Arriving at the royal capital for the first time in a while, Griswold was wearing a hooded coat over some otherwise black clothes and boots, not really trying to look all that recognizable as he made his way over the city on his broom. Not being the kind of person that really enjoyed being around the place too much, today was somewhat different in that it was a visit that could not really be avoided. After all, it was linked directly into a mission he was to be undertaking soon, one that was quite important to a bunch of people, which was apparently why they had decided that it would be a wise decision to get Griswold involved. While he was not exactly the best person for the job, the fact that he had quite recently saved a whole family of people from an ancient elven ruin that had been infested with wraiths had apparently made some waves for him, which was most likely a good thing.
Because of some person being allowed to venture into an ancient ruin after getting the wizard king to sign off on it, a magic knight getting assigned to it for the sake of protection and as a sign of good will from the wizard king’s office itself, Griswold was one of the few candidates that stood out as a solid choice. Those that had ever ventured into one knew that heading down into a ruin was nothing at all like most other kinds of missions, because there were a lot of things that could potentially go wrong. One such thing was the fact that the ceiling could collapse, a floor could give in, a wall might fail and cause either the former or the latter to happen or worse. Because the name “ruin” more or less implied that a place was old, which made it seem that much more dangerous when the word “ancient” was slapped in front of it, though that just seemed to make the average archaeologist wet their pants in excitement.
As for Griswold, he had not exactly forgotten what had happened the last time he ventured into one of the elven ruins near Kiten when he had heard about a family that had gone missing after their daughter claimed they had been taken away by ghosts. Even though the wraiths he encountered were doing the things they were doing against their will due to an ancient curse being triggered after a particularly powerful staff had been stolen from the crypt beneath the ruins in question, they were still incredibly hostile and needed to be stopped one way or another. That said, whenever he destroyed them, they would eventually reconstitute themselves after a couple of minutes, after which they would simply return to attack him a second, third or fourth time. Eventually though, he managed to retrieve the staff from a pair of grave robbers that had turned on one another and returned it to the pedestal it had been stolen from, thus settling the curse and allowing the wraiths to return to the afterlife.
So in those regards, heading back into ruins again so soon was not something he was really looking forward to, though he also understood why he had been picked to go along with these people and see to their safety. As much as he wanted to stick around the forsaken realm so he could actually help the people that really needed it while getting some moments of peace to do some training here and there, knowing the royal knights exams to be just around the corner. Because even with all of the training he had done with Hania over the past week, which had allowed him to get stronger to some extent while Hania managed to unlock various new states of control with his merged spirit forms, he still did not feel like he would be in any way strong enough to become a royal knight. If the people he was supposed to use as a point of reference were all like Hania, he was about a few years away from actually being capable of contributing a single damn thing, and that was rather disheartening.
Though there was a part of him that wished there were those who were weaker than he was, that was a sentiment he quickly dropped for rather obvious reasons. After all, if he was not the weakest, there were some people around that would get blown to bits before the fight would even have a chance to properly start. That was how powerful demons were supposed to be at least, so if he was to be the weakest one around, he was entirely fine with that as it meant that the others would at the very least be able to hold their ground. If he was to be the only weak link in the chain, that would still make for a relatively sturdy one, depending on where he was placed. Because it was as they said, a chain was only as strong as its weakest link, meaning several weak links would make for a chain that was broken apart easily by something as powerful as an archdemon, let alone various archdemons coming at them all at once. An undesirable force to stand against, though it was something that clearly needed to be done for the good of the country.
Arriving at the massive library, the thing he had been told to read up on was snakes, particularly those of the venomous variety. If it were up to him, he would not even do that much, as he knew enough about snakes from living near a strong magic region, as well as on a farm, to know that if a snake went right, it would not be the worst idea to go left. As most animals, snakes might look scary, though the vast majority was more afraid of people than people were of it, and that was the sad reality of it. Most would just go about killing the snake right away without really bothering to figure out whether it was even venomous or even remotely dangerous to people, which plenty of snakes weren’t at all. In a way, he imagined reading into these creatures would not be the worst thing as doing a bit of self-education would be rather helpful. After all, if he was to be preaching on how people did not understand animals, or snakes in particular, he really couldn’t just get away with not understanding them fully himself.
Once he was inside of the building, he put down the hood, not expecting a whole lot of people to actually be around here that might snitch on him. If at all possible, he would have liked it if no one knew he had been in the capital so he wouldn’t have to deal with anyone from the crimson lions try and give him some missions around the noble region that he would rather see delegated to someone else more suited to the people here. After all, something he had once again learned during his training with Hania, he really wasn’t the kind of person who could deal with all the antics of nobles. Having to watch what he said at all times so as to not step on the overly long toes of incredibly testy people with way too much money and influence, had to make sure not to move in a way that was considered unsightly or dress in a similar way, it was all just way too much for him to deal with. And in truth, it was also one of the reasons why he had been considering switching to a magic squad that was located in either the common or forsaken region.
One thing was for sure, it was in no way to be blamed on the crimson lions that he wanted to change to another squad as it was entirely a matter of personal conviction and preference. He knew full well that he owed it to them that he was a magic knight in the first place, and that he was fairly special as far as members went, what with him being the only commoner to exist within the crimson lion squad. He imagined that, regardless of how things went, they could at least take pride on knowing that the commoner they had taken in had managed to climb quite a bit, and was not done climbing any time soon either. Returning his mind to the task at hand, he continued looking for the kinds of books he needed, believing that anything regarding reptilians might help him to some degree. After all, snakes were reptiles, and he doubted that snakes would be the only things he would be encountering within the ruins. After all, all kinds of creatures must have made that place their home by now as it had been years since anyone had gone in, that he knew of at least.
Reading up on constrictor type snakes that were usually many times larger than their venomous brethren, he read up on how they used their strong muscular bodies in order to wrap around someone completely before crushing the air out of their lungs. Once that was done, they would dislocate their own jaws and begin forcing their prey into their mouths completely, where they would eventually be dealt with as they got dissolved by stomach acid. Claiming that once one of these snakes began eating, it could take various hours or even up to a day or longer before they would actually be done with the whole process and continue hunting for new pray, he believed these would not be the ones they would need to worry about the most. Dangerous as they were, he imagined the smaller ones would be the biggest issue here, as a single bite might cause one of the people he was meant to be escorting their lives in a matter of minutes, making every step in the dark a tricky one.
Continuing to the elapids, the vipers and the colubrids, he figured these were the ones he would need to be worrying about. Not because they were stronger or more violent, but because of the fact that they were all venomous and fit in rather well inside of a ruin as old as this one. Reading up on adders, cobra, asps and other types of venomous snakes, there were a couple of them that seemed to have a venom so dangerous that it turned the flesh it passed through necrotic, which seemed like it would be an incredibly painful death for those that got bit. All things considered, there were a lot of things that needed to be taken into whatever calculation he was going to be making if it came to getting however many people he was supposed to be transporting throughout this particular ruin, which made it seem like the chances of them running into some kind of trouble along the way were too big to go entirely unscathed. This obviously required him to be that much more vigilant.
Letting a deep sigh escape his lips, he realized how this was likely going to be a lot more difficult than it sounded, as was usually the case with these things. There was a reason why they wanted a magic knight to tag along after all, which was not something they would do if they were not expecting to run into trouble. This was exactly the reason why he believed reading up on snakes would only provide him with some more basic knowledge as to the species. Because if they wanted to get someone who could deal with snakes, there were other people to ask aside from magic knights who were not specialized on the matter. Having already encountered certain types of threats that would usually not meet the light of day in the past few months, he hoped the worst threat would be snakes.
2000
[END OF THREAD]
