Ruthless: Path of Conquest

James sat in the bed, staring at the menagerie of creatures all around him.

There were dozens of the things, all subjugated to his Will, but he had never seen them all in one place before.

Creatures that were like balloons made of skin. Other creatures that resembled pterodactyls made of skin. And Thing from “The Addams Family.”

There was so much more he could do, he realized as he looked at his little zoo of homemade monsters. So many creative ideas popped into his head for new monsters he could shape from his flesh. It was shocking how far behind he had fallen in using one of his most powerful Skills. Probably the most powerful Skill.

Once his energy returned, he would pursue these avenues.

And I have an idea for all of you right now, he thought suddenly, staring at the monsters with a new intensity—a zeal in his eyes that would have frightened them if they were made to be capable of feeling fear.

It was an idea to hopefully make the best use he could of all of them.

He opened up his Status sheet again. Then he used Skill Fusion to temporarily combine Skill Fusion itself with Monster Generation. He set a time limit for the combination of ten minutes. Otherwise, he would lose both Skill Fusion and Monster Generation permanently, which would be an unacceptable loss almost no matter the potential gain. James thought he knew what he would get.

He looked at the Skills section where the old Skills had been.

Sure enough, he found the new Skill he had been expecting.

Monster Fusion, Lv. 0.

He felt like a mad scientist.

James looked around at the creatures that surrounded him, and a smile slowly overtook his face.

You guys are going to be more useful than I could have ever imagined.

He quickly grabbed two of the creatures, one balloon-like and another glider-shaped.

Monster Fusion!

His hands glowed, and he pushed the two creatures together. There was just the smallest flicker of resistance from them—as if they did have some emotions in them, and they did not like having their individualities snuffed out forever.

Then the two monsters were gone, and in their place was a single, larger creature. With the balloon-shaped monster and the winged monster fused, the result looked a bit like how James imagined a plucked vulture would look.

But despite its ungainly appearance, he could feel the ferocity of the monster in his hands. He smiled.

The new creature was stronger than the sum of its parts. Of that he was almost certain.

He closed his eyes and inhabited the creature’s mind for a moment. There was something slightly wilder about the fused monster than there had been about the original creatures—a bit alien, a little more removed from humanity. He observed that it perceived every other creature in the room besides James himself as potential prey. He noted that the monster had the same Skills as the creatures that he had formed them from. The physical Stats were the same as the creatures’ Stats added together too.

It was still weak relative to James, but would that remain true?

There were still more fusions he could perform.

He left the monster’s body and opened his own eyes again.

James grabbed another pair of monsters, this time the severed hand creature and another of the winged skin monsters.

Monster Fusion!

He continued the process of making fused creatures excitedly and quickly. He didn’t want to let Skill Fusion and Monster Generation defuse before he was done with this. He scarcely noticed the beads of sweat beginning to dot his forehead.

After James had combined each of the original monsters with another one, cutting their number in half, he continued fusing the newly created creatures.

There was just a little more resistance there—a little less willingness from the combined creatures to feel their individuality snuffed out.

But it was easy for him to suppress, even with his body in its weakened state.

He wanted to push these creatures to their limit and see how large and powerful a monster he could shape.

As the number of monsters dropped to a quarter of what it had been, James felt the sweat break out over every inch of his body.

I’m sure if I was at a hundred percent, this would be easier, he thought. It was frustrating to be held back by his temporary physical condition, though he was already pleased with the results he had achieved.

The monsters were much bigger now than they had been—and far more powerful.

The forms they had taken were all fairly bird-like now—larger than ostriches, but still capable of flight, he was fairly certain. Their wings were bat-like, of course—James’s body did not grow feathers, so neither could these creatures. They had beaks and claws made of bits of concentrated keratin, except one of the creatures that had bony claws—a heritage of the severed hand monster.

It was impossible not to notice that they became more unruly as they grew stronger.

The larger and stronger creatures made stalking movements, like avian predators, as if they wanted to leap on the smaller ones. James had already ordered them not to see each other as enemies to be preyed upon. But now he had to give them strict orders to keep them from testing their strength against each other.

The beasts had inherited James’s own stubbornness and love of a fight—especially a challenging fight in which they could not be certain of victory.

Besides their master, who they still did not dare to challenge, the only creatures present that they could challenge were their brethren.

James was too tired to worry about it. His body was soaked in sweat, yet still he wanted to press on.

One more round, he told himself. I don’t even have eight Skills I want to hand out to these things. The number of combat Skills is just three: Berserk Mode, Predator’s Venomous Armaments, and Otherworldly Shriek—the last of which will be accompanied by Echolocation. A couple of these creatures already have Solar Ray and Solar Recovery, and they’ve been outside absorbing solar energy all day, so that makes a total of four decent combat Skills my personal monster force will have. If I could cut it in half one more time, just narrow it down to four monsters, the power will be as concentrated as I can get it for now.

He took a break, breathing heavily—almost wheezing—from the physical exertion of the process.

So goddamned frustrating… If I was at full power, I would be able to make them all into one monster…

The idea was appealing—and perhaps slightly crazy. The creatures were already almost too large for the room. Once they had been combined a final time, they would scarcely be able to fit out through the window they had entered by.

But James was not one to be dissuaded by such practical problems. If he had to, he could always make the window larger.

He grabbed two of the remaining creatures, the ones that had the solar Skills—one that looked like a great buzzard, while the other was more like an ostrich—and he pushed their heads together.

Monster Fusion!

James felt the creatures resisting him. They fought with their weak Wills against their master’s domination, trying to remain independent life forms.

Obey me, he sent sternly. This is the way to make you stronger.

After a last gasp of resistance that he felt in both their bodies and their minds, the two monsters combined into a monster that had lost much of its avian qualities—a heavier, more muscular creature with the thickness of snout that James mentally imagined ascribing to a dragon. Its wingspan was long enough that if it had tried to, it could have touched both walls of the bedroom from the center of the room.

That is what I’m talking about…

James immediately named it the Great Solar Wyvern.

The combined creature looked at James with a testy expression—and then it leaped toward the window, clearly trying to make an escape.

Be still, James ordered.

The monster froze in midair and dropped to the floor. There it made small, jittery motions—toward the window, toward James—indecisively before it stopped moving and bowed its head toward its master.

Good. Just three more times to go…

James’s body was drenched in sweat now, to the point that it felt like he was melting. If he had touched his forehead, he would have realized he was burning up as if with fever.

Still, he continued.

The other monsters resisted fusion just as much as the Great Solar Wyvern’s component creatures had, but he overcame them each in turn, creating the Great Berserk Wyvern, Great Sound Wyvern, and Great Venom Wyvern, once he had used Skill Transfer to give them the Skills that he had planned to share. The Great Venom Wyvern was also fortunate enough to receive the Mass Pillage Skill, under the logic that it would probably do more up-close killing than the others and therefore have the opportunity for more pillaging—leaving out the Great Berserk Wyvern, which would undoubtedly lack the self-control to use Mass Pillage in the heat of battle.

None of the other creatures resisted James in the same way that the Great Solar Wyvern had attempted to, although a few looked at the windows of the room as if they had some desire to try an escape.

There were a few cries of outrage from the creatures as James forced them to combine, but that was as far as their willingness to go against their master went.

They were all similarly large and fierce-looking, although the Great Berserk Wyvern stood out, because it foamed at the mouth slightly as if it wanted to kill something right away.

James sat back, looked upon all that he had made, and saw that it was good.

Just in time. Monster Fusion defused as he was staring at the monsters he had made. There was a feeling of sweaty accomplishment, of the kind that one only gets from doing something difficult that requires all of one’s effort. James’s vision was slightly blurred now, he was so tired, but he smiled deliriously.

I did it. I win. I made the best monsters. Now we’ll go get Cyrus…

He somehow knew that these beasts would accomplish all that he had wanted from them—and more. They were probably capable of killing Cyrus and his followers without needing help from the others James was sending.

Those euphoric feelings lasted for just a few seconds, and the door to the bedroom opened.

It was Mina. She had a kitchen knife clutched in one hand, and James had a split second to think how woefully unarmed that was in a place with giant monsters and magic weapons. Then she spoke.

“James, are you all right?” Mina asked, staring into the room, her eyes clearly not yet adjusted to the relative darkness of the bedroom. “I heard noises—” Her voice choked off as her eyes settled on the Great Berserk Wyvern, which stood closest to the door.

He had told her that he was going to work on his monsters in the bedroom while she made dinner, but he had not given Mina the level of detail that would prepare her for what she now saw. After all, James had only come up with the idea of combining the monsters once he was already in the room by himself.

Mina took what seemed to be an involuntary step back, and the Great Berserk Wyvern took that as a sign of weakness.

It lunged forward toward the apparent prey.

“Be still or die.”

The monster stopped in its tracks, as immediately as if James had affixed a chain to its neck. It let out a little groan and then lay down on the ground and curled up into a circular shape.

James realized the ring on his finger was glowing, and then he suddenly slumped backward on the bed, too tired to hold himself up.

He heard Mina moving toward the door again, and he sent another message to the creatures, this one telepathic and directed at all of them.

She is your other master. If you hurt her, or if you hurt any human without my permission, you will die.

Then a pounding headache hit him, and he lay still with his eyes closed.

A few seconds later, he felt a small, cool hand touching his forehead. He kept his eyes closed.

“I guess I know how you tired yourself out,” Mina said.

“Yeah, you know,” James said. “I’ve been in here forcing these things to behave.” He was trying to sound cool, but his voice sounded weak even to him.

“I was just coming to tell you dinner was ready, when I, um, heard them.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. He couldn’t see her. His eyelids seemed too heavy to lift at the moment.

But he thought it had to have affected her, the encounter with a big wyvern-like creature trying to jump on her.

“I—I’ve been attacked by monsters before, skapi,” she said, clearly trying to effect a nonchalance that would not have felt true to her character even if she had not just had a possible near-death experience.

James reached out and took the hand that wasn’t on his forehead in both of his.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “They’ll behave themselves with you from now on.” He raised his voice slightly. “They just got a little big for their britches. They think they’re powerful and independent now that I combined them.”

There was no reaction from the creatures at this implied rebuke. James wasn’t sure if they failed to understand what he was saying or were simply not capable of being offended by the words of their creator—or if they simply understood that reacting badly to anything he said might shorten their lives.

“The whole world is a dangerous place now,” Mina said, paraphrasing something James had said repeatedly in recent weeks. “It’s bound to include your creatures, too, to some extent. That’s why we’re going to go and do some training together, right? So I can roll with those punches. Deal with the unexpected.”

“Yeah, not everything will be as cuddly as my monsters,” he said, smiling.

Mina laughed. “James, they’re seriously terrifying.” She sounded simultaneously nervous at the thought of the creatures that took up the bulk of the space in the room now and genuinely admiring of James’s achievement in creating them.

“Hopefully our enemies will think so,” he replied.

“I assume you will want dinner in bed?” she said.

“Yes, please. And I’d appreciate it if you’d close the door to make sure the children don’t wander in here. I’m going to send the monsters out, but I don’t really want anyone to see me like this.”

“Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?” Mina asked. There was an obvious smile in her voice.

“Well, I would just about kill for a Gatorade, if that’s available. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any electrolytes left.”