“That bastard, Dray,” Lucas cursed. As far as Lucas was concerned, things only added up to a single conclusion, and that was Dray. There were simply too many coincidences for it not to be him. Most importantly, Dray had technically superseded Xun Guan as Lucas’s sponsor in the Imperium. Dray was the one who had told him to take the ring from Kegan’s finger and had granted him fair possession of Kegan’s land and title. If his sponsor had defaulted to back Xun Guan, that meant that Dray had already forsaken him and that, without a doubt, Maidbanger was behind everything. “Freaking, stupid, dang son of a bi—”Lucas let out every random word that came to mind, stopping himself just short of profanities.

“What’s going on, boss?” Bonnie asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, what can we do?” Nick asked.

“Do you all still have your mounts?” Lucas asked.

“Yeah? Why?” Nick asked.

“Is Linnaeus nearby?” Lucas had an idea of how to handle this situation, but he wasn’t 100 percent certain.

“Yeah, Linnaeus is still flying around. He’s been worried something might have happened to you,” Viola said. “Your Charisma score must really be something.”

“Yeah,” Lucas replied, nodding, “It is. Well, if he’s nearby, then we have a chance.”

“A chance to what, boss? Tell us what’s going on,” Bonnie said.

“Well . . .” Lucas felt his heart started to race as he thought about the fact everything he had worked for might come to nothing due to an event outside of his control. “We’re going to conquer this entire place and make ourselves the greatest villains of noob island,” Lucas said, laughing a bit as he started out the door.

“That’s right,” Viola said. “You can definitely do it. I have faith you’re going to do something magnificent.”

“You gonna tell us your plan though, boss?” Bonnie asked.

“Why bother? Isn’t a bit of a surprise for the best?” Viola asked. “A twist ending for a beautiful act! Don’t you want to see how this all plays out?”

“I just kind of want to kill stuff. Now that we have a healing Sage, our party is pretty good,” Nick said. “Story stuff doesn’t matter to me as much, but the killing is fun.”

Viola seemed absolutely shocked when Nick said the story didn’t matter, but to her credit, she bit her tongue and kept from saying anything when Lucas led the group out of the manor.

Lucas dumped all of his new points from leveling into Fortitude and Arcanum and then rushed off to save Liu.

Chapter 12

Character Name: Lucas

Level: -47

Hit Points: 476

Arcane Energy: 1100

Stamina: 100

Holy Energy: Class Locked

Current Class: Enchanter

Stats:

Arcanum [increases Arcane Energy by 10 per point]: 100

Holy [No Effect/Class Locked]: 0

Athletics [increases Stamina by 10 per point]: 0

Fortitude [increases Hit Points by 1% per point]: 40

Charisma: 100

Luck: 0

Unspent: 0

Current Elemental Attunement:

Lightning Affinity: 1.5%

Effects: +3% Lightning Element Damage

+6% Lightning Element Channeling Speed