The First Legendary Beast Master

Karl smiled as the canals began to level out near the upper safe usage line.

The trolls were staring in awe at the massive amount of water that Karl had generated, unaware of the chaos that it had caused further downstream. They suspected, but without the advantage of Hawk watching from overhead, they couldn’t be certain.

Fortunately, it was all adults working on the canals, so there were no major injuries, and no weaker people washed downstream when the water arrived.

“There you go, boon granted. Thank you for your answers.” Karl informed the old Troll.

“Does this mean that we will start getting normal rainfall again?” The aging shaman asked.

“As long as someone finds and eliminates all the spies from Bomgon who cursed your region in the first place.” Karl agreed.

The Troll made an annoyed growling noise. “I should have known that it was them. It’s always them.”

Karl nodded. “They have been spreading all over the coastal areas, from what I hear. I don’t have all the details, but I’m also not from here, I am just visiting to hunt for Monster Spawns. The abundance of insane creatures has upset the Dragon Gods and the balance of nature.”

The Troll gave Karl a strange look. “You are worried what the Dragon Gods think?”

“There are multiple Dragon Clerics in my travelling group, including a Black Dragon. Once the imbalance got large enough that even the Black Dragon Clerics got annoyed, it was certainly time that someone went to deal with it.”

The farmers all nodded proudly at Karl’s determination. Trolls always did what they set their minds to. But thinking that he could make a difference with one single group and a whole country full of troubles bordered on Orcish levels of delusions of grandeur.

Even the Demons didn’t usually aim that high with their mission goals.

“Are you going to the city?” The shaman asked instead of commenting on Karl’s mission.

“Yeah, I thought we might spend the night inside the city, to see if there are lingering signs of the curse. If it’s broken, we can just move along and go hunt the interior. If not, we can make it rain again, and try to shatter the remaining curse here, so the edge of the desert doesn’t spread any further.”

The troll nodded. “I think that you should keep it quiet that there are known spies in the city. If they start hiding, we might never find out who they are.”

Karl patted the old man on the shoulder. “My spy hunter should have found the first of them by now. When things go wrong, spies always go hide in an abandoned building and gather to discuss their plans.”

The Troll laughed. “What else would they do?”

Karl shrugged. “If they were smart, they would shut their mouth and pretend that their cause never existed.”

In Karl’s mind, Rae laughed. She had just found a group of thirty spies. In an abandoned warehouse. But there was a local city spy in the rafters beside her, listening to their plans as well.

Now, she had a dilemma. Did she wait for them to finish, so the local city’s spy got all his information? Or did she traumatize him for fun?

Oh, who was she kidding? They were at the point of making new plans now. Those didn’t matter if nobody left the room alive.

[Oh, this time the undead spell made knights.] Rae informed Karl.

Karl could only wonder how the city was going to take that bit of knowledge. Rae was supposed to be eliminating Bomgon’s spies, but it was going to look like she was actually a Bomgon Agent, punishing them for their failure.

[Just don’t let anyone see you while you’re using the Undead in the city.] Karl reminded her, just to be safe.

[Got it, boss. Stealth mode.]

As Karl had expected, the local spy had freaked out the moment that the Knights had attacked the hapless agents of the Bomgon army.

There were Overlords among them, but the undead simply shrugged off their attacks with their innate damage reduction and [Void Body], active from Karl’s Epic Guard. That was an impressive range for the skill link, Rae decided. It would greatly expand the range of her extracurricular activities if the skill was always active from dozens of kilometres away.

{Fuck, who called those Spectre Knights?} The Banar agent whispered to himself as the undead tore through the Bomgon agents with brutal efficiency, silent except for the sound of blades colliding when the Necromancers and their Acolytes managed to defend themselves.

{Right? Very scary.} Rae whispered back, then laughed as the spy promptly ran out of the warehouse, no longer concerned about who might see him.

The screams would bring the city guard in a few more seconds, so Rae hopped down to join the battle, still invisible. Judicious application of [Vibrating Blade] and [Entangling Vines] with [Lacerate] for both her own attacks and her summoned undead made a suitably gory scene for a few seconds before she used [Essence Transfer] to clean up the blood.

The spell seemed to supercharge her, giving her life force beyond her base for a moment before it was absorbed.

But the guards were coming, so she reluctantly memorized the Spectral Knight form and dismissed her [Army of the Dead]. Then, she returned to the rafters to watch the show, as the guards carefully approached the emaciated corpses of the spies.

“Fuck. What happened to them? Thirty dead in under five minutes, and I see the corpses of over a dozen Overlord Ranked mages, what could have killed them all without any sign of collateral damage? The walls of the warehouse aren’t even scratched, not a single missed attack.

Could it have been an ambush? And why?” The team leader muttered to himself as he examined the area.

One of his team members, a fox eared beastkin, looked around the room cautiously.

“Whatever did it isn’t gone. I can sense the danger in the room, but I can’t see or smell anything. It might be an observation spell,” he whispered.

The guards drew their weapons, and Rae resisted the urge to bring out the popcorn while they tried to understand what happened.

Then the city spy slid back into the room, and closed the front door behind himself.

{It was a dozen Spectral Knights. All Overlord Ranked, and they tore through the group like nothing. These mages were Bomgon spies, I recorded their conversation about how they would rebuild the curse we broke during the rain.} The spy whispered.

{Whatever killed them is still here.} The fox man whispered back.

The spy began to tremble in fear. “Then we need to not be here. It snuck up on me and whispered in my ear. Literally right in my ear, I could feel its breath. But there was nothing there.”

Rae lost interest in their fear, and used [Shadow Step] to move a few buildings over, searching the shadowed areas of the cities for more spies that might still be meeting.

One group was good, two would be better.

But even if she didn’t find more spies, there was so much tea spilling and debauchery going on in the shadows that she couldn’t resist a few detours. Who knew that there could be so many hidden romances and intrigues in one city? And the City Lord’s heir wasn’t actually who everyone thought it was?

That was unexpected. Also, definitely popcorn worthy, Rae decided, as she watched the Dwarf whisper empty promises in the ear of his mistress, while their son showed off his school reports.

Sister Butterfly would love this show. The Karl needed to teach [Night Haunter] to everyone.