even think of using a weapon which was used to kill it's own kind. They are too prideful for that. On the contrary, I think this blade was wielded by one of the Grandmasters of the beastkin."
"Beastkin killing a vampyer? Both of them are in a peace treaty together."
"Sir Ian, this ruin alone is estimated to be around more than a 1000 years old and the peace treaty was merely signed 393 years ago by some low level clans. Not to mention, that the bone marrow of a beastkin is still a delicacy in the land of undead."
Ian puts the folder down and rubs his eyes as he thinks for a moment. "Is there any chance that this weapon or the wielder of this weapon used the power of the forbidden elements."
"Great Horizon! A beastkin wielding the power of the forbidden element? What are you saying, Sir Ian? That cursed race would face divine punishment if that happens. Such blasphemy couldn't even occur in my thoughts." Aneer panics and his hand flips the glass which was full of wine-like liquid. The glass pours liquid all over Aneer's suit as it falls on the ground.
CRACK!
"This is just my hypothesis. Don't take to your heart." Ian says as he takes a sip of water from his cup.
"As. As you say."
The butler quickly walks towards his lord and wipes of the stains with a napkin. "Do it properly!"
Aneer smashes the plate which was full of food on Jora's head. Ian watches Arun abusing his butler with an uninteresting look. Drops of blood drips from the Jora's head falls on the ground.
"I think I should leave now." Ian gets up.
"Wha- Please wait. I prepared a gift for you."
Ian doesn't wait and leaves the hall. He reaches the main door and exits the mansion. His private hover waiting for him.
"Please wait a minute!" Jora comes running from the main doors.
"If you are here to give whatever gift Arun wanted to give me, keep it. I don't want it." Ian says it as he opens the door of the hover.
"No! I know! How to find the element of that sword wielder." Ian stops and looks back Jora.
"Show me."
Ian is follows Jora into a small apartment complex. The complex is located just behind the Chamber mansion. It was created as a residency for servants who were serving the Chamber family. Jora takes Ian to the 3rd floor then he takes out a bunch of keys from his back pocket. He opens the door of an apartment.
Ian follows Jora inside where he immediately regrets it.
From the outside, it looked like a normal studio apartment but the inside is totally different. There is no bed, no fridge and not a single piece of furniture. For bed there is some weeds on the floor and in the corner of the room there is a single bucket for daily necessities. Not to mention the lack of light and air as both of those things from a tiny window which in the other corner of the room. No human could live in these conditions.
Ignoring Ian reaction, Jora goes to the stack of the weed and takes out a box hidden in the stack. He opens the box which reveals a long nail length stone.
Ian's lungs forgets to breath for a second as he sees the stone which he already saw in the folder. "A tooth of that noble vampire."