Unbound Deathlord_Obliteration

Unbound Deathlord_Obliteration Page 50

by Edward Castle

  There was no follow up attack, but Sam was now left to fight him alone. I willed my morbs to destroy the ice...

  Only to realize that he had fired more arrows after trapping me, only they'd targeted my morbs instead.

  Thanks to my Diviner trait, I could sense magic to some extent, but I'd learned to ignore the nearly constant presence of my morbs, so I hadn't realized when they were destroyed.

  I amassed new morbs as quickly as I could, and targeted the only thing I could see right now, the ice I was entombed inside of.

  I asked Sam.

  She snapped, and I could hear the strain in her voice.

  My fireballs continued raining down on the ice, until a crack opened in front of my face and I could see what the hell was going on.

  Tardas was standing in the exact same place as before, on that huge chain. Sam was attacking from all sides, trying to get closer, but he was too damn fast with those arrows. To make matters worse, they all had some kind of magic: binding ice like the one that had hit me, shards of stone, bursts of fire, even gusts of wind. Others split into multiple arrows after his shooting. All of them changed path midair as the ghoul willed.

  Sam had no choice but to send throwing knives at the incoming arrows. If she tried to defend the same way as me, she would only end up with a similar nasty surprise.

  The worst part though, was that she didn't have unlimited throwing knives, and apparently she had run out. She had to throw a few of them for each arrow, or Tardas would just maneuver his arrows around them, and then she also had to move around collecting the daggers she had just thrown.

  The only thing that really worked to her advantage was the chains. They were everywhere and worked fairly well as cover. Only now did I realize the ghoul had positioned himself in a location around which there were no chains except for the one he was standing on, like a clearing.

  I amassed five morbs to defend myself just in case, then continued blasting away at the ice around me.

  Sam shadowed, trying to approach, but was pushed back by a rapid volley of five arrows which each split into five as they flew.

  I finally finished breaking out of the ice, and was thankfully still being ignored by Tardas, who seemed more interested in fighting Sam. I immediately took cover behind a nearby chain that was as large as a tree.

  I amassed all eleven fire morbs I could and threw them at Tardas as rapidly as possible. The slave immediately turned my direction and managed to shoot six arrows before my morbs were halfway there. Each arrow turned into five and, ridiculously, he seemed to have no issue controlling thirty of them simultaneously. I tried to preserve my spells by maneuvering them out of the path of the storm of arrows, but they were mercilessly destroyed.

  Sam used the chance to approach, but was once again driven back by a flurry of arrows.

  Simply put, it was impossible to attack him.

  Then, it hit me: I didn't have to attack him, only get past him. The Devourer, not the ghoul, was my target.

  I told Sam after I amassed eleven new fire morbs. When she moved to attack him again, I darted towards the next good cover.

  I had barely taken my first step when an arrow that was aimed at Sam made a sharp turn and came at me instead. The asshole didn't even need to look to shoot me! I sent a fireball at it and detonated it early to keep the arrow from evading my spell while I moved forward.

  "If you're going to run," Tardas said, "then playtime is over." And with that, he vanished.

  I said.

  She also vanished, but I could see her icon approaching me on the minimap.

  I helplessly threw one firemorb after another in random directions as I waited for her, holding my shield high and changing the direction I faced every other second.

  When the arrow came, of course, it hit me in the back. I felt it penetrate my armor and sink into my damn spine. I yelped in pain, and then the arrow exploded in my back.

  That one attack took away three thousand HP and damn near rendered me unconscious, even with the pain in the game being greatly dulled.

  Fortunately the pain also went away quickly and allowed me to think somewhat straight. I was trying to focus on creating a death morb to heal myself when a new arrow was shot my direction, only to be intercepted by Sam's throwing knives.

  I looked toward the middle of the room. The Devourer was so close, but so impossibly far away...

  The truth was obvious. I paused as the coldness of the deathball passed through me, pushing back the lingering pain and mending the gaping hole in my torso.

  She replied firmly.

  I replied sarcastically.

  she insisted.

 

  She appeared in front of me with a blood blade in her hand. I was confused, hadn't she ditched that thing back in the blood room?

  Without warning, she slit her own throat, then rammed the blade straight through her ribcage, piercing her heart. Her HP instantly hit zero and her body fell lifeless on the ground. Her icon turned into a red skull, the game confirming what was already obvious, Sam was dead.

  Another arrow came my way but I was too shocked to defend myself. Had Tardas used some kind of mind magic? What the hell was going on?!

  But before the arrow could hit me, Sam's hand jerked upward and plucked it out of the air.

  "Bloodied," the Devourer's voice boomed in the room. "Your Destiny was Devoured, your Blood was offered, and your Soul is accepted."

  A bizarre red light began to pulsate and the tendrils of blood above us throbbed to its rhythm. The lightsteel chains shone white, their magic apparently straining to counteract whatever was happening.

  "You who have sacrificed yourself within my Heart," the voice said, "are now one with my Veins." The voice drug out the last syllable as the stream of blood deflected away from its original path without breaking, formed a curve that swept down and coiled several times around Sam before it turned into a churning vortex of blood that engulfed her. I had no choice but to back away. "Forever." The voice finished ominously.

  The vortex subsided, the chord of blood returned to its original state and the lightsteel chains stopped glowing.

  Sam was on her feet again, but I was only assuming it was her, since this thing was occupying the space where I'd seen her last and it still had that dagger sticking out of its chest.

  Now it was an avatar made of blood which swirled wildly. Instead of eyes and mouth, there were only voids in its substance, just like the Water Goddess.

  "You have ten minutes," the Devourer said. "Afterwards, you're mine."

  My game interface was still telling me Sam was dead. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't her.

  It looked at me for a moment, then turned with a speed that bordered precognition, to face Tardas just as he released another arrow.

  The avatar stretched itself out, becoming a twisting ribbon of blood which intercepted and ignored the arrow on the way to appearing in front of the ghoul in the blink of an eye.

  It spiraled around the invisible Tardas, who became visible inside when he was penned in by blood in all directions. He had no time to react before all the blood collapsed in on him, creating a scarlet cocoon which writhed as he struggled within. Sometimes his face or a limb briefly broke free, before being drawn back in.

&
nbsp; For a good minute, he fought, but you could see his thrashing weakening, until it was all over.

  The blood mass held still with Tardas' corpse inside it. From the name of the god that created that thing, I guessed it was consuming the ghoul.

  And just like that, the ghoul wasn't my problem anymore.

  "Holy shit," I said.

  The blood replied by throwing Tardas' longbow at me. Then, it formed two open hands, showing 'ten', only to immediately close one finger to show 'nine.'

  And I understood. The Devourer had said that Sam would be forever his, then he said she had ten minutes. And she had told me I had to be quick. Just like me, she was all-in. I bet that if I didn't kill the Devourer in nine minutes, she would permanently lose her character.

  I nodded, took the longbow, and prepared to run to the middle of the room, when her hands turned into a mass of tentacles and shot upwards. They gripped the stream of blood we'd been following and pulled it down, then splayed open into something that looked like a hammock.

  One of the tentacles then grabbed me and shoved me into the space and closed it around me. When Sam released it, I felt myself shoot ahead!

  I imagined this is what it would feel like to be a blood cell, propelled through a vein by the beating of a heart, only so much faster.

  I was glad to see Sam had some kind of plan, because I'd been thinking I didn't have a chance of getting to the center of the room in nine minutes, let alone also finishing off the Devourer.

  It was finally time end this.

  I was going to kill a god.

  38. Commitment

  The blood surrounding me poured into my wounds, healing me as I flew ahead. Thankfully, I had no need to breathe, because I'd have otherwise suffocated in the two minutes before I was unceremoniously ejected from my ride.

  I fell from several stories up, and hit the ground both hard and badly. I'd tucked into a ball but still lost two hundred HP.

  I rolled to a stop and after a few seconds of dizziness, I got up, looked ahead, and saw... Nothingness.

  To be more precise, there was a column of black fog that stretched floor to ceiling. The chains and blood stream went into it and disappeared as they crossed the threshold. It was a void that none of my enhanced or magical senses could pierce.

  A green energy, that I assumed was the Blight, flickered across the face of the fog of darkness occasionally, giving it an ominous appearance..

  I took a couple minutes to heal the damage from the fall, and contacted my Destiny Spirit, just to be sure everything was ready.

 

  The child voice replied in an annoyed tone.

 

  It repeated.

  I smiled at my own joke and stepped into the fog.

  Inside there was nothing; I looked back and I couldn't see where I had come from, only the thick dark fog. I tried to look at my own hands and couldn't perceive them, even right in front of my face.

  I steeled myself and moved on. Sam was counting on me, I only had five minutes left.

  No damage received from darkness element (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Devouring (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Dark Madness (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Lone Despair (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Heart of Darkness (Immunity)

  No damage received from dark blight element (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Dark Blight Corruption (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Dark Blight Illusions (Immunity)

  Status effect resisted: Dark Blight Control (Immunity)

  Messages of me resisting damage and status effects came in the hundreds, so many that I couldn't even read them as they scrolled past. I ignored them and kept moving.

  Twenty or so paces later, the scenery changed again.

  Where before was only darkness, now I was in a white void space. I couldn't see the floor on which I stood, there were no walls, nor ceiling, though thankfully I could see myself again; and I could see something else..

  The millions of chains I'd seen out in the cavern were converging here. In this white space, it seemed like they stretched outward to some infinite horizon, far further away than the walls of the cavern I'd been in. It must have been some kind of spatial magic making this place bigger on the inside. As the chains came together, they were intersecting and merging, but instead of becoming bigger, the combined chain was smaller but more luminous. By the time they reached the center, there were only thousands of chains, but they were incandescent, giving off a beautiful, silvery-white light. Then the chains merged a final time, where they all intersected they became a large sphere of wrought lightsteel.

  The only thing marring the ethereal beauty of this bastille, was the blood. The same cable of blood I had seen before was also here, but where it was trying to enter the sphere at the center, the opening was apparently too small, causing a massive amount of blood to backup, coating that side of the sphere and clinging to hundreds of chains like a water droplet caught in a spider's web.

  I approached the sphere and saw an inscription inlaid with gold:

  "The First Defender

  God of Self-Sacrifice

  Devourer of the Blight

  Savior of Valia"

  Not seeing an entrance, and not having time to look, I hoped for the best and touched it, and thankfully was transported to the final chamber of the prison.

  Now, I was standing on a hill in what appeared to be an endless plain of dried blood. There were sculptures of beasts and people in torment everywhere, though they seemed to be a part of the bloody terrain.

  I turned and saw something even creepier to the side; some of these statues were moving. Tens of thousands of them, some seemed to be trying to run, some were struggling to rise from the ground and others seemed to be trying to wipe something off of themselves. The one common factor was the clear desperation etched on their faces.

  A sparse fog, composed of intertwined tendrils of green and black, crept across the ground everywhere save where I was standing.

  Seeing no sign of the Devourer I called out. "Hello?"

  My voice was a scream in this place of silent torment. The fog trembled at that and glided towards me. I tensed, but then realized there was nothing I could do to fog even if it wanted to hurt me and forced myself to relax.

  The fog soon condensed into a smoky humanoid before me. The green of its left side and the black of the right, shifted and warred with each other subtly, but always remained in balance overall. There was no movement from the being but the voice of a young man came from all around me.

  "Who are you?" It queried in a strangely jovial tone.

  "You don't know?" I was actually surprised, it seemed like the worse it would be for me, the more likely it was that the people I was interacting with would know me. My ego was slightly bruised, even if it was better for me this way.

  "Should I know the name of every mortal who comes to adore me?" He also seemed surprised at my question.

  "Well, considering how hard it was to get here, it would only be polite," I replied, then hurried to keep the conversation moving, because Sam's clock was ticking. "I'm Jack Thorn." I waited for a few seconds but my name didn't seem to mean anything to him. "I'm here to become a Blackguard," I said.

  "Oh, I see. You're one of those." He waved his hand at me dismissively.

  Suddenly, the fog which had lingered on the ground engulfed me. Notifications telling me I'd resisted damage and negative statuses spilled across my vision again, while the fog rapidly dissolved as it touched my skin.

  After a few moments, it was over. "You didn't die," the Devourer observed needlessly.

  "Ya," I replied sagely. "So, Blackguard?"

  He silently regarded me for a while as if I were an interesting an
omaly. "Ah, a Dark Archmage. It's been some time since the last came with hopes of conquering me. And yet, you come with tales of serving me."

  "I'm not that greedy," I said.

  "Lies. No Archmage can be born without greed. Greed for knowledge, for power, for revenge. Sometimes greed for survival, or for life. There are many goals, but greed is what fuels it all." He started walking around me. "Your plot is doomed to fail," he said. "It has been tried before. Even if I consume your Destiny Spirit and it explodes inside me, it won't kill me."

  My mouth dropped open. How the hell had it seen through me like that?

  "Why the surprise?" He asked with a hint of laughter in his voice. "You think no one has ever tried it? Destiny Spirits were rarer before this Age of Travelers, but their destructive potential is no secret." I sighed; I had sucked up to Zenhit for nothing. "Then you come and directly ask me to turn you into a Blackguard, something that can be achieved only when I swallow your Destiny Spirit. It doesn't take a genius to see through your scheme."

  "Well, shit." I said. "Would you mind just dying, then? It'd be really helpful."

  He stopped walking and looked at me curiously again, but for a different reason than my words alone. "This compulsion to do as you say... Ah, an Adept Faithful. Your charisma is quite powerful. Alas, death is a blessing that I can't have until the Fallen are gone."

  "What if I promise to kill them all for you?" I asked.

  He sighed. "You bore me. Leave. Come back when you're as strong as three Mage Kings combined and wield divine power. Then, you'll stand a tiny chance of harming me."

  "Can we at least try the Destiny Spirit thing? I hate Zenhit." I said.

  "This is the last time I tell you to leave," he replied.

  Well, I had tried being polite. With my shield raised in front of me, I rushed him. I swung my sword at the same time I threw a firebomb behind him. He didn't move as my sword passed right through him and the explosion didn't even cause a ripple in the vapors he was made of.

  No damage dealt to Devourer.

  He sighed. "I can't kill you," he said. "The Blight and the Divinity inside me are locked in eternal stalemate, and I can only use dark magic, to which you're immune. But you also cannot damage me. You're too weak."

 

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