Re: Level 100 Farmer

It did not take very long for Li to get to the Chevrette estate. By now, he had the city mapped well in his head, and having a bird's eye view in the sky made things all the easier. But what made the trip even shorter was the drive with which he pushed himself. He had not flown with this intensity since he had stepped into this world. 

His wings crashed into the sky, blasting out great squalls of wind that shot his form across the sky like a shooting star. He had his arms pinned to his side with his body straight like an arrow to let the wind flow past him more efficiently. His eyes were wide open, black like voids as they saw past the battering winds and honed into the cityscape below.

Another flap of his wings, and Li adjusted his course slightly, angling himself downwards as he spotted the tall hill where the noble estates were. The force of his flight was such that he was certain that if anyone in the streets were walking below, they could hear him, though they would not be able to see him.

Caution was secondary at this point, but even so, Li did not completely disregard it. As the golden Chevrette mansion came rapidly into view, he shed his mortal form once more. His flesh peeled away into flaky rivulets like dried paint, scattering into dust in the rapid winds of his flight. He figured that since he would be fighting an opponent of some merit, he would have to use some measure of powerful magic far too flashy to attribute to his human form.

Li had not wanted rumors to spread about a powerful monster lurking in Riviera, but he would deal with that later. Instead, he immersed himself in the present, zoning in on the gold-tiled roofing of the Chevrette estate and crashing straight through it. 

Li retracted his wings as he bored through the reinforced roofing and two floors of wood before he made it to the bottom floor. He landed gently on his feet, sawdust and splinters falling around him like rain. He had sensed only a single life force in this mansion. There was not a single guarding knight nearby, which was quite odd considering the house was still supposed to be under arrest.

It only took Li to cast a single glance around him to realize why. There were knightly corpses scattered all about the living room. It was a strange sight to see the bisected halves of armored knights littering luxuriously golden furniture, the bloody red and shining gold mixing together oddly well. 

The stench of death ran rank in the air from the knights' corpses, but as before, Li noticed there was little sign of struggle. All of them had been split in two cleanly before they could put up a fight. The house was largely still in order, the bookcases and their leather-bound tomes still standing dusty and tall, the dinner table still laden with food laid out for the knights. 

The bodies of the knights were warm, their blood fresh. Li could smell the roasted meats and vegetables still steaming their succulent taste, still hot and fresh out of the kitchen. This slaughter had been recent. 

Li was right to have come here. The golem was likely still here. But what was odd was that it had killed completely indiscriminately. As Li made his way to the single life signature in the mansion, he could see there were bodies not only of the Knights of Lys, but of a few aged butlers that likely served Chevrette. 

Li quickened his pace to the life signature. It lay beyond the living room, into a hallway that fed into a spacious kitchen. The kitchen was well lit with lantern and crystal lights, and the bodies of chefs lined the floor, some of them still holding knives and unprepared food in their hands.

The situation did not seem right. As Li focused, he realized the life signature did not match that of Chevrette's. It was stronger, younger, and yet, it was not supernatural. Regardless, he pushed on as anything alive and human would still be able to tell him what had happened and where the golem was.

At the back of the kitchen, behind a vault for ingredients very similar to the one employed in the fine restaurant, Li found the life signature he was looking for.

Li had pulled the metal vault door off with his branched fingers, and when he saw who it was, he laid the heavy door quietly down. It was Chevrette's daughter, kitchen knife clasped in a shaking pale hand poised at Li, and below her blood rimmed dress was the body of her father, neatly split from head to toe like all the other corpses.

The northern bronze housekeeping golem was also here, though in several broken and dented pieces. The head was noticeably scrunched up like a tin can beside a pile of fish spilled from an overturned crate. It sparked and occasionally let loose a distorted word of "danger". 

Ironic, in a way. The great Chevrette ending up just the same as all the common citizens and servants he once stood above. But regardless, the sins of a parent did not condemn a child, and Li needed to talk to the daughter properly to get a sense of what was going on. 

Li knelt down and slowly reached out his hand, knowing full well how horrific he looked. The daughter shrunk back, biting her lip with such intensity that it broke the skin and drew blood. She flailed her arm around, the knife waving wildly.

"I am no threat," said Li. He pointed to her with a wooden, claw-like finger. "[Tranquility]".

A swirl of leaves and brilliant green energy whirled around the girl, wiping away her momentary panic and terror as well as any potential physical damage. 

Li moved forwards, making sure his large frame hid the sight of Chevrette's corpse from the girl. As he did so, he changed he cast more shapeshifting on himself, using a spell called [Aspect of the Howling Ursine] to shift his face to that of a brawny, horned bear with purple flame curling from his eyes and teeth.

Still a terrifying sight to a human, but at the least, it masked his insanity inducing presence, which was the best to hope for as he simply did not have any other forms barring his human one that were not complete eldritch monstrosities or crawling insectoid horrors. It was also possibly the most combat ready form in case he was ambushed. And in his opinion, a bear was more pleasant to look at than a skull. 

"It may not appear so, but I am here to help. Consider me a…guardian spirit of sort. No harm will come to you through me. Come, tell me your name."

"Ella," she said. She clutched the knife to her chest still like a precious pendant, but the fact that she did not wave it forward anymore meant that she knew it was useless. That at the least meant she had some sensibility to her, even in this situation. 

"Good. You can speak. Then Ella," said Li, his voice resounding outwards in ethereal, rumbling echoes. "What happened?"

"I…do not know," said Ella. She drew out her hands and looked at their bloodstained forms. She shivered, the knife dropping from her grasp. But at the same time, with her mind cleared from shock, she spoke with a surprising amount of strength that leeched through the fear-laced wavers in her voice.

"One moment, I was with father in the kitchen, the next, everybody had fallen. But father told me that we were fine, that the arrest would amount to nothing, that he had never done anything wrong. But surely, the gods have come down upon us, but I do not know why. Father was so good to me, so good to others."

Ella looked at Li with fear, but she managed to squeak out a request. "If…if you are here for father's soul, will you tell me if he was a good man?"

"A good man?" Li paused for a moment, recounting how much suffering the man had wrought to others. Evidently, not to his daughter, but there were sins enough tacked onto his figure. But it did not sit well with him to condemn the man in front of his suffering, likely innocent daughter. He sighed.

"A man is not solely good or solely bad. A man is a man because there is both within him. To you, I am sure he showed the good he had within himself." 

Ella nodded meekly, and Li, seeing her gaining more composure, was about to ask whether she had seen the attacker, but that matter resolved itself quickly enough. He saw Ella's eyes widen, and he realized there was something behind him. 

"A magical beast that comforts little girls? Why, this land never ceases to amaze me. Now then, please do move from my next body."

Li turned his bulky frame to meet eyes with a ghostly pale woman. She looked like she would have belonged on the front page of a model magazine in his own world, back in his own country.

The momentary surprise of seeing someone that looked like his own human form quickly, passed, however, and he analyzed her for tactical details, seeing whether there was anything about her that was odd or dangerous.

She held no weapons nor did she wear any armor, but Li did realize skin was unnaturally smooth and unblemished, shining with an ethereal light that seemed almost akin to polish. And as Li got a better look at her, he realized that indeed, it might have been polish.

She was garbed in black robes patterned with red dragons that flowed loosely, making it hard to see her figure, but he could see her exposed hands and digits were segmented, the wrist joint attached to a ball like that of a porcelain doll's. 

Inorganic limbs. This was the golem he was looking for. 

"No, you are no mere magical beast. More akin to a devil, perhaps a fallen god," said the golem as she flung back long locks of black hair as she gazed at Li with wide eyes. Eyes wide not in fear like Ella's was, but in sheer, raw hunger tinged with ferocious, if almost insane drive.

"This presence, this sheer, spiritual power. To witness it in person makes me understand that I was right to hunt you. The deathly chill of Yin and the living heat of Yang reside within you in equal and great measure. More than enough to serve my needs without having to resort to the foolish machinations of skeletal devils. I will make excellent use of your core."

Li turned and began walking towards the golem, his massive, ursine figure dwarfing her. His great, black-furred and spiked paw grasped at Chevrette's corpse as he moved forwards, mindful that he did not have Ella staring at her murdered father until he was done crushing this insect. 

"Hunt? Me?" Li smiled, baring several rows of jagged teeth. "I sense that you have some pride about you, that you have always been the hunter. But tonight, you will know what it feels to be prey."