As the hooded figure prowled the cobbled streets of the small town of Nurnburg, shutters slammed and doors closed, people rushing inside their homes. Nobody wanted to catch the ire of an Inquisitor and risk finding themselves burning on a pyre.
The sun was setting, and it cast an ominous shadow off of the Inquisitor. He bore no visible weapons, though his large cloak may have concealed some.
Making his way down the empty streets, he eventually found his way to a large decorated mansion, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The entrance was guarded by two mercenaries who moved to apprehend him before realizing who he was and scurrying away, quickly opening the gate for him and standing aside to let him through.
The Inquisitor strode through, not even affording them a glance. As he passed by them, they shivered, doing their best to keep perfectly still to not draw attention.
Ignoring them, the cloaked man continued onwards, pushing forward through the large embossed main entrance, and swiftly made his way through the mansion towards his destination.
Not too long after, the Inquisitor stood in front of another two mercenaries, standing guard in front of a nondescript door that stood at the end of a hallway. These mercenaries seemed far better trained than the first two, and they kept their composure well. Their posturing would have worked far better had they not both flinched when the Inquisitor raised his hand to knock on the door.
"Bah! What is it? If you're just going to tell me that my wife is here again, send her off! I don't have time for her tomfoolery now, I have a search exploration to organize and-"
The Inquisitor pushed through the door and the voice went quiet. The owner of the said voice was a middle-aged man wearing a loose tunic and pants, dressed modestly despite their stature. Their silver hair was neatly trimmed but seemed to innately find itself messy from the number of times the man ran his hands through his hair.
Looking up, he stopped talking and stared the inquisitor in the eyes. Unlike any of the others that had been in the Inquisitor's presence as of yet, the man did not show an ounce of fear. He paused for a second before sliding away the ledger that he had been writing in and presented his hand in greeting.
"Inquisitor. I had been informed of your arrival by the high church. 'Names Baron Silvermorne. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
The Inquisitor stared at his hand for a few seconds before leveling his stare on Baron. Baron sighed, retracting his outstretched hand and wiping it on his tunic.
"Uhg, you Inquisitors are always so gloomy. Are you going to at least take a seat?"
"..."
"...Nevermind. I was told you were to accompany me on my expedition. I know you can't answer me in your... penance..." He said, waving his hand at the Inquisitor's stitched mouth. "But do you at least have some information you could give me? I rather dislike it when the high church sticks its neck into my business."
The Inquisitor paused for a moment before reaching into his cloak to procure a large leather-bound grimoire. He flipped through it for a bit before plucking out a paper stuffed between its pages, and handing it to Baron.
Baron looked over the paper, his expression going from bored, to confused, to surprised, and finally, to amused. Chuckling, he handed the paper back to the Inquisitor.
"Now THAT is interesting. I guess it wouldn't hurt for us to take a small detour. I will be expecting compensation though. If this is as important as this letter makes it out to be, I expect payment. Not just tithe reduction either, I want relics."
The Inquisitor bristled, not used to being treated as such before a glowing halo appeared behind their head. The Inquisitor's hood was thrown back, revealing their bald and scarred head and their stitched mouth, and their eyes began glowing a bright white.
"How amusing." A divine voice came from the Inquisitor. "You have the gall to blackmail me? Do you have a death wish? Or have your accomplishments gone to your head enough that you would challenge the authority of a god?"
Papers flew everywhere as a majestic presence descended into the room. Baron was pushed back a few inches before the skin under their tunic began to glow, revealing the presence of a massive array of magical tattoos imbued on his skin. The tattoos began to emit a light of their own, burning through his tunic and repelling the presence of the being in front of him.
"Soldira. How pleasant of you to come converse with me yourself. It must truly be an important missive."
Baron grinned, and his eyes shone like a madman. He seemed undaunted by the fact that a god had descended in front of his very eyes, and he continued speaking unhurriedly.
"That vessel wasn't made for this. I might not come out of this unharmed, but I am confident that I can survive until you burn whatever is left of his soul. The smart play would be to comply with my demands. I stay up to date with the comings and goings of my lands, and you simply don't have the manpower or the time to accomplish what you need to do."
"How reckless of you. I knew you were a gambling man, but I didn't think you would go this far, Baron. This is a dangerous game you are playing. Do not think I have not noticed your eldritch dealings. The only reason you remain at your seat of power is because you are useful."
Baron grinned and said nothing, instead moving his hand to the longsword that rested against his desk, casually laying a hand on it.
They both stood in stalemate for a few seconds before the divine presence began to recede, but not before leaving some parting words.
"You will have your relics. I will absolve you of this transgression, Baron Silvermorne. Do not fail me."
The Inquisitor collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, crumpling to the ground. Baron scoffed, letting the tattoos that covered his arms and upper body fade as he grabbed the Inquisitor by the lapel and began to unceremoniously drag him across the ground.
Baron opened the door to find the two mercenaries passed out on the ground, groggily beginning to wake up. He tossed the Inquisitor at one, immediately jolting the man awake.
"Take our guest here to the medbay. I wouldn't want to get into any more trouble by letting him die. And you, follow me. The situation has changed, and I need to address the men. We will be taking a detour into the Wildwoods."
-----
By the time I had finished eating the arm, it was already morning. It had gained me a total of +63 XP, which only proved to me that I should probably spend more time eating them. If only the arm already game be a quarter of the XP that killing them did, then I would be majorly losing out by not finishing my meals.
The only annoying thing was that the scent of the meat brought predators. One in particular had been following me for the past few hours, and even though I had finished off the arm, it was still following me. I guess it had changed its target to me.
I knew now that the animals that lived in this forest were smarter than the wildlife that I had expected. This predator must be waiting for me to slow down to rest, or to be fatigued. That was a good sign because it meant that it wasn't strong enough to have complete confidence in ripping me to shreds without me being weakened.
The predator had been prowling behind me in absolute silence for a few hours, and it had yet to make a single noise. An ambush predator then. I had caught sight of it during the routine times that I would expand my detection radius to the max, about once every 10 minutes. I had developed this habit specifically for if something like this were to occur, and it was paying off already.
The creature resembled a feathered panther. Its black plumage helped it blend in eerily well, though it didn't seem to have wings.
Eventually, I decided that the best course of action would be to just feign exhaustion and pretend to take a nap. I was pretty sure that the feathered panther would strike then, but I had wanted to see if it would do so without me having to stop as I didn't want to waste time if it decided not to attack me.
Eh, whatever. Let's just lie down now. I'd mostly recovered from the strain of my last fight by this point, and I was actually rather excited to fight it.
I decided to just flop over onto the side of the road. Maybe I could have acted tired and all, but that was too much effort. I just laid there eagle spread, facing straight up into the sky.
After a moment of thought, I manifested an eye and looked up. It might make the creature less on edge if it knew I wasn't looking at it, plus, I also hadn't gotten a good look at the sky since I was born.
The first thing I noticed was that there were two suns. They seemed pretty close to each other, almost interconnected. One was a blinding white, and the other was a much dimmer purplish color. The white one didn't actually hurt my eye to look at, despite the fact that it seemed to be quite bright. Changing my target to the darker of the two, as soon as I started to stare at it, the world started to shift. Everything started to get much darker, shadows deepened, and my eye started to hurt, painfully badly.
And then my eye exploded. Note to self: Do not look at the purple sun. I did learn something interesting though, which was that the two suns seemed to have split duties. The white one seemed to act like a light source, and the dark one created the shadows. Rather interesting, but I would have to find a better time to think about that.
Apparently, having my eye explode was enough of a weakness for the feathered panther to attack. It had been steadily closing the distance as I lay there, and once it saw its opening, it lunged forward.
Waiting until the last moment to react, I waited until it bit its fangs into my side before violently twisting around, dislodging myself, and wrapping my legs around its neck. It flung away the large chunk of my stomach that it had ripped off just in time for me to stab my claws into the tendon on the right side of its jaw, severing them.
It scrambled backward, trying to get away from this strange creature that seemed to be unphased despite missing half of its stomach, but with my legs wrapped around its neck, it just pulled me with it.
Just as I was going to try to sever the other side of its jaw and leave it without its most potent weapon, it rolled over, flinging me around. Now on its back, it began using all of its limbs to furiously try to dislodge me.
Ignoring the fact that my back was being cut to ribbons, I leaned forward and manifested the biggest mouth I could, filled to the brim with serrated teeth, and bit straight into its throat. Clamping on tight, I bit down as hard as possible while I felt the beast's movements slowly begin to fade.
After one last crunch to make sure it was dead, I pulled hard, and eventually ripped my head away, along with most of its throat.
Grinning, I swallowed the bite whole, pleased with my catch. The feathered panther was larger than I was, and I was sure I would net a large amount of XP from this.
And... It tasted kind of like chicken? Nice.