Mercenary wizard 3 a pro.., p.1
Mercenary Wizard 3: A Progression Fantasy Saga, page 1
Mercenary Wizard 3
A Progression Fantasy Saga
Magic For Hire
Book 3
Han Yang
Copyright © 2023 by Royal Guard Publishing LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Swarm
2. Deceive
3. Pierce
4. Adrift
5. Upgrade
6. Storm
7. Adrift in the Shallows
8. Beached
9. Jackpot
10. Attack
11. Giants
12. Destruction
13. Upgrade
14. Madness
15. Lucky
16. Mines
17. Red Eyes
18. Descent
19. Rescue
20. Wizard
21. Damp
22. Robes
23. Tracking
24. Squawk
25. Master
26. Trek
27. Giant
28. Waterfall
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Also by Han Yang
Chapter 1
Swarm
Harbortown Beach -- Defeat the Attacking Sand Fleas
Day 176 of the Crane’s Year
I twirled my throwing daggers idly as I watched the newest threat to my home swarm in. The steel still felt good in my hands, even after becoming a full-blown mercenary wizard. I supposed that a bit of the street thief still lived within me, preferring subtle methods of dispatching my enemies to the louder spells that I’d since learned.
My wife Avril glanced at me as I twirled my weapons of precise destruction, with playful confusion evident on her face.
She said, “Darling, I know your past is important to you, but you’re a wizard now. Don't you think it's time to hang up the old throwing daggers? You can literally summon boulders of thick rock, not to mention fire bursts.”
Avril's fine features were scrunched up prettily as she transitioned from giving me a look, to staring in the direction of the setting sun and our many, many oncoming attackers. She was right, of course. But I didn't actually have any intention of using my throwing knives against a mass of swarming sand fleas.
I mean, if we were being attacked by one sand flea, sure, I’d break out the old throwing knives. At over a hundred easily, however, the red eyes swarming towards us were simply too numerous to waste time with such theatrics.
I shot Avril a grin, turning my attention from the faraway but rapidly-approaching enemies. She looked exceptionally beautiful, just the sort of partner any man would want to spend a night with, let alone eradicate a swarm of red eyes.
In my old home in the Desert, women went around veiled to keep the sun damage from accumulating on their skin. Whereas an outsider might think that we were all tanned, the truth of the matter was that we did as much as possible to keep the sun off of us. Avril’s tanned face was the color of sand in a setting sun.
Avril noticed me staring and blushed lightly, the pink settling into her cheeks and making her look like she'd gotten a bit too much sun that day.
She ducked her face back towards the oncoming line of sand fleas while muttering, “I do wish you'd stop staring sometimes.”
I laughed and turned my attention that way as well before responding, “I just can't help it. When I met you, you were always wearing that ash mask. You look much better with your skin showing, instead of a skull and bones.”
She sighed longingly and said in a wistful tone, “Things were simpler back then, weren't they?”
I blinked in surprise at her, then realized that she must be joking. Compared to uncovering a secret cult bent on bringing demons back to the land and using dark magic that was nearly impossible to heal, dealing with a few dozen sand fleas on our island home was about as close to a walk in the park as you could get.
Granted, the closest park was in the island's Oasis Center and took a good two days of travel to arrive at, but still.
I stowed my throwing knives back in the strap of my boot, then wriggled my toes and felt sand scraping against the inner sole. I sighed and pulled off the boots, tipping them upside down and banging on the toe with the heel of my hand to knock as much sand out as possible.
I liked my boots. They were comfortable, defendable, and absolutely the worst kind of footwear that one could possibly use while traversing this beachside paradise that we called home.
They were perfect.
I pulled off the other boot, tipped some more sand out of that one, then picked up my sandals and strapped them onto my feet instead.
Ahead of us, the line of sand fleas grew ever closer. These were a real treat to get to know. Back home, we did have fleas, even if we didn't call them sand fleas.
The small creatures got tangled in camel fur and made the pack animals itch horribly. They also seemed to arrive in swarms, meaning that if you were in a caravan, any one animal who got them would soon transmit them to every other animal in the group. I'd even heard of women with long hair needing to comb their dark locks out for days on end, just to rid themselves of the pernicious fleas.
Men like me who kept their hair short rarely had such difficulties.
“I believe they're nearly here, dearest. We should prepare,” Avril said, standing up and knocking sand off the front of her dress.
I did the same, then summoned the power of the Mountain and pulled a few pebbles from an inner pocket in my shirt. The pockets were sewn into my sleeves and were easily accessible. Focusing on the small rocks, I willed them to reactivate the mana that I'd dumped into them earlier and felt them thrum in my hand, as though eager to be put to use.
“Good to see you lads again,” I said to the rocks with a grin, glancing at the chittering line approaching us.
Avril snorted. She didn't love the way I spoke to inanimate objects sometimes, and used words like “cracked” when talking to her child about me. I didn't mind, since she was always chuckling when she did so.
Studiously ignoring my wife’s raised eyebrows, I raised my hand and shot one of the small rocks into the oncoming line of sand fleas. My miniscule projectile whizzed off, making a racket like a hornet as it careened towards the front sand flea.
The fleas back in the Desert were tiny things. The sand fleas out here, well...
Once or twice, I'd seen a horse that was larger than the smallest ones. But that horse had been a truly fine specimen. These sand fleas were massive, and arrived in swarming herds, standing at least shoulder height on me.
The fleas moved with quick scuttling motions across the sand. Their jaws snapped, while their red eyes glowed viciously as they were backlit by the setting sun. They might have been big, but they were still just as dumb as any of the miniscule fleas I’d learned to deal with in my childhood home.
My rock punched through the face of the first one in line. Its carapace of a skull collapsed sharply inwards, and its two red eyes smushed together from the force of the blow until they looked like a fancy lady’s jelly dessert. The beast didn’t even give out a roar of anger as it crumpled to a sandy death.
Sand fleas were a real problem in the Desert. On the tropical islands, the carapace exterior was exceedingly hard and routinely shrugged off. Sword strikes, arrow volleys, and the like did little to break through to their soft, gooey interiors. The only way you could deal with them in a non-magical, one-on-one manner was by striking their eyes with enough force to get back to where their brains sat, and damage the tiny things.
The only other way to deal with them was by catapult volley.
This was costly, slow, and generally more use against singular large targets than against the swarm of writhing, scuttling legs that a sand flea onslaught foretold.
Alternatively, I had heard that tests against trapped specimens, using the larger kind of two-handed, two-headed battle axes or large warhammers, had seen some success. But if you were using something that large against a creature that attacked in droves this all-encompassing, you were really asking to be repaid double or triple by the oncoming red eyes.
I grinned wickedly as my magic projectile shot out the rear end of the first sand flea in the line and continued its path, cracking the skull of the next one. This process repeated itself until a line of sand fleas five deep collapsed to the ground.
The thick press of immobile carapaces made the next ones in line hit the rear ends with a sudden stop, smacking into each other and creating a giant pileup. Loud crunches and cracks rang out from the brutish invaders as they collapsed into one another.
I grinned, watching the results of my work. Spindly sand flea legs snapped as their knees bent backwards and gooey ichor oozed from the joints.
Still, the sand fleas came on quickly, and the ones further in the rear soon swarmed over their writhing or immobile comrades.
Meanwhile, Avril swirled magic between her cupped palms and sent lines of hot fire careening across the front lines of the onslaught. Hissing pops sounded as the sand fleas’ innards boiled in double time and burst them from the inside out. Screeches came from the ones behind the leaders as the boiling contents splashed down upon the m and seared their glowing red eyes in boiling ichor.
I shot more balls of the condensed magic into the fray, doing my best to angle each shot so that it would take out as many of the sand fleas in a line as I could manage. One by one, the enemies fell to our defenses.
Soon the rhythmic thumping and chittering of sand flea legs pounding in unison on the wet sand and of sand flea mandible clacking hungrily turned more chaotic. Now, sand flea legs were clacking into each other, and sand flea mandibles were being crushed and popped wide by the jarring impacts, as we forced our enemies into pileups ten, twelve, or fifteen bodies deep.
Behind us, there were loud cheers from the island’s gathered onlookers. The spectators had come for a show, and a show was what they were getting. Crystal drinking glasses tinkled as toasts were raised to our efforts, and silver cutlery clattered on porcelain plates as the onlookers applauded. They, of course, were offering nothing more to our defense of their town than this ruckus.
I paid them as little attention as I possibly could, while Avril seemed to not even notice them a bit.
Still the fleas came on. That was the thing that the island-type sand fleas shared most with their Desert flea cousins: their pernicious, unwavering inability to simply give it up and call it a day.
The waters before us surged. The serene blue turned to a foamy white, as black chitinous legs splashed up and down across the sea, and sharp pointy mandibles sounded like the drums of war as they clacked again and again. This time, a deep baritone was added to the clacking from being under water.
I pulled more stones from my sleeves and sent them ricocheting off into the onslaught of glowing red eyes and shining black carapaces. Soon, the slow, measured footsteps and tap-tap-tap of a man with a walking stick approached my left.
“You two have always done right by us in the past,” the Mayor of Harbortown said, with a voice so stern I could practically see him frowning in my mind's eye. Even so, I kept my attention focused on the waves of glittering black insects that approached us, like the tide coming in. “I just want to let you know that we have backup if you need it.”
I chuckled and glanced over at the mayor, confirming with my eyes what my imagination had told me a moment before.
Mayor Archibald's frown was etched so precisely onto his weathered features and leathery skin that I wouldn't have doubted anyone if they told me he was actually a statue chiseled by some great artisan from the mainland.
Long ago, Archibald had had a shock of black hair that he kept so well-oiled it would have reminded me of this swirling mass of black chitin before us. When it had started to change, no one knew precisely. Now it was bleached white by the sun.
The origin of his wrinkled, leathery skin took even less mental curiosity to discover. It had accrued over the course of a lifetime spent unshaded by the wide straw hats that many of the locals wore, being constantly dehydrated through the thick salt water that lapped at the shore. Though at the very least, no one had assured me that his shoe-leather face had ever been anything but hard and weathered.
The cane that he rested on wasn't, at least strictly speaking, caused by sun damage. Instead, so the story went, the mayor had been a brawler in his youth, and had attempted to live the mercenary lifestyle that I now so enjoyed. Though it was difficult to picture the aged, sun-beaten man wielding a war hammer in any sort of reality that existed outside of the man's own dreams, his barrel chest did remain as indication that he had been strong once.
A giant crab had been the cause of the cane, not sun damage. The tap-tap-tap of his cane was accompanied by the tap-shuffle-click of his iron-tipped peg leg.
I shot his nervous features a knowing grin as I sent off the last of my pre-made spells.
“You've always had a small army of mercenaries—low-grade ones, need I remind you—ready to jump in and help. But now you’ve got Avril and me, Archie. You were annoyed with yourself for paying those mercenaries in advance, too, weren't you?” I said, while shooting another blast into the sand fleas.
Archibald's eyes scanned the writhing mass before us. Though the sand fleas’ advance had slowed now, it still showed no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Archibald grumbled and wrapped his fingers tight around the handle of his cane. “You needn't remind me,” he said wearily. “The city council's on me enough about that as it was.”
I chuckled at how despondent he sounded. Harbortown might have had a busy port, but the margins it made on the ships in that port were vanishingly slim. If it weren't for the fact that Avril and I called the island home, neither of us would have even thought twice about turning down these protection contracts. The funds they paid were so low it was almost insulting.
I was a mercenary, but I was also a wizard. And my darling wife now matched me in that respect. My fees had started small, but I now could command princely sums if I wanted to.
Still, the island had been our home for the past year. And a home required special care.
I grinned over at the mayor and cast a glance down at his wooden leg. “I could heal that for you as well,” I said easily, as I lowered my hands and prepared my special summon. “Regrowing limbs would be a painful experience for the both of us, but fortunately for you, I don't want to grow rusty. At least no rustier than the iron tip of that leg you're constantly replacing.”
The mayor grumbled again. Getting across his cantankerous pig-headedness through tone, what would not be easily conveyed in words alone. I knew why the mayor wouldn't let me repair his leg, of course.
I had asked him about it, shortly after learning of his honor and integrity, and how much he cared for the Harbortown inhabitants. The fact of the matter was that Archibald kept the peg leg for political reasons.
It was always easier to remind people that you've sacrificed for them, if you didn't have to keep bringing it up in every conversation, or during every second-guessing you receive from the council. He had grumbled at the time, “You could heal me, sure, but then where would I be? An old ex-mercenary in a seaside village. My only skills left with my old body.” He had shaken his head. “No, it's better this way. As I am now, I can be helpful to my friends, my family, and my community. Bring my leg back and, ironically, you'd doom me.”
I’d simply shrugged. The focus on remaining useful to his family, his town, no matter what the cost, struck a chord with me that I could understand. After all, I was doing something similar, though perhaps even more disastrous.
Fifteen stelli—that was all I charged for these protection contracts. It was a fee that a normal, non-wizard mercenary could earn in a short afternoon's work, finding some lost farmer's sheep, or clearing out a cave of red-eye moon wolf youths.
Fifteen stelli.
It was, frankly, so low a fee for what Avril and I were accomplishing that it wouldn't even be considered an insult. Frankly, if I had seen that prize listed as a reward for fending off this many giant sand fleas, I would have assumed that it was a joke, and not a particularly good one at that.
I may not have carried unfortunate wounds on me, as a sign of how much I treasured my home. But if a mercenary's lifeblood was income, then taking fifteen stelli for this job was the equivalent of cutting off both my legs at the hip and shoving a serrated blade deep into my stomach.
I pulled magic into my center, feeling my heartbeat quicken. The magic pulled into me and I felt its breeze sucked the sand towards me in columns. It tugged on Avril's long hair, like the small gusts of wind that herald a storm.
Still, my heartbeat quickened even more. It grew faster and faster and faster…
And then suddenly it dropped in an instant. One heartbeat, it was racing at a hundred and fifty beats per minute. The next, it dropped to seventy five. And yet still, it pumped twice as loudly for all that it had been halved.
