Chapter 371 - Prologue: A Web of Schemes and Lies
A massive ogre with a bee-like posterior slowly drew a four-meter bow as he observed his prey. His muscular, emerald-green arms flexed as he pulled his arrow as far as it would go. He had the perfect shot. He was positioned atop a steep cliff and he had the sun to his back. Even if his prey were to raise its head and gaze upon him, it would no doubt be blinded by the brilliant light. And yet, the hunter did not loose his arrow. He stayed perfectly still, doing his best to blend into the rock atop which he was hidden. He knew that it alone was unlikely to kill. To secure the massive, winged tiger, he would need much more than a bladed twig.
He had known that coming into the operation. That was why his body was covered in grey cloth. It was meant to hide his frame so he could blend into the gorge and stalk his prey. The nocked arrow had been a test of its sensitivity, a check to see if the beast’s instincts would respond to his open bloodlust. And surely enough, the canyon’s master briefly glanced in the hunter’s direction before returning to its usual business with a snort. All three of its tails continued to swish about carefree, the blades at their tips ripping the surrounding stone apart.
Lucius Hyacinth—the hunter—took a breath as he lowered his bow and returned his arrow to its quiver. His quarry was sharp. He was going to need a completely different approach.
It was then, as he looked away, that the monster suddenly closed the distance. It appeared beside the ledge with its wings silently flapping. They were as silent as an owl’s, despite the beast’s ridiculous scale.
It bore down on him without mercy, claws first, jaws open. He barely reacted in time, catching its forelimb with his own largely by virtue of luck.
Even standing at four meters tall, he was less than half its height. And yet, he managed to block the blow. His muscles bulging, his tattoos glowing, he caught the beast’s paw midswing with a strike of the fist and ducked out of the way of its teeth. He nearly reached for the holy weapon at his waist, but he changed his mind as he recalled his objective. His God had tasked him with retrieving the beast’s pelt. And Lucius intended to deliver.
Leaping over a swipe with his trunk-like legs, he grabbed the tiger’s neck and swung up onto its back. He made a mad dash for its wings, but it flung him off with a twirl before he could close the distance. His body spinning and off-balance, he was unable to evade the tail driven towards his neck.
The wound healed before he hit the ground, but the thoraen warrior was annoyed all the same. He leapt up again and grabbed the tiger’s foot. He ignored all of the bladed tails flying towards him as he mustered up his strength and threw the beast into the side of the cliff.
Together, they tumbled, and together, they sprang into action again. Over and over, the fighters clashed, with neither taking any substantial damage. It was a fight that lasted for days. The sun set and rose, and the brilliant blue sky gave way to a cloudy rain. Still, they fought, with the number of spectators ever-growing.
It was only natural that they would wish to bear witness.
One party was a vicious beast, feared throughout the land as one to whom even the local warriors fell prey. There was not a single giant in the nation capable of standing against it. It had even eaten Vyk Fornestead—the prince himself—despite his former status as a hero of great renown. The other was Kael’ahruus’ champion, a man hand-picked by one of the greatest gods to demonstrate the deity’s methods and embody his ideology.
Everyone expected the man to emerge victorious, for there to be a new legend written like those of old. But after ten days and ten nights, they collapsed side by side.
There was a moment of silence as the audience stared in disbelief. It was a tie. Both fighters were exhausted and neither could be pronounced the victor.
Some members considered slaying the beast in its downtime, but none dared to claim the final blow. To interrupt the battle was blasphemy of the highest order. They would no doubt be cursed by the god of the hunt and condemned to a life barred from his quarry.
That was when a boy in the crowd had a sudden idea, a way to tilt the scales in the hunter’s favour without interfering directly. He was but a poor orphan with little to give, a child whose parents were stolen by the beast, but he tore a piece of his bread and threw it into the valley.
Spurred on by his charity, the rest of the crowd soon followed suit. The idle observers dumped their snacks and rations down the side of the cliff so that the warrior might have the opportunity to regain his vigour. But while he certainly recovered and returned to his feet, he did not move to finish the beast. He presented it with a slab of dried meat instead, allowing it to join him in feasting.
It was hardly the most correct choice with victory in mind, but he could not fathom any other. Through the extended battle, the Cadrian hunter had gained a great respect for his foe. He may not have used his god-given weapons, but he still had his god-given might. And in spite of it, they were evenly matched. Curiously, it seemed that the tiger harboured a similar sense of respect. The proud creature did accept his sympathy, but rather than taking up a stance and resuming the battle, or even just walking away, it lowered its head and bowed. It began to glow as it did, a powerful, brilliant gold. Power gushed from its core, pulsing through its body as Kael’ahruss’ divinity took hold.
And on that day, at that moment, the tiger was remade, given life and purpose anew. By the time the light faded, the feral monster was gone, replaced by the divine beast forever known as the champion’s companion.
Together, they would hunt.
Together, they would seek the end of Claire Augustus.
___
The warlord who ruled Cadria’s southeastern province scratched the back of his head as he felt a sensation equally foreign and familiar. The strange prickling normally only affected a specific part of his body, usually his head or his heart, but on that particular evening, he felt it equally in every cell at once. And though its intensity was run through a filter and greatly reduced, it was nearly strong enough to render him unconscious.
He was so surprised that, for a little while, he simply sat still and did nothing. He took his time to parse the sensation, taking deep breaths to calm his rapidly-beating heart.
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One of his children had been terminated. And through their entanglement, he had experienced her death. From what he gathered—the memories were oddly broken and distorted even though they were usually crystal clear—Number Fourteen had been evaporated by a spell in spite of her intangibility. And for the time being that was all the information he was able to pull from her final moments.
It would take a few days for him to restore her consciousness, though there was a chance that even that would not allow him to confirm her killer. The skill that allowed him to restore his spawn was yet imperfect, and many of them came out with their minds half scrambled. It was a coin toss as to which memories were retained. She would likely lose most of the memories associated with her infiltration as well, but that was even less of a concern. He had already received her report; she had used Pollux’s communication devices to write a detailed analysis of the enemies inbound.
From the point of view of most other sentient species, Lord Ephesus was a cold-hearted father, but he didn’t mind the label. In the first place, to call him a father was a misnomer, just as it was to describe her as his daughter. That was not to say they weren’t parent and child—Ephesus had certainly spawned Number Fourteen some thirty years prior—but so too were they one and the same.
Number Fourteen had practically been a perfect copy of the original when she first split off, with all of her stats, skills, and memories identical. Her personality was the only thing separate. While Ephesus was every bit as willful, ambitious, and cunning as all true lorputi, his clones were without any drive or desire. It couldn’t be helped. To produce a child with its own will, he would have to find an unrelated individual and perform an exchange of genetics. Ephesus had no such interest. Even one such exchange at any point in his life would forever remove his ability to produce subservient clones.
Again, it was a decision that would have led to some minor judgement, and again, Ephesus didn’t care. He was far more concerned with the manner of his other self’s death than the fact that she had died. He needed to know who killed her and how, so he could avoid the same fate himself, or perhaps find some way around the weakness that had led to her defeat.
With that thought in mind and his heart finally calmed, Ephesus sat up in his chair and turned his eyes to his so-called daughter’s final report.
Scouring through the pages in his mind—he had already memorized all of their contents—he recalled each of the enemy combatants and their strengths and weaknesses. From what he had gathered, it was likely the fox that killed her, but ‘Constantius’ was also a possibility.
A laugh rang through his chest as he thought of the faker again. He was certainly caught off guard, but frankly, hearing the news had only led to disappointment. His master’s daughter was worth nothing. He was beginning to doubt that it was really she who had levelled Tornatus to begin with. There were a few traces of the fox’s magic present at the scene, and at least according to his offspring, the halfbreed had crippled herself in making the massive blade. If he had to guess, the weapon was her only contribution.
She wouldn’t make a good match for his Master.
The fox was the only one that could possibly pose a challenge, the only one who could force his master to reveal his hand, the only one who could last long enough for the audience to understand the sheer depth of the god-king’s prodigious might.
He needed her to take the stage. And he needed a way to remove the nuisance before she ruined everything by trying to challenge her father.
The data suggested that she could only be around level eight hundred at most, nine hundred or nine-fifty if her classes were inefficient. She may have been raised in the ideal environment, but everyone knew that she was utterly incompetent. He didn’t doubt for a second that her classes lacked the Royal Cadrian modifier.
After all, his clone had been without a particularly functional body, and it was only in those that their species could truly excel.
Whatever the case, the end result was the same. He couldn’t let her go up against her father.
And it just so happened that assassination was one of the many arts that he had long mastered.
___
Vella, the goddess of war, breathed a sigh as she perused an update on the state of the seven realms. It was a newsletter produced by the celestial thereof, sent out to the pantheon at exactly eight in the morning on the first day of each week. As the demigod in charge of the historical record, Zane was the opposite of lazy. He presented every important event in an easy-to-digest form; it only took a few seconds to internalize all the matters he reported.
Vella took much longer. She carefully scrutinized the divine tabloid, sweeping her many eyes over its form as she pinned it in place with her giant metal legs. She made sure to glean all the information she could, analyzing each event to ensure that nothing was overlooked.
It was an important part of her usual routine. She needed to keep tabs on her enemies and she lacked the time she needed to do all the research herself. Of course, Zane’s work was only surface-level. His writings functioned more as news articles than they did academic papers, and there was only really so much she could learn, even reading between the lines. Still, it was good enough. A careful look or two sufficed to confirm if there was anything that required further attention.
With the chore finally out of the way, the arachne kicked the board out of sight and returned her eyes to the panels floating in the space around her. There were enough of them to completely mask the Hall of Heroes, the grand temple that served as the goddess’ domain, and each featured a view of the world, focused on an entity therein.
She was following the most interesting warriors in each of the mortal realms. While some of them were certainly considered the mightiest in their respective domains, many were of little renown. It was not necessarily the extent of one’s abilities that garnered the goddess’ interest. Anyone could gain levels—that was quite literally why dungeons existed to begin with—but most struggled to draw out their potential.
That was why, after quickly scanning most of her bookmarks, she turned her eyes to one Virillius Augustus. Her cheeks glowed as she watched him, even though he was doing very little of note. The moose-based cervitaur in question was seated at his desk, sorting through a stack of papers with a hand pressed against the side of his face. He occasionally ruffled his silver hair and fiddled with his darkened horns, but otherwise, he was perfectly still.
She knew it wouldn’t be long. There was less than a year until he stepped onto the battlefield, and there was sure to be another war to follow. The Western Alliance was rife with fear. Cadria was not only a military monstrosity, but an economic giant with heavy investment in education and scholarly pursuits. Its sway was ever-growing.
The seventeen-member alliance was hardly blind to the superpower’s machinations. Cadria’s tendrils were stretching ever further south, extending each time their envoys demonstrated the boons of cooperation.
There wasn’t much time for them to act, but the tournament would certainly provide a window. The nation’s warriors would surely flood the capital to witness the war by proxy. And in doing so, they would leave the west wide open. The alliance would have a rare chance to strike at the nation’s undefended side, to claim the continent’s breadbasket for its own and secure more high-level dungeons.
It was precisely to support said plan that Vella had recently taken action. She chose seventeen fighters, one from each allied state, and bestowed a series of powerful blessings and an equally powerful set of demonic urges. They were all souls in which she saw great potential, but only time would tell if they could meet her expectations.
She could only hope that they would push Virillius as he had never been pushed before. Perhaps hard enough that she could see the full extent of his might. Or perhaps even further, so that he might arrive in her hall and fulfill her fervent desire.
Her heart was aflutter. She couldn’t wait.
Her web was ready; the pesky lion could do nothing to stop her.