Bel counted thirteen knights, or soldiers, or whatever. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to make of them. They were all decked out in a mish-mash of armor and weaponry, not like bandits, but something else. Some of their armor shone brightly as it reflected the little light that filtered through the clouds, but the other armor on the same man was dinged and bent. It was strange to see, and even more strange that all of them seemed comfortable with it.

  Bel was stationed at the forest’s edge, roughly two hundred yards from the group. The mix of overcast skies and the tree’s canopy let him feel relatively safe from notice. He looked up at the clouds. The dark pillows had been threatening to rain, but so far had not fulfilled their promise. It wouldn’t make things easier, but he figured if anything, it would be an advantage for the unarmored against the armored. Not much of an advantage, but he’d take whatever he could get. For now, though, he studied, unable to pass up the opportunity for recon.

  There were obvious ranks, or classes, if he was going to consider this the game it was being sold to him as. Of the thirteen, three were mages, clearly. They carried staves and wore cloth. Bel didn’t want to stereotype, but their lightly colored garb made him think they were healers. Then, there was an even split between the rest. Five wore mismatched pieces of heavy armor and were likely bound for the front line and carried gigantic swords and axes, while the other five wore lighter armor and leather and were skirmishers with short swords or ranged carrying bows.

  All of them carried some kind of blue and gold, though. It wasn’t just the patch like the dead soldier in the village, but full sashes draped across heavy armor, or gold and blue cloth tied around the arms of the archers. Each of them bore the mark of the king in one way or another.

  Bel thought about it for a moment and cracked a smile. It was almost a raid party. Not a Viking raid party, but a MMORPG raid party. Healers, Tanks, and DPS. The ratios weren’t what he’d consider standard, but they were close. When he thought about it that way, it actually gave him a little hope. He understood those mechanics. Tanks draw aggro, DPS burns cooldowns, and healers make sure the tanks can… well, tank.

  The key to breaking this group apart was going to be the lack of healers. With only three casters in their group, and assuming they were all on healing duty, that meant a three to five ratio of healers to tanks. Keeping pressure on the tanks while working over the healers would break them as the healers wouldn’t be able to heal themselves, and the tanks won’t be able to soak as much damage. DPS would still be a problem, but once the tanks and healers are out of the picture, the DPS would scatter.

  Of course, all of this thought and planning was worthless, without some way to attack. With just himself, the knife, and a ten-foot python, Bel was hopelessly outnumbered—and he had to face it—out-skilled, too. It wouldn’t matter how much he analyzed their party comp if he didn’t have some backup.

  “I mean, if we only had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.” Bel whispered the lines of to Meph. Meph continued them with a flit of his tongue.

  Bel closed his eyes for a moment and thought. He could trust Meph to take out two of them, maybe, and that’s if the snake even understood what to do. He’d found he was putting a lot of faith into Meph when he really had no basis for it. The snake was definitely changing, and not just physically, but Bel still had no idea the extent of it.

  But, even if Meph took out two of them, it would leave 11 for him, and that was just flat out impossible, and since these were the people responsible for killing 60 innocent people in a village just a mile southwest of him, he wasn’t looking to parlay. This group needed to be wiped out, and that left him with one other option: getting back to the camp and convincing the remainders of Gracious’ group to fight alongside him.

  Bel sighed. It felt like asking the school bullies to help you fight the police. Sure, and all that, but at the end of the day, the bullies are bastards, too.

  That was a problem for tomorrow. Right now, the King’s mercenaries were resting, and when they were done, they were going to march on the camp. Bel figured he had an hour at most. He needed to move.

  He pulled out his phone and opened up the Map app, and then almost dropped it in surprise. The map had red dots on it—eleven of them—and they moved in real time. Bel watched, and a twelfth dot appeared at the edge, while another wandered off and vanished. He was getting real-time updates on the enemies he’d tracked through the map app on his phone.

  “Fuck me sideways, Meph. That might be the best news I’ve gotten in a long time.”

  He wanted to run a quick check. It was obvious that there was a limit to the distance of the on the map, but did it persist if he moved away, too?

  He walked several feet back until dots disappeared at the edge. Then, being careful not to look up and observe the mercenaries, he monitored the map as he walked forward. The dots didn’t reappear. He looked back up, checked them all, and then looked at his phone again. All the dots were accounted for.

  “Hollleeey shit.”

  Based on the range he was seeing, he could keep track of targets that he’d seen for nearly half a mile. Line of sight was an issue, but this was a marked improvement over his situation just moments before. He wondered if it was tied to the heat vision that he had now. And how much of this was attached to the bond that Meph and he now shared?

  He closed the map app, opened the Wiki, and typed: “Bound”.

  A new page opened up.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Bel scrolled through the page quickly, skipping the part about binding objects. He was sure that was important, but he didn’t have time for it now. He flicked down it until he found what he was looking for.

  “Woah.” Bel looked over the paragraphs several times just to make sure he was reading them correctly. His awareness of Meph was clearly stated, so he could tick that box. Shared stats made sense with what Yillie had said about him moving faster. It mentioned nothing about other perks, like this map highlighting, though. However, things were clicking into place.

  When he put on the ring, the world around him had changed pretty dramatically. It was still the same, but he was more used to it, so it wasn’t as unnerving. His night vision had become more crisp, sounds more distinct, and he had a connection to events going on around him no matter how miniscule. And then there was the heat vision. All of these were how snakes viewed the world.

  Bel slid the ring off his finger. He was momentarily frightened because he’d forgotten what it felt like when he pulled the ring off the first time—like Velcro. Once the ring was off, though, the world went back to how it had always been, though Bel hardly recognized it. Everything felt a little more blurry, and he himself felt off balance. He looked over at the crowd of mercenaries, and they were little more than gray and brown blobs. He looked down at the map on the phone, and all the dots were gone.

  “Ok, ok. Fuck me.”

  He slid the ring back on, and the world returned to glorious high definition. While he may not be one hundred percent on what the ring did, he had a much larger understanding of it now. It was allowing him to share senses with Meph, which is why when he was walking towards the village with Gracious, everything had suddenly become more intense. Meph was already in the village, and Bel had just gotten within the

  The thoughts flipped over in his mind several more times before he caught himself in a giggle.

  “I’m being hard carried by my pet snake.”

  Meph flitted his tongue and Bel gave him a head scratch.

  He looked down at the phone. On the Aethereal Binding page there were several links to other articles, but one caught his eye: Stat Growth. He tapped it.

  Bel shook his head. “This wiki is fucking amazing.”

  If he was reading it right, he had a pretty solid grasp on the topic, and more of the recent events were making sense. When he killed the bear-walrus thing, he didn’t have any Aether Forged equipment, but he had a bound familiar, Mephisto. So, while Bel couldn’t absorb the Aether, Mephisto had been able to. The monster must have been pretty fucking strong, too, because Meph had doubled in size overnight, which was also tied to him being non-sentient.

  It wasn’t much, but Bel was feeling a lot better about everything that was happening around him, and once all of this shit with the King’s men was over, he was going to do everything he could to learn the ins and outs of the world.

  First, though, he had to survive the day, and that meant killing thirteen people.

  He sighed.

  As much as he tried to justify it in his head, there was a large part of him that didn’t like the idea of killing. When he felt doubt creeping up, though, he only had to remember the pile of corpses in the village. Any one of their faces was enough to stoke the fire in his chest again.

  “You ready to do this, Meph?”

  Meph tightened across Bel’s shoulder. Bel looked back towards the King’s men one more time and counted each of them, then turned and the two headed into the woods towards the camp.

  Thirteen to go.

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