A tunnel echoing with laughter.
“As preposterous as it might sound,” continued the sighing Offworlder, “you all still have a better chance turning back and trying Ramiro's goons.”
The words contained no menace, nor humour - just a matter-of-fact declaration.
-Kepzett Pek: Arrogant brat!
-Sima Szemely: Elder Bian, is he really alone?
-Akard Zseni: We’re gonna be rich...
By this, the last cultist referred to the Spelltomes. Strapped as they were to the Offworlder’s chest, they weren’t technically equipped and would all drop upon death.
Apostle Bian, pretending to laugh louder at the Offworlder's boast, lost sight of a semi-translucent body jogging past him, the Cutthroat exceeding his detection range as they closed in on the target.
The Apostle wiped away a fake tear. “So how’d you find us here, noble hero?”
“We're continuing to chat? OK. Well, interesting story, a few days ago, I was picked up for a ride by an awfully suspicious wagon driver, who, for mysterious reasons, took me in the wrong direction. Naturally, being the paranoid genius that I am, I was able to infe—”
“Sofor!” A random cultist rudely interrupted the story, thrusting his spear threateningly in the Offworlder's direction. “On his name, your blood will drain into the sand!”
The Apostle capitalised on the distraction of this unexpected outburst.
-Bian Han: Tor.
A puff of smoke burst behind the Offworlder, from which a Cutthroat materialised with a shadow-sheathed dagger, its point aimed to penetrate the back of the Offworlder’s skull.
The tunnel dimmed as the pair and the surrounding Lightstones were swallowed by a cloud of smoke.
Apostle Bian and his disciples all broke into a fit of genuine laughter.
Why would Brother Tor bother
“Tor!” shrieked a woman, the first to notice the Cutthroat's HP plummet to zero in a group interface.
Tor Csendes—The Hard Fist, patriarch of Clan Csendes, scout for The Kulfoldi Guardians, and unbeknownst to most The Butcher of Ketseg—expired much like his 482 victims, dismembered helplessly in the dark.
Several cultists were about to charge when the Apostle screamed in their ears.
-Bian Han: MAINTAIN FORMATION! ALL WHO BREAK IT DIE!
Apostle Bian, activating bullet-time again, immediately set upon analysing what had happened.
Tor had been Tier-4, so his strength significantly exceeded the Offworlder’s even when accounting for the stat boost of a Tier-5 Spelltome – Spelltomes being only 1 of 13 item slots. How, then, could the Offworlder have killed him so fast? Spells from the Spelltomes? Short-cast abilities weren’t potent enough. A hidden squad from The Company? If so, then...
One of the Apostle's disciples was staring at the smoke cloud through the glow of the Lightstones that'd escaped its range.
-Nyomorult Azon: Elder Bian, the colouration of the smoke...it’s not Tor’s.
The Spelltomes!
-Bian Han: SCATTER! SCATTER! SCATTER! SCATTER! SCATTER!
His followers, however, confused by his conflicting orders, hadn't budged when the dispersing smoke bomb revealed the Offworlder with a charge of white-hot sparks in his extended palm.
A bolt of lightning struck a cultist in the chest.
Its arcs branched out to his neighbour.
Then to theirs.
In an instant, the tunnel became daylight bright with the illumination of the soul-lights from three dozen dead.
Counted among the departed were Arcfedo Szeretett, The Slum’s most popular costume designer before the Offworlder arrival; Kepzett Pek, favourite son of Lelkesz, priest of Yarost; Akard Zseni, disgraced disciple of Ochi The Mumbling Stick; and Gigi Yang Kuat, great-grandchild of Strong-Toothed Gigi.
As the flash of the
The teenage eyes creased in confusion at those who’d been struck but hadn’t perished (‘Why so many survivors?’), flared in shock (‘Too strong!’), then flashed yellow as he activated bullet-time to spin around. With a clumsy, bookish run, he fled through a gap in the wall to the rear. Activating a trap mechanism, he collapsed a section of the roof, thwarting any pursuit and choking the tunnel with dust.
"Don't let him escape!" cried a cultist, leading a squad to rush after the Offworlder who'd slain their comrades.
This group, and all the others with similar intentions, came to an abrupt stop when two skeletons stationed at the train's front by the Apostle shuffled in front and crossed their spears to block the way. The cultists, who'd witnessed many times the might of these lifeless automatons, shrank back nervously.
-Bian Han: Kids, please, settle down. Aren’t you curious as to how such a ‘weakling’ slew Tor?
Apostle Bian had dissected enough people to know when they were truly afraid. The kid's acting was pretty decent, but some of the subtler signs can't be faked.
He gave orders for the debris to be cleared from the spot where Tor had been slain. A Landworker, grabbing a handful of soil from the rubble, magically levitated it and piled it to the side. The Apostle, safe in the rear, then peered with a Commander skill through the Landworker’s eyes in order to inspect the site. Beneath the rubble were the shattered fragments of a glass vial steeped in a pool of a pinkish fluid resembling blood diluted with mucus and liquefied bone.
Well, there was the explanation, thought Apostle Bian, and a rather astonishing one at that.
Poor Tor had been done in by Dynasty’s Downfall, a colourless, odourless poison capable of instantly killing most targets under Tier-5. Despite the poison's efficacy, it was practically never utilised because of its prohibitive brewing cost, the recipe requiring an Alchemy master to labour for weeks with the toxic venoms of over 200 monsters. For killing a person, there were far simpler, far cheaper methods. In fact, the poison’s cost exceeded the bounty on the entire cult, including himself.
A shocking waste...
When Apostle Bian considered the matter further, it occurred to him that they were never truly defeating this opponent. Since the Offworlder couldn’t have had the time to assess Tor’s strength, the rapidity of their retaliation suggested an instinctual, regular usage of Dynasty’s Downfall in self-defence. Even the Nilke princes would struggle to fund such an extravagant habit. So suppose then, that they did squash this insane moneybag today, what of tomorrow, what of the day after? The Offworlders were immortal, and this one had the funds to pursue them wherever and for eternity.
Still, if the Apostle’s choice was between the vengeance of one tomorrow and a horde of thousands hungering for him today, the former was slightly more palatable.
And if a larger force from The Company were waiting on the other side, then escape had only ever been an illusion. In which case, he should confront them sooner rather than later; he'd always found those who squirmed pointlessly before certain death distasteful and pathetic.
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His decision made, he had his followers bore a hole through the rest of the rubble. While the first Landworker monitored the soil’s thickness, others began digging out an opening sufficient for the train to move through quickly without being stalled in case of an ambush.
In the meantime, Apostle Bian rearranged his forces. The squads were separated with enough distance between them to minimise casualties from another
The donkeys with their pickling barrels, already on edge, startled as levitating drums, violins, marimbas, horns, flutes, and whistles that’d been spread throughout the ranks came to life and began to play a song of war. By synchronising to a single song, the instruments overlapped multiple enchantments. A
More crucially, the music ignited a shift in morale. As the boisterous, aggressive rhythms thumped through the cultists’ bodies and shook their hearts, the anxiety that many’d felt, especially after witnessing their comrades’ thunderous demise, was transformed into the lust for bloody vengeance, the will to survive.
The Apostle looked upon this change, and it pleased him.
When the last cubic metres of dirt were being excavated, he, too, felt his spirits lifting upon the soaring melodies. "Once we begin, brothers, we will not stop until we reach the mountains! Our journey is imperilled, and some of you will likely be reclaimed by The Cycle! Take comfort in knowing that that meat of yours was not entirely useless, that it nourished your brothers in their Ascent!"
The cannibal cultists laughed as the last of the earthen blockade was cleared.
Apostle Bian shifted to the perspective of a tank at the vanguard who pitched a Lightstone forward. Not a hint of a person was visible on the other side. Irritatingly, though, the Offworlder had produced more stalagmites, which extended beyond sight. Additionally, the ground was pockmarked with holes of the dirt used in their creation.
The Apostle carefully studied this formation and the calculative, conniving mind that'd constructed it. It gave him an uncanny feeling, as if he were peering into a stretch of monstrous intestine lined with jagged, man-devouring teeth. To enter was to be consumed, digested.
But forward he’d chosen, so forward they would go.
-Bian Han: Ditch the cargo, brothers. We’re not delaying while their clumsy hooves navigate this terrain.
-Gyors Labu: What? You would have us discard so many offerings? For one Offworlder?
-Bian Han: Has rage so clouded your judgement, Gyors?
-Gyors Labu: My apologies, Elder Bian.
At the Apostle’s command, the train released the corpse-carrying donkeys.
Then, with the band playing them on, they entered the breach at a brisk run. The group’s scouts began a rotation of sprinting ahead in stealth to sniff out the Offworlder should he be hiding in the dark. Meanwhile, the vanguard threw out Lightstones to illuminate the uneven ground and check for traps.
But well before anyone could immerse into the rhythm of their march, right when the train’s tail had slipped through the breach—right when the last cultist had entered this ambush formation, which the Besalaa Freedomfighters, practitioners of Tunnelling Cowmole Claw, called The Moving Wall—death was sprung upon them.
Near the front of the train, the Beast Tamer with the bat, Denever Ficko had been walking with an arrow nocked while his monster companion on his shoulder attempted to echolocate their enemy.
The Apostle had commanded him to not to be distracted by the Offworlder. Denever, however, could concentrate on little else. He and the slain Cutthroat Tor were members of The Kulfoldi Guardians, a band of six Tier-4 heroes who’d been specially cultivated by the Apostle to promote the public aspects of Nerin's teachings. Through eight years of adventure, the group had garnered much fame; through eight years, they had formed a bond that should never have been broken.
Beside Denever, the tunnel wall, which was only a couple centimetres thick after being hollowed out, shattered, and a spear stabbed at him.
Before he could register the attack, he was zapped by lightning.
The arcs of this
Denever The Beast Tamer had a high enough level to withstand both the
With no chance to either rage or fear, Denever Ficko friend of Tor, captain of The Kulfoldi Guardians, and his bat Kutya shut their eyes for the final sleep.
The
Juthatan Alakil was the teenage son of a concubine excommunicated from Bica; he had joined The Primordial Path and trained in the forbidden Bloodmancer class to gain the power to restore his mother's honour. A masterful puppeteer of bones, the boy no longer exerted much control of them when every one in his body’s right half was smashed by the slam of a tower-shield. His skeletal summons disintegrated to dust as a halberd bit through his neck.
Beside Juthatan perished his squad’s Accompanist, Furo Edesem. In public, Furo was also a beekeeper famous for the lively ariettas he played for his hives to sweeten their honey. His flute was muted for the rest of time when, sliced from navel to throat by a basket-hilted broadsword, the man's song-loving soul spilt out of his torso with his organs.
Joining these departing souls was Nyomorult The Observant, Kenyes, Sima The Elder, Malis, Leheto Scar-Nose, Evo, Tuz...not one of them endured the swarm’s metallic stings for more than two seconds before their blood dyed the soils of Suchi deeper red.
The neighbouring cultists stared with abject terror at their comrades being consumed by the weapon swarm. How frightening it was, delivering its blows with inhuman accuracy...lacking any apparent controller, something of the flesh that could be stopped by a retaliatory attack or begging for one's pitiful life...driven by an insatiable hunger, immediately, after devouring their comrades, splintering apart and flying towards them, offering them the same faceless death...
They broke.
-Bian Han: DON'T RUN AWAY, YOU FOOLS! ATTACK WHILE THE
However, the Apostle’s followers were not soldiers. Without the drilling to maintain composure in the presence of destruction, to listen over their comrades’ death-throes for the next order, they scattered in all directions.
Through their panicking ranks, the Offworlder, who'd also been hidden in the hollowed wall, began to strobe in and out of view. At one moment, he was stepping over a Lightstone to trip a man and open up their defence to a flying axe; the next, he'd receded back into the shadows. At another moment, his hiding spot elsewhere in the dark was unveiled by him firing a spell-spear through an unfortunate heart, then he vanished again behind a stalagmite.
Seeming to flirt with danger, constantly switching between advancing, retreating, pouncing, shooting, and shoving, his movements were like the swiftest dragons from legend. These creatures would swoop down upon the battlefield and claim an entire battalion as effortlessly as one harvests a daffodil. Before their comrades could raise their spears or nock their arrows, the dragon would be gone, and the unreachable clouds above would be shaking with its laughter.
By coordinating this technique, Grass Dragon Plucks Spring Flowers, with the difficult terrain of The Moving Wall, the Offworlder snipped the lifestalks of Sima The Younger, Szamuzte, Ragyogas, Izletes of Elkul...
In all chaotic moments, though, there are those who refuse to yield to fear, stalwart warriors blessed with iron hearts.
One such brave figure was spear-wielding Gyors Labu, a mage-melee hybrid Proximicanist.
By faithfully adhering to The Primordial Path, Gyors had been fattened from a starved street rat to a refined and respected man of the world. He'd felt the tamed winds of Rong flutter through his hair, he'd spat on the God statues of Sokgyemant, he'd attained the Proximicanist’s third scale and breezed through Nerin’s Trials to earn his Ibangua citizenship.
In addition to these accomplishments, he’d also been the one who’d sworn earlier about avenging the wagon driver, his cousin Sofor. By sharing his secrets with Sofor, he’d hoped that The Path could guide the struggling boy away from the streets, just as it had himself. But then Sofor died.
“And so I return to the desert!” Gyors Labu bellowed.
His specialisation's
Two butterfly swords detected his approach and veered to intercept him. Forged from a Tier 5-2 metal like the Offworlder’s Spelltomes, the deadly weapons twirled in tandem through a mesmerising, blood-thirsting dance designed to confuse him and open up his guard for a mortal slash.
Gyors, deciding to meet twin weapon with twin weapon, shifted his spear to a one-handed grip and summoned a second spear in his offhand.
Due to the swords' material being far superior to his own equipment, they had a penetrative advantage, so they could chop through his spears like air. However, this penetrative advantage only applied when weapons were actively being enhanced by an attack ability. Therefore, by using his spears to obstruct the swords' approach, he could force them to initiate their attacks slightly earlier, buying him crucial milliseconds with which to avoid the fatal stroke and close in on Sofor's murderer. Although his spears would be sacrificed, he could still kill the Offworlder using his bare hands, his specialisation possessing an array of instantaneous touch-range spells.
The twin swords, responding to his response, split apart to attack from a hard to block wide-angle, the action looking like whatever invisible enemy wielded them had stretched their arms supernaturally far.
Gyors' gaze flicking from sword to sword, he didn’t react in time to the
Entering the crown of his helmet, it bore a smoking hole in his brain.
His limbs slackening with the temporary loss of neural control, one of the swords slipped past his spears and, like a machete falling upon young bamboo that hasn’t had the years to thicken its stalk, hacked him cleanly in half from one shoulder to the opposite hip.
The second sword moved on to claim another courageous soul who'd stumbled nearby during their charge.
Thus concluded the brief saga of Gyors Labu The Enchanted Spear, first of the Labu clan to ascend from Sand to Clay.