Kiada, Blood Servant System Reborn

"Why would you want to help us?" I asked with suspicion.

"Can we sit down? Look, we will drop our weapons over here," Kal pointed to a spot on the ground where the men started to put their weapons down in piles. "We don't want trouble, the exact opposite. Since you have already had a visit with Dyster it was important for us to talk with you before you got to the city."

"Fine, but I am sending the girls back to bed, but I don't need them to kill you all," I said, gesturing to the logs we had rolled up.

"Hey, you don't have to tell us twice, we already know about you. Red Legion Guild is big talk in Healia so we naturally heard about you, and you completing the first dungeon! Very impressive, and not long before Jester completed the one here and earned his item," Kal explained.

There were three logs rolled in a triangle around the fire, so Lesha, Tim, and I were the ones that put our back to the tent. Tim still straddled the log to watch the tents just in case.

"Item?" I asked curiously.

"I will let him tell you about that, he doesn't share information freely, but that doesn't mean he is a bad guy. We all get a bad name because we do the jobs that no one else will, but we don't kill without purpose. Jester wants to give you a place while you're in the city, but he has his reasons. He wants to kill Dyster, and all the rest of the Gods by extension," Kal explained as we all sat around the fire.

Now that was interesting, and it also lined up with what I was planning to do at some point anyway. This Jester sounded experienced, but was he just a crime boss that wanted to overthrow the Gods because it was inconvenient, or was it something else?

"What reason would Jester have for wanting to kill Dyster besides making his life easier as a crime boss?" I asked, but then all the men started to laugh, except for Kal, and then they all soon quieted.

"Jester is no crime boss, hell he doesn't even like killing and we don't do anything that doesn't need to be done because of him. Jester was a normal adventure that was a soldier before that, a good and solid man, never did wrong. One day, he had gone to the dungeon after kissing his pregnant wife goodbye. Dyster was having a bad day and one of his natural disasters caused the house that Jester's wife was in and five others on the block to collapse. Jester returned home to find his wife and unborn child dead."

Lesha gripped my hand tight as Kal told the story, and I could feel her start to shake at the end. I slipped my arm around her, but he wasn't finished.

"Jester spent the rest of his time from that point forward; only coming out to buy food rations with the spoils he earned. It took him three months of grinding until he was finally able to push through and claim the core for himself. After that he came to our guild and killed the current master, not a big loss, Teim was a cold-blooded killer that would kill anyone if he was paid. The rest is history, or at least the last 2 months," Kal finished and leaned back on the log.

"What about Giayadel's followers, and the women?" I asked.

I would hunt them down in my spare time if I had to. After hearing yet another story of callus Gods, I was starting to feel less reserved about killing them. I already had a sense of what Dyster was like with the way his temper had spiked when I challenged him, so the story was not hard to believe.

"Jester will still help you deal with them, we know about it and we have been slowly making them disappear, but Giaydel just sends more. The men we kill are all wearing some type of mask that makes them look handsome when they are just hired thugs with silver tongues. Jester is working on plans to deal with them, but they are still in the works, for now, we need more information."

"So then what do we do with the rings and Belt Knifer? How do we give them back?" I asked.

This was a far better deal than what Dyster had offered, but then Dyster wasn't that likely to help with a plan for his own execution. Losing the rings would be unfortunate, but we could get more in the city, we would just have to get some more gold…

"Here, Jester told me to give these to me if you asked. He said that meant you understood what he was trying to do and would be willing to listen. I will take the rings back and then Jester will deliver them back to Dyster because he will not be happy that you refused him. Plus, Jester loves to take any chance to get under Dyster's skin," Kal said with a laugh and walked over to hand me a handful of rings.

"What about my Knifer?" Tim asked a bit reluctantly, but Kal was already pulling a small rectangular box with wrist straps.

Tim's eyes lit up and he looked at Kal with big eyes.

"Jester knows about you too, and the Belt Knifer is good, and we can get you some, but this is what you need. This is the" Kal tried to say, but Tim cut him off.

"Air Knife, are you serious? Isn't this a tool only allowed to be used by members of your Guild?" Tim asked, not grabbing for the weapon yet.

"Yes it is, but Jester has decided that since we will be working together it would be fine for you to borrow one for now, but I'll need the pair of Belt Knifers you got on. Dyster tends to get a bit upset when he gets stood up on a deal," Kal said with a smile.

Tim took his belts off and handed them over, trading for the Air Knife. This was not how I had expected this meeting to go, but I was relieved. And now I was more on track with my main goal, ridding the world of the invading Gods!