TBE Chapter 54

  Ezekiel continued learning his letters by reading the words loudly from the elementary book from Norman Duvon, his old tutor who betrayed them. He was still a little angry thinking about that old man. He wondered why the old tutor still wanted to have more coins by selling him out to rich nobles. He was already old. What would he do with more wealth?

  He decided to forget about it and their old village in general since there seemed to be very few good memories from that place. Ezekiel did feel that the old rough butcher cared about them somewhat but there was nothing for the three of them in that old village anymore.

  After he got tired of the beginner book, he switched to the geography book. According to the book, the city of Lonmere, which was the capital city of Delantan, was a couple of months away from Eagle Village. That was a very long way from where they currently were and that meant they would have to stay in some of the towns and villages on the way just to rest especially during bad weather although, because of his ability to summon a comfortable place to stay, a bad weather was not a problem for the three siblings.

  The issue was Ezekiel did not want his brothers to grow up isolated from people, which was why he felt that they needed to stay in towns and villages. He still felt a little worried that Norman Duvon had spread the fact that he had a magic potion and there could be people coming for them but he was hoping that maybe due to Norman Duvon’s age, they would treat what the old man was saying as some sort of imagination by a senile old man.

  Ezekiel knew though that if the sick rich noble was desperate enough, he or she might believe Norman Duvon and have someone search for them. He was just hoping that enough time had passed that it would not be easy for any people to find them and even if somebody did try to locate them, he would deal with them. He wasn’t helpless since he did have magic.

  They stopped briefly for lunch then continued. He wanted to get far enough away so Ezekiel did not want to linger in the same place for a long time. He would probably be comfortable enough once quite some time had passed like maybe a month.

  At around five in the afternoon, Ezekiel started searching for a nice campground where they would stay for the night and when he found one, he immediately stopped and prepared the place for the night.

  When everything was settled and Prince Charming was inside his stable, watered and fed, Ezekiel prepared himself to work on his current woodworking project in the kitchen which was the small storage item with drawers. After a couple of hours of working, he was happy enough with his progress so he stopped and cleaned everything. He then called his two brothers who were still playing in the surrounding forest guarded by Yuki Onna and told them that it was time to wash up and eat dinner.

  After dinner, Ezekiel cast all the defensive spells that he usually cast at night for their protection then he told a fairy tale story to his brothers until they were asleep and soon he joined them after he spent some time studying his system browser.

  That night though, Ezekiel was awoken by his snowy owl familiar, Yuki Onna. It informed him that three people arrived in the vicinity. He borrowed Yuki Onna’s eyes and saw that the two men out of the three were familiar. One of them was one of the butcher’s men but he knew that the man was just a general worker that could be hired by anyone. The second man was one of the village idlers and the third one was dressed differently. His clothes had a better quality and he looked and acted like the leader of the three.

  Ezekiel borrowed Yuki Onna’s ears and heard the third man commanding the other two and based on the snippets that he had heard, the third man was an attendant by the sick noble that Norman Duvon was planning to sell the healing potion to.

  The men that he was expecting to catch up to them finally arrived. Ezekiel hoped that no one would try to find them but knew deep inside that it was a futile hope. Norman Duvon gave hope to a rich sick noble and that noble probably would spend a huge fortune to get the miracle drug that would cure him of his disease.

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  At first, Ezekiel thought of just subduing the men since he wasn’t truly prepared to kill humans yet but knew that it would probably be a mistake. He knew that he would have to defend himself and his brothers and he could only do that using magic if he let them escape after they knew his magic capability, the noble would probably not let them go and would keep pursuing them in the hope of getting the magic potion that could cure him since after that noble learn that Ezekiel could do magic it was guaranteed that the magic potions was real.

  Ezekiel knew that there was probably some doubt regarding Norman Duvon’s claim that Ezekiel owned a healing potion and if that noble didn’t receive news about them, they would still have time to get far enough away. Ezekiel woke up Robert and Luke.

  “Robert, Luke, there are three men outside. They are here to hurt or even kill us to get the healing potion from me so I would have to kill them so prepare yourselves. Go up to the washroom and hide there.”

  Ezekiel was gratified to see that his brothers were very obedient and climbed to the washroom immediately without any protest. They did not waste any time asking if they could help or something impractical like if they could watch. He could also see that even though Robert and Luke were a bit scared, they were not fully terrified and that meant that they were confident enough that their brother could handle any problem because of his magic.

  Ezekiel, still using Yuki Onna’s eyes observed what the three men would do next. He overheard their discussion about using a tree to force their door to open so they could subdue the kids and one of the men kept cursing about why there was a house in the middle of the forest. The leader of the men then said that they would try to force the door by themselves first since we’re only little kids, we could not have found a way to lock the door tightly.

  Based on what Ezekiel had heard, the three men learned about them from the market vendors and people in the last village. Ezekiel didn’t fault the villagers since the men probably lied about their reason on why they were trying to find them.

  “Boy! We know you’re in there! Get out of here and give us the healing potion and we will let you and your brother leave here alive,” The man who had been helping the butcher shouted.

  Ezekiel didn’t respond since what he wanted to do was for the three men to attack the front of Galder’s Tower to activate the Glyph of Warding that had a Sleep Spell attached to it. He also made sure that his spell slots were full of spells that he could use to kill the three men.

  He wondered how the three men would try to force open the door but Ezekiel was surprised to see that the three men did not hesitate to go in front of his door which was understandable since no one would expect that three kids like them would have something like magic to guard them.

  As expected, when the three men got near the Glyph of Warding, it was activated and the three men fell asleep and crashed down.

  Ezekiel opened the door and cast a Magic Missile spell towards their heads. Even though he was expecting it, when the bolts hit the men’s heads, they exploded. The bursting sound would probably cause him nightmares for a long time.

  He had heard the sound before since it was the same as the sound of a boar or a wolf's head when they burst due to the bolts from the Magic Missile spell but knowing that the bursting sound came for the heads of humans brought a deep psychological impact that he knew that he would have to process.

  Ezekiel did not want his brothers to see the corpses of the men so he immediately summoned a Tenser’s Floating Disk below the bodies and used the spell to lift the corpses. Then he cleaned the blood and flesh from the area using his Prestidigitation spell.

  He rummaged through the men's clothes and found a total of 2 gold coins, 10 silver coins from the noble’s man, and 20 silver coins between the two men from the Eagle Village. He also found a short sword and a dagger from the mercenary that the noble hired and a couple of daggers from the men from the Eagle Village. He spent 30 copper coins and purchased three small spades from his system shopping site.

  Ezekiel led the Tenser’s Floating Disk deeper into the forest with Yuki Onna above making sure that no living thing was nearby after he stored the weapons and coins from the corpses in his 4th tab space. When he thought he was deep enough, he cast three Tiny Servant Spells on three spades he purchased and commanded the now-moving spades to dig a deep enough grave where he could put in the three corpses.

  While waiting for the three spades to dig, Ezekiel allowed himself to experience the full cacophony of emotions that he was holding back. It was a mix of nervousness, stress, remorse, and guilt.