by Erik Colombe
“She was a low-level thief when I met her. Her body was covered in scars, and while she was pretty in a certain light, I brought out all of her potential. This is what awaits the world when I’m in charge. Beauty.”
“All of her potential, huh,” John said, making a show of staring at her chest, which had grown multiple cup sizes since the last time he had seen her, while her waist seemed unnaturally thin.
“I may have added a few suggestions here and there as part of my requirements for joining me. John, this world is filled with beauty, and I have the ability to make the rest of it beautiful.”
“Beautiful? What about what you did to one of my messengers that you put a disease in?”
“Messenger? You mean that filthy demi-human? That was just something I’ve been working on. Don’t worry, it doesn’t affect humans. It is able to target specific genomes, and when it finds one it recognizes, it attacks the immune system, causing the host to become a factory that replicates my beautiful experiment until the factory is run dry. I haven’t been able to get it airborne yet. The magic that exists in the air causes microscopic particles to behave in unpredictable ways,” Chris said, looking down like he was talking to himself. He looked up and seemed surprised to see everyone around him.
“Enough about my work. Why are you here, John? I still have a ways to go before our eventual meet up. You’re changing the narrative on me, and I can’t say I appreciate it.”
“I came to try to end this. I don’t want to fight you. To be honest, I don’t think I can win. I came here to try to get peace between us. What happened between Mike, Ryan and I was awful, and I’m sorry it went down that way, but I have people I want to protect.”
“Now you have people you want to protect when you let us all get killed by Ryan,” Saarka shouted at John.
Chris put a hand up to stop her, and she stepped back.
“John, I want you to know that I don’t hold any grudge against you for what happened with Ryan and Mike. They’re quite stubborn, and I can understand how they would have forced your hand.”
John felt a glimmer of hope rise in his chest.
“So, we’re good? We don’t need to fight. We can just go our separate ways.”
“No, I’m still going to kill you, once I finish my narrative.”
“Why? What is the point?” John yelled.
“I need to finish the narrative. I am the summoned hero that has come into this world. I’ll kill all the demons in it, including you, their king, and then I will shape this world into my image with that narrative as the starting point. It’s poetic, really.”
“What if I just leave? I’ll go far away. You’ll never see me again.”
“John, John, John, I have higher expectations of you than that, but if you do, it won’t matter. Someone else will take the title, and all your little demi-human pals die,” Chris said, swiping away some beach sand that had managed to climb its way onto his coat.
“You’re talking about genocide!”
“I’m talking about cleaning up this world. We came here for a reason. We were spared death, and I will not take that for granted. This world will become a shining beacon of humanity.”
“You’re insane,” John said.
“That’s a matter of perspective, and really, yours won’t matter in the end.”
“There’s nothing I can do to prevent this? Your big plan is that you four will fight me and my generals. The entire time we fight, the terrain changes with the power of my city core, hulking spiritual beasts will form trying to squash you like a bug, while we fight and jump around in the sky, fighting some kind of epic battle.”
“Don’t forget the demons that will be horribly mutated by the diseases I unleash. I’ll also bring an army to witness your defeat from monsters changed and designed by my hand to be more barbaric and deadly. It will be a battle between gods. I get giddy just thinking about it. Don’t ruin anymore for me. I want it to be a surprise, and I hope you manage to offer me a challenge.”
John rubbed at his eyes and stammered a bit, starting different sentences before he dropped them as they were all pointless. Chris was a maniac. He had a developed country at his disposal and the confidence of a King, while John was just trying not to get his feet wet before he left when he needed to be a leader. John straightened his back and looked Chris in the eye.
“I look forward to it. We’ll have a battle, and my side will wipe the floor with you. You want a fight between Good and Evil, you’ll get one, and it will not leave you disappointed,” John said.
Chris smiled at that.
“Now we’re talking. I can’t wait to see you again,” Chris said, rubbing his hands together.
“Hey Chris, before I head out, catch,” John said, throwing an old and ratty book in the air. Chris caught it with one hand and turned to look at it.
“Fara Heim,” John yelled out.
The book glowed a hot red, and Chris dropped it with a curse. Ink spilled out of the book like a stab wound and snaked its way around the stones until it formed a magic circle filled with intricate symbols. John saw Chris try to run, but the magic circle had ensnared him, trapping him as the intricate symbols started to climb up his shoes.
“What are you waiting for! Come help me,” Chris yelled at Saarka, Clem, and B’narld.
“You stay where you fucking are,” John yelled at the top of his lungs, pointing, at Saarka. She froze, but Clem and B'narld weren't phased.
"You're going home, Chris, final showdown my ass," John said, throwing a blast of wind at Saarka, Clem, and B'narld.
It didn't have any kind of damaging effect on the three, but it sent them tumbling onto the beach away from Chris.
"You could have told me about a damn time delay, Tom," John murmured to himself, rushing after them.
He cast haste into his legs and raced to Saarka, shoulder charging her in the chest and sending her flying away into the ocean. Clem and B'narld ignored John and tried to run back to where Chris was struggling to get out of the spell work Thomas had created so long ago. John drew his sword and slashed at the back of Clem's meaty ankle, dropping him to the ground. He went to attack B'narld when an arrow flew between the two of them. John looked over to Chris, who was nocking another bolt into a crossbow.
"Don't just stand there; kill him," Chris said, readying his aim.
John put Clem between him, while B'narld whipped out his spear and started jabbing it in the air at John with blinding speed. John kept up with the speed, and as soon as he saw a chance, he lunged in with his sword.
"Jump back," he heard Chris shout, and B'narld dodged John's blow, while John found a bolt digging into his hip, and he saw minus 596 flash across his vision.
Notification: Warning you have been poisoned. -100hp per minute while poisoned.
John took out the bolt and tried to cast heal on his leg. Poison was a base game stat that even Heal could cure. The moment he stopped to place his hand over his leg, B’narld started to attack him, and John had to move. Every time John got the rhythm down and tried to attack, he would find another arrow in his body. If he even took a moment to try to heal, a spear was thrust into his face. His body felt like it was burning all over as large black veins rose to the surface of his skin.
Notification: Warning you have been poisoned. -400 per minute while poisoned.
John looked up at his health bar. It was draining rapidly. He could barely handle the two of them right now, and he didn’t know when Saarka would finish her swim back to the shore.
John tried to shoot a fireball at B’narld, and he heard Chris yell again. B’narld jumped back, and he managed to pull back fast enough to avoid the bolt aiming for his arm. He turned to see the symbols had only made it halfway up Chris’s body. The poison would kill him long before they finished their work. Chris seemed to know his every move, the little ticks he had when he tried to fight back. He was terrified that Chris wouldn’t have to yell at B’narld anymore; a crossbow bolt would just find its way through
the flurry of thrusts that B’narld threw at John, and he would die from poisoning.
“If only he couldn’t hear him,” John mumbled to himself, while he was being driven back into the ocean.
John jumped back and let two crossbow bolts hit him as he summoned and hurled a fire grenade at B’narld. It missed, but the explosion was close, and John’s ears were ringing. John rushed at B’narld, taking advantage of the blessed halt of arrows, and used his sword to slice at the back of B’narld’s legs. When his tendon was cut, and he had fallen to the beach, John knocked his spear to the side while using him as a human shield, allowing him time to cast heal on his leg, removing the poison that was running through his body. He sighed with the relief from the pain the poison had caused.
John left B’narld there and walked back to Chris, who fired another crossbow bolt at him, but without B’narld distracting him, John just smacked it out of the air with a marginal amount of wind magic.
“Didn’t invest in any long-distance spells, huh?” John asked as he took a seat out of arm’s length from Chris, keeping an eye out for Saarka.
The symbols had made it all the way to Chris’s neck.
“What is this thing doing to me?” Chris asked.
“Sending you home, or it’s supposed to. I was going to take the trip, but you just had to be a prick.”
“It does what?” Chris screamed and tried to fight against the symbols that held him. The circle was smaller now as it had almost consumed him, and he was having trouble even moving his arms.
“This isn’t funny. Cut this shit out right now. I can’t go back. I won’t,” Chris yelled.
“Shouldn’t have threatened my friends then,” John said as the symbols covered Chris’s body. The book and Chris disappeared with a little popping sound as John was left alone in the temple.
He turned to the beach to see Clem and B’narld. Both of them looked like the light in their eyes had been snuffed out as they crashed down to the ground like lifeless dolls.
John saw Saarka slowly walking out of the ocean until she saw Clem and B’narld’s bodies limp on the ground. She ran towards the temple.
“What did you do?” she screamed and didn’t wait for John to speak as she threw streaks of white light at him.
John waved a hand, and the streaks broke and shattered like glass.
“I sent him home,” John said.
“He was the hero. He was going to make everything like it was in the fairytales,” Saarka screamed again and hurled more magic at John.
Dispelling it barely cost John any of his mana. Chris may have raised her level, but there was no substance behind it.
“Sorry, sometimes the genocidal hero doesn’t win,” John said.
“You think this is over. Chris told me about where you come from. I’ll wait for another hero. I’ll make you pay for this,” Saarka said.
“There won’t be any more heroes. The only thing that kept bringing people here was Thomas’s will, and it’s gone now. Go find a better path to follow. I’m tired and I’m going home,” John said, and he turned to walk away, while Saarka fell to her knees on the broken granite floor of the water temple, defeated.
“No, I won’t let it end like this,” she whispered to herself as John disappeared over the horizon. “I’ll find others and make them into heroes. It might take all my life, but you will remember this day, John, as the day you should have killed me instead of walking away like a coward.”
Saarka didn’t feel the presence behind her until the thread was already around her neck.
“Don’t you know, youngin. This temple is bad luck,” the old fisherman said as the thread bit into Saarka’s throat.
She tried to scratch and claw at the person behind her but couldn’t reach around. She threw all the magic that Chris had taught her, but they were just pretty lights that she could only throw in front of her. Slowly, her breathing faded, and the world went dark.
“Still needs to learn not to leave his unfinished business laying around, but he did well,” Quway said as he threw off the illusion spell and headed home.
Table of Contents
Reincarnation:RPG
By
Erik Colombe
Part 1
Part 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Reincarnation:RPG Part Four
By Erik Colombe
Part 4
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10