NOVEL NEXT Chapter 385 - Battle For Freetown: Part 7
It was all Eric could do to hold himself together, shivering under the titanic flood of power and potency now roaring through his soul. It was a desperate struggle to hold fiercely tight to the image he had of himself, that he had always had when he was sane, sober, and at peace with himself and his place in the world.
He ignored Kevin’s furious screams like the shrieking winds of a hurricane he crouched under as best he could while taking deep breaths, holding on to his calm, his sense of self as the pocket realm, which by some miracle of System fuckery poor former Malcolm had actually made for himself, began to fade away to the glimmers of impossibility once more. And who knew what wondrous uses it might have had… had he walked any other path save the one he had chosen.
Breath in and out.
Eric opened his eyes, finding himself upon the perfectly smooth surface of the scenic boulevard that was Blue Quarter’s exclusive and surprisingly intact shopping district once more, mixing retail with parks and recreational facilities so well it was like stepping into the most tastefully high tech tourist mecca he could think of. The soothing rustle of cherry blossom trees magically altered to shower vanilla scented petals upon flower beds filled with roses, marigolds, and countless other beautifully blossoming flowers that didn’t mind the dark or cold at all, were a soothing contrast to the desperate shrieks in his mind.
Shrieks that he somehow managed to ignore for precious seconds as he slowly wobbled upright on shaky feet, catching sight of no less than three furiously glaring abominations that were stumbling former contenders covered in bulging tentacles, glaring red eyes and seething hate, leading bands of clearly controlled puppets, including goblins armed with normally illegal plasma blasters and the largest of halberd-wielding ogres, stumbling to see Eric in what was near pitch darkness.
Eric’s monstrous perception and unified perception, on the other hand, allowed him to take in pitch blackness as well as vanilla Skydragon night which was as bright as day save for a slight purple tint. And Eric, for one, always favored games and real life hunts where he perfectly.
Perception was king and a smirking Eric happily sprung for the nearest extremely sturdy Alutopaz roof without engaging at all.
Because as ruthless as the night had been, he wasn’t a complete monster. And if his sense of his twisted opponent was accurate, then Jeffry still had a dozen hapless puppets who had once been powerful Contenders with lives and dreams of their own, now forever slaved to his will.
Eric flashed a bitter smile. As deadly an opponent as he was proving to be, Jeffrey still seemed completely unaware that their mental connection was becoming a two way street. If there was any chance that Eric could free those captives without killing them…
He shook his head, knowing that the odds were infinitesimal. But he could at least try to avoid them before being forced to make a certain, terrible choice that would have irrevocable consequences. Because he had sensed it, a certain skill so perilously close to leveling up in a way that was beyond unorthodox, even for his crooked path. So much insight and dark revelations revealed with his last fight that it would have been so easy to level up and evolve what was perhaps his greatest gift along the darkest of paths… and that had been one evolution he was in no hurry to embrace.
Or so he thought with a fierce smile as he stood atop the second highest building in Blue Quarter, save for the Blue Palace that soared far higher still, sending out a message to a friend, his strained smile belying how desperately he hoped for good news.
E – Are you okay?
M – I’ve been a hell of a lot better.
Eric winced, sensing that was a vast understatement, and that a certain crow had been buffeted by etherial and mental storms that would have shredded any mortal crow to bits.
Still, it was vital, if their plan was going to work.
Heart now hammering, Eric asked the question that most needed answering.
E – Did you find him?
For long desperate moments, Eric held on to a faint strand of hope.
M – I’m sorry, Eric. Wherever he is, he’s long out of Freetown. It’s clear that our enemies will stop at nothing to keep their trump card safe, especially if it means our fall.
The warm post-battle glow that Eric had allowed himself to savor, buoyed by the candle flame of hope that he might actually have a shot of ending this night in control of his own mind, sputtered to streamers of smoke and chilly despair as Morlekai gave the bad news.
“Well fuck.” Eric laughed bitterly as he sat his ass down on the surprisingly comfortable rooftop accommodations, having been set up so that patrons much like himself could enjoy the rooftop pool, bar, and amenities, even if most guests would have taken the elevator or stairs to get up there.
If he was lucky, really lucky, Kevin would be so piss-ass scared that he’d flee both this region and this world, and do all he could to avoid Eric.
But as the sudden bolt of shrieking pain tearing through his skull made agonizingly clear, Malice’s twisted cards of fate meant that there could be only one outcome.
You have been struck by PSIONIC BLAST!
Sylvan bloodlines provide no natural Psionic Defense! (Even if a Mental Resistance of 82 means you’re all but immune to magical equivalents, faerie enchantments, entrancements, or even a Mind Lord’s attempts to crush your will. Yet you’ll always be vulnerable to outright Psionic Attacks!)
You have suffered one additional Medium Wound! (40 points of damage that will NOT heal until you enjoy at least 1 hour’s uninterrupted rest or quiet meditation.)
Eric cried out as bright flooded him, his right eye bulging with such sharp pain that he was terrified that his foe was somehow actively trying to blind him, as Kevin’s furious voice echoed in his mind.
“You fucking monster! You killed my brother! He begged you to let him go! I begged you to let him go!”
Eric was flooded by Kevin’s furious despair, a thousand flashes of a shy, bullied boy ignored and neglected by his own parents, whose only friend in all the world was the brother who always stuck up for him, always had his back. “Don’t worry, bro, we got this.” Malcolm’s charming smile had always soothed away Kevin’s brooding anxiety, always serving as an anchor, all the more so when they both dropped out of high school, left their drunk-ass parents, and with a little bit of a cyber hustle and some unofficial and very bloody cage fights, actually made a life for themselves. And so what if Malcolm’s girlfriends pitied his ugly frail self? Malcolm always made sure they treated him with respect, were never mean or rude, and after every score he’d go see Candy, who made it clear that cash was king and she would worship him an hour every week because who the fuck said that love wasn’t transactional?
Then the world ended, Candy died, and it was just he and Malcolm against the world. And for once, they were finally winning! Putting all the smug bastards who had treated them like second-class shit in their place, and were well on their way to becoming kings of the world. That was until yet one more arrogant spoiled asshole, a lazy partying fuck living off his mother’s excesses with a silver spoon up his goddamned asshole went and killed the one person that Kevin actually cared about!.
Kevin’s fury buffeted Eric, sensing so much in the young man’s howling fury. Just a few years older than himself.
And maybe Eric would have felt pity. Maybe his heart would have gone out to him and Malcolm both. If the pair of absolute fuckwads hadn’t been helping the goblins slaughter twenty thousand innocent souls, just so they could grab a few more essences to boost their own twisted powers.
And somehow Kevin sensed Eric’s rejection of his monstrous pain, and the crushing guilt he thought Eric should rightly feel after butchering the only person who meant anything to him in this awful twisted world.
“You think you get to shrug it off, you fucking inhuman freak?” Kevin screamed from the back of what Eric now sensed was a Veli going full fucking throttle across the vast territories that had stretched and warped as if mana-space-time was now so vast that once twenty mile wide regions had ballooned to forty, then eighty as palest Orange turned to deepest red, and the fool Kevin couldn’t even sense the goblin mercenaries’ fear as they steered his veli past the roaring T-rexes and stalking allosauruses that filled these wild plains, to say nothing of countless sauropods devouring the towering conifers or nibbling on fruit-bearing plants that their historic counterparts had never known, including stegosauruses and massive herds of brontosauruses pounding across the plains, earning the name thunder lizards as the now most definitely Red-tier territory supported far more dinosaurs per square mile than would have ever historically been the case.
All this Eric sensed in a flash, even as a howling Kevin lashed out with a mind blade made of such vile lethality that Eric couldn’t help but scream and flinch as his snarling foe thrust it deep in Eric’s psyche.
You have suffered one additional Medium Wound!
You have failed to save versus pain.
You have failed to save versus disorientation!
Willpower check: Critical Success!
Eric crumpled to the rooftop, groaning in pain. He sensed that his nemesis was making use of basic attack patterns taught to him by his squid-brain masters, getting flashes of tall octopedian eyed figures covered in writhing tentacles shaping an all too willing Kevin’s mind into their vessel. And the fact that their connection was becoming increasingly two-way didn’t make a lick of difference in the injuries Eric suffered, in his utter inability to defend his mind, or in the blinding fury Eric was buffeted by as his nemesis hammered his psyche with a furious need not to simply destroy, but to utterly and forevermore control.
“I’m going to claim you, motherfucker!” Kevin shrieked so loud that blood poured free of a groaning Eric’s ears as he shivered upon the chilly Alutopaz rooftop, the endless night sucking all heat away. “And the first thing I’m going to do is make you strangle your own whore of a sister! How do you like them apples, you absolute piece of necrotic filth!?”
Eric howled as Kevin lashed out in a desperate frenzy, his spiritual hands now massive as he tore Eric free of his mind and thrust him into oblivion’s trenches, finally claiming control as Eric’s ears rang with Kevin’s furious cackles and, worlds away, Malice’s wheezing laughter as a teary-eyed Aurelia, blazing like the sun, held her unharmed firstborn child close. And a wheezing Malice smiled indulgently on, while doing all he could to destroy the lives and worlds of all her other children.
Eric howled in helpless fury, feeling his psyche swirling through the ether, like a tiny mote in the monstrous psyche of his foe, eager to consume him for all time.
He had never expected it to end this way. The only thing more shocking was the companion that had just manifested on his shoulder, completely unfazed as Eric struggled just to maintain his flickering awareness, before it was lost for all time.
BunBun gave him a disappointed look, one ear flopping halfway down in clear disapproval. “Dude… seriously?”
Eric’s momentary flash of comfort became nothing but fury and despair. “Fuck you, Bunbun! I’m doing everything I can just to survive, but our enemies aren’t even bothering with any pretense of fair play! They’re going to rape Earth of all her potential and resources and throw the broken survivors in whatever soul forges they can find! A gentle ascension was bullshit! We were all doomed from the start!”
His bunny familiar gave a gentle nod, patting Eric’s shuddering brow with a sympathetic ear. “I know, fearless leader. I was the girl who’s final moments were trying to scurry under a bed screaming for some magical class evolution that would never come to this once hapless mortal girl before the smirking orc assholes tore off the bed and tore me to pieces while doing unmentionable things to me before eating me and my entire family alive.”
Even in his horrific circumstances, struggling just to keep his soul alight in a sea of Kevin’s roaring contempt, Eric was pained by his familiar’s frank confession. Yet she wasn’t gazing at him with recrimination or contempt, just gentle bemusement, her bright blue eyes peering into his own.
“What I don’t get is why you’re playing such a defensive game, beloved master? Ooh, our daughter sends her love, by the way. And she’s winning HARD! Can you guess how?”
Even in his agony, desperately fighting just to breath in a pounding ocean’s worth of crushing contempt, he couldn’t help but find a tiny speck of comfort in Bunbun’s soothing patter. “No idea.”
“By taking the OFFENSIVE! Just her and a few hundred thousand of her closest Elven buddies, and your Chevalier and his wanna-be wife. Thanks for letting us grab Emily and Richard and all of Elonia’s actual paladins, by the way, and we are kicking the EVERLOVING SHIT out of these goblin fuckheads. And you wanna know our secret?”
Eric forced a smile through his clenched teeth! “I’d love to.”
“We take the offensive! Blitzcreiging new forts, towns, and cities every day. What we do NOT do is sit around trying to defend some camp, letting our enemies amass all their forces so that a dozen snipers are perforating our princess before she even knows what’s going down.”
Even near death, Eric was horrified by the thought.
“And that’s why we keep moving, fearless leader! Striking fast, hard, and we’re out before their increasingly shattered and broken defenders can formulate any sort of response, or straggling companies of mercs have any shot at chasing us down. By day, it’s Brain Blasting and Blood Lightning, and at night its our most elite companies racing at top speed while princess beauty sleeps in her palanquin. Do you get it, hero and father of my cute little bebe? She is ALWAYS moving. She is ALWAYS on the offensive. She is never still.”
Eric nodded with relief. “Good. At least our daughter will have a chance. Claiming a world of her own. I think that’s what Aurelia wanted all along.”
“From the moment she knew she actually existed,” Bunbun said with an agreeable nod. “So, what are we going to do about you, clueless wonder?”
Eric chuckled bitterly before choking back the bitter salt waters of oblivion. “Now I try and hold on just a few more fucking minutes… for as long as I can. I won’t let this Kevin asshole can puppeteer me without a fight!”
The spirit of Bunbun sighed, gazing sadly at Eric. “My question is why are you limiting yourself to a strictly defensive play? Even the best fighter will crack, eventually, if his opponent gets to hammer at him relentlessly.”
Eric blinked at this, before drowning in pain once more. “Fuck, Bunbun, there’s nothing I can do! I’m not like Lilly! I’m not a natural Psionicist! I can’t attack him that way without hurting myself!”
“So why the hell would you choose that path? Attack him on another front.”
“What other front?”
And Eric could taste it, his familiar’s good-natured snark, a wry answer on the tip of her metaphoric tongue that would shake Eric’s very foundation when she laid it all out.
Which was the very instant that the connection was cut, and all there was was icy cold blackness and the distant screams of his familiar. And he could feel it. Even as Eric howled with ever growing despair and dismay, he could feel Malice’s chortling glee at hurting Eric in every conceivable way that he could, even as he took a dying gasp, expending resources he could ill afford to lose, just for the satisfaction of destroying all Aurelia’s creations, save for the child now in her arms.
“Not that expensive, little fool. Your familiar has already overextended. And I can’t tell you how sweet it is, to hear you both scream.”
Those taunting words like nothing else had Eric howling his helpless fury.
Yet he was just a tiny spec of a flickering consciousness in the seas of his opponent’s towering contempt. Even the memory of the fires that had once blazed so hot that mantels had cracked and planetary cores exploded was no more than a gentle warmth in those endless dark seas.
Warmth that was, by darkest coincidence, the temperature of the human body as Eric’s perception shifted, sensing himself drowning not in endless dark waters, but in the pounding tides of his opponent’s blood.
Despairing howls stopped and he smiled, even as he was forced to surrender control over his body. Because that one simple shift in perspective, along with Bunbun’s own, changed everything.
He wasn’t drowning in oceans of inevitability.
He was lodged in the beating heart of his enemy.
And what was that his familiar had alluded to? The only way to win a war was to go on the offensive. Because even the largest titan would fall if hammered with enough blows, and all it took was his daughter to go on the absolute offensive with admittedly absurd Exile’s-Paths-worthy damage multipliers to bring an entire continent to its knees.
And as helpless as he had felt, a lone frightened fool against a mocking master of the mind… the connection between Kevin and himself was now absolutely undeniable. It transcended mere sight-lined attacks or any lesser ritual. It was a binding that even Eric with his Contender’s might and fury couldn’t deny.
It was blood that bound them, from the moment an octopedian tendril had whipped through his flesh in the one tiny heartbeat he was vulnerable, thanks to Silver-tier Malice.
Yet now it was he who had been reduced to little more than a vessel of hate, killing intent, and crystal-clear memory. Everything he was or had ever been, trapped in a drop his own blood.
The strongest and most primal of all his arts.
The memory of Eric stretched lips wide in a killer’s grin as he began racing across endless crimson fields of territory so RIPE for the taking.
For his enemy had been focused on pristine offense, all his soldiers invested in controlling his puppets from afar. Which meant that there was an entire territory ripe for the taking in the vast chasm between the body and soul… between flickers of awareness and the pounding beats of a pair of hearts pouring oceans of blood.
Blood which would be his to control once more.
One converted corpuscle, one sprouting tendril at a time.
Find Weakness skill check (finally) made! You sense the weakness in your foe’s otherwise unbreachable barrier!
Cultivation affinities of Wood, Wind, and Fire are now in play!
Essences of Wrath, Dominion, and Fire are now in play!
Rank 32 Blood Mastery engages in Contest of Wills versus Lythid Prodigy!
Rank 31 Spirit Mastery engages in Contest of Wills versus Lythid Prodigy!
Rank 25 Flesh Sculptor engages in Contest of Wills versus Lythid Prodigy!
“Mollet, Iram, Herbam, Ignis, Plures, Attentio! Round two, motherfucker!”
Eric sensed the pounding heart that was the tides of this crimson ocean turn from placid turpidity to a roaring maelstrom of conflict. And he welcomed the crimson storm of sudden dismay as he embraced the very same tactic that had allowed him to strike Freetown with his enemies’ pants down.
He quit worrying about the choice target everyone expected him to defend until he was ground to dust and instead embraced the glorious opportunity before him. For just as his opponent had utterly breached Eric’s defenses, the crimson arts upon which their contest had raged meant that his foe had been breached in turn. Even if his winning hand had consigned Eric to the tiniest of subjugates within Kevin’s crimson Maelstrom, that made no difference to Eric.
Just as he had overrun entire territories, he’d happily take over his foe’s crimson soldiers, one bloody cell at a time.
Until one cell became hundreds, then thousands of cells.
“Hell Vines!”
Twisting into ropes of crimson flesh, consumed and conquered as Eric strove to overthrow his enemy from within. Yet the tiniest of thrombi was nothing compared to the vast size of his prey.
And he was running out of time.
He sensed that as assuredly as he sensed Elonia’s doom and Malice’s cackles of twisted glee, just minutes away from soul riding the perfect vessel as Aurelia’s heart began to thaw one last time.
“You won’t win, motherfucker! You hear me? My mastery of Dominion is greater. I control YOU!” Kevin roared, Eric and his tiny creation torn free of an arterial wall and sent hurtling toward the lymphatic system, soon to be flushed and purged by a vindictive spleen into oblivion when Eric quite holding back and finally embraced the skill evolution he had been so CLOSE to taking.
So terrified of embracing.
Yet now was the absolute perfect time.
So a tiny effigy of Eric accepted the path that would become his own as he opened his tiny sharktooth maw wide...
And finally began to feed.