Kite’s point of view
Wrath gave me back control over my body. It takes a few seconds for everything to sink in. My arm is cold… Cold enough to feel the coldness through my dead hand. I didn’t even know that was possible, I’ve lost all feeling in that hand until now. This ice is something special... The ice itself has started to melt but it’s fire resistance properties has me thinking about potential uses for it if I can figure out how Wrath used it.
We finished the raid, the last boss wasn’t much of a threat. It was a medusa. They have the ability to paralyze with eye contact and their poisonous bite can turn your skin into stone. Gobber quickly handled it by himself. The dangers of the medusa are fairly easy to deal with if you know them before hand.
I dawned on me after he quickly finished the medusa off that if I participated in the fight I could have gained new blue mage skills… I should be able to gain a new variation of poison by drawing it out of one of her fangs and ingesting it. Looking over the spoils of each boss it’s clear that the drops from here are not going to be close to what I can prepare and make myself now. The only reason to do these raids would be for the very rare drops like rubber and the raw materials that could be mined and gathered from inside.
I’ll sell all of the equipment drops to adventurers or perhaps find a buyer who is looking to outfit his men with some last minute rares before the war finally starts. That should bring in a few gold at least. I’ve been slacking on making money, the coffers are quickly drying up as we're spending more than we are making. Avenues of investing and production in new technologies to sell to the people could quickly become the main source of revenue for our mercenary group.
As we leave the raid we each grab 1 of the 5 giant hammers the demons were wielding. Seeing as they haven’t disappeared yet, the chances are they are permanent and not going to be reabsorbed like most other monster parts and equipment back into the dungeon. Each hammer weighs a few hundred pounds of pure iron. This should be to keep our blacksmiths making weapons for almost a year. I’ll set up a base camp at the bottom of the crater that my men can continuously assault this raid from just like the tier one raid to the north of here.
I notice that some of the adventurers that Wrath had saved are still here. The ones he terrified has most likely fled back up the ropes out of here. I glance up and see they are almost at the top. Traveling all the way here just to have to climb down and back up the cliff face… I feel sorry for them but it is for the best, they would have quickly died inside that raid. It takes a few minutes to set-up the base camp as the other group watches us.
With what had happened and us carrying out giant hammers we are a sight to behold. I’m about to place the portal scroll down when someone comes through it landing on me. It’s one of the gnoll portal guards, his cloths are all torn up and he has small gashes and cuts all over him.
He quickly gets his barrings and scans the area for something. Finally looking down at the person he landed on and noticing it was me. He yells out.
“Master! Trouble, big trouble. Go through the portal right now!”
I barely let him finish his sentence before I toss him off me and grab the portal scroll. I use it as I think the worst… Is this the fire lord here to destroy my base. No, it can’t be him, this gnoll wouldn’t have made it through the portal if he landed a hit. Whatever it is, judging by the guards cloths it is a very dangerous creature.
I travel through the portal and before I can gain my bearings I am sucker punched in the face. I fly against the nearby wall and chip some of the concrete from it off. My jaw hurts and I can already taste blood in my mouth from where my own teeth cut into my gums. I look to see what just hit me expecting to see a giant of some kind from the sheer force. It isn’t though. The scene before me is far worse than I had imagined.
It was Leon who punched me. Hiding in the corner of the room are Kline, Silky and the three remaining guards that didn’t come through the portal. Silky is putting up a wind barrier while Kline is treating a serious wound on one of the soldiers. Did Leon cause that!? No, another one of the men purposely slashes at a scratch that he must have gotten from Leon. SHIT! I instinctively rub my face where the fist had hit me to check for blood. I hope he didn’t scratch me or this is going to go from bad to worse very quickly.
He doesn’t give me much time to think about what is happening before he charges at me again. Shit! Leon was one of the few people who could keep up with me before he turned into a ghoul. Now that he has turned feral he is coming at me with the same ferocity that Tough did. I lift him off the ground with control blood but he breaks it almost immediately. I’ve had people manage to break out of the grasp of control blood but never that quickly. It didn’t even slow him down. I raise my heirloom sword up to parry his attack.
The sword doesn’t even register to him as a threat at this point. He grabs hold of it with both of his hands and starts forcing me back. I can see the blackish blood drip and smear across the blade. Even with my leverage advantage, even with my insane strength he starts to push me back into the wall. The amount of blood leaking from his hands makes me hesitate. It makes me want to pull my blade back but if I am corrupted like him this entire base could be overrun by ghouls in a matter of minutes. I have to fight him seriously or everyone could become like him.
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With all of my strength I get underneath him and lift him off the ground with my sword. Using the length of my sword to keep him just out of reach of me he Kicks at me now, still not letting go of the sword. Perhaps he still has enough survival instincts in him from being a human that he knows how dangerous this sword would be if he lets go. I throw him with the sword as hard as I can towards the wall opposite of the one I’m against. That wall is still being used to expand this room so it wasn't cemented in yet. I tossed away the threat but I also had to toss my sword.
He goes hurdling away from me, I expect him to smack into the wall and fall to the ground giving me a few seconds to think of what to do but he doesn’t. He lands feet first against the uneven wall and propels himself towards me from it. His feral instincts are finally showing as that left him wide open and unable to defend himself. I could kill him right now with many attacks but I only have a few meant to incapacitate people... I could go with poison but he is most likely resistant to poison. The second I have as he comes back towards me I take a deep breath and start removing all the breathable air from the room.
I swing. I swing with all my strength with an uppercut aimed at his stomach… It can’t hold back, he’s too strong. Leon was already one of the fastest members of my army and now that he’s turned he’s even faster. There should have been no way for a person to bounce off the wall like that, he unnaturally bent his body… Now that I look at him closer he snapped his left leg to kick off the wall.
My fist slams into his stomach. His face convulses in pain as most of the air escapes from his body. The punch was at full strength, it sends him flying into the ceiling. The ceiling in this room is only 10 feet (3 meters) high. Once again he slams into the surfaces and bounds off of it with his arms and legs.
His injured leg strains and snaps even more. A normal person would be crippled over in pain, let alone able to use the splintered leg. He’s too close this time, I’m not going to be able to dodge! If he scratches me with his claws it’ll be all over, I’ll slowly change into a ghoul just like him. No! I can still try to control him just like I did with Tough. I use promote undead on him. A warning box pops up.
Warning! Doing this will deactivate the previous promote undead. This will force the previous undead to become feral again. Do you still wish to activate it?
WHAM! Leon slams into me as the option popped up. Even with quick thinking and combat expertise the fight it progressing too quickly. He bites down on my right arm snapping the wooden automaton I use to control my hand, shit! SHIT! SHIT! I haven’t had any feeling of pain in my arm until now, the moment his teeth sink into my arm I feel pain once again. A searing pain slowly starts to seep through the puncture points his teeth have made.
I can’t think right now! I just start punching him in the face over and over again with my left hand. Like a dog his jaw remains clamped onto my arm even taking continuous damage. I can't get a good angle to strike him from. I just hammer into him, over and over again but he will not let go. I start hitting him even harder, bruising slowly starts to turn into bleeding. Seconds later he finally stops writhing. Not because of me striking him but because he has ran out of air.
I pull him off me by manipulating his jaw. He’s not breathing… What do I do? Do I try reviving him… Will he attack again… I… I don’t know what to do… I can’t use promote undead… I’m not even sure it would work and Tough would become feral again… What do I do!? I feel so lost right now… I’ve prepared for so many things but… I can’t think of anything to do to save him besides to revive him and put him in jail until I can think of something better.
I create an air orb and place it over my head… With the battle happening so quickly I didn’t really think of a good method to make it so I could breath while Leon couldn't. I start creating more air to fill the room… As dangerous as he would be I can’t just let Leon sit here and die. I force some of the air into his lungs and his eyes shoot open again. He puts his hand on his head as he sits up.
“Wha… Oh no… Kline, did I?”
Kline doesn’t even look up from the person he’s treating.
“Y-yea. Kite, get over here. This person is too seriously injured for me to deal with by myself.”
It’s hard for me to turn my back on Leon right now. If he goes feral again and attacks me while I’m unguarded I wouldn’t be able to fight back. I can’t think about that right now, someone is in danger of becoming a ghoul just lik-. SHIT! The person who went through the portal was also clawed. As I walk over to start treating his wound I produce a bit of numbing poison and apply it to him to reduce the pain from the contaminated flesh I’m going to have to cut off of him.
“Kline, this is very important! While Leon was feral, did he attack anyone else?”
“I-I’m not sure.”
“THINK! This is extremely important!”
I collects himself now that the situation is slowly being dealt with.
“Yea… I think before we came through the portal he might have clawed someone.”
Shit… We’ll have to deal with that after we get everything else fixed. Gobber should still be near the injured messenger, he’s seen people change from a ghoul attack. He should be able to handle it but we’ll need to send a healer through the portal now to deal with that… Gobber might have killed him already if he couldn’t get control of the person before they changed… Shit! Why is this happening!? Kline stops healing as he looks directly at my arm.
I look down now… The ghoulification has already been completely set through most of my arm… It might be because my arm was already dead. I was being stubborn trying to keep my body in tact but cutting it off is the only solution right now… I’m not sure how my regeneration will work with cutting off this dead flesh… I might not even ever regenerate my arm… It’s better to not have an arm than to become a ghoul. I pull out one of my backup swords and walk over to Leon. He’s still trying to compose himself and is still lying on the floor.
I hand him my sword and he looks at me confused until he notices at my arm. A look of fear and realization shoots through him… This is his fault. I yell at him now to snap him out of it.
“You’re the strongest person here right now. So it'll be the cleanest cut."
I prop my arm up the best as I can with my other arm and tell him.
“You should know what to do.”