"What do you an? How many people would die if Echidna and I fought here?" sharra glared at Arad, "Countless hos burned, souls snuffed, livelihoods wrecked, dreams crushed, hops vanished. It'll rain blood, no one would be able to take responsibility for such an end." She approached Arad, "What do you say? Hero brought by the goddess, do you think your authority alone could fix that?"
Arad smiled at her, "I'm not saying what you speak of is wrong. I'm saying you don't care." He stood and approached, "You and Echidna are quite similar, both are monsters. She kills for her fancy, and you kill for the royal and nobles's fancy."
"Don't lump with her. We're not the sa." sharra growled back at him, and everyone could feel the two might start fighting any second now.
"Sorry." Arad apologized first with a gentle bow, "You aren't like her, you're worse. A mindless weapon in soone's else hand. She might find it in her heart to spare a life, but you won't, you aren't allowed to."
sharra swung her fist at Arad's face but stopped right before hitting him, her wrist shaking.
Arad looked at her with a smile, "See? You can't even hit , assault is a thing after all." His expression softened a bit, "I know soone similar, she's called Lydia, a paladin to a goddess in my world called Amaterasu. But unlike you, she doesn't claim to be good, she only claims to uphold Amaterasu's will."
Arad smiled, "A beacon of light, darkness trembles at hearing her footsteps. She fears no man, fiend, or god. She fought an abomination with enough power to level a kingdom, she punched a devil lord so hard that he started to question his life choices."
"You've been babbling for a while, get to the point." sharra glared at him.
"Follow the law if you want, worship those nobles and royals who wrote it for all I care. Don't pretend to be good, understand what you fight for and protect it." He sat back on the bed beside Echidna. "They want Echidna dead since she was killing their taxpayers. If they were seeking to help people, they wouldn't even risk giving her a chance, they would've ordered you to kill her in her hut."
Arad looked at sharra with a smile, "What would they not do to protect themselves? Everything would be on the table. They'll change the law in a heartbeat to protect themselves from and the freedom I was granted by Yog."
A large smile crossed Arad's face as he looked at her, his eyes burning purple. "I'm not oblivious, I know of the orders you got, that Mary got as well."
"There are no..."
"We don't want him to experint or rape our daughters, pay so of the girls in the slums to surround him." Arad looked at her, "They knew those girls in the slum wouldn't eat dinner if they ate lunch. When an order cos from a high noble or a royal to sell their bodies, they are forced to take, and for nothing more than chump change."
Arad went silent for a second and then growled. "Maybe I should just kill those royals and nobles." At that mont, everyone in the room felt as if they were hit with a hamr on the head. sharra jumped back with sweat rushing down her face and back, her finger shaking in fear.
Echidna had covered herself in curses, sacrificing her left hand to form a powerful shield around her whole body. Plum on the other hand cried above Arad's head, jumping into the ceiling, "Arad! Calm down, what was that, I've almost leaked!" She looked at him, "Wait, I leaked a bit."
Arad sighed, "Sorry about that. This city and the one we were in before are good." He reached for his hair, but nothing was in it.
"Arthur seems to have several daughters with the won in the slums so he's firmly against those orders. And the guards in the previous city opted to hire prostitutes. I'm not mad at them fearing but at them abusing and exploiting the weak and poor." Arad's closest friend Jack had grown up and was raised in the slums, he often talked about how hard life was and how so nobles tried to exploit them.
When Arad got word of the orders making their way around the city he couldn't help but feel both enraged and disgusted. Those people are suffering like Jack and his sister did, like how Tina and Mira's mother did in the first years after their husbands died.
"It's lawful, they are given an offer of a work to be done. But it's not good, it's exploitative, scummy, and quite pathetic...coward didn't even think of talking with directly." He smiled, "How about I show them sothing funny?"
"Do..." sharra was about to say that she didn't think Arad would be able to do anything to the king or nobles, and she quickly rembered how he had just beaten Arthur. Arad would probably slap the king, and drag the queen's face on the ground while he's at it.
Echidna jumped in and sat beside Arad, "Did you hear that sharra? I'm not the only bad one, I might be the loudspeaker, but I bet you most of the nobles had done more heinous shit than." She leaned on Arad's shoulder, "At least I was offering herbal dicine to the hunters and poachers passing by my hut. Unlike so little shit decided to burn down my ho." She glared at sharra.
Arad's gaze shifted toward sharra, "She was a peaceful herbalist until you provoked her?"
"Not , my previous master. The inquisitor that trained with the sword and the one I got his dal." To beco an inquisitor one must rank up in the army first and at least beco a commander. They then must be picked up by an inquisitor who trains them, and they'll get his rank of an inquisitor if he's to die or retire.
"I killed the rotten bastard." Echidna smiled, "He burned my hut, so I set his ho ablaze at night."
"With his family and two neighbor houses ended up burned, everyone died." sharra glared at her.
Echidna looked at her with a mocking face, "Why should I care? He didn't care about setting my house ablaze."
"You weren't healing people, you were testing your concoctions on them." The two seed to be about to fight again.
"But I told them. If it worked, they'll survive, if it didn't, they are about to die anyway. It'll just be a bit more painful." Echidna giggled, "So they bought it like it's on a discount." "You started a plague, eight tis! Then you took the sick people to experint on!" sharra sat down, already getting tired from trying to reason with Arad and Echidna. "I've heard from the other victims, he scread for five hours as you opened him up alive and pulled his organs out, one by one!"
"To be fair, I only pulled his liver, stomach, and intestine out. But thanks to that, his wife's operation was successful and she survived. Well, half of her survived."
As the two argued over Arad's head Mary walked in, "I've got what you ordered!"
Arad pushed sharra and Echidna away, "Let's get to work." He then turned toward Echidna, "Stop arguing with her and go clean yourself. Take a bath, clip your nails, and make sure you're clean, sharra helped her shave any hair on her legs, arms, or back. I don't want a single hair strand to be left."
"Why !" sharra growled.
"Hold up! I don't have any hair!" She showed him her leg.
"So you can keep an eye on her. And I don't care how smooth your skin is, leave one hair, and you'll be in for a whole night of itching." As the two made their way to the bath, Arad and Mary approached the desk and he started mixing two separate mugs of ink. One for Echinda's nails, and one for so simple tattoos.
Witch's nail polish acted like an arcane focus to help them cast spells with a higher output. Humans mostly need an arcane focus to cast magic, so rare few can cast spells, they have one output source, witches can have up to twenty by polishing their nails, and all of Arad's draconic scales are output sources giving him millions of output points.
In short, a witch would have at least 20 tis the output of an average human in terms of magic, which makes them the mystical and powerful beings living in the forest.
The tattoos on the other hand are small inscriptions of magic circles that could be written on
the skin like it's done with scrolls. This allows the witch to cast those spells or buff far faster than without them, and even have a free cast for each tattoo. Scrolls burn when used, but since the witch's skin is alive and attached to her, it's infinitely reusable.
For example, a witch can inscribe a tattoo on the back of her palm that shoots a fireball each ti she flicks her fingers. The first fireball would be cast without costing mana, but then consu the normal amount afterward, this resets each ti the witch's mana gets filled since the overflow of her regeneration afterward will recharge the tattoos.
What Arad wants is to increase Echidna's precision with curses as much as he can help balance the vampire and lycanthrope curses he intends to enchant his powers with. Mary would be the stand-in healer and sharra would make sure they've got the connection they need to track down a suitable vampire and werewolf. Plum's power would co in handy while trying to hunt those two, she could also help find a decent place for Arad to transform in. Alcott winged it while fighting Ginger and suffered for years because of that, Arad won't make the sa mistake and will make sure to be prepared beforehand. With both Vlad and Alaric defeated by him, Arad had quite the confidence that he could ta the violent curses.
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