Chapter 122: The Plague-Bringers
Once Nara was hauled into her Astral Domain, she could walk upright on her own two feet. The domain boosted her recovery and prevented her from dying, but she needed her evolved Racial Ability, Soul Legion, to do its work if she wanted to return to reality without the full force of poisons and curses. She could excise them here, but reality would remember her state if it wasn’t somewhat naturally recovered. Unfortunately, that was a restriction of a physical vessel intended for a physical realm.
She was a firm believer in Sen’s philosophy of understanding the limits of your abilities. Here, in her Astral Domain, she was safe from vampiric transformation and death. It was the best time to gauge how long and how effective Soul Legion was in protecting the sovereignty of her own body.
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Racial Ability: [Soul Legion]
Language adaptation. Essence, awakening stone, and skill book absorption. Immunity to identification and tracking. Resistance to dimension-restriction effects. This is a legacy effect of [Free Spirit].
Transfigured from [Soul Sanctuary] by [Blessing of Legion].
A portion of all familiars are kept within your soul even when familiars are not subsumed. This allows you to use effects and abilities granted by familiars as if they are subsumed and telepathically communicate with them from any distance. When familiars are subsumed, their subsumed effects have increased effect.
Your body is considered your territory. Your territory is hostile to enemies that trespass within it, damaging them in the process. Your subsumed familiars may attack foreign entities within your territory. The attacks and damage of your familiars when attacking foreign entities is based off of their characteristics. You can control the strength of this effect or disable it. This effect applies to any object or territory connected to your soul. This effect shares your ability to ignore rank disparity.
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This ability was the cornerstone for her half-desperate play to delay Siyu from eating the whole town like locusts in a wheat field. Her blood was a part of her body, and therefore part of her territory. It wouldn’t act that way for long, but it was long enough for a full suite of afflictions and damage from her various familiars and own abilities to inflict themselves on Siyu. Thanatos with his spell fire, Chrome with his resonating force damage and deterioration, and Sage who, while she afflicted no damage normally, translated to physical constriction damage, rending damage, and suppressing boons.
Soul Legion had an interesting effect on afflictions. Afflictions that used her body as a medium, such as poisons and diseases, had significantly reduced effect. Wounding afflictions did not, since it was just breaking her body normally, not attacking or changing it. She had learned this the hard way.
Other than that, were exceptions like Vampiric Curse, which overwrote control of the body, taking away control from the soul. Her body was hers, no one else’s, and her soul fought back for control of it.
Every part of it was hers, including her blood.
Life stealing abilities that didn’t directly take her blood would function normally against her…probably. Life force could be stolen through magic, as could mana and stamina. Stealing life force directly through sucking blood was the rarity, and not the other way around. The sort of melee range required to suck blood was highly impractical for combat. Siyu’s ability to drain life force was far faster to compensate for its impracticability.
There was still one more step left in the plan to fully delay Siyu. Her afflictions and poison bombs would do some work, but Siyu had just topped off from a person by sucking them dry. He’d repair himself soon enough.
Right on time, Sage called out, “Benefactor, Siyu has returned to his lair.”
“Thank you, Sage.” She swapped her voice chat to Aliyah, “Aliyah could you detonate your rune traps? Siyu is in there right now.”
“Is he? Then of course; This is by far a better opportunity to use it than any we’ve planned for.”
“Aw poo,” Nara muttered after a moment. She was waiting for the sound of explosions to rocket through the air, forgetting she couldn’t hear anything outside, “I didn’t get to hear the explosion. That was like, 20 rune traps. I bet it was epic.”
After matters were temporarily sorted, her attention was arrested by the portal arch in front of her.
“I guess it wasn’t a trap,” she said, not quite believing. “I would’ve fallen for that one.”
“You wouldn’t fall for it because this is real,” Chrome objected. “You haven’t been tricked because this is reality.”
She pouted.
“Don’t give me that. What have you learned?”
“I can use my own portals. I should use my own portals,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Good. By the Sands, that is the bare minimum,” Chrome said, stressing his last two words like a very concerned teacher at the end of a scolding tirade.
“Not other people’s though,” she unhelpfully added.
“We’ll work up to that.” He was satisfied. For now.
“It only took a desperate gambit,” she said cheerily.
Chrome glared at her, “You said you had a plan.”
“You knew my plan. You thought it would work,” she said accusatorily.
“I didn’t want you to use your own plan thinking it wouldn’t!” He shot back.
“I thought it’d work, genuinely. Later.”
Chrome heaved a sigh, crossing his arms, “Once you had committed to entering your own portal, I lost my objections. You are, if not anything else, very had to pin down unless you let it happen.”
Mama Chrome was reluctantly ‘alright’ with Nara taking risks as long as she had a backup plan, a way out. For iron rank adventurers, managing risks was an important part of their growth. Nara struggled to understand the mentality of Erras—taking risks but not dying to them. That was integral to the lifestyle of the adventurer, as well as what was necessary for their world’s defense against evil gods, alien invaders, and supernatural cults. Adventurers needed to be willing to take risks, judge which risks they could survive, and take on those roles.
Nara’s ability set was suited for risks many weren’t. She wasn’t high damage, but she was survivable in high pressure fights and high mobility, a combination that other scout types lacked. In the beginning of a fight, she was a dodge tank, while later in the fight she became a hard to kill damage dealer. In the future, she may be asked to take on dangerous roles behind enemy lines, and her portal was her greatest and quickest means of escape. Once she was in her Astral Domain, she could prevent her own death and jump anywhere in the world.
However, Chrome would always tell her not to take these risks, or to prioritize her own life over others. Through Lieke and Aliyah, Nara was beginning to learn what it meant to risk her life for others, but Chrome would always oppose it. It was heartwarming for her that he was always in her wheelhouse. Always her coach in her corner.
Nara had a lot of power in her Astral Domain, but what remained outside was limited to what she understood enough to form stable reality. Accordingly, destruction was far easier than creation. Nara didn’t understand blood well enough to heal herself, so she had to rely on her stacking Integrity boons and the new effect of Refresh to convert mana to health.
“Nara, what happened?” Sen asked through voice chat.
“I managed to drive Siyu off for a while, injure him enough that he needed to retreat,” she explained.
“What did you do to accomplish this?”
“I threw poison at him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t lie!”
“You didn’t lie?” he said, unimpressed with the omission.
“Does it matter? I’m fine and Siyu is buried under a man-made cave-in.”
“It does matter but I’ll let this slide, for now. I’m letting this matter slide,” he emphasized. “How is Siyu’s condition?”
“Sage says he’s still alive. He has to deal with a bunch of afflictions and rocks weighing on top of him, so he’ll be held up for some time. But he just had a bunch of blood. Hopefully, he’ll burn through it recovering.”
“Alright, we’ll start with the evacuation,” Sen said. “Encio is already working with the town head.”
It was unknown how long Siyu would remain trapped in the cave. He had his bat form, although it was more Golbat size than Zubat size. Once he was out of the cave, there was no doubt he’d be seeking blood like a rabid hyena to quickly recover from his injuries.
“If he’s smart, he’ll run,” Eufemia said disdainfully, and her tone betrayed whether or not she thought Siyu capable of being smart.
“Is he smart?” Nara asked.
“No,” she scoffed. “He’s a small-town narcissist who thinks everyone around him is supposed to serve his goals, and thinks he’s grown too big for his kiddie puddle. He’ll become enraged that some plain, no name iron ranker bested him and that his vampiric origins were exposed before he could enact his perverse festival of blood and carnage. Chances are he wanted to create some local infamy, garner favor with the Undeath elites, and make his way to Nekroz or whatever secret church of the Undead base happened to be nearby. He’ll take revenge on you for ruining his self-absorbed fantasy where he’d use the death of six iron rankers, especially an Arlang, as his claim to fame.”
“So good chance he ain’t scootin’.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“I’d bet on it. Any takers?”
“No.”
“Nope.”
“Absolutely not.” Chorused the team.
*****
“How is the evacuation, Town Head?”
“Most of the townsfolk have entered, but Aira Hong and a few of the miners refuse to evacuate. I’ve done everything in my power to try to convince them to leave, but they are adamant. The miners refuse to leave because of loyalty but Aira…I am not sure. She seems out of sorts, sir Arlang.”
“Seek shelter yourself, Town Head,” Sen assured. “We’ll handle them.”
“I understand.”
Nara thought they were less resistant to entering a magical door than she thought they would have been. The people of Erras evacuated their towns around every ten years, this sort of evacuation was not unusual to them. While sometimes they moved by caravans, often, high rank portal users would evacuate large numbers of normal rankers at a time. It was one of the few times the townsfolk saw a silver ranker in action. At bronze 0, Nara could move 1000 normal rankers. At Silver 0, that number changed to 10000, with each intermediate rank adding an additional ten thousand. Small towns like Crystal Quarry 6 only took 1 to 2 cooldowns of a silver ranker’s portal.
Some of the miners had congregated one of the town’s small plaza, anxiously milling about with an energy they did not know how to displace. Siyu was their brother and leader, and none wanted to doubt his nature, no matter the evidence their town head provided. Most of the miners, even those caught up with Siyu’s rhetoric, had enough sense (or beloved mothers and spouses wielding an attitude and a shoe) to follow the rest of their family into the domain.
Sen approached the miners that had not left.
“Why are you still here?” he said, his tone balancing authority, anger, and disappointment.
“We don’t believe this crud about Brother Hong being a vampire!” One miner yelled, although he could not quite meet Sen’s eyes.
Tousa Di and Boss Zho were nowhere to been seen, apparently already evacuating themselves. Boss Zho may have been concerned for his miners, but he was not risking his own life for them for a person he found suspect anyway. Siyu had been the miner riling the others up over the originally agreed pay difference between the miners and the traders, and some of the younger miners worshipped him for it.
They couldn’t force the miners through the domain door, unconscious or not.
Sen handed over the papers Nara and Aliyah had gathered from Siyu’s lair. Evidence of his handwriting, detailing methods to kill the townspeople, experiment on their bodies, and tracking the shifts of the traders.
The miner that received the paper tossed them aside, “This is a fabricated heidel shit! Lies of Deceit! I know you’re trying to frame brother Siyu because you’re envious of his talent and superiority! He has what a fake noble like you doesn’t! Honor! Brotherhood! Masculinity!”
The miner ground the papers beneath his feet, ripping it apart on dirt and sharp pebbles.
“You cannot read?” Sen pointedly asked. He knew the answer.
The miner’s face flamed red from embarrassment. There wasn’t anything wrong with an inability to read; it was more common in the small villages. He hadn’t thought he’d ever need to. He’d just listen to brother Hong.
“I don’t believe this! Brother Hong is being framed.”
“Yeah!”
“Framed! Brother Hong would never!”
Sen briefly wondered if these people would die because they were stupid, and if someone deserved to die if they had been manipulated by someone evil. Once he escaped the cave-in, Siyu Hong would leave his cave, hungry for blood after recovering from his injuries. They could try to stop him, in a repeat as before; he would empty them of their blood, and they would be powerless to stop him.
Aliyah, fed up with their thoughtless worship, opened her rune inventory, dragging a dead and rotting body out, and held the tortured and twisted corpse in her hands. Immediately, the attention of the miners was arrested by the overpowering smell of the rotted flesh of their fellow townspeople.
“Look,” she told them icily, “Do not turn your eyes away.”
They stared at her, immediately silent, all sound as dead as the body in her hands.
Do you recognize this person?” she said, with an agonizing calm. “No?” She set the body back into her inventory, removing another. This time, it was more intact. The facial features with some resemblance of a human face. The storage room the bodies were in had been enchanted to slow decomposition. This person, then?”
“That’s… Ken Yan. One of the traders.”
“Ken Yan,” John said, reciting his details from his memory. “Thirty-two, father of two young twin daughters. Disappeared four weeks ago.”
Aliyah placed the body back in her inventory, her combat robes now covered with smears of blood and rotted flesh.
“Go. Now!” she commanded.
They did, stumble-running to the domain door in the center of town.
Aira Hong was the final townsperson left in town. She sat in her house, unmoving, awaiting her fate.
“Miss Hong,” Sen asked, “Why are you still here? Please evacuate with the rest of the townsfolk,” He sat across from her, polite only on the surface. He had ignored the locked doors and forced the door open with his physical strength. At this stage, no one cared about his casual B&E.
“I don’t know what else to do,” Aira said, her voice listless. “It’s the last thing I can do for him, as a mother.”
“Die to his fangs?”
She flinched but didn’t move. Her head drooped down, wispy black hair that had whitened quickly from stress rather than age obscuring her face.
“You are going to make this fight very hard for the rest of us, if you sacrifice yourself to him,” Sen said his tone firm and disapproving. “He’s at his weakest now, and we need it to stay that way. It is the best chance of survival for my team.”
“Are you going to kill me if I don’t leave?” she asked softly, her lips trembling as she spoke.
“I could,” confirmed Sen. “I’m considering it.”
Unlike Nara, Sen had less scruples about killing. The Adventure Society would not begrudge him for this either. Killing civilians was usually criminal, but the circumstances meant her opposition to evacuation put all the other civilians in harm’s path. It was a painful choice, but it was the correct choice. If Aira Hong was a corpse, they could store her within an inventory, denying Siyu from regaining his the lifeforce he needs.
If she refused to enter a portal, Encio could attempt to carry her as far as possible, while Nara portaled him back to the team. Death wasn’t the only option, but leaving Aira on her own in the country, while low, could still cause her death.
“Spare me this tribulation, miss Hong,” Sen said softly, sadly. “I do not want to kill you, but If you chose to die either way, I will kill you myself, for the safety of the townsfolk and my team.”
She couldn’t help but ask him, “Would you regret killing me?”
She looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. They were resolved, but she could see his reluctance. His reluctance wouldn’t stop him, of course, he was firm in his decision. He had been trained his entire life to be an adventurer, and mirage chamber scenarios encompassed difficult decisions adventurers had to make.
She regretted meeting those eyes. Those eyes that made her feel as if she had done everything in her life wrong. Somehow, she had ended up the villain in the path of the heroes. No, not even a villain. The pathetic, senseless hanger-on that did nothing but slow down the heroes and put more lives at risk.
“Did you think I would feel nothing if I had to?” he asked, “What do you think adventurers are?”
She wrenched her gaze from his, sobs rising from her throat. What had she done wrong with her son? Where did it all go wrong? Was it so long ago when his father had died? She thought she had raised him to be kind to all those around him, to be studious, and to support those around him. How had she been so blind to his true character?
Sen could feel the woman was wracked with guilt, eating her up from the inside like a black mold. Despite his crimes, she couldn’t help but love her son. Siyu was her son, her precious child. They had cried together when her husband, his father, had died. The town helped with their finances, allowing Aira to provide for him. Did their kindness mean nothing to Siyu? What had twisted him so irrevocably?
“…I will leave,” she finally said, breathless from sadness. She was weak and pale, as if only the ghost of Aira Hong remained in her place.
“I will escort you there,” Sen said, standing. “Forgive me that I don’t trust you to go alone, Miss Hong.”
*****
Erras’s familiarity with evacuations meant that it was completed in a surprisingly timely manner. Nara had finished healing from her blood loss and cleansing the Vampiric Curse before the evacuation even finished. Aside from blood loss, her injuries had been relatively light for what Erras’ magic was capable of repairing. She didn’t have to regrow any limbs, after all, which would’ve taken days.
The full night passed without any disturbance from the cave. By that time, the sun had risen from the East. The Crystal Quarry 6 stone spire cast a long, westward shadow that in combination with other spires, striped the landscape like a zebra made of darkness and light.
It was dusk when Siyu finally re-emerged from his lair. Ranshi was watching. Since the townspeople were safe, all he needed to do was intervene if one of the team was about to die. Genuine combat against an essence user outside of a mirage chamber was incredibly rare.
He stared, eyes bloodshot, at the team before him. They were poised and fully armored, weapons drawn and glinting. It struck fear into Siyu’s heart, which infuriated him greatly. He was so used to the position of superiority. The sight of true, genuine, gallant adventures hammered the nail of truth that no matter how he spoke or raised himself upon the praise of others, he was still a sham, provincial country boy.
Off to the side, he spotted a bronze ranker. He eyed Siyu but made no move. However, this meant for Siyu, this was a battle of survival. He had a plan to distract the bronze ranker. He just needed to deal with these upstart iron rankers, and he could escape. There was nothing he could have done to avoid being found out by these investigators. They were competent, compared to the rest. It wasn’t his fault for rushing the plan provided to him.
“No sneak attack?” Siyu snidely said, spreading his arms grandiosely as she stopped a way away from the team. “Or are you too good for that?”
Sen Arlang stood at the forefront with his glimmering leather, metal and cloth armor of dark red, brown, gold, black, and silver. He was a valiant general that stood at the forefront of the troops, unafraid of risking his neck alongside his comrades.
“This is your only opportunity to surrender, Siyu. Comply, or die.”
Behind him, Eufemia scoffed, “We’d afraid you’d run like the rat you are if we ambushed you right when you snuck out of your hidey-hole.”
“An ambush is hardly honorable. A tactical escape is logical in those circumstances,” Siyu defended.
“Oh, woe is me, the bronze ranker who kills normal rankers in their sleep.”
It struck a nerve; Siyu ground his teeth, tasting blood. No matter how Siyu convinced himself he was the noble hunter, and the townsfolk were his prey, there was no mistake he was picking on the helpless and weak. He had no nobility and no honor, and it infuriated him.
“I am immortal!” he raged. “Ageless! I have become a being beyond all these pathetic peasants. They will grow old and die, a mere few decades of pitiful, futile existence. There is no better use for their feeble life force that to nurture me, who will leave a lasting legacy that will mark my name in the annals of history!”
He paused, recovering. His eyes were bloodshot, and his chest was heaving with emotion. They could all feel his emotions roil the surface of his oil like water with the gas burner turned up to high, hot bubbles popping and splattering. Vampires had inherent ability to disguise their own aura to prevent direct discovery, but Siyu had lost control of his.
“You leave me no choice,” Siyu said, as if he hadn’t planned to kill as many people in the town as he could originally. He stood there, and raised his hand, then lowered it dramatically.
Nothing happened.
“Did he do something?” Eufemia stage whispered. “He like a stage performer but the effects ritual malfunctioned. So awkward. I’d kill myself.”
Ranshi turned around, his attention towards the town. “He’s released a small swarm of monsters from the forest. Vampiric converted monsters.”
Ranshi had the Fire, Eye, and Magic essences for the Avatar confluence. Like Nara, he had familiars that allowed him to observe at a distance. He was more Spell-blade-scout to Nara’s off-tank-scout-damage-dealer. His fire essence abilities would be effective against vampirized monsters. Since Sen had a plan to deal with Siyu, it was better that he dealt with the oncoming monsters since he had a higher individual capability.
“They can do that?” John said. “That’s seems bloody unfair!”
“Why do you think we hate vampires?” Encio echoed his sentiment. “Their ability to inflate their numbers along with other Death Essence users is their greatest threat.”
“You let it snowball, and it gets out of hand?” Nara said.
Encio nodded, “Entire towns can be wiped out by a single necromancer or vampire.”
Essence users all had the ability to massacre entire towns, but it was the abilities that encouraged you to do so that was the issue. Outside of niche cases like essence user vampires who used life force to power up, necromancers needed to use their abilities to rank up. That meant they needed dead bodies.
With all the other available essences, banning the one that produced plague-bringers was the sensible decision.
“I can deal with the monsters,” Ranshi said. “Can you handle the vampire?”
“We have a plan for him,” Sen confirmed.
Ranshi sprinted towards the doorway in the center of the town. His objective was to protect it and prevent any monsters from entering. Its defensive capabilities were unknown; he could only assume it had none at all. He left a small tentacled flying eyeball familiar behind—if Sen’s fight hadn’t ended by the time his did, he’d rush back to assist. From the distant forest, tens of monsters dashed through the trees, transformed into lesser vampires. The true terror of vampires was their ability to transform almost anything into their servants. When essence users were converted into a thrall—an unwilling transformation—their rank was increased but they lost their essence abilities, making them extremely durable physically capable meat shields. The same applied to monsters, which made them fearsome adversities.
The low magic quality of the area played to Ranshi’s favor. Bronze rank monsters rarely manifested here. Most of his foes were iron rank monsters converted to bronze rank, with only a few silver rank vampiric servants. Silver rank monsters were the real challenge, thankfully, the vampiric curse made them mindless brutes. He’d be able to draw them away from the evacuated townsfolk.
He sighed; he deserved a bonus for this.