War God for Hire- Mercenary: A Reincarnation, Cultivation, Litrpg Adventure

by David Burke

  Kyle had intended to pull the lance back and thrust it into Barak again, when he was blasted off his feet by a pair of twin, brown beams. He felt like he’d been hit by two MAC trucks; the pressure of tons of earth was behind those beams. Kyle was sent tumbling across the ground but managed to roll up onto his feet.

  The two Aekor made use of their thirty-foot tentacles to flank him. They each moved in a different direction. They began blasting him with a barrage of other attacks. Lightning bolts from one eye, shadowy dagger-like blasts from another, a third cast powerful bolts of death essence which tried to shrivel his very life force.

  Kyle kept moving, keeping up a constant flow of motion as he simply let instinct to take over. It was a place he had been often enough before, where his body knew what to do, even if his mind couldn’t react quickly enough. Everything around him became a shield as he struggled to keep the deadly beams from hitting him. A handcart he flung up to block a stream of shadow daggers. An instant later he had rolled over and picked up a shovel to block a shocking bolt of sky essence. His defense was flawless, even though it would have looked crazy to anyone watching.

  One of the creatures roared in frustration, “Stand still and die, tainted one.”

  Kyle’s grin remained plastered on his face. He was in his environment now, feeling the flow of motion and reaction. He began picking up his pace. No longer was he merely using rocks, broken tools, shattered beams, and even the bodies of the dead as shields. Now, he started using them as weapons. More than one grapefruit sized rock smashed into the smaller eyes upon their stalks, eliciting screams of pain from the Aekor.

  In perfect sync, both monsters stopped their barrage and their central eyes pulsed. A grayness washed over Kyle. He remembered this attack from before. It was the one that had denied him access to earth essence. Now, it also seemed to have a physical force. Each wave of force that radiated from one of the Aekor was like a massive hand and he felt like he was being squished between two of them.

  The pressure stopped increasing as soon as they felt he was contained. Kyle took a moment to check on Skrug. He didn’t need to have worried though. The smaller monsters, twisted forms of glytharen, blasted him with heat rays or swung at him with their saw-toothed swords.

  Each burning blast that struck him left seared flesh in its wake. The swords were less effective, in that the cuts they caused started to heal almost as soon as they were made. In turn, Skrug laid into his dozen enemies with his weapon.

  The troll moved with a great deal of grace for a being as large as he was. The first three of his enemies tried to block his blows, counting on shields or even their natural armor to protect them. All three of died in as many seconds without even the chance to scream as the divinely blessed axe razor blade cut their bodies in half or removed their eye stalks.

  After that, his enemies had been more careful. Having to dodge Skrug’s wide sweeping strikes, prevented them from making their own attacks. Kyle looked around to see if Raina was going to engage. Now that he had felt her aura, it was much easier for him to pick it up. She was nearby, but apparently just hiding after whatever she had done to Barak—not that it looked like Skrug was going to need any assistance.

  Kyle could only allow a portion of his mind to be distracted by what was happening with his dire troll friend. The majority of his mind remained focused on what the Aekor were doing or attempting to do to him. Before, he hadn’t understood what the grayness of the attack was. Now, though, he had more memories and more experience to filter those memories through.

  Moment by moment as he fought the Aekor, more knowledge was filling his head. That grayness was void force. His formerly human mind wanted to initially think of it as anti-matter, but he knew that comparison failed. Even anti-matter was composed of something, although he couldn’t have explained what that was.

  No, void force was like the anti-essence. It was the essence of nothingness. His mind rebelled from it, as he couldn’t fathom true nothingness. Eventually, he had to close off the portion of his mind that was speculating on what void force might be before it gave into despair.

  As he did, he heard the ongoing conversation between the two Aekor. They looked exactly alike, ten-foot-wide spheres with one massive eye, a mouth of similar size, with eight smaller eyestalks on the top of their heads, and three thirty-foot-long tentacles holding them up in the air. Given his need to name things, Kyle started referring to them as Leftie and Rightie.

  At that moment, Leftie was saying, “Something is wrong. I feel more than eight in him.”

  “It cannot be,” Rightie replied.

  “But I tell you, I sense it. Open your mind.” Leftie insisted.

  Not wanting to let them be the only ones speaking, Kyle looked at Rightie and said, “You know, Leftie is correct.”

  Rightie screeched, “Don’t speak to us, tainted one. We must cleanse you so we can be free of this pain.”

  “Like that is ever gonna happen, Rightie,” Kyle retorted.

  “What are these names you have given us? Aekor need no names. Names serve no purpose. Individuality is a concept of the taint. Only Oblivion is pure.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Kyle smirked. “Here I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  Leftie screeched this time, although Kyle had to admit that if they moved around, he would be hard pressed to tell them apart. “Favor? What is ‘a favor’?”

  “Simple. I was doing something nice for you.”

  “What is this ‘nice’ you speak of?” Rightie demanded.

  “Well, not to offend, but you two are butt ugly—just a couple of big, round rocks for all I can tell. I was trying to pay you a compliment. You are even slightly bigger than my nuts.” With that, Kyle grabbed his nut sack inside his armor and made a motion that the coaches had always discouraged for fear that a player would be caught on camera doing it.

  Just for good measure, he added a one-finger salute with his other hand. It was petty and Kyl knew it. But there was something about these beings that he couldn’t help but hate.

  “Ewww, I think it is comparing us to its reproductive organs,” Rightie said.

  “How dare it? As though we would make more of it. We are here to cleanse the taint,” Leftie asserted.

  As the creatures were distracted with Kyle’s banter, he felt a surge of deceit essence in the sky above. Suddenly, Raina appeared. This time, her face shone with anger rather than lust. She dove at Leftie with a barbed trident extended from her hands. Her aim was true and Leftie shrieked as its big eye popped with a sickening squelch.

  One of his tentacles blasted Raina, trying to dislodge her. Apparently, she was tougher than she looked though because her perfect ivory skin burned with the blasts of energy and bled as it was cut by jagged spurs of bone in the tentacles, but she kept both hands on her trident. She yanked it out and then thrust it back down again and again, making a gross mess of the Aekor's sphere-like body.

  A trio of beams shot out from Rightie. Combined with the Leftie’s pained thrashing around, Raina was tossed to the ground. She tried to extend her wings, but she was again struck by a couple of beams. Her attack had lessened the hold their void force had on him, though, so Kyle rushed to stand over the now prone Raina.

  He could tell she still lived. It would take more than a nasty fall to kill a demi-god, of that he was certain. But she was groaned in pain as she lay there. The sound was distracting, as she delicately caressed the burns and gashes in her skin. It sounded positively erotic. Just another reminder that Raina definitely was what he categorized as ‘psycho chicks’. Hot or not, she was crazy.

  The two Aekor blasted their void force at him once again, but Kyle took the brunt of it himself in order to protect Raina. She may be more than a bit psychotic, but she had fallen trying to save him. The two Aekor spoke back and forth to one another. But it was mostly gibberish this time.

  While they were busy talking, another part of Kyle’s mind was processing what was hap
pening. The void force held him still, though he thought he could break free if he pushed with all his strength. The field seemed to be nearly equal to his peak Spirit Tier strength. That was quite impressive, but it wasn’t the true purpose of these fields.

  They were intended to cut cultivators off from their connection to essence. Long ago in another universe, this weapon of the Aekor had been devastating. It was only after the champions rose, that they had stood a chance—and only because the champions had moved beyond mere cultivation. They’d stopped using all of the essence they worked with and had grown stronger by focusing on a single aspect of essence.

  It was the strangest epiphany to have in the middle of battle, but Kyle realized in that moment that all existence was one. There were really no different types of essence. They were all part of a singular whole. But even a divine mind needed to categorize and name things, so they’d come to understand the universe in its distinctions, rather than in its unity.

  Krig’s memories recalled how the champions had taken essence into themselves and become one with their concept. It made them far more powerful than the Aekor and they started winning the war. That was when the void wraiths had first shown up.

  The Aekor were little more than automated servants sent out before the advancing void. They were meant to break down essence, preparing it to be consumed by… But no, Kyle didn’t have time to pursue that line of thought, not even with his mind processing at speeds no human could have handled.

  One interesting observation remained front and center, though. Before, when he’d first faced an Aekor in Thena’s arena, it had cut him off from all essences other than war. This time, though, he still had access to both War and Death Essences. He paused for a second to think about what best to do with them, and then he remembered one of his favorite things to do with Aekor. Well, more accurately, it had been one of Krig’s favorite things to do to them.

  It was a way to demonstrate his superiority, and Krig had liked doing that even more than Kyle did.

  “So, you want to cleanse me of essence? Oh wait… I mean taint. Well, it tain’t gonna be easy, but here you go.”

  Since they didn’t laugh at his joke, Kyle let them have it. He gave them exactly what they’d said they wanted as he activated his divine ability, Rage Burst. Never had it been truer. He was angry at these things that wanted to destroy the sanctuary Krig and the other gods had made. One life had already been taken from him; this one wouldn’t.

  Kyle’s Rage Burst pushed both the creatures back but they caught themselves and drove their tentacles down into the ground, anchoring themselves as they weathered the anger of the war god. Their bodies began to serve the purpose they’d been made for. They started absorbing the flow of essence he projected at them.

  This time, though, he didn’t stop. He kept Rage Burst running at full tilt. Each second, another burst of essence force blasted out from his body. He made sure that the angle of these blasts was high enough so as not to hit Raina. With his conversion rate, he could keep this up all day long. Blast after blast rained out, but the monsters seemed to be able to keep up with it. They each only had to absorb half the essence each time.

  Kyle doubled down on his gambit. “Fine, you want more? Here, take more.”

  Then, he redoubled his efforts. His Rage Burst skill expanded to level three, and suddenly each blast was shooting out a full ten points of war essence. The destructive effect on the area was devastating. Even Skrug, who had slain all his foes by now, knew enough to keep his distance. And yet the Aekor remained standing. These two were clearly much stronger than the one Hilde had destroyed in the arena.

  With a grunt, Kyle drew deeper and pushed his divine skill up to level 4. Now, he was shooting out fifteen war essence every second. It was still less than his conversion rate, so he kept pouring it out. Red, angry veins began to appear all over the bodies of the two Aekor. They seemed to have a greater capacity than he remembered, even if they were starting to reach it.

  It just wasn’t happening fast enough. So, he pushed his skill up to level 5 and his full capacity of twenty war essence blasted into them each second. One, two, three seconds, and those red veins began to blister and swell. Then, they burst, leaking a black, viscous goo.

  The two orb shaped creatures continued to swell as Kyle’s essence was forcibly blasted into them. Soon, all the Aekor could do was scream. Their void force fields had collapsed under the assault of his rage.

  Leftie exploded first. The wounds he’d received from Raina must have weakened him. After that, Kyle stopped letting out his power in a wide burst and instead focused his essence in a cone centered on Rightie.

  It made unintelligible noises as its eye stalks ruptured one by one. Its bloated body began splitting like an overripe fruit. Kyle could understand only one word that escaped its lipless mouth: “Mercy...”

  Somehow, that incensed Kyle even more. “How dare you plead for mercy! You, who are the servants of the void. You crave oblivion. I am giving you what you crave and that is more mercy than you deserve. You wouldn’t have even known what the term meant if Nade hadn’t exemplified it and your kind hadn’t driven her to this world, which became her grave.”

  Kyle surged his power yet again and it expanded. Another piece of his divine mantle slid into place, and he sent a surge of thirty war essence into the Aekor in one burst. Its body exploded into a fine mist, but Kyle controlled the air surrounding them so completely that not even a single speck of it landed on either him or Raina, who stared up at him in awe.

  She opened her mouth to speak but must have thought better and closed her mouth without saying a word; Kyle was still lost in his rage. He strode slowly over to the dying Barak. The dragon demi-god’s body had been unable able to heal, with Kyle’s lance stuck through his heart. The divine power imbued in his soul weapon overcame the demi-god’s essence, yet his vitality was such that he clung to life, even as he slowly bled out.

  “You… you, I forgive,” Kyle pronounced as he stared at the dying dragon.

  Barak coughed, spitting up gouts of blood as he spoke. “I … don’t… need… your… forgiveness.”

  “Fine. Then you have my pity. For you are only what you were made to be. But I free you now. Only know that I will put the power that made you to better use.”

  When Kyle held out his hand, a brilliant golden glow erupted from the dragon’s chest. It was so bright, that the glow showed even through his scales. Kyle clenched his fist and a golden crystal erupted from Barak’s armored chest. The instant it escaped his flesh, his life force fled and he died.

  The shining crystal was tiny, smaller than Nyda’s smallest fingernail, but it shone with the power of creation. It started to fly up into the sky, but Kyle pulled his hand back down as he growled, “No! You belong to me now.”

  In a flash of light, Lige’s divine splinter was cut off from the god of justice and shot into Kyle’s chest. He felt a surge of power. Something like this had happened to him before, when he’d absorbed Dod’s splinter, but now Kyle was doing so with his eyes open. Now, it was intentional.

  He fused the divine splinter of justice into his essence wheel and the spinning increased dramatically for a moment before settling into its new form—a new spoke having formed for Justice Essence. Lige would just go crazy over this, but he now held all three fundamental powers: justice, death, and war. In Kyle’s mind the elemental powers were the next most important, and then what he thought of as the powers of corruption after that.

  Only then did Kyle close his eyes as he pulled up the character sheet Hilde had made for him.

  Name: Krig-Kyle Hudson

  Race: War Godling/Demi-god of Death and Justice

  Stats: (Current/Max)

  Strength: 29/42

  Agility: 21/42

  Constitution: 34/45

  Will: 38/45

  Mind: 21/39

  Charisma: 20/29

  Essence: Current/Max

  Sky: 7/25
Conversion rate: 1/3 seconds

  Justice: 25/25 Conversion rate: 1/3 seconds

  Death: 25/25 Conversion rate: 1/3 seconds

  Sea: 10/12 (+5) Conversion rate: 1/5 seconds

  Deceit: 1/13 Conversion rate: 1/8 seconds

  Earth: 17/33 Conversion rate: 1/2 seconds (Durability)

  War: 32/50 Conversion rate: 30/second

  Raw Essence: 54,867,313 (construct)

  613,197,582 (mantle inside you)

  Skills:

  Flowing Earth Armor 1 - 2 Earth

  Earth’s Sucking Snare 1 - 1 Earth/target

  Divine Ability:

  Rage Burst 7: 30 War

  Reality Shift 3: Variable Raw Essence

  Expanded Awareness 4: Passive based upon circulation

  He was pleased with what he saw. His stats had increased markedly. His Agility went up +6, which he attributed to gaining a second demi-god status. It was now into the beginning of the Spirit Tier. Likewise, his Constitution and Will had each improved, but only by a single point. That was to be expected though, as those were his only two stats already in the Demi Tier.