The Master of Uradan

The door opened in a loud creak as it rubbed against the floor, letting the view of the new room enter Rohan's field of view. This one, moving as slowly as possible, and feeling like an old grandpa, moved in the center of the newly found room.

Inside this one, a few tables were standing there, with strange utensils on it. On the right, some shelves were hanging against the wall, while different kinds of objects could be seen. As Rohan approached these wooden furniture, he could distinguish a lot of dried plants, resting there for presumably a long time with a thin veil of dust on them.

There were so many kinds of plants that he didn't even recognize some of them. Of course he wasn't a professional anyway, so it could just be the most normal herbs anyone could find in their garden that he wouldn't know about.

Next to this shelf filled to the brim of all these plants, was another one with books on it. Some were about mathematics, history, botany, biology, there were a lot of themes in this small collection. It was only a small one, but still a welcomed collection to Rohan, as he always had loved to read.

Thinking about books, Rohan felt a little pinch in his heart. Back when he was living with his butler, this one always left each day to go buy books before coming with a full stock under the arms, just so Rohan could read them freely.

But since he was living in the city of Blanche, a terrible fact had fallen on him. He had walked around the whole city, each street and even each alley, but he couldn't find a single place selling books. And as his master, Horin, was someone who had fled his country at full speed, plus was someone who didn't really like to read, there wasn't a single book in the shop. And all the things he could read since he was there was the yellowed book that Jonas had given to him before he left for the war.

Without hesitation, and with a big smile on his face, he took out all the books to put it inside the bag of the wizard he had taken earlier. While he was taking them one by one to store them near him, he saw that some of them weren't like the other ones.

There were four books with a black leather cover and golden words written on them: 'Rank 1 Beginner Wizard'; 'Rank 2 Beginner Wizard', 'Rank 3 Beginner Wizard', 'Spell: Wind Blade'. They were all valuable books affiliated with the secret of a wizard!

Rohan was feeling even more excited to have found them, they probably have nothing to do with him, but reading them should still give him a good amount of information about the wizards in general! With a greedy smile on his face, strangely reminding the one of a goblin, he put them in his bag, ready to kill to protect them.

After thinking for a few seconds, he decided as well to take all the plants here and put them in his bag. He didn't know anything about them, but there could be some valuable ones in it. Anyway, he now had a book about botany, so that should help to sell them at the right price if he ever needed to.

Looking one last time at these empty shelves to be sure he had forgotten nothing, he turned around to continue and scavenge the rest of the room. In front of him, standing against the wall a bit further away, he could see a table with a lot of potions in it. What a good day!

He hurried up and soon stood before the table. Some of the potions were the weak mana potions he already knew about. There were also some of the weak recovery potions, although there were only 3 of them. But what made the jaw of Rohan nearly hit the floor, was the presence of a weak mana compression potion. He was surprised to see one here, as this potion was only useful for a warrior and not for a wizard, why was this Jared in the possession of one?

The terrible mission he was currently hating with all his might was finally not so bad! Rohan quickly cleaned up the drool coming from the corner of his mouth, and put all these potions inside the warm of his bag. Among these potions there were some of them he didn't know about. Of course, he wouldn't drink them like that without knowing what they do, but maybe one day they would be useful. In any case, he just decided to take everything he could see.

All that was left in the room was the wooden furniture and some items on it, but Rohan didn't bother about them, and without waiting more, he left this treasure trove. He went back to the main room, with a corpse on the side lying on his blood and fragments of wood posed everywhere, alongside a lot of utensils broken here and there.

It was the third room he had visited, and the two others were just a bedroom with nothing interesting in it and the other one what seemed to be a kitchen. This place was really the living quarter of this wizard. Below the city. Inside the hideout of the bandits working for Bradley.

For Rohan, a rank 2 Beginner Wizard living in such a condition had pretty much lost everything. After all, all wizards were extremely well received in any place. So finishing in this spot, and dying here, was probably the worst outcome for a powerful and rare wizard.

There were only two doors that he hadn't touched. Another one was in the same wood as the others and was just on the left of the room he had exited, while the other one was made of iron. Exactly the same one as the one he had taken to enter this room.

He headed straight to the left and entered the room, only for a fierce smell to attack his nostrils as soon as he opened the door. In his sight, only two tables were standing in the middle of the small room. What caught Rohan by surprise, was what the larger one contained. A large beast. A dark scaly skin, four powerful looking limbs with sharp claws at the end, a tail hanging down to the ground, and an open mouth full of teeth. Rohan had never seen such a beast, but the instant he discovered it, he knew it wasn't like the black tiger he had fought. This beast there, was a true magical beast.

Holding back his excitement alongside his breath, Rohan advanced to look closely at the terrifying beast. It must have been a long time since the beast was dead as the putrefaction was taking Rohan by the throat and some parts could be seen attacked by the decomposition. The young and inexperienced warrior nearly threw up after seeing and smelling this.

As he approached the corpse of the beast, he could see the long and deep gash creating a large opening toward the inside of the monster, facing the back of the room. He wasn't an expert at all, but he still could see that some organs had been taken away. Particularly, the heart was nowhere to be seen.

*sigh*

"Well, that's to be expected. Who in their right mind will let the core of the beast untouched?" After all, it was a great help for the promotion of a warrior, and this for any rank. He was sure that the leader of these bandits, if they were really the ones who had slain this scaly beast, had already taken it for him.

As the smell was truly intolerable for Rohan, he couldn't stay there any longer and walk toward the entrance. But before he left the room, he saw a notebook posed on the second table, in the middle of bloody tools. He took it out without hesitation, and as he couldn't bear it anymore, quickly left the room. Since he wouldn't take the time to read anything in this hell place, he directly put it in one of his two bags hanging at his side.

He glanced a last time around him to encompass the whole area in his sight, and, when his look fell on the body of the wizard, he sighed before heading toward him. He stood in front of the wizard. After all, he couldn't leave it that way. He crouched on his weak legs with a great effort and moved his hand toward the lifeless corpse lying in his own blood. Then, he tightened up the handle of the sword, stood up, put his foot on the body, and pulled out the blade with all his might.

The blade left its human scabbard in a sickening noise. With a face showing at which point Rohan was disgusting, he didn't even take the time to clean up the blade before turning around and approached the closed iron door at a snail pace. At each step, he could sense his whole body urging him to lie on the ground and stop moving for at least a week or two, but Rohan couldn't do that. He needed to leave that place first. That was why he had taken back his sword. Even though he wasn't in the capacity to fight, he would still prepare himself for any danger he could encounter.

With a loud shrill resonating in the whole area, the door showed the way to Rohan who went up the stairs that had exposed themselves in front of him. As he continued to go up stairs after stairs, it didn't take long before another door appeared in his way.. At the moment he opened it, the first thing he saw was the clash of two swords as a loud shout echoed in the room he had entered. What fucking luck it was?