Chapter 22

Long Term Plans

I’ve overheard more than one cleric give a sermon on Hell’s instruments. Clerics like to emphasise that these instruments are made from kidnapped souls and that the tortured screams of these kidnapped souls are Hell’s version of music. Unlike on Earth, these sermons are less about living a life of purity to stop eternal damnation and more about killing yourself and your family as quickly as possible if you should ever find yourself about to be captured by the forces of Hell.

It was very practical advice.

The screams Davina’s clerics and paladins made as they were torn limb from limb by the monsters of the Abyss were a sweet symphony to my demonic ears, more so, than the screams of regular people. Each cry sent a pleasurable shiver down my spine, suggesting that the sermons I’d overheard were true. Hell’s music was tortured screams of the innocent. The smell of blood and pain added to the music, leaving me enchanted and distracted in a way that had never occurred before.

As I sat on a boulder in the Abyss, I was vaguely aware of Luke decapitating a pair of monsters strong enough to be dungeon bosses. He then leapt away from the frontline like a metal comet, sheathing his longsword mid-flight. With his free hand, he cast a simple levitation spell to remain airborne and sail through the air to land beside me. He quickly turned and scanned the battlefield for other threats.

This cavern wasn’t like the other caverns Gorgath had taken us too in the Abyss. The ambient mana was denser, which lead to faster crystal growth, which when combined together meant more monsters. The higher monster population density created a different type of monster to the usual dungeon monster, one that only cared about eating, breeding, and fighting. It resulted in a zone that was constant carnage.

The immense carven held more than a dozen floor bosses. Each one birthing tens of thousands of its kind a day, trying to overwhelm the other bosses with numbers. Whenever one of their spawn grew as strong as a dungeon boss, they regained their individual senses and created a pack, subjugating their weaker brethren into their service. They behaved exactly like their parents, using their pack like cannon fodder, pushing them to make suicidal charges to kill prey and fuel their growth. This instinctive behaviour had led to a very active battlefield between hunting floor bosses.

Luke swept his gaze over the frontline. Gregory’s people were fighting side by side with Carolyn’s Old Monsters, holding the line in front of Davina’s people who provided support. Davina’s clerics and paladins were the weakest warriors on the field and the dungeon bosses sensed this, so more often than not, they found themselves the targets of a dungeon boss’s pack, who were more than willing to send their cannon fodder pack after them. These weaker monsters didn’t care about survival, which resulted in them throwing themselves into blades to break through lines and reach their target. And reach their targets they did.

Luke moved his gaze behind the battlefield to where Gorgath was busy dissecting the latest floor boss, choosing portions to feed to his mana crabs and tossing others to his brothers. I could smell the purity of the mana crabs’ bloodline now. They were almost ready. A few more generations and the kid would have what he needed. Maybe then he would stop sulking about losing the election.

Luke sighed and finally took a seat beside me. He raised his hand and muttered a spell sealing us in a soundproof bubble.

Without the screams of the injured to captivate my attention, the world came back into focus. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen and heard Davina’s people being ripped apart, but it was the first time I’d had such an experience without the threat of something dangerous to keep me focused. Without an external motivator, their suffering was a much stronger distraction, and I was far more susceptible to it than I imagined.

I would have sat there forever.

I hadn’t expected their blood and screams to overwhelm me so thoroughly, so I hadn’t mentally prepared myself to deal with them, like I had with blood and hunger. And despite how distracted I was, I never came close to feeding on anyone. I was always in complete control.

Luke’s gaze moved from his sister, who was fighting a dungeon boss, to the princess and her guards. “You shouldn’t have let Carolyn’s people come down here to train with your people. They’re seasoned veterans. They can achieve as much with each additional level as your people can do with three.”

“You’re sister wants to leave Murdell at some point in the future so that take precedence.”

“What does Kathrine wanting to leave have to do with making Carolyn’s people stronger?”

“Your sister believes that the darklord will invade the south if she leaves?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with them.”

“It means I have to evaluate how useful they can be.”

“For what?”

“Killing the Darklord.”

Luke turned his head, until I could see his eyes through the gap in his visor. “I can’t tell if you’re joking?”

“I never joke about killing.”

He paused. “That’s true.” He then sighed. “So, you want to kill the Darklord. A man who is supposed to be over level 300. A true Demigod if the rumours are true.”

“The rumours aren’t true. He’s nothing but a Dragon. His unmatched reactions come from the ability to see the immediate future, not from being over level 300.”

Luke turned away to watch the frontline. “What makes you think he can see the future?”

“His daughter Celest is a seer and foresight is a hereditary trait. The Darklord having the ability to see the immediate future and some of the distant future would explain his meteoric rise to power, his combat ability, her ability to see the future, and why he hasn’t taken over Murdell.”

“Maybe to you,” Luke muttered as he watched another dozen monster packs leap into the frontline with wild abandon. “Some of us can’t read a history book in a few seconds.”

That was true, but also an exaggeration. My son could still read a history book in half an hour. His ignorance was a choice.

“As a professor I could give you a history lesson?”

He chuckled. “Only if it helps me understand why you want to do something as stupid as try to kill the Darklord.”

“I can manage that… Murdell has always been what you would call a social status based society. Those with magic have a higher social status than those without magic. And those with access to more branches of magic, have a higher status than those with access to less. On top of this, skill also applies, so someone with more skill has a higher status than someone with less skill. The Darklord changed Murdell’s society when he began preaching bloodline purity. He told everyone that what mattered most wasn’t how many branches of magic you had access to or how skilled you were with them. It was how far back you could trace your direct ancestry before finding someone without magic.”

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“So, he’s Voldemort.”

“No. Voldemort believed what he was preaching. The Darklord simply used his rhetoric to divide and conquer Murdell’s population.”

“How?”

“The people of Murdell have always been willing to do anything to boost their social status, so when the Darklord’s rhetoric artificially boosted a portion of the population’s social status, those who were effected in a positive way were more than willing to accept what he said. These people were also typically more prejudice than your average citizen, because of their long pure bloodlines, which made them more willing to pay more than lip service to these beliefs.”

“Who started the war?”

“A better question is who started the killing. The younger generation of Darklord’s followers were duelling anyone who looked at them sideways three years before the war officially started, and those duels successfully destroyed the up-and-coming generation of their opponent. That was important, because the Darklord had only convinced half of the military to follow him by the time the fighting broke out. During the war, the two sides lost people at relatively the same rate and if the war had continued, the Darklord would have ended by being the only Dragon of the old generation to survive. He also would have been the only one with a new generation of Old Monsters. A generation that had grown up loyal to him.”

Luke shrugged off my speculation. “All of that could have been coincidence. It doesn’t mean he can see the future.”

“It would agree with you, but when the war turned in the Darklord’s favour, the south tried to summon a hero and ended up summoning your sister. No one in their right mind would believe South’s claim that they summoned an unbelievably powerful sorcerer hero to protect them.”

“The Darklord believed them.”

“The fact he believed them is why I know he can see the future.”

“That’s not evidence.”

“Yes, it is. Would you believe them?”

Luke paused. “No. The timings too convenient and there’s no proof.”

“Exactly. A man who killed seven Dragons, archsorcerers who were over level 200 with more than 3000 attributes, believed one of the most juvenal lies I’ve ever heard. He believed these lies so much that he agreed to a truce and recalled his army. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“He’s supposed to be insane.”

“Ruthlessness looks like insanity when you’re on the receiving end. Besides, his daughter is too emotionally stable for him to be insane.”

“Why do you think he believed them then?”

“He believed them because he has some ability to see the future, and every time he saw a future where he killed South Murdell’s hero, he also saw his death. He didn’t know why he saw his death, but he always saw his death.”

“You think he saw his death because you would have hunted him down.”

I nodded. “Without mercy.”

“There’s a flaw in your logic.”

“I’m listening?”

“If he was able to see you killing him over a decade before it happened, how come he can’t see you coming to kill him this time?”

“Different people view the future in different ways. If his ability to divine the future is weak, like I suspect, he’ll only be able to ask a question and receive an answer. The question would be something like, will I die if I try to kill the hero? When that comes back with a yes, he can ask his next question. Will I die if I kidnap the hero? That might come back with a no. Reading the future this way can be incredibly helpful for navigating politics and life, but it has its limitations. The further away something is both physically and timewise, the harder it will be for him to get a clear answer.”

“How did he see his death over killing Kathrine then? His death would have been more than a decade away.”

“Unless someone is a true seer, seeing the future is mostly about probability. That means if there is a 100% chance of something happening, it’s able to be seen from decades even centuries away.”

Luke turned back to me. “What about the butterfly effect?”

“What about it?”

“Don’t our actions change the future?”

“Sure, but the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was going to kill them whether or not you step on a butterfly a million years before it crashes into Earth. Events outside our control can become absolutes and I can say with absolute certainty that if he would have died if he killed Kathrine.”

“That implies you would have always beaten Contessa.”

“No. When I first asked you about your mother and sister, you would have told me someone killed Kathrine. I then would have tracked him down before doing anything else, changing the course of history.”

“I suppose that makes what you say possible. But why won’t he see us coming after him this time?”

“I never said he won’t see us coming. He will. He just won’t see us coming with any accuracy to begin with. The first time he sees us coming, he’ll divine the future and ask questions. The closest these questions will get him to us will be Darksmith. Darksmith which has the largest concentration of future magical talent and threats in Murdell. He’ll either send someone to watch the academy or wait until something changes, either way we’ll have more time.”

“What if he runs away instead?”

“I don’t care if he runs or stays and fights. I’m only doing this so your sister can leave Murdell with a clear conscience.”

“What if you’re wrong and he can’t see the future and is over level 300?”

I pointed to reforming frontline, where the paladins were dragging the injured to the clerics. “That’s why Carolyn’s people are here.”

“You think you can make them strong enough to kill a level 300 archsorcerer?”

“No, but they might be able to provide enough support for my people to kill him.”

Luke shook his head. “You’re people are good, but there’s a big difference between an Old Monster and a Dragon, and just as big a difference between a Dragon and a Demigod. Gregory and his men are children next to the Darklord, even if he is only a Dragon.”

“Is that you volunteering to help?”

“That’s depends on if you can keep leveling me this quickly.”

“I can, but I’m not planning to kill him next week. Your sister has another two years of studying at Darksmith. That’s two years of training with two dozen hunting trips into the Abyss. If Carolyn’s Old Monsters are as good at magic as I think they are, I’m willing to hunt deeper and push their levels higher. They’re the deciding factor. Without sorcerers to counter the Darklord’s magic, fighting him is suicide, and I won’t send you to your death.”

“And if they’re not good enough?”

“Then I’ll come up with another plan.”

“Why don’t you kill him?”

“I can’t. He’s a Darklord and I’m a creature of darkness. He’ll have a dozen skills that he can use to manipulate me into service.”

“So, I have to kill him.”

“If you don’t mind.”

Instead of answering, he changed the subject. “Do you know where Kathrine’s going to go when she leaves?”

“No, but that’s because she doesn’t know where she wants to go yet. She just knows she doesn’t have many good memories of Murdell.”

“That’s because the south has used her as a pawn ever since they summoned her.”

“I know. The only reason she doesn’t abandon them to their fate is the south is where Riza’s family lives.”

“So now I have to defeat a Darklord.”

“And I have to topple his private army.”

“Can you stay awake that long?”

I nodded. “Barring serious injures I can hold on for another four years without needing to sleep.”

The frontline was getting slowed down by corpses, so I waved my hand and released my hunger. Across the battlefield, every monster corpse withered and crumbled to dust as the last traces of lifeforce was pulled from their bodies by my vampiric aura.

The lifeforce rushed into my body, only to immediately be syphoned away by my soul, which grew a little stronger.

Luke looked at me again. “That’s longer than I thought you could stay awake for.”

“Unlike visiting you, visiting your sister doesn’t get me tortured every other week.”

Luke reached out and patted my shoulder. “Yes, but visiting Kathrine led to you sparkling. So, I think I can safely say you prefer visiting me and torture, over visiting her and sparkling.”

That was true.