The Arcane Archer - Chapter 46 Revelation

“Hi and welcome to the Mimic Inn, may I take your order or are your just staying the night?”

“Get me a beer.”

“Understood sir.” I said with slight nod.

Now you may be wondering, “Why is Leo saying this to people????” Well to answer your question, the dungeon is still working on refilling the first two floors with enemies so till that happens, I had to take a part time job to make some money.

The Mimic Inn pays decently in my opinion. With Chance being filled with many strong people and what not, they all have a decent amount of money and know how to pay a good minimum wage.

Their minimum wage was a silver per hour. According to regular wages in a human city, someone would be lucky just to earn 2 silver coins per day for working an easy job and technically I’m working one of the easiest jobs.

All I’m doing is sitting in a chair, greeting anyone who walks through the doors and asking them what they’d like before using magic to send a quick message to the owner who’ll start working on it. Other then that, I have nothing else to do and have been reading my books for a while.

Compared to having to learn history and stuff back on earth which was a massive bore for me, learning history and stuff here is much better cause it talks about magic and stuff. Can almost never get bored from reading about magic in fantasy novels and video games so why not on a different world who’s history is filled with magic?

Anyways, after a few more minutes, an alarm I set within the system went off indicating that it was time for me to end my shift. Closing my book, I got up from my chair and walked over to the boss before saying my shift was up and getting a quick nod from him and a small bag holding 8 silver coins.

This being my second day working here, I’ve made a total of 16 silver in which brought me up to a total of 34 silver.

Making my way up the set of stairs to get to my room, I saw and heard that I got a notification from the system but I just shoed it to the back of my head cause I wanted to get to my room first and it couldn’t be that important.

Unlocking my door, closing it behind me and relocking it, I then threw myself on my bed and relaxed for a few minutes. Eventually I sat up and went to check out the notification from the system.

[Quest Failed! Aetius the false god has killed the entirety of a race and has ascended into an actual god of war!]

.

“Well shi- ”

My door slammed open with Ava standing in the doorframe. “Leo, I have bad news!” She yelled loud enough the entire Inn probably heard.

“Let me guess, Aetius and his followers killed the entirety of a certain race?” I asked not sounding surprised.

“No! He- wait. How did you know?”

I raised an eyebrow and gave her a “Take a guess” look.

“Right. Magic. But now that all the Tabaxi are dead, we’ve lost one of the biggest supporters in our fight against Aetius. He even killed their Divine King and took his spark.”

“Divine King?”

“Yeah, you know, the Jaguar King, god of War and Heritage. Usually whenever the previous Jaguar king is about to die, he sends a Tabaxi on a quest to discover their own power before the Jaguar King dies and adds his power onto that Tabaxis newly found power, constantly making the Jaguar King stronger and stronger. Sadly, it doesn’t pass down knowledge from what we hear so it makes the new king a bit of an idiot, but it also makes the new king strong. Anyways, since he was able to take the Jaguar king’s diving spark, he was able to ascend to Godhood and became a newly born god of actual war and something else which we don’t know.”

“How don’t we know the second part? If he took the divine spark from the Jaguar King who was the god of war and heritage, shouldn’t he get the same Godhood and powers?”

“If only but no. When someone gains a divine spark, they gain a godhood from one of the two godhood’s that the divine spark came from which represents them the most. The other half is something else entirely that defines who they are. Let’s take Sapphire, the god of death and mercy for example.

According to legends, she was a regular mortal who was a priest under Zyrt, the god of Death and Survival. She eventually became his best priest and accomplished many things with the power he gave her and offered her a divine spark. She accepted that spark but instead of becoming a evil god of death or a god of survival like Zyrt, she instead became one of mercy who wanted to ease people into the afterlife instead of being a ruthless evil god who did her job without emotions because she still cared about people. She wanted to be merciful.”

“But she didn’t kill Zyrt to gain the divine spark? Is there another way to gain one?”

“There is.” She said while nodding slowly. “A god can give someone a divine spark if they’ve had one for long enough because as time passes, their amount of divine sparks slowly starts to grow as they grow in power. However, by doing so, they themselves will loose power and will feel a responsibility to the person they gave the spark to.”

There was a moment of silence that she allowed me to just contemplate everything I just learned. At one point, a question came to mind that out of all the other ones that I had now.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked. “I’m guessing this isn’t some knowledge that everyone hears about.”

She gave a smile that seemed to radiate a bit of sadness.

“Well that’s simple.” She said while slowly taking off the hood that covered her head, revealing elvish like ears that were much shorter then regular elf ears. “I was a priest of Aetius and he told me many things as one of his favorites.”

There was an awkward second without any sound before I started laughing.

“A priest of Aetius!? That’s one of the best jokes I’ve heard in a while!” I laughed out while she gave me a death glare. “Aetius hates any other race then humans and if I’m guessing, you’re a half elf or something which would mean he would still hate you as any other race.”

She continued to glare at me before punching me in the face. It sent me back a few feet as I was to busy laughing to notice. For some reason I continued to laugh as if it was the best joke I’ve heard in the entire world, even though I knew that this was a very serious matter.

After a bit more laughing from me and some aggressive kicking from her, I somehow did stop laughing. To make up for it she dragged me downstairs to the bar and started making me buy her few rounds at the bar, but I made sure to give a limit as I didn’t want to go into debt again.

After a few drinks in her system, she eventually started speaking.

“It was around 35 years ago” She started.

“35 years? You’re not that- “I started saying before she gave me a death glare which told me to shut up.

“35 years ago, I was still in the main human city, fighting for my life as a kid. Humans were racist as usual so everyone always beat me up, insulted me, and just about anything they could think of to ruin my life. At some point, I decided to go to church in hopes that even though one of my parents was an elf they would help me escape the fate that I once though certain. At first, the regular priests just threatened to kick and force me out if I stayed any longer, but I continued begging. Eventually, one of the higher up priests who had this huge smile on his face that never seemed to fade.

He took me as his priest directly under him and taught me the ways of being one too. A few years passed and as I continued to learn, I was brought a choice of how I wanted to continue learning. Learn how to fight for Aetius, or support for Aetius. I decided that since Aetius had numerous churches filled with priests, I’d be able to become a paladin and fight for him instead. The priest that took care of me didn’t take to this lightly even though he offered it himself. He started hitting and beating me up to the point I was barely able to move but not once did he use magic.

He did this for what felt like months until he beat me up to much one day. I was on the verge of death and he finally had to use magic on me, healing magic.
for visiting.

This caught Aetius’s attention and he spoke to me in my head. He said that I did well to seek him out and decide to fight for him. He continued talking and telling me words of praise all while the priest looked upwards in horror. My body healed thanks to Aetius while the priests slowly started to become bruised and bloodied. One I was fully healed, the priest himself dropped dead.

After that, I worked under Aetius for multiple years. Fighting under him, killing for him, and doing anything he asked because he helped me and was once nice to me. As time passed, I noticed small things here and there that made me question what was happening, but my devotion remained strong. That is until he spoke to me physically.

He came down to me wearing armor that was made of some incredibly strong materials. He told me his plan and what he needed to do to ascend to godhood. At that time, hearing what he was saying and everything else made me realize the horrors of what I’ve done. I agreed and made it look like I was enthusiastic about it but once he left, I fled.

Some people make it seem like it’s hard to abandon one’s duty as a paladin or priest but it’s incredibly easy. All one must do it deny. Deny the powers that were given to you and deny the oath that you took to get those powers. By doing so, you become what many classify as a being a of hate and death. An Oathbreaker.

As an Oathbreaker, you still retain some powers but done of what you had previously. Your new powers revolve around death, necromancy, and destruction. I never used these powers as I didn’t want to eventually embrace the darkness that now lingers inside me. I roamed around the world for years and learned new ways to fight and live. I eventually decided upon stealth and using dagger compared to the previous giant sword I used previously. Then, I discovered chance by, well, chance.

They took me in and taught me a new way to live my life. They didn’t care that I was a half-elf as this entire town is filled with beings who accepts you as you are. They’re my new family and hope that we’ll be able to survive through what comes next from Aetius.”

There was a minute of silence as we just drank in peace and just looked at our mugs.

“If you knew what he was going to do then why didn’t yo- ”

“BECAUSE PLANS CHANGE.” She yelled. “because they change over time and become unpredictable”

“Then what do we do next now that Aetius has reached godhood?”

“I I-I don’t know.”