Transmigrated as a Ghost

Once Marcus had finished burning all of the bandits that planned to attack him and Lilia, he began taking inventory of the valuables he had taken off of them.

'Forty-seven silver, five gold, and six hundred thirty-four copper. Not very much money but what can you expect from a bunch of idiots who were all under level fifteen. I managed to get a number of weapons most of which are just cheap iron but their were a couple of quality steel pieces among them. If I find the right shop, I can probably get somewhere between ten and fifteen gold. They also had half a dozen darts coated in the poison of the vergif salamander which I guess is potent, but it is not like it would work on me anyway. And finally, they had a couple of healing salves, and two low grade antidote.'

With his inventory of the bandits valuable items done, Marcus stored the items and made sure to catalog them in a little booklet, so he did not forget later that they were in his item box.

Now that he had taken care of what he need to in regard to the bandits, Marcus floated back over to the tent and told Blitz to go back to sleep and continued his nights watch.

When morning came Marcus let Lilia sleep in since she was quite tired after yesterday's long travel and instead practiced with Blitz.

He wanted to get a better understanding of Blitz's abilities and see if they could pull of any combo's using lightning.

Unfortunately, when Marcus tried combining his lightning magic with Blitz's innate lightning abilities the two would fight for dominance instead of merging together like he wanted.

He did, however, have some mild success with combining his iron magic with Blitz's lightning, by having Blitz keep a continuous current on his iron sphere or golem.

However, the practicality of such attacks was kind of low because it took most of Blitz's concentration to keep infusing Marcus' iron magic with electricity.

Marcus continued his training with Blitz for about another hour, trying to figure out how to fight while mounted on his back.

After practicing a few moves with mounted combat Marcus saw that Lilia was rousing and decide to end his training and go over and see how she was doing.

"Lilia, how did you sleep, are you feeling better today."

Yawning widely Lilia rubbed one of her eyes and said, "I slept pretty good, but at one point I woke up when I heard a bunch of people screaming. Do you know what happened?"

With a slightly uncomfortable face Marcus told Lilia that he had dealt with some bandits last night but made sure to leave out the gory and unsettling details of the encounter.

As big smile creeped onto her face and Lilia gave Marcus a hug and said, "Thank you for keeping me safe I really do not know what I would do without you."

Marcus while returning the hug said to Lilia, "I just did what any big sibling should do, you have already been through a lot so my goal is to make sure you have a happy life from now on where you can do as you wish."

The two of them then separated from each other's embrace and went to work putting up camp.

They swiftly brought down the tent and Marcus stored it back in his item box before taking out a pot of porridge and quickly heating it up for breakfast.

Once the two of them had eaten Marcus called Blitz over and attached the harness back to him and the three of them got underway again heading towards the kingdom's capital.

Now that it was their second day of travel Marcus was starting to get the ropes of what to do.

He made sure to take more breaks for Lilia and Blitz to rest, and during their breaks he would teach Lilia how to read.

It did not take long for her to be able to recognize all of the letters of the alphabet and by the time they had finished their fourth break she could recite them all with nearly a hundred percent accuracy.

'Wow, she managed to get the alphabet down pretty easily even though she just started today. I know she is not a toddler, so her mind is more developed, but this is still quite fast. I suppose it might have to do with the system, since her intelligence stat is fairly high for her age and level. I know that as I have leveled up and my intelligence stat has increased, I have been able to remember and sort information better than before."

While Marcus pondered how the system effected one's ability to learn, Lilia had already moved on to writing practice, writing the symbols that make up the alphabet in the kingdom of Borealia.

Soon their hour and a half break was over and Marcus' group of one monster, one beast, and one human moved out continuing their journey.

Things continued pretty routinely as they traveled, they would go for around three hours then rest for an hour and a half and Marcus would teach Lilia during this time. The day quickly passed this way and just as sunset was upon the kingdom of Borealia, Marcus spotted a small town that lay at the edge of a valley that was in their path.

'I was planning to stop soon but that town is only a little ways away, I am sure Lilia would like to sleep in an actual bed tonight so maybe we should just push on into the town and find an inn.'

Marcus passed this idea by Lilia and she readily agreed since while the tent was comfortable nothing could really beat and actual bed, and Lilia knew that if they stayed in an inn Marcus would not have to stay up all night on watch.

With Lilia's confirmation Marcus urged Blitz to continue on and the three of them sped forward heading towards the town.

Unfortunately, even with Blitz's speed they were unable to beat the night which had already descended by the time they had arrived.

'Damn, if the day had only lasted fifteen more minutes, we would have made it before the last light. Oh well, hopefully we can still get a room at the inn, well if there is an inn.'

They soon were in front of the town gate which was connected to a six-foot-tall wooden fence that spanned the perimeter of the town.

However, Marcus was a bit unsettled when they got to the gate and it was wide open, but there was not a guard in sight.

Marcus wondered if the night guard was late for his shift, or if the town just felt so safe that it did not worry about leaving its gate open and unguarded.

With a slight bit of trepidation Marcus urged Blitz inside, and while Marcus did not realize it at first because of his darkvision, Lilia quickly said, "There are no lights on anywhere."

After hearing Lilia's comment Marcus took a good look around and found that she was right, there was not a single light to be had in the entire town.

'This is strange, even if the people here go to bed early, there should at least be a couple of light sources here and there for a town this size.'

Seeing as how there was no light and Marcus could feel that Lilia was beginning to get a bit scared, Marcus lit up the area with his floating lantern spell lighting up a diameter of about sixty feet around them.

Now that they had some illumination, they continued deeper into the town looking for an inn and along the way Marcus' sense of apprehension increased because he had noticed that their was not a single person on the streets not even a night guard.

Marcus was nearly beginning to think that they had walked into a ghost town, so he told Lilia to wait for a moment while he checked something out.

He quickly found an isolated area where if anyone had been watching him, they would be unable to see him, and he turned ethereal and invisible.

He then floated into the nearest building and looked to see if anyone was inside and to his relief, he did find a young man and woman who were huddled in their bed.

He checked to make sure they were alive and after he saw that they were both breathing he exited the building and went back to Lilia.

He told her what he had found, and they went on with their search for an inn now that they were certain that this town was not abandoned.

After another twenty minutes of searching through the town Marcus finally spotted the sign of an inn and pulled the carriage up to the building.

However, when he went to open the door, he found it was locked. Marcus thought this was a bit strange so he instead tried knocking on the door hoping that the inn keeper would come.

Unfortunately, even after knocking multiple time and waiting for ten minutes no one came to the door.

Marcus was about to enter the building by way of his ghostly powers when he saw something move out of the periphery of his left eye.

Except when he focused his attention over to the area he saw the movement, nothing was there.

'Okay we are leaving; this place is starting to give me the creeps.'

With his mind made up Marcus began heading back to the carriage but before he was able to get back onto the drivers seat, he saw another flicker of movement and not long after a man in a dark black suit walked into the light.

"Hello there travelers, you are out quite late. I noticed you trying to get into the inn but, unfortunately everything has already closed down for the day. However, I am the owner of a trading company and I have large house in town, if you would like a place to stay for the night, I would be more than willing to show my hospitality."

As soon as the man finished speaking Marcus felt what was like a small prick inside his head, like a needled had tried to inject something but failed to piece his skin.

However, in a trance like motion Lilia grabbed Blitz's reins and said, "Okay, that would be lovely."

Seeing this Marcus gave Blitz a mental command not to move and make sure to keep Lilia safe.

Lilia continued to shake Blitz's reins to no effect, and when she realized the carriage was not moving, she slid off the driver's seat and started walking forward.

At that point Blitz grabbed her shirt with his mouth and lifted her into the air so she could no longer move.

Marcus seeing this glared at the man and said, "Who are you and what did you do to Lilia."

The man in the black suit looked genuinely surprised when Marcus talked back to him not expecting him to have been able to put up any resistance.

"My you seem to have an especially strong will, not many level thirties would be able to fully resist my mesmer and suggestion. I suppose I will have to ask nicely then; would you accompany me to my mansion, I have not eaten yet and you smell absolutely wonderful?"

Marcus then saw the man's face go into a wide grin revealing two elongated teeth the classic indication of a vampire.