Vaelion's eyes laid down on the boy lying beside him.
His name… was his Meerius…something.
He couldn't remember it very well. What he did recall however was that this guy was one of his twin sister's goons who had spent the large part of the first semester tormenting him in every way possible.
From beating him up to robbing him to his last penny, he had done it all.
Vaelion let in a deep sigh.
Right now however he was shuddering at the corner of a dirty, filth-ridden cage, coming in and out of consciousness, with a poorly bandaged arrow wound on his side.
Looking at his condition, one couldn't even tell that this kid was supposed to be an heir to some noble household.
"Guess there really was no other choice." Vaelion shook his head at the decision.
He knew what he had to do and he wasn't going to justify it with crap like this guy deserved it… maybe he did, but still, that didn't change the fact regarding what he was going to do.
One thing was for certain however, he wasn't going through that torturous experience once again.
Their little prison caravan kept moving through the forests until the moon rose high up in the sky.
"Let's make camp here." The ogre with the gruff voice commanded, causing the ogre in the front to halt the lizard-like beast hauling our cage.
"Patch, you go and set up a camp, scab, you are on cooking duty. I'll go and check around the area." The gruff-sounding ogre spoke once again, making the two ogre huff in disgruntlement.
"Making is do all the work, while he takes a scroll." The ogre standing beside our cage, the one I assumed was named Scab mumbled under his breath and got to work.
Patch got to work too, taking out their eating supplies from the lizard's backpack.
The night soon descended, and two of the ogres went to sleep in their tents, leaving Patch behind for guard duty, who himself sat on a nearby rock opposite us, dozing off.
A couple of hours passed like this, it was only when I could hear the sounds of ogres snoring that I got to work.
I silently stood up from my seat and walked towards a trembling Azaris.
The best I can do is make it quick. Saying so to himself, Vaelion grabbed Azaris's head with both of his hands and snapped it to the side.
Crack.
A low resounding noise echoed through the forest as I quickly grabbed Azaris's body, stopping it from falling.
I then turned my head to my side at the ogre to check if he had noticed anything. Thankfully he didn't seem like he had.
Taking a large breath, Vaelion mumbled to himself. "Alright, now how do I do this?"
He placed his hand on Azaris's corpse, hoping for something… anything to happen.
–
Would you like to harvest the corpse?
Yes/ No
–
Another series of floating texts appeared in the air, causing him to momentarily sigh in relief. He didn't know what he would have done if this thing hadn't worked because of the mana-dampening chains.
"Yes."
Vaelion whispered once again as he felt a radiant wave of energy travel through his arms, going inside Azaris's corpse. At the same time, he noticed Azaris's corpse noticeably shrivel up in seconds.
–
Harvest was successful.
You have received-
3 low grade spirit stones
0.3% increase in fire affinity.
Charges remaining- 2 /3
–
Vaelion's eyes widened in astonishment as he read the floating texts.
0.3% increase in fire affinity? How was that even possible?
Sure there were ways out there to increase one's affinity but they were so impossible to get their hands on that they were kept locked in as treasures.
This, however…
Vaelion had to forcibly take in a deep breath to calm himself down.
There was no doubt that this blessing was a truly extraordinary ability, but he needed to get out of this place if he wanted to make use of it.
Sadly, however, the harvest ability hadn't given him anything useful that could help him break out of his mana dampeners.
Wait, did he really need to take out his dampeners?
Vaelion eyes immediately shot down to the 3 low grade spirit stones that were lying beside Azari's and a crazy idea began forming in his mind.
Sure he couldn't use his own mana because the dampeners would just suck it off, but that didn't mean he couldn't use these spirit stones.
Nodding to himself, he quickly moved towards the corner of his cage and sliced his hand open with the pointy edge.
Blood began to trickle out, which he hurriedly used to draw out a small runic formation at the palm of his hand.
The mana dampeners weren't going to let him use his own magic, but that didn't mean he couldn't use magic from the spirit stones.
All he needed was a way to direct its energy into a spell. Lucky for him, he had once made friends with a runic inscription master during his time in the army and had learned some extremely basics of rune formation. And that a young mage's blood acted as a great catalyst for making these formations.
Unluckily for him, these rune formations were often inscribed on castle walls as a way to trap the enemies, not on living flesh.
Still, this was the best chance he was going to get.
Once he was finished drawing up the inscription he took all three of the spirit stones and began carefully positioning them near the circuit nodes, after which he closed his hands shut while making sure they didn't move.
After he was sure everything was ready, he called out to the ogre dozing off in the distance.
"Hello, sir." He spoke while keeping his voice low enough that it didn't wake the other ogres.
The ogre slowly raised his head, while turning it slightly to look at him.
"Huh? What the hell is it?"
"My friend here," I spoke up, lacing my voice with some panic. "He is not breathing, his body has also shriveled up for some reason."
"What are you talking about?" The ogre frowned, clearly not wanting to get up from his rock. "He is probably just sleeping. You go to sleep too."
"No, he is not. Look, I don't know what it is but I don't want to catch it okay? And I am sure your boss wouldn't like it either if something happened to either of us."
Now this got a reaction.
Patch immediately stood up from his seat with a huff and began marching towards Vaelion.
"He is not my BOSS." He grabbed the cage and shook it, causing Vaelion to take several steps back.
"Huh?" Patch was busy glaring at Vaelion when his gaze finally fell upon Azaris's shriveled corpse.
"What is this?" he spoke while taking a sniff in the air. "Blood? Why is there fresh blood in here? You-" he turned towards Vaelion.
"What did you do to him?"
"I… I." Vaelion stuttered as Patch immediately took out a key from his pocket and opened the cage.
"Oh, you better not have messed with the sacrifice." He warned while entering the cage and hurrying past Vaelion to check on Azaris.
This was it. Not wasting any time, Vaelion immediately raised the back of his palm and aimed it at Patch's head, before activating the spirit stones inside.
The runic formation activated, tearing through the flesh of his palm and escaping out of its back, penetrating straight into Patch's skull.