City Of Sin

101-110

Discovery

Richard jumped off his warhorse, making his way to the body of the black knight. He kicked the half-decomposed guards away and kneeled down, turning him to show his face.

The man’s boorish face resembled that of a barbarian, still stuck in the scowl he’d had before his death. His hair was cut neatly like a soldier, unlike the unkempt style of most of the powerhouses of this plane. He was mostly human, but certain characteristics made it evident that he had the blood of other races in him as well. Be it strength, endurance, or energy, it was evident he was top notch.

Precision and Richard’s own artistic intuition was sending him some very strange information. This mixture of bloodlines actually maximised the man’s potential, and the process itself could be considered perfect. It made him think back to records in the Deepblue of a way to craft a mixed-blood race. This fellow in front of him seemed to be the fruit of such methods.

The marks of the battle made it obvious that he was around level 15, but be it his armour or his weaponry they were all standard issue. The rest of the battlefield also indicated that he was no more than an ordinary knight in his team. What kind of team was made of level 15 knights?

Even in Norland such a team would be an elite force of a powerful family, second only to rune knight platoons.

Richard stood up and waved his hands, motioning for ten desert people to come over. He wanted them to strip the black knight of all his weapons, and take his armour off as well. A dark and gloomy aura was constantly radiated by the corpse, making even the fearless desert people show signs of fright. Their hands were trembling as they took the weapons away.

Once three of them got the heavy breastplate off, another took a machete and cut open his flaxen clothing to expose the knight’s chest.

Richard suddenly lost his breath.

On the greening chest was the lifelike tattoo of a bear’s head. The bottom part of the head went quite deep, with a complicated magic array inscribed on it. This array was extremely familiar to Richard, he could draw it with his eyes closed.

It was a rune!

Richard was certain that nothing even vaguely similar to runes existed on Faelor. Even if someone successfully drew a magic array on someone’s body, this was rare and only performed on powerhouses. Only those of a high level here had the carrying capacity for runes. The mages of Faelor didn’t even know of the concept, unaware of how to calculate the carrying capacity for a rune.

These seemingly basic magic principles had been established in Norland for a long time. They were drafted by more than ten legendary mages, who had spent centuries slowly perfecting the craft.

Richard didn’t need any kind of test to conclude that the rune on this corpse wasn’t from this plane, and he was also 90% sure that it came from Norland. This was a standard rune on Norland— elementary defense. It would reduce the damage its wearer took by roughly 10%. Even if other planes also had runecrafting heritage, it wasn’t possible for them to replicate a rune in such detail.

Flowsand stood up as well, extremely astonished by the sight of the rune.

The filth and smell of the corpse had long slipped Richard’s mind. He snatched the machete from the warrior, cutting up all of the knight’s undershirt. Sure enough, he saw a standard strength rune on each arm.