Vey drags the badly bleeding and more of less naked noblewomen by the hair as it makes its way to the supply wagon, comfortable in the knowledge that there is no reason not to take its time bringing whatever it wants to take back to the dungeon, and burning the rest along with the corpses. Ultimately, taking the corpses back just isn't logistically feasible, to Vey's dismay. Vey silently thanks the horses for running off after the web spell disappeared, since it saves Vey the trouble of executing them itself. Most of its buffs have worn off by now, save for [Mage Armor] and [False Aura], but with how many gouges Vey left in the noblewoman’s flesh, and with how she stopped screaming or fighting back the moment Vey started carving into her chest to make her talk, it doesn’t really consider its near-death captive a threat.
“Which of the barrels has the food?” Vey asks, dragging the girl up off of the ground to look at the wagon’s contents. She weakly points at one in the front of the wagon, then two more, before dropping her hand back down again wordlessly. “Where are the ‘valueables’ you spoke of?”
Variations of that continue for several minutes until Vey is satisfied enough to know what it wants to take back with it, and what it wants to leave. With its increased strength from [Fists of Stone] and another [Telekinetic Tentacle] spell, it should be able to take back four of the barrels and chests with it to the dungeon. Vey drops the near-death human, confident that even if she is still alive by the time Vey gets the barrels out, she won’t be able to run. Vey’s selections are as follows: A barrel of salted fish, originally for the guards. The remaining full barrel of ale, as Vey had no use for the ones with some of the liquid missing, but does want to run experiments on alcohol. A wooden chest containing coins and jewelry from the carriage, the noblewoman’s funds and personal items. Lastly, a small crate formerly occupied with assorted fresh vegetables, which Vey has emptied onto the dirt road and filled with all of the guard’s weapons and salvageable armors.
By the time Vey finishes preparing what it wants to take, it sees that the girl must have bled to death at some point, as a small vulture has started tentatively hopping/walking close to her, the same way they had been doing to all of the other corpses. Vey starts dragging all of the corpses to the wagon, and foisting them up, for as much as it finds the idea of vultures somewhat entertaining given the way Vey itself is picking through the remains of the group itself, burning the evidence is probably safer. The carriage and wagon are too far apart for Vey to burn them in a single spell, and it doesn’t have the mana remaining for two [Scorching Ray]s and the spells it would need to start carrying back its haul without waiting an hour or so between the activities. It instead settles for drenching a wad of cloth wrapped around a stick from the woods in alcohol from the dwarf’s flask, and lighting that with [Scorching Ray], and painstakingly igniting everything slowly, waiting for the fires to take, and then beginning to carry its haul.
Vey begins to think that maybe it shouldn’t have started a fire without checking how close the wagon and carriage were to the forest and brush on either side of the road, but when it looks back, the fire seems to be burning both down perfectly safely, so it doesn’t check back again as it walks up the small hill, stopping whenever its spells disappear, and waiting for the mp recovery to allow it to recast them and for it to be able to continue moving. The forty-five minute walk out takes it two hours to get back with its loot, and combined with the time it spent waiting by the road, it should have plenty of time to sort the stuff into its storage room, clean the blood off of itself with [Create Water], and make up or alter the truth into a suitable story to tell Sera about how it got all of its new stuff. The moment Vey closes the doors to the dungeon, letting the undead it hadn’t stationed by the stairs take care of the hauling process in pairs, it slumps down against the wall and ‘rests’ for a moment, finally allowing itself time to check its status and injuries.
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Vey tries to take in all of the information at once, and is entirely overwhelmed. It does confirm its theory though, no matter how much ‘progress’ it makes towards progressing its level, it won’t actually level up until it completes an ‘encounter’. The titles producing an effect is interesting, Vey had been operating on the assumption that they were purely cosmetic. Is the Elffiend title the reason Sera started becoming so clingy with me? Vey wonders as it reads the description for Arcane Strike. This is something I probably would have figured out how to do on my own, so what are the titles doing? System Help! Titles!
Vey wonders if maybe it should’ve started by checking that, instead of the minor crisis it had about potentially altering its pet’s mind unknowingly. Vey does hate mental magic, after all, as evidenced by how it has still yet to produce an enchantment spell. The next thing Vey takes into account is how injured it is. Specifically, why it’s health is damaged, but it doesn’t feel any lasting pain the way it has seen mortals do. This prompts it to finally question something it should have done a while ago, which is actually read all of its skills and effects.
Vey knew most of this stuff already by virtue of simply understanding its own body, but seeing the extra bits of fluff from the system’s description is nice to know. In fact, if it had thought to check, it might’ve come up with an idea to progress its necromancy research.
The final thing Vey reads through is the level up notification. Apparently it only leveled up once this time, despite the fact that it killed more mortals. It supposes that the adventurers were probably leveled beings, but that most of the guards probably weren’t, meaning the actual level ‘progress’ Vey gained from killing the guards was lower. It knows instinctively that the monster evolution notification is incredibly strange, but also entirely unrelated to its level progress. If Vey had to guess, what it means is that it can ‘change’ its subrace from None to one of those, and gain effects based on what it picks.
All of that is for later though, right now it needs to get up off of the floor and sort through its haul of loot, clean itself off, and then go see Sera, in that exact order, before it can safely and calmly think about leveling up or ‘evolving’.
