Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Reforged: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 2

by M. H. Johnson

  Alex just stared, heart racing with unspeakable panic as the hideous abomination of metal and demon scurried across the ground, heading for the nearest crippled, shrieking slave.

  Alex didn’t think, he just acted, taking advantage of his 15 Strength and Vitality to grab first one, then another desperately pleading slave, before Bullrushing forty feet in the blink of an eye in the direction his friends had fled, grateful it had worked, frantically stumbling forward and knowing he had no right to expect to see any sign of Peng or Yong Ming. And he was grateful beyond words when the furious-eyed man appeared as if by magic from the thick rustling foliage all around, grabbing each crippled, bleeding slave before putting them gently down.

  Yet far from any look of relief or pride, what stared back at Alex were eyes filled with cold fury.

  “Was this part of your plan? Are you one of them?”

  Alex swallowed. Drained of almost all his Qi, both the points that allowed him to use his disciplines and nearly all his Dark Qi reserves, he was beyond exhausted, and knew how close he was to death.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That! That thing!” Peng roared, finger jabbing in the direction where the sounds of shrieking wounded could still be heard, the demonic horror made of twisted metal and malice making no move to follow.

  Alex licked exhausted, dry lips, tasting the blood he had spat up, injuring himself by manipulating his Qi in ways never done before. “We were doomed,” Alex whispered. “You know that as well as I.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t explain how you summoned that horror!” Peng snapped.

  Only then did he see Yong Ming looking up at Alex, eyes filled with either terror or wonder, Alex couldn’t tell which.

  Peng grabbed Alex’s jaw, forcing him to meet the man’s angry stare. “Answer me, boy! What the hell did you do?”

  Alex took a shuddering breath. “It was his armor.”

  The man blinked. “What?”

  “It’s why you couldn’t hurt him. Why you couldn’t even touch him. Why he was draining those men, body and soul. His armor made him immune to all your blows.”

  Alex met the man’s horrified gaze. “That armor was fused to a demon. And I could think of only one thing to do. One chance we had to get out of there without losing both our lives and our souls.”

  “Alex, what did you do?” asked Yong Ming.

  An exhausted Alex shrugged, realizing he had already said too much. Far, far, too much. But he owed his friends some kind of explanation. “Let’s just say I pushed Scar so hard that his armor got the best of him.” He forced a grim smile. “God knows he didn’t like me stuck on his back.”

  Yong Ming chuckled ruefully. “Isn’t that the truth. He was furious! And his fury seemed to make him grow stronger.” Her eyes widened with remembered horror. “Until it didn’t.”

  Wordlessly, Alex handed Yong Ming and Peng a pack heavy with healing tinctures and liniments, assembling it altogether in a heartbeat in his ring, stepping a couple of feet away and bringing forth the bag, as if he had hidden it beside a tree all along. “Here are the tinctures and infusion-soaked bandages I made for those bastards all those weeks.” Sad eyes gazed into Yong Ming’s own as the shrieks in the clearing now some distance away only grew.

  Alex girded himself, already knowing what he had to do.

  “Put these on your wounds.” He flashed a self-effacing smile. “Put them on all the wounds, no matter how severe they are. You’ll find yourself healing a lot faster than normal.”

  Peng blinked. “We’re still lost, Alex, with no supplies.”

  Alex turned to gaze at the cluster of surviving slaves. Just over half the men, most badly wounded, and nearly all the women and children.

  Trusting his sense of direction, he pointed to the east. “The Trade Road is that way, and the wagons are just to the south, as you know.” He took a deep breath, not breaking eye contact with Peng. “Don’t worry about Tang Dan or the other slavers.”

  Peng furrowed his brow. “Why not? Are they secretly working for you, now?”

  Alex flashed a cold smile. “They’re dead.”

  Yong Ming gazed at Alex with a look uncomfortably close to awe. “All of them?”

  Alex nodded. “As far as my Qi Perception could detect, yes. But the spirit guarding the...”

  “Virgins?” The injured girl said with a bitter smile.

  Alex winced. “I don’t know what her deal is, or if it’s even safe for me to approach, but they were fine, last I checked, and I don’t think that spirit really likes the slavers. It refused to help them fight me.”

  Peng furrowed his brow. “The quartermaster’s wagon...”

  “Will have all the supplies in it you need. I assume you and the survivors can handle the horses?”

  Peng nodded. “We can. And with my resources, I can even get us all to Yidushi as free men. But Alex...”

  Alex met the man’s gaze. Strangely, it was the older, more experienced man that paled. “That thing has to be stopped, Peng, at all costs.”

  The man sighed, gazing at Alex strangely. “That thing is a demon, Alex. Let us tell the temple of its location when we reach the city. Let those more powerful and skilled in handling such abominations deal with it.”

  Alex gave a sad shake of his head. “At least several of our number might live, if we can come to their rescue in time. And if we leave such an abomination alive in woodlands so filled with wild Qi… we all know what will happen.”

  Yong Ming paled. “It will evolve. From tainted demonic artifact to a true Greater Demon roaming the mortal world. And should it stumble across any village...”

  Alex nodded. “Hundreds or thousands could be dead before anyone strong enough to handle it comes. I think we all know what has to be done.”

  Peng gave an angry shake of his head. “We’re lucky to be alive, boy! There’s no way any of us could take on a horror like that!”

  Alex said nothing, simply raced back to the wagons, his Qi Perception detecting no hostile slavers nearby as he made his way directly to the quartermaster’s tent and filled it as rapidly as he could with food, weapons, and armor; all the crucial gear which he could recognize and transfer in just a moment’s time. Though it comprised just a fraction of what he had pilfered, Alex took some small solace that it included those items most vital to his friends’ continued survival. He could only hope they would be okay, even should they never see him again. After all, his own death was almost a given with the madness he was planning.

  Heart racing with something he refused to call terror, he forced himself back towards those screams just as Peng and the others broke into the clearing beside the wagons adjoining the trade road.

  Yong Ming’s eyes widened. “You’re actually going back. Alex! Please! It’s suicide!”

  Alex shut his eyes for only a moment, knowing Yong Ming was right. When he opened them, his friends paled. “It doesn’t matter,” he softly said. “It doesn’t matter how foolish it seems, or how likely it is to kill me.” He looked all around him. “I’m just one tiny speck of life in the sea of beauty and wonder all around me.”

  He smiled, filled with a sudden love for every gently blowing tree, every freed slave gazing at him so strangely, every village and town within this beautiful world filled with countless innocent souls, all of them savoring each day’s joys and struggles, wanting only to embrace peaceful lives and savor what happiness they could with those they cherished, before returning to the River of Souls once more.

  And the abomination he now dared to approach threatened everything and everyone.

  Alex trembled with a feeling that went beyond awe, beyond wonder, beyond simple resolution.

  At peace with the death to come as he broke into the clearing ahead, beholding a furious abomination of twisted steel, infernal Qi, massive ape-like arms swinging about a pair of helpless, shrieking slaves as if they were no more than sacks filled with meat, twisting and shattering mortal bodies as if they were as fragile as d
olls with bones of brittle glass. A mouth filled with serrated metal teeth opened wide in a roar of challenge as eyes like hot embers from the depths of Hades glared into Alex’s own.

  “I will claim your soul, boy!” roared the risen demon. “I will feast upon your flesh and rend your spirit forever more!”

  Alex did not flinch, for all that his heart pounded with terror, summoning forth a shaft that he no longer feared to touch, a fangtian ji that sparkled like the sun now in his hands.

  “Bring it!” Alex roared, distracting the hideous abomination before it could focus on one of the still-living slaves trapped in the clearing, the creature now twisting around and racing for Alex.

  Alex flashed a fierce grin, his saintly artifact glowing like the sun as it cleaved into the demon’s flesh with a shower of screams and Golden Qi.

  Dodge, strike, pivot left!

  In those moments Alex moved as fast as thought, weaving past the hideous claws of liquid steel and flame tearing through the ground, obliterating stone he had stood upon just heartbeats before, dodging death with eerie precision, knowing a single misstep would send him crashing into the River of Souls. Yet Alex refused to let terror consume him, even as he fought for his life against the demon he dared to face, putting all of Liu Jian’s grueling lessons to good use every second he survived the nightmare before him, always using the shaft of his divine artifact to guard his line and parry his foes’ blows.

  Yet this only enraged the demon further, the horror lashing out with increasing abandon at a pace Alex strove desperately to match, step for step, blow for blow, his polearm always warding his flank or protecting his face just a heartbeat before a claw could rip him open, sending him rolling back with the force behind those terrible blows even as the demon shrieked; its metallic flesh was scorched and blackened, the golden treasure blazing like fire whenever the demon dared touch it, chunks of the abomination falling to the ground with each exchange.

  And when Alex sensed the slimmest chance for rebuttal, he did more than parry his foe’s killing blows, risking everything not to parry but to weave and dodge under his opponent’s guard, desperate to close. Even when his helmet was sent flying, even when bloody claws injected poison that should have devoured all mortal flesh into his veins, Alex would not be deterred, could not be deterred, finding furious exultation every time his ji leveraged past his enemy’s defenses, the demon stumbling to one massive knee as Alex blasted through infernal flesh, earning screams and roars and direst threats that slowly turned to hideous promises, if only Alex would embrace eternal damnation and fight by the horror’s side.

  To which Alex could give only one reply, lashing out in a dizzying series of spinning, cleaving blows, going on pure offense, using his terrible weapon almost like a battle-axe, the spinning blades never stopping, never slowing down as the air itself seemed to bleed before Alex’s flurry of blows, the demon roaring and charging forward, now determined to bring Alex down in one final deadly assault, just as Alex hoped he would.

  Sensing just the moment to strike…

  And embracing it, no matter the cost.

  Qi Perception - transcendent success! Artifice skill check - success! You have had a breakthrough! You can now sense not only the inner-workings of artifacts and Qi constructs, but their weaknesses as well! As this demon is as much tainted artifact as infernal soul, your Find Weakness skill stacks with Artificer! You have successfully sensed the weak point of your foe!

  Adderstrike successfully executed!

  And with the last ounce of his strength, his fangtian ji went from a deadly storm of cleaving slashes to a powerful lunge aimed right between his enemy’s hotly glowing eyes.

  Alex’s vision suddenly transcended mere sight, sensing the overlapping streams of Earth and Fire Qi and the infernal spirit energies keeping this demon protected. A tiny flicker of Alex’s remaining Dark Qi wreaked havoc with the abomination’s defenses for the single heartbeat needed for his saintly artifact to pierce the creature’s skull and rupture the infernal core that served as the heart of the demon’s hideous power.

  The abomination gasped like a massive bellows, gazing at Alex with crimson-eyed disbelief even as furious wails and all its power were absorbed and consumed by the saintly artifact in Alex’s hand.

  Face twisted in a hideous grimace, the abomination froze into a massive statue of cold, lifeless steel, completely devoid of infernal Qi. It was now so utterly empty of even the trace amounts of Qi found within all earthly artifacts that it began to pit and rust and crumble before Alex’s very eyes.

  Congratulations! You have defeated a Greater Demon! Demon core and all infernal taint has been consumed by your artifact! The endless potential for transformation and change inherent in every foe you bested this night is now your own. Your noble acts will have untold repercussions in the lives of countless innocents and have not gone unnoticed. A portion of the endless potential of all those souls you have unknowingly rescued from damnation now flows within you as well. You have positively impacted the lives of dozens of would-be slaves, giving them a second chance at life. A portion of their endless potential is now tied to your own soul. Additional potency earned. Saintly points earned.

  Adderstrike is now Rank 5! You may pick one Modifying Perk.

  Find Weakness is now Rank 1!

  Qi Perception is now Rank 3!

  Artificer is now Rank 3!

  Qi Flood (Inverse of Qi Absorption) is now Rank 1! Flood your foes with Dark Qi and watch what happens!

  You have expended your last point of Qi!

  You have been struck by exhaustion!

  You have been struck by Greater Demon! Critical Wound suffered!

  You now have 5% Immunity to Infernal Taint.

  You are now feeling the effects of Critical Wounds.

  Demonic nemesis is dead. You are no longer infused with saintly potency. The concerns of a mortal, eager for his own well-being above all else, flood through your psyche once more. Saintly artifact has returned to personal garden.

  Alex gasped and crashed to the ground, his moment of transcendent exultation, sweetest triumph, and pristine connection and love for all living things collapsing into the agonized sobs of a young cultivator forced to gaze upon his own entrails seeping from a hideous gut wound.

  He took a shuddering breath, stunned with unspeakable pain so great it washed away the awe and wonder he had felt for just a heartbeat with his victory over true malice.

  And how excruciating was the pain he was forced to endure even now, writhing and crying out, knowing that death was, at most, several agonizing hours away.

  Alex groaned when he coughed. His sputum was free of blood but the agony rippling through his ruptured abdomen was beyond hideous. Too exhausted even to sob, he knew the odds of him being able to avert death were minimal.

  He only had a few infused poultices and potions, having been, in those transcendent moments, far more concerned with the fate of everyone else, a portion of his soul already knowing full well that he would not survive the fight.

  Still, somehow, he was here.

  Enduring every agonizing gasp for air as he fought against the hideous pain coursing through him, whenever he so much as twitched.

  And if he were going to die… he’d far rather it be in the pristine garden within the heart of his ring, bathed in the divine light of a saintly treasure, than struggling out here where any wandering spirit beast would tear at his already leaking entrails in a heartbeat, assuring a gruesome death no matter what miracle he might have otherwise been able to pull off.

  He gazed once in the direction of where he knew the wagons to be, fooling himself into thinking he could sense a pulse of Yong Ming’s desperate cry.

  “We have to save him, Peng! He could still be alive. We have to save him!”

  And somehow, he could sense the way Peng gripped the girl’s shoulders with a father’s immovable strength, and gentle care. “You saw the look in his eyes, Ming. He knew he was going to his death. You did as we
ll.” The man sighed. “We all sensed the pulse of spiritual energy released. Perhaps a god took pity on the boy’s sacrifice, and abjured that nightmare. Now come, child. For the sake of all the women and children with us, for the sake of the wounded men who will need weeks to fully recover even with our young friend’s inspired poultices… we need to leave. Now. In case young Alex was unable to do anything at all. Leave, in case even approaching that clearing is death, and what will the women and children do if our second strongest cultivator perishes to folly?”

  Gentle eyes gazed into Yong Ming’s tear-filled gaze. “It is only through luck, the coin we found, and the strength of a pair of resolute cultivators that we have even a hope of making it to Yidushi as free men and women, girl. You know this. And I do too. With the Lai clan doing all they can to assert dominance and mastery over all the free towns near Yidushi, neither of us have homes we can ever safely return to.”

  Yong Ming’s sad eyes gazed into the distance. Somehow, to Alex, she seemed only a heartbeat away. “Goodbye, Alex. For what you did for all of us... thank you.” She flashed a tear-filled smile. “May the gods grant you a peaceful journey to the next life. May it be filled with adventure, luck, and joy.”

  And without another word, she turned on her heels and walked back to the carriages, a now fatherly-looking Peng by her side.

  11

  Alex didn’t bother to wipe the tears falling from his cheeks as he fell into his ring, taking a deep breath of blossom-scented air, so rich with life, hope, and wondrous possibility, sobbing in pain only once as the warm gentle light of his divine fangtian ji illuminated all within his garden like a gentle golden sun.

  He smiled, imagining the hideous burning of his demon-tainted wounds easing under that gentle light.

  It was everything he could do not to collapse into exhausted, dying slumber from which he would inevitably awaken upon the River of Souls, waiting patiently for his next life.

  With a desperate gasp, he forced his eyes open, choking back his sob of pain, hoping against hope that his mad gamble would work.