When Areth and Rosavelle left the city of Olnalend and returned to the camp where the mercenary company was stationed, the two of them spoke very little. Areth had never been much of a talker to begin with, but the true reason for the silence was that Rosavelle needed time to process everything she had learned.
Having believed the simple yet convincing confession he had given her, Rosavelle now looked at her master differently. Before, she had concluded that he was a powerful and cunning man, but now she was beginning to believe that he was something greater.
When they arrived at the camp, Rosavelle went straight to her bed.
Meanwhile, Areth entered his spacious tent and sat down at his desk. After writing down everything he had told Rosavelle in the book spread open before him, so that he would not forget it later, he placed the book back into his storage space.
Then he opened another book, this one written by himself. In this new book, he had recorded everything he could remember from the novel. He had separated each topic under its own heading and elaborated on it in detail. He had managed to fill three such books, each containing more than five hundred pages.
The first book contained the main plot of the novel, as far as he could remember it, and it was by far the longest. The second contained everything he remembered about every character, whether important or insignificant. The last book contained every detail he could recall about this world itself.
Now, he had decided to begin writing yet another book. This new one would contain details that had never appeared in the novel, yet still existed in this world. He had not finished it yet, because with each passing day he discovered something else that had never been mentioned in the story.
For the moment, however, Areth picked up the third book and opened it to the section containing detailed information about mercenary companies.
In this world, there were very few occupations as profitable as commanding a mercenary company. With the days ahead threatening to bring him financial difficulties, Areth felt the need to reread the information he had written himself.
First of all, there were hundreds of companies, large and small. Most of them were small and usually took jobs hunting monsters or clearing out bandits. But there were also massive companies that could practically be called armies. The largest commanded forces numbering in the thousands and took part in wars between kingdoms.
For now, Areth knew he could not throw his own company into a war. His men, or rather his slaves, were neither experienced warriors nor disciplined soldiers. They had numbers, but they lacked everything else.
For the time being, he decided to accept the contract offered by a noble in the south who was looking for a mercenary company. But if the task proposed by the noble proved too difficult, he would have to find other ways to make money. Then again, the guild's first assignments for newly formed companies were usually not particularly difficult.
Areth closed the book and sat in silence for a while.
The inside of the tent was dim. The wavering light of the oil lamp on his desk flickered across the pages and scattered notes. From outside came the sounds of the camp: men speaking in the distance, the crackling of burning fires, a child crying somewhere, and the footsteps of the slaves standing watch in the darkness of the night.
All of it reminded him of a single truth.
The company truly existed now.
These people were his responsibility.
He had to feed them, arm them, train them, and above all, keep them alive. If he failed, hunger, sickness, or a single wrong decision could kill half of them within a few months.
Areth pulled a sheet of parchment toward himself and quickly began making calculations. There were two hundred and fourteen people in the camp. Only around one hundred and seventy of them were of an age to fight. But even among those, the number actually capable of fighting was lower still. Most of them had never even held a proper weapon.
Worse still, only around thirty of them truly knew how to fight. Former soldiers, guards, bandits, or slaves who had been forced to fight in arenas. The rest were merely frightened and useless people.
However, if he thought of them that way, he would be making a mistake.
If they were trained properly, if they feared properly, if they hoped properly, then within a few months they could become useful men. Most of them had never held a sword before, but most of them had also known hunger before. Hungry people learned. Frightened people obeyed. And people given a purpose could sometimes become more loyal than soldiers bought with a noble's gold.
He wrote several more lines at the bottom of the parchment.
First month's objectives.
Order.
Basic training.
Enough food.
Motivation.
Then he cleared the desk and, having set his goals for the time being, put aside the matter of the mercenary company. Now it was time to turn to something every bit as important.
He took that book out of his storage space.
That strange, mysterious book of Tiamat.
He had no idea what it contained, and he hoped he would be able to read it. He remembered what Valdren, the Wizard from the Green Tower, had said about the book. According to him, he had never been able to read it, and he suspected that only followers of Tiamat could.
The idea that only certain people could read a book sounded like the sort of thing one would find in a cheap fairy tale.
But this world was already filled with magic, gods, and creatures capable of shattering the human mind. In a place like this, the notion that certain books chose their own readers did not seem so impossible.
He took the black book from his storage space.
As always, it was heavy.
Heavier than a normal book.
There was no writing on the cover. Only a dragon's eye with a vertical pupil in the center of the leather, giving the book an unsettling presence. Areth ran his fingers across the cover.
The leather was cold.
Too cold.
Despite the warmth inside the tent, the surface of the book felt as icy as a stone left outside on a winter night. The moment his finger touched that strange eye in the center of the cover, the black leather around it rippled slightly.
Areth's hand froze for a moment. Then the eye opened. Its vertical pupil slowly widened and stared directly at him. A moment later, the eye on the cover closed once more. Then the book opened by itself. The pages began to turn rapidly.
First page.
Second.
Tenth.
Hundredth.
Areth could not read any of them. The pages were covered in symbols he did not recognize, twisted lines, and bizarre marks that caused a headache at a mere glance. They looked like letters, but they were not. Some of them seemed to move. Some crawled across the page.
Then the pages stopped.
The book had opened to its exact center.
And for the first time, the writing on the page began to change. The strange symbols twisted, scattered, and transformed into letters that Areth could understand.
"Give your blood."
Areth stared at the page for several seconds.
Then he frowned.
"More cliché than I expected," he muttered.
He drew the small knife at his waist. Lightly cutting the side of his palm, he let a few drops of blood fall onto the open page of the book. The instant the blood touched the page, it was absorbed. Not even a trace remained.
Then the writing changed again.
"Insufficient."
This time, the black leather beneath the book trembled slightly. The cut in Areth's hand suddenly began to sting. The next moment, it felt as though not a few drops, but all the blood in his body was being drawn out through his palm.
Areth's eyes widened slightly.
He immediately tried to slam the book shut.
But the cover would not move.
Thin, dark red veins emerged from beneath the black leather and spread across the table. Like snakes, they slithered forward and wrapped themselves around Areth's wrist.
Instantly, Areth drew his dagger from his storage space with his other hand and tried to cut through them. The dagger struck with a sound as though it had hit iron instead of flesh. The veins tightened even further.
The pressure inside his head suddenly intensified.
Then he could no longer see the tent.
The place he found himself in the next second was somewhere he had visited before.
And the woman who greeted him with a broad smile was someone he had met before.
She was tall, voluptuous, and possessed a powerful feminine figure. Her flame-red hair flowed around her, while the horns rising upward from her head formed the image of a magnificent crown. The hourglass shape of her body, covered in black and yellow dragon scales, only added to her imposing presence. Her vertical golden eyes retained their sternness. Her tail swayed behind her as she approached Areth with the measured, alluring gait of a supermodel.
"Well, well, well... look who we have here. The follower of the great Tiamat known as the Butcher of His Own House. I was just speaking about you to the god of family and relationships... He is dying to meet you."
So spoke Tiamat, the Goddess of Ambition, Conquest, and Dragons.