Chapter 20: Ch. 20 Betrayal
Through his hazy vision, John could see three knights standing above him. Although they seemed familiar, he couldn't recall their names.
The three knights pointed their bloody swords at John as they panting heavily, barely standing up, dead bodies could faintly be seen littered the surroundings. This dream in particular seemed to be very hazy compared to every other, barely showing John what was just a few feet Infront of him.
One of the knights who's face was covered in blood, seemed to be furiously yelling at Roukel but it all seemed like a faint whisper to John.
"Roukel.... Thirteen knights....."
While John couldn't understand the current situation, he was certain of one thing. The emotion he was feeling right now was unbridled rage.
Roukel angrily opened his mouth and spoke words, however John couldn't hear what was said because of how surreal and faint the dream was.
As John couldn't understand the blurry memory, a flash of light shined In his eyes and the overwhelming feeling of pain engulfed him as multiple knights swords had pierced his heart and throat.
"ARG!" John awoke from the dream, grabbed his neck and chest in pain, and immediately started using his healing spell at full power.
Rolling off his bed, John already had Roel in his hand as he started surveying his surroundings as his instincts had already taken over. As the phantom pain from the dream began recording, Johns rational finally returned to him as hr looked around.
It wasn't a tense battlefield that held the smell of metallic blood in the air, but instead his familiar shitty apartment.
'What the hell happened!?'
The dream had absolutely no context as his memories weren't clear. He didn't know what it was that lead to the betrayal of his knights, and whether it was justified or not, but John still felt an anger inside of himself at the knights.
'Even if Roukel could be considered Evil in the eyes of other Kingdoms, he treated his people with upmost respect and kindness.' from just the memories that John had, Roukel had risked his life over a dozen times for his people.
This dream inspired John, he now had a strong ambition to find out what the hell happened to him in his past life!
After the dream, John couldn't get rid of an uncomfortable feeling he had so he decided that he needed to train and use his Mana Absorption more often in order to clear up his memories.
Fortunately, he had awoken at just a few minutes before seven o'clock in the morning, his nightmare had inadvertently served as an alarm.
The now wide-awake John quickly got ready to go out. Eating a quick meal, John hopped into his car and drove to the Dungeon Bureau.
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"Ah, your here…" Leon said as John walked into the room, his eyes subconsciously wavered to the sword at his side and John caught it.
'Every single time we meet, Leon always gives Roel a once over. He best not get any funny ideas about stealing Roel, lest he ends up in the same state as the PKers!' John didn regard Roel as just a sword, he saw him as his partner and comrade.
The moment John had this though, there seemed to be a white flash of light in Leon's eye, as his eyes went wide and his body broke out in cold sweats
"W-What did you come here for today?" Leon said anxiously.
"I'd like to get on with the next matching...Is there something wrong? You don't look very good." John noticed the sweat pooling off of Leon's face
"UH… In truth… Ah....." Leon suddenly let out a large sigh and shook his head, before he calmly looked up at John.
"That PKer that you captured, Ron, he died yesterday," Leon said.
"How? I had properly treated him." John had stopped the bleeding and treated Ron's injuries, it would have taken a few weeks for him to recover but he had been at no risk of death.
"His death is not related to his health, someone broke in and assassinated him," replied Leon as his fist clenched together.
"Did you just say he was assassinated?" John asked in surprise.
"Yes... After taking him to one of our... interrogation rooms, Sam gave us a valuable lead on one of the local PK hideout, we left him in a near impenetrable room to assess his information.. Only to find him dead tens of minutes later..."
They thought they'd finally found a valuable resource that could help them fight back against the PKers, unfortunately their lead had been killed right under their nose.
"For them to be killed in such a secure place and only minutes after giving us information, means that their is a mole within the organization! My number one goal right now is tracking down this killer before I can send you out on anymore missions." Leon explained.
"Well, there's no helping it....." John said with a slight annoyance.
'The moment I figured out how to quickly raise my mana, im immediately stopped in my track... Maybe if it's just one or two innocent hunters, I could absorb them and make it painles-' slapping himself as hard as he could, John felt his teeth get slight knocked loosed as the loud slapping noise was heard out.
'I can't! I'm not so pathetic that I'd stoop so low and tarnish my pride for the increased mana' Leon looked at John in shock from just how loud that slap was, as the room fell into silence.
"I'll speed up your Dungeon request, so don't worry about having trouble finding dungeons to raid."
"Thank you, please catch that Mole quickly."
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"Are you Hunter John Jackson?"
"Yes, that's me." John said as gave his Hunters badge to employee to scan.
Waking through the tear in reality, John appeared in the cramped dirt corridor that every D ranked and below dungeon had.
He started off the dungeon with four D-rank blood wolves blocking his path, however they couldn't even slow John for even a few seconds before he quickly harvest them and moved on.
Sprinting through the cramped dark corridor, John easily slaughtered his way through any money that appeared before him until he came to a large door.
'I'm already at the Boss Room,' John thought in minor shock, his breath completely fine despite sprinting and his Mana having grown a tiny bit as he didnt need to waste any mana fight the mobs.
Opening the Large Boss doors without caution, his Light Drone flew in front and brightened up the room and enabled him to see the monsters.
There were ten agile blood wolves guarding the Boss, while a large car size Dire wolf stood in the middle of the pack.
'Wolf types are one of the fastest D ranks, but they are considerably easier to fight that orcs.'
Walking into the boss room, the group of wolves charged at him full speed, only for their heads rolled onto the floor the moment they stepped into Johns sword range.
The Dire wolf had a look of surprise but he continued to charge at John nonetheless.
Evading it's large bite, John gripped Roel and cut the Dire Wolf's leg. With loud whines and yelps of pain, John quickly put the animal out of it's misery.
'Id rather face a thousand ugly trolls than these cute Wolves, too bad I can't pick''
-Verifying assault, measurement complete. D-rank dungeon, clear.
When John had finished absorbing their mana, the measuring tool reacted.
'When I get out of here, I should buy an actually decent dagger to throw,' he thought.
John knew he needed another option to attack, and with daggers he'd easily be able to take his opponents by surprise. This is gonna annoy Roel, but he'd have to just bare with it as John wouldn't concede as that would endanger his life.
Walking out of the Dungeon without feeling a drop of sweat on him, John realized he had easily outgrown the D ranked dungeons and was going to focus on C ranked Dungeons more often.
As exited the dungeon and began walking to his car, John noticed that a group of men dressed in the same matching attire was standing infront of his car.
"May I ask who you are?" John asked aggressively, his hand tightened onto the sheathed Roel.
"Woah woah woah! We come in peace." A bald man stepped forward and started apologize.
"Im Michael Windle, an executive captain of the Hound guild," began Michael as he offered a business card.
'Ah! Im already getting random people showing up and trying to recruit me? I thought this would happen when I become A class, but it isn't too much of a surprise.'
John accepted the card and examined it.
'I didn't expect an upper mid ranked guild to come see me when I'm just a B ranked healer, the same rank as the majority of other Healer…'
Ever since the Phoenix guild had invited him to join their guild, various other guilds had gotten the word and started to keep a close eye on John.
"I see, i understand who you are, thank you for personally come to see me" John said as cordially as he possibly could.
"Then, let's talk back at our guild house for a little whil-" "Im sorry man but I just got out of the dungeon, how about after I go home and rest up, I'll contact you later." John said firmly, leaving no chance for retort before getting in his car and immediately leaving.
As he was halfway through his trip home, John crumpled up the business card into a compact ball with his powerful grip strength, and flicked it out if his window.
He didn't care if Thomas Andre, one of the five National Level Hunter and leader of scavenger asked him to join, John would never bow his head to anything Man or Monster.
Arriving home, John cleaned himself up and started researching the guilds as he was laying in bed. Since he didn't have much information on mid-upper ranked guilds or higher, he went to the forums to find some answers.
He looked through community posts where a lot of Hunters gathered, and found information on the Hound guild.
John was able to find bulletin boards from Hunters who had been invited to join the Hound guild.
He saw that the public opinion on the Hound guild was actually very good, they were popular and kind to even non guild related hunters.
With the way guilds work, the more Hunters they had, the more influence they possessed.
This meant that several guilds used coercive means in order to increase their numbers but at the very least, it seemed like Hound wasn't one of them.
After searching the website, John found dozens of guilds ranging from extremely polite and nice like the "Dragons Breath" to asshole guilds that coerced others into Joining like the 'Great Demon' guild.
'I guess I don't really need to know about guilds,' John thought as he exited the website.
Brushing his teeth and taking a shower, John laid down on his old bed and weary closed his eyes to sleep.
When he fell into a deep sleep, John saw the rest of his death!
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The background was similar to that of his most recent dream but a little different.
He was in the center of a large green plains that stretched for miles, there was a mountain of corpses that had men and monsters alike.
Unlike last time however, there were thirteen knights that surrounding him now.
John watched and felt everything from Roukels perspective as he swung his sword, sweeping the blood off of it jn one stroke as the thirteen knights pointed their swords at him.
"In the name of the new Imperial Majesty, we order you to submit!"
When John heard the knight's brilliant voice, he felt a strong sense of loathing and repulsion from deep within.
The sword in Roukels hand tightened as he looked around at the knights, his once trustworthy Guards had now turned their blades against him.
"Give up! Or do you want to die fighting us!" Screamed a knight.
Roukel smirked at such a sentence. "Give up?....When have I ever given up!! Humanity was mere slaves for the other races, and I alone freed us from its shackles of slavery!! Ive never gave up then, and I won't give up now!!!" The mana around Roukel intensified greatly, changing the wind and blowing away the dead bodies that laid near him.
"Roukel…" a face of sadness could be seen on all thirteen of the remaining knights but Roukel cared not for their emotions.
Looking at the scene, John felt a whirlwind of emotions like anger, sadness and frustration, but one emotion rang louder than all others. Betrayal!
Roukel raised his sword and assumed a defensive battle position as the knights ran at him. At that very moment ment, he woke up.
This time he wasnt in shocked or in pain, but instead felt a burning anger in his chest as his fists were clenched tight.
'My people betrayed me!'
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