Chapter 252
Despite his sister’s choice to abandon the Blood God as a path to take to power, Riven wasn’t so sure doing so would be a good idea for himself. He was relatively certain that, over the course of his climb so far, the Blood God had been the man in his visions multiple times under the light of the blood moon. The shrouded man over an ocean of red.
If that was the case, this entity had gone out of its way - or his way - to help Riven without being asked. Shouldn’t Riven reciprocate if chance allowed? Riven did know that gods acquired power from the strength and worship of their followers. More followers meant more power, but better quality candidates could make up for dozens, hundreds, or who knows how many less powerful worshipers. Perhaps this is why the entity had been so angry for Allie leaving? Due to the loss of what she could potentially come? Perhaps this was why Gluttony didn’t have a direct conflict of interest with Riven pursuing the good will of this Blood God? Due to Gluttony not truly being a god - but something else entirely? At least, Gluttony hadn’t said anything about it so far. Thus, he would need to talk to Genua when she got back about how to go about fixing whatever damage Allie had caused. Not only was it a likely good path to progression, but it was also probably important in getting the Blood Moon Requiem off Allie’s back since she’d probably pissed them off to the tenth degree.
The reason he was even thinking about the Blood God as he flew forwards in the direction of the illusory wall down below in the forest was because of the last significant vision he’d had concerning the entity.
“Blood, shadow, and death. These are the three pillars the vampires were created from.” The hooded figure said, turning his red gaze and forcing Riven’s own with it towards the piles upon piles of dead far below them. You have taken the first step by converging the paths of shadow and blood, but you lack the trio in its entirety. Descendant, you show promise… otherwise Gluttony would not involve itself so directly in you. But you need to broaden your horizons now and before you hit the E-grade, or you will fall short of what you could otherwise become. Death is a sister component to blood in more ways than one. Why do you neglect it so?”
That vision had empowered Riven with the gift of insight pertaining to the Death Sub-pillar, and had allowed Riven to call upon eight skeletal champions of the Blood God’s realm to temporarily fight for him. The symbol of a scythe, a symbol of a red teardrop, and the symbol of a black sun - even now they reached out to him from their individual sub-pillars across his soul, but now alongside them the visage of Gluttony’s maw joined the trio to make a quartet.
How was he supposed to solidify his foundations with these four pillar ideologies?
What about his path of Red and Black?
Was the path of Gluttony the same thing as his Sin Pillar?
Riven was on the cusp of E-grade, and needed to figure out how to ascend. Gluttony gave vague notions of what to do, and had hinted at it a couple times now - but Riven got the feeling that it wasn’t a 1+1+1+1=4 situation. More than likely and based on all the context clues he’d received from multiple people on the outside now - it was probably semi-unique for each person to at least a small extent. Or, based on what the Blood God had said, being :‘you will fall short of what you could otherwise become’ - there were likely things Riven could do that would make his ascension into E-grade far better than if he just ascended immediately.
He didn’t really know yet. What he DID know was that no one had outright come to tell him, and he hadn’t asked - but again there’d been more than a few subtle hints on what needed to be done. Perhaps he’d have that conversation with the Great Maw after this little fiasco he was about to participate in.
Because right now, he had some cultists to kill. The air about him screamed as he kicked his mana channeling up to the next notch, and a torrent of roaring power exploded behind him to launch him into the distance towards where Athela had disappeared.
***
Six cultists in total. Three reptilian naga of the Chubin cult, and three others of the Nekra Cult - two dark elf females and a chaos dwarf.
They’d made camp together on the outskirts of their system-given horde, with Grakzee going ahead to scout the area, but just because they were technically on the same team for this specific mission didn’t mean they were friends. Nor did it mean they were on the same team at all as soon as this subsection of the world quest ended. No, they were all in it for themselves. Each apocalypse beast could only have one winner, one to claim the egg - or to use it to create an item of supreme power. In the end, the chosen would all be at odds with one another - cultist or not, and that went doubly true for those within their same bracket of apocalypse beasts; who’d have to kill one another in order to get what they wanted.
And thus the uneasy alliance had been formed, with three big reasons keeping them in check from ripping into one another at a moment’s notice. First was that every one of the chosen would respawn here in this sub-event until they left in a year or so by the system’s estimation. They would continue to respawn until they got the necessary points needed to leave, and that could only be done by completing quests or killing non-cultists. Second was that if they DID kill one another, they’d get negative points for it - so an attempt on one another’s lives would need to have bigger rewards than repercussions, they’d have to have a good reason to do it. The third and last reason was that, just as Grakzee had already deduced, it was very likely they were up against a harder obstacle than any of the other cultists here. There were only two non-cultists defending this town based on the system quests they each got, with a much larger potential for points should they kill either one of them. +280 points for a single kill would net them far, far, far more than any of the others got for their non-cultist kills. Only +3 points were being awarded to other people at other questlines for killing non-cultists, but everyone had a pretty damn good idea as to what having 93 times the normal points for a kill meant.
It was likely they were up against Riven Thane.
Each of them was a cold blooded killer, each of them in the S and Paragon rankings on Panu, but that fucking vampire was nearly unkillable and had the equivalent power of a meteor strike. Videos of him wiping out Daskus, fighting the Azag Hive Cluster in Chicago, wiping the floor with Rippenvire invaders in Dawn alongside the Harbingers of Gluttony, and then killing the elites of the Empire of Dying Suns invading force alongside a dungeon boss had circulated numerous times over - along with some other less-well-known videos too.
He may not be as ruthless as his batshit crazy sister, but he was even more dangerous in actual combat. It also didn’t help that he had demonic familiars that were also incredibly strong in their own ways, and that he may or may not have somehow ascended by absorbing something related to Gluttony based on system messages and the titles on the ranking ladder for Panu.
So that was the third and final reason they didn’t kill one another in their sleep, and avoided antagonizing one another. They needed to work together if they wanted to beat him, and in a worst case scenario they’d agreed to try and have one of their own sneak around him to destroy the town so they could claim the 30 points bare minimum. To do this, the others would need to distract the vampiric warlock and his demons when the monster wave was unleashed in a few hours from now.
Other than Grakzee, who was the only stealth-type fighter their group had, the five remaining cultists were a mix of warrior and caster types. The remaining 2 aquatic naga, who were lizard-like Chubin cultists, were both mages specializing in Glacial and Storm sub-pillars respectively. Of the 3 Nekra cultists, the chaos-dwarf was an axe-wielding barbarian with a long black beard and chaos-attuned runes he’d been born with - enabling him to utilize the power of the Chaos Sub-pillar at an astounding affinity of 73%. One of the two drow or dark-elf women, the larger of the two, was a death knight who kept a large black cloak covering the armor she wore - which was made completely from bone. She also had a large bone-made claymore, and her eyes glowed a neon-teal light. Meanwhile the last of the Nekra cultists, another and smaller drow woman, was an affliction caster that specialized in plagues and debuffs which rotted, corrupted, and ate away at her enemies rapidly over time.
Currently these remnant 5 cultists sat around a campfire, either looking into the flames contemplating what they would do when the fight finally came - or glancing over their shoulders at the huge swath of roaming monsters nearby. One in particular stood out above all the rest, the monster swarm’s ‘boss’ unit, and it was no less impressive than many of the dungeon bosses any of them had seen up until this point. It was a large level 180 ELITE monster. More specifically it was a winged tomb-cobra, with the largest difference other than size being it had two large clawed arms like a dragon. It was so large that it could swallow a small house, with lightning coursing over its golden scales and white feathered wings; and bright orange eyes that surveyed its smaller kin from the center of the swarm. It’d already spoken to them once, after having been dragged from its own world along with its brood to participate in these integration trials - and was more than excited to be given a town of humanoids to eat for its mission.
“How long will your lizard friend be gone, you think?” Chasindir, the cloaked and armored death knight stated while leaning forward and brushing a long braided lock of white hair from her face. Her helmet rested at her side on the log she was sitting on, and he neon teal eyes flickered while souls danced around one of her hands.
Merris scoffed irritably, glaring out from his silver-blue hood - his reptilian features contorting into a sneer as the lightning mage crackled dangerously as if a threat. He pointed a clawed hand at the deathknight and rose up slightly from his coiled position with a hiss to his words. “I have told you numerous times, drow. Grakzee is not my friend. You insult me by asking this, as my tribe is by far superior to his.”
Chasindir grinned slightly underneath her own sandy-brown hood trimmed with teal coloring, that of the Nekra Cult, and head bobbed over to where the large winged tomb cobra remained coiled like a giant hill amongst her writhing swarm. “What about your cousin’s tribe? How does yours compare to hers?”
“That is of a different species, you ingrate!” Merris snarled, causing his aura to explode - but none of the others bothered getting up from their spots or even acknowledging his tantrum. Merris was by far the easiest to rile up, and Chasindir the death knight had been doing so time and time again just out of boredom - and because she thought it was funny.
The chaos dwarf, who was sharpening the large obsidian axe across his lap, just sighed and grumbled something to himself while rolling his eyes at the duo again.
Chasindir snickered, loving that she’d hit a sore spot for the naga and prodded it verbally again with her eyes flaring brightly. “Are you sure you’re not of the same species!? You both have scales, you both control lightning, you both have clawed humanoid hands yet have the lower bodies of snakes. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you naga were beasts rather than enlightened creatures like myself. It pains me, actually, to even consider you as more than a fish!”
The naga mage bolted upright with another clap of thunder roaring from overhead, and he quivered with rage. But he dared not strike, even despite his temper he knew that infighting was stupid - and he settled back down into a coiled position while the drow woman in bone armor started loudly laughing at his expense.
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“You fall too easily for her jabs.” The larger glacial naga mage from further down the campfire line stated simply, not opening his eyes and remaining in a meditative state. “A weak mind brings about ruin, it would do you well to sharpen yours. If you did not react, she would no longer find it fun to annoy you.”
Merris audibly scoffed again, snapping his jaws in Chasindir’s direction while the death knight continued to howl in amusement, but he managed to not reply to the next two quips she had either. Instead, he began focusing on one of his internal lightning braids - one of multiple soul-space creations he wanted to use in his ascent into the E-grade later.
The unknown plaguebringer and afflictions remained staring at the flames without speaking a word to anyone despite multiple attempts to get her attention, and with Merris not playing by Chasindir’s goading any longer - the camp fell eerily silent minutes later. Only the hissing of the monster swarm and rustling of their wings and scales interrupted the silence, but even they were unusually quiet - considering most of them were the size of a fully grown human or bigger.
“I grow bored of this, and we still have another five hours to wait.” Chasindir stated grumpily, putting her bone helmet on and adjusting her hood back over the top again. “That Grakzee is taking way too long. Do you think he got lost, with that little pee-sized reptilian brain of his? I bet you he did.”
Fortunately for Chasindir, none of them had to wait long before things got a lot more exciting.
The illusory wall separating themselves and the horde of monsters from the outer world shimmered and exploded as - off in the distance along a large tree-spotted hill - Grakzee came barreling out of the mirage covered in blood. He was moving fast, far faster than any of the others could due to his agility-based class, and hot on his heels was a cackling demoness that all of them were very familiar with.
It seemed that Athela had arrived at the scene, and without a word - the others sprang into action.
***
Athela’s evil smile widened at the sight of the monster swarm before her. And ‘swarm’ was putting it lightly. There were man-sized, winged serpents of golden scales and white feathers that stretched out for two or three square miles - some of them even having taken to the air to fly around.
And at the center was a monster even larger and longer than her drider form.
This was going to be a fun time. Maybe, just maybe, after killing everything in sight - she might finally catch up to Riven and join him on his quest to pursue E-grade!
The thought made her giggle, and she stopped playing around with the naga she’d been chasing this entire time. Pulling on Mark of the Hunted that’d lodged itself into the naga’s soul and causing him to freeze up only for a moment - her eyes blazed red. Her body exploded into a wave of crimson blood, and like ten thousand tiny rivers of death, she crashed into and through the naga in a motion so fast that a sonic boom resounded behind her.
The naga screamed, and only barely managed to get away by means she wasn’t entirely clear on. She found herself staring at the spot he’d been in only a second later, and he was somehow a hundred feet away.
He turned around, looking at the hole in his chest in astonishment, and then stared back at her with incomprehension in his eyes. “You… You took it? How? I didn’t… didn’t see…”
The assassin flopped forward onto his face, bleeding out onto the ground and going into shock, unable to regrow the beating heart that was spasming - impaled - by Athela’s two red katanas. She’d cut it out and wrenched before he’d been able to completely move, but she still frowned in dissatisfaction with her own performance after being unable to take his head too.
“I’m losing my touch.” Athela spit with irritation, grumbling to herself about how he’d managed to step away - because if that’d been anyone else with better regenerative properties, such as Riven had, then taking out the heart wouldn’t have been all that was needed to kill the man.
*CRACK*
*SNAP*
The earth shuddered as lightning ruptured the ground beneath her feet. A storm of wails accompanied it just as she dodged the bus-sized lightning bolt, and she narrowly missed an arcing swing of soulfire that ripped out of a bone claymore only a couple feet away.
Her arachnid limbs and red katanas clashed furiously with sparks flying as meticulous footwork created a dance between herself, a death knight's claymore, and a huge obsidian battle axe.
The ground beneath her feet shattered when the dwarf barbarian smashed a martial art infused strike into her position - which she managed to deflect to the side in a spray of debris. A storm of ice-made blades roared from high up in the sky and thundered downwards by the thousands, and her arachnid blades tore them out from the air with movements that blurred while she kept the two frontline warriors at bay with her katanas.
She had to admit, whoever these cultists were - they were good. Individually she’d have an easy time, but together they were putting her just barely on the back foot - forcing her to play defense rather than offense.
A lightning strike tore into her leg, and she cursed as blood sprayed out of it - only for her body to twirl around and spray red, lacerating needles in all directions with a high pitched laugh. “YOU ARE NOT AS WEAK AS I’D ANTICIPATED, THIS IS GOOD!”
The clang of her blade on a pauldron sent the death knight spinning from the impact, causing the drow women to smash into a nearby stone and shatter it from the high speed impact. The dwarf let out a bellowing roar, lowering himself into a battle stance as the illusory figure of a spirit bull formed behind him. The bull was made from chaos energy, a dark gray that shattered the ground the bull walked upon, and then it charged when it overlapped the dwarf’s own body as the two entities tore across the ground.
Athela blocked, axe and horns met with katanas and sharpened spider limbs. The resulting shockwave from her many blades against the charging chaos dwarf and his bull caused the land out to either side of them to explode in a cataclysmic typhoon of expelled energies. It was enough to garner the attention of the nearby swarm, who’d mostly stopped to watch the ongoing battle without interfering just yet - but some of them were beginning to inch closer.
Leaning in to be within a few inches of the snarling dwarf, Athela sneered down at the shorter man with true killing intent pumping into the aura around her as the world gained a sanguine hue. “I will enjoy cutting your heart out next!”
But then the dwarf smiled, and the ground underneath her shifted - hands created from gray stone tearing up from the earth to latch onto her feet and legs. Athela felt something odd come crashing down onto her position right after that. It wasn’t necessarily forceful, but it was certainly potent. The feeling was akin to drowning in a lake far beneath the surface, being compressed by the pressure around her, rather than being outright crushed instantaneously. She felt her muscles begin to weaken, and pinpricks of pain began to spring up all over her body as a cloud of dark green energies crackled to life around her.
She looked up, and there in the sky was the floating figure of a drow woman with short white hair in dark robes. She carried a severed, rotting head, dangling from one hand, that had necromantic and unholy runes inscribed onto the head’s surface - where torrents of energies were cycling through it and being amplified before she cast them down on Athela’s position like a judge sentencing one to a slow and painful death.
The drow caster cackled at Athela’s grimacing while the ice and storm mages got into positions to charge up building attacks on the outskirts of the cloud, and the death knight snapped her shoulder into position with a backwards glare before getting up next.
“Finding it hard to move?” The dwarf snickered, his body pulsing with chaos energy that continued to wind up he legs. “And those little rot spots seem to be spreading fast! Overconfidence killed the cat, you know!”
Athela glanced back down at her legs, which were held in position rather solidly at this point while open ulcers began to form across her skin, and wondered if she should take it up a notch and transform into her drider aspect. The drider wasn’t as fast and agile as her humanoid form, nor was it as stealthy as her tiny arachnid form, but it did have the additional strength, sturdiness, and mana output that would be needed to free herself from this position.
But she felt another wave of oppressive intent bear down on her as another set of runes flashed overhead in the sky, creating an intricate circle of unholy sigils that expanded into a dome over her position. She felt even weaker, and gasped as the curse leeched her strength away while making her arms barely able to hold back the axe from tearing into her.
The dwarf edged forward, the storms of swirling ice and sparking thunderclouds from either naga on both sides grew to extreme proportions while the world shook, and the afflictionist overhead called down to her with a shrill laugh.
“I WONDER WHAT IT IS WE WILL GET FOR KILLING A WORLD BOSS IN HERE!” The drow woman floating in the sky cackled, waving her hands around to perform a tier 2 spell of some variation while the severed head flailed around with her. “OR PERHAPS IT WON’T COUNT DUE TO RESPAWN AND WE’LL JUST HAVE TO FIND YOU ON THE OUTSIDE TO TRULY GET THE PRIZE! LET’S FIND OUT!”
The woman let out another shrill fit of laughter, her body lit up bright green with curse energy, and the sky above her tore open with a pillar of unholy flames that-
The caster’s laughing fit was abruptly cut off. There was a quick flash-snap of a crimson and black, of a projectile that eradicated the woman from existence instantaneously, coming from somewhere far, far off behind her. The movement was so fast that Athela couldn’t even follow it with her eyes, but remnant pieces of the drow’s body fell slowly to the ground from up on high as the spells she’d been channeling vanished in an instant.
She recognized the ability that’d killed her as Riven’s blood lance enhanced with ‘snipe.’
The lightning storm to her right was launched like a cannonball by the storm mage, and the blizzard on her left was launched from the frost mage like an avalanche. They both tore towards her with the sound of a thunderclap, colliding with two thick walls of crimson ice that rose up from the ground around Athela akin to the protective hands of a god. The ground shook, the backlash causing both of the naga casters to dash backwards while red crystalized blood shattered on the outer layers of each wall - but held firm enough to deflect each of the elemental storms to the front and back of Athela’s position.
The death knight, who’d been waiting for the exchange to happen so she could rush in for the second kill after Athela’s first form was taken care of, gawked at the exchanged as another sonic boom echoed out from somewhere high up in the clouds.
Another flash of crimson-black light bore down from the heavenly clouds above and sent the dwarf spinning end over end, causing the barbarian to lose his grip entirely on his battle axe while he screamed out in pain. He was akin to a smoldering stone being skipped across a lake. However, unlike the afflictionist who’d been absolutely eradicated by the snipe, the dwarf warrior was far sturdier and managed to roll to a coughing stop while sealing shut a deep wound that sparked with black lightning in his chest.
All four of the remaining cultists: the dwarf barbarian, the drow death knight, and the two naga elemental wizards turned their eyes upwards as a figure descended from the clouds in a swath of black, red, and deep purple energies. Then the figure abruptly accelerated and crashed into the ground, creating a crater out in front of him as the four cultists backpedaled again for positioning to ready themselves.
Through the cloud of dust, debris, and swirling energies - Riven thane stepped out in full plate armor - the flaps on his armor underneath his thrusters billowing with the torrent of energy encompassing his form.
The monster swarm roared and charged, and without looking their way - the warlock raised his free hand to summon thousands of spinning storm blades; blades that rushed the oncoming wave of enemies in a series of explosions that lit up the sky in black and red lights.
“Athela.” Riven stated calmly, turning to look at his minion who’d picked herself up from out of the barbarian’s holding martial art - kicking at the gray stone hands that’d somehow kept her in place. “Take care of the monster swarm. Gluttony and I are wanting to test out metal with these ones, a little bit of… experimentation. Would you mind?”
Athela huffed, glaring daggers at the cultists in turn, but gave Riven’s helmet a kiss and began skipping out towards the oncoming horde that was still reeling from Riven’s attack. “Fine! I guess being designated to small fry cleanup is ok this time, but not next time. Got it!? I’m not just your cute little side-piece spider princess that you can use for your carnal desires, I’m an independent woman that needs to level up too! And I GET THE BOSS MONSTER!”
Riven chuckled, shaking his head and looking her way while she skipped beyond the wall of crimson he’d constructed to block the elemental blizzard. “You can have it. Be safe, dear.”
“You too honey!” She blew him a kiss before laughing and rushing forward, transforming into her large drider form with a scream and spewing out an army of little frost-weavers that entered melee combat a second later.
Riven’s black and red eyes shifted towards the other four who were all staring him down with mixed expressions, and the third eye of Gluttony on his head opened up along with a piece in his armor set to let it see. Unlike his others, this one had a more purple hue in the sea of black around it - and the visage of a black maw tore through space behind him as he entered a battle stance.
That maw then began to speak. “Remember… do not use any mass-casualty spells. We are using them as a whetstone so we may find errors and places that need fixing in our dual-spirit controls for fighting, no need to eradicate them immediately. We will need to improve upon our unification if we ever wish to survive the greater sions of established factions in the greater multiverse. Skill and technique are the focus here, rather than sheer power.”
Riven chuckled, and his body erupted into infernal flames of Hell’s Armor while simultaneously sparks and threads of blood with ‘Blessing of the Crow’ bloomed about him - making him look like the aspect of some lost evil spirit. His weapon, Jackal, screamed in anticipation of the kills - and he took a deep breath. “Let’s see what these new changes from fusing have brought about then. After that, we eat them. I’m already starving."