Logan felt his stomach lurch but then he tightened his lips in resolve. Hell, if Thorin cut off all his fingers, all the better. That meant he wouldn’t be able to deploy his clones.
“Thorin!” Arsen’s face was pale. His head recoiled at the sight, his eyes wide and staring, but he had the presence of mind to rush towards Thorin and snatch his discarded skill ring from the floor. Swiping it from a pool of blood, he threw Logan a savage glare and jammed it on his finger.
The air tightened, and one after another, five other Arsen clones materialized in the room. They had the same hedge-hog hair, the same mud and blood stripes on their face. The same resolute expressions.
Logan tried to hold back his grin, but it was impossible. He suspected his eyes were glowing with satisfaction. Whether they were Thorin clones or Arsen clones were the same. Right now, they were just meat sacks full of one thing.
Karma.
As more Arsen copies materialized, it meant it would take a massive amount of Karma to deploy the same strategy. A cycle of growing and Karma depletion. Growing and Karma depletion.
Already, Errol was moving sluggishly as if the man had slammed down ten pints of nonaonalic juice. Better yet, he had no idea what was happening or what was causing it. To him, he felt tired without a cause.
But Logan knew why:
80/810.
60/810.
40/810.
“Don’t worry, Thorin! We’ll get him!” Wobbling, Errol blinked his foggy eyes, his hands going limp and his one-hundred-pound whip slamming to the floor with a crack. He shook his head, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he looked down at the floor in disbelief.
Errol had just enough strength to take one more step before he collapsed in a heap. A massive collapse as if his strings had been cut.
“Errol!” Arsen shouted. His five clones stopped as one and gave Errol looks of horror.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 77 Silverthorn male! Extra experience granted for defeating an enemy above your level.]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[…]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
Holy shit, Logan had obtained seven levels from one kill! In a normal situation, he’d be throwing the extra attribute points into his intelligence or wisdom attributes to upgrade his Karma pool or Karma regeneration rate, but this time, he purposely held back. To allow [Liche Siphon] to drain the guards, he needed lower Karma, not more.
“W-what’s w-wrong with him?” said Thorin, clawing at his chest, his stubbed, sliced fingers spreading a trail of blood.
Arsen crouched next to Errol and shook him. His clones stood in a circle as if uncertain what to do. “Brother? Brother!” He looked up. “He’s dead.” Then pinning Logan with a look full of murder, his lips pulling back and baring his incisors, he blasted his aura in a killing intent. “Trickster! Abomination!”
Logan was already re-launching [Liche Siphon], this time focusing on Arsen’s clones. He reached across the room and envisioned sucking the first clone’s lifeforce, funnelling his Karma into Logan’s pool like turning on a hose. But he didn’t stop there. Bridging the distance, he pictured that hose not just going to Logan. Instead, it looped from the first clone to the next.
He created a tether that linked each clone, visualizing a valve that connected them in an endless loop and funneled their Karma pools towards Logan like a city’s pipe infrastructure.
Ding!
[Liche Siphon is Level 3!]
[Liche Siphon is Level 4!]
[Liche Siphon is Level 5!]
Arsen was charging at him with his daggers in a white-knuckled grip, the veins in his neck standing out in rage. “Thorin! Corner him!”
But Thorin could hardly stand, let alone corner Logan.
That meant he still had to deal with Arsen’s clones. Unlike Thorin, Logan couldn’t sense unhatched eggs underneath his claws, so that was out. However… Logan held back a frown of distaste.
In the tactician trial, Arsen had waded through a swamp, and mud clung to his hair and clothes. He even had caking, dried stripes of mud on his face. And even worse, he’d managed to swallow handfuls of the brackish, soupy water. Looking past his bright lifeforce, Logan could sense pinprick after pinprick of life.
He’d swallowed insect eggs.
The blood from his nose was getting worse and dripping down to his mouth, likely making him look macabre underneath his facemask, but Logan didn’t care. The more blood the better. That meant he was expending Karma.
But that was all the time he had to examine Arsen before the man rushed at Logan, his feet pounding, his chest bouncing up and down as he stormed after him with his daggers held out and ready to stab. His clones mirrored him, rushing Logan from all sides, trying to pummel him and pile on top of him like football players tackling a quarterback.
Logan darted to the side, kicking off with his pink sock-clad foot and picturing himself hitting the opposite wall and then bouncing back like a boomerang. Without Errol’s whip, there was no reason to worry about someone pulling him off balance by the ankle. Arsen and his clones would have to catch him instead.
This would be tricky. Logan needed to deploy [Life Cycle Master] while darting around and running, dashing, summersaulting… using every ounce of his 242 agility points at his disposal. Arsen was level 93; his highest stat was strength, and it was possible that he was wearing one or two True Grit rings. But Logan was betting that the man couldn’t match his agility score. Better yet, with [Undead Stamina], there was no way he could outlast him.
Logan could dart around like a madman, slashing Arsen’s clones with his talons, and eventually wear the man out.
But that wasn’t his goal.
His goal was to give himself enough time to deploy [Life Cycle Master]. He was going for broke with the skill. While pivoting on his feet and bouncing the other way, he already had a picture of the eggs inside of Arsen’s stomach. He’d latched onto them like a predator in sight of prey. A burst of pain behind his eyes like a stabbing poker, blood gushing in a torrent from his nose, Logan wrenched, and forced the eggs inside of Arsen to hatch. From thin, pale eggs barely the size of the tine of a paperclip, to small brown larva with ridges like a worm, to a pupa half the size of a house fly.
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“What are you doing?” Arsen demanded. “You’re retreating? Coward!”.
Logan paid his words no mind, all his attention on forcing the pupa to hatch as he darted around the room. Arsen’s clones came at him from all sides, but they were ineffectual. Without Errol’s whip, there was no way to pin him down. And Thorin was useless—he was kneeling on the ground, his face green as he hacked and struggled to get air.
Taking another running leap, Logan slashed the closest Arsen clone with his talons, scoring deep gouges into his chest. The clone made a sound of pain and wobbled in place, but it was still on its feet.
Logan ground his teeth and refocused on the pupa inside the original Arsen’s stomach. Wrenching, he forced the pupa to form legs, three on each side of its body. Logan pushed, and then nudged the insect to form a head next, a hundred red eyes blinking in sudden awareness. The pain of dying was in his command, his desperation to get back to Lara and the kids, his resolution to save Ernie. He would do it for them, he would overcome.
His nose pouring like a faucet and the pain continuing like hellfire behind his eyes, Logan forced the insect’s wings to form: one wing, two wings, three, and finally four.
It was some kind of warped version of a swamp fly.
It had six legs and four wings, and a pointed head with a hundred eyes.
Clenching his fist to focus his concentration, Logan screamed as he repeated the same steps, hatching insect after insect: six, a dozen, twenty, fifty!
By now, the original Arsen had slowed, and he swallowed convulsively as if trying to hold down acid. Hacking and spitting, his eyes bulged, and he dropped his daggers to the ground. They made a clanging, metal on stone sound.
“What did you do?” he spat. Coughing, his face grew red, and he clutched at his neck as if he were choking. A reek emitted from his body like rotting meat. Then as if unable to hold it in, he opened his mouth, sticking out his swelling tongue and gagging as the first fly crawled out. It was the size of a horsefly, with six hairy black legs with claws on the ends. It bounced on the end of Arsen’s tongue, and a hundred swivelling red eyes peered at Logan in analytical curiosity.
Then another fly.
Until a swarm poured out of his mouth, an endless stream of flies.
Ugh. Even though Logan had been the one to do it, he couldn’t deny that the sight turned his stomach. But the grossness factor was irrelevant against winning.
Logan pulled up his Karma.
120/810.
60/810.
10/810.
Hell yeah! “You shouldn’t have fucked with me,” he said, his voice dark.
And just like that, Arsen’s eyes rolled back in his head as the insidious nature of [Liche Siphon] drained his Karma pool and sucked him dry. With a pop, Logan’s ears ringing, Arsen’s clones vanished as if they’d never existed in the first place.
He was dead.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 93 Silverthorn male! Extra experience granted for defeating an enemy above your level.]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[…]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
Logan had received nine level increases from Arsen’s death.
A glow of righteous satisfaction suffused his limbs. A feeling of knowing that he’d deployed everything he’d had, every molecule of his willpower towards defeating Arsen, and he’d come out on top. Logan felt a self-satisfied smile creep across his mouth as he stared down at Arsen’s corpse. He wanted to bask in the feeling of coming out on top, of relief, of knowing that he only had one more step, and he’d be finally through this whole ordeal.
That’s why he was irritated when that feeling was interrupted by an insect flying into his face. Logan curled his lip. His emotions were already raw, and he’d dealt with enough insects to last a lifetime. A hundred flies were buzzing around the room, flying into his face and swarming. Being pests. Annoyed, with his senses wide open and with [Life Cycle Master] still deployed, Logan latched onto the flies, grabbing onto each pinprick of life and commanded them to… stop.
One fly dropped.
Two.
Two dozen, and then fifty. One by one, the flies stopped mid-flight as if they’d been zapped with electricity.
A hundred insects were now on the floor, lying on their backs, their insect legs limp, their red eyes sightless.
Dead.
Logan gasped. He… may have a world-ending skill. Birth to death. Until now, he’d never looked at the skill definition and wondered how that would apply to the extremes. Birthing a being seemed obvious—he’d done it with the trees and the green beans; he’d created a new being with the bark ants and with the purple plant inside Thorin’s stomach. But he’d ended it there. Not once had he thought, what if he went further? What if he continued pushing, forcing a living being beyond what was healthy, beyond… well, beyond life.
Death.
But he still had one more guard to handle.
Collapsing his facemask and revealing his blood-soaked face, Logan strode over to Thorin. The man was now sitting on his ass and drooping to the side, the happy fungi still at work. His chest moved up and down erratically as if he couldn’t get enough air, his fingers nothing but bloody stubs.
He had a cut on his chest, a raw looking wound as if he’d tried to dig into his own insides. Within the raw opening, purple stems and leaves were writhing underneath his skin, a warped tree insect eating away at his insides. The rest of his belly looked as if his skin were a tree, his veins replaced with roots.
“Y-you’re really,” he rasped and then swallowed, sounding like he was breathing through wet fabric. “Y-you’re really a t-trickster after all.”
Logan looked down at the sword abandoned by Thorin’s side. Somehow, it seemed like karmic justice to use the same weapon on Thorin that had sent Logan to his death.
“Logan,” Thorin groaned with a cough. “Y-you hate me. I-I understand.” His lips were blue. “B-but if you have any d-decency left, don’t hurt Asthea. She t-thought of you a-as a friend.”
“Save your breath, man,” said Logan and despite his best efforts to remain stoic, a fission of compassion settled into his belly. Thorin’s last thought wasn’t towards himself, it wasn’t a burning hate of Logan. With his last, desperate breath, he pleaded for his princess.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do what was necessary. “Close your eyes.”
Thorin turned his face away as if in relief that his pain would finally be over. With a rasping sigh, he closed his eyes.
“You brought this on yourself.” With a grunt, Logan swung the sword and used all his hard-earned strength and dexterity to give him a quick end.
Ding!
[You have defeated a Level 99 Silverthorn male! Extra experience granted for defeating an enemy above your level.]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[…]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
Logan dropped Thorin’s sword. It ricochetted against the floor, its blade covered in blood. Wiping the blood specks from his face, he stared sightlessly off into the distance.
He couldn’t believe it was over. Adrenaline was surging through his body, his senses hyper alert. After dying, after feeling so helpless against the guards in the first encounter, the past hour had felt unreal. Logan had killed three guards who were out of his league, and he hadn’t even had to deploy the extra attribute points after leveling up. For the first time, Logan understood the true value of [Life Cycle Master].
Birth to death.
Whether it was controlling fungi and mold, guiding insects, growing trees or birthing beings, the skill could do it all. But it could also kill. It was beyond anything he’d ever contemplated. Thinking that [Life Cycle Master] wasn’t valuable in a combat situation was laughable. Ever since he’d made that mistake with Eleanor and then merged [Life Cycle] into [Life Cycle Master], he’d had a weapon all along.
Logan looked up at the ceiling.
With a crackle of electricity, the Cursed Rope flew over to its severed tail and landed on the floor. The severed tail looked like a bundle of discarded rope fibre—something you’d find in the bottom of a hole, but as electricity touched it, it came alive. Wiggling like a worm, it inched its way towards the end of the Cursed Rope’s severed tail and came together like pastry dough.
As soon as the tail attached, the rope swelled, getting bigger, and two small divots formed on the front of its head. They weren’t eyes… but they were the beginnings of them. Logan was reminded that the Cursed Rope leveled up as he leveled, and he’d just gone through a massive increase.
The Cursed Rope crackled, a sound like thunder ricochetting around the viewing arena, before it slithered through the air and hovered in front of Logan’s face as if examining him. Blue electricity sparkled over Logan’s skin, but it was like a caress rather than an attack. With one flick of its tail, it lowered itself to the floor.
The user is strong, the user is strong, it purred to Logan with pride.
Curving its body like a cobra, its head up and jaw open, it regurgitated, its throat moving like a bird trying to feed its young.
And then with a cough, it spat out Asthea’s True Grit Ring.