Standing on the rooftop of Field Alpha, one of the training grounds here at Ordo University, determinedly rose the Guild Master of Glory Guild, Archknell, the Deathweaver. His title was given to him for a good reason, for he was what it described: the one who weaved death. Upon one expedition, an S-Rank, he had encountered a being of absolute death with his team, the Fallen Nemesis, the so-called Ceaseless One.
And Archknell had brought death to the Ceaseless One, had raided its crypt and stolen its riches: jewels and treasures, knowledge. The best artisans had crafted the weapons he wielded today, and he had trained in the secret arts once wielded by the Ceaseless One. On one fine night…
[Honor]
The Knell Tolled
You have slain the Fallen Nemesis, the Ceaseless One, and gave your years to learning its immortal secrets. You had invented the new art of weaveform, in which strings woven the strings of life. Now, go. Go and bring death to all deserving, as you have mastered this state of being.
Any and all weaveform attacks have a chance of inflicting Death on living beings, beginning at 0.1%. Beings that have an explicit immunity to Death are excluded.
Every string carries its own 0.1% chance. By stacking multiple strings together, the chance is increased additively.
This is an [Honor] reserved for you and only you, Louis Strander.
His pride was formed.
There within Dawns, a deathless abomination roared, and walkers stormed the streets chanting the same mantra: death, death, death.
Furthermore within Dawns, there was his charge. How old were they? Just middling adults. Plenty of them had their first taste of alcohol. Plenty of them began their first steps into life. Lost their virginity perhaps, experienced their second heartbreaks (the first was taxes). Plenty of them volunteered their lives to the global cause, executing the three core values: security, prosperity, and the union. Plenty of them lost their friends, their teachers, their lovers, their parents; must they also lose their own lives?
Within Dawns, there were the people. Ordinary men, ordinary women and children who formerly strolled the streets happily and alive and smiling. How many died today? Yesterday? In this hour alone, in this single minute, in every breath he took? How many families found themselves without a father or a mother or a child? Like for example the massacre at Julius High School where children had their necks torn out, eaten and brutally mauled, or any of the other disaster-points across the city-state, each having their gore.
And how the day began tragically with the loss of Pillar Vesper. Soldiers and Slayers were routed, killed, hunted to the last like rabid dogs, and everyone watched.
Currently then, how many civilians were watching? There on the rooftops, standing like he did, refugees escaping the chaos below. They barricaded the rooftop doors and paled at every steel bang, looking down at the rotting waves rumbling towards the great necromancer. Did they have hope when Pillar Vesper fell? Or when their own dead rose in impossible numbers?
They swarmed the streets in thousands, pressed between thin alleyways and snaked around whole blocks, stretching towards the golden horizons. Pink heads knocking into one another. Peeling shoulders, exposed tendons and muscles, and many had a permanent jaw-drop.
It was easy to lose hope then, when the world had irreversibly changed and nothing was familiar anymore, as though sugar left a bitter taste and the moon had replaced the sun. Yet for that reason, it was why Archknell was standing on the rooftop of Field Alpha: to remind Ordo that heroes still existed.
After slaying monstrosity after monstrosity, even a god once (that was how he earned his title, Deathweaver), it was there that the previous Guild Master of Glory Guild, Laurel, took him as her protege, and the rest was told in the textbooks.
So he faced his homecity, his nation, and sorrow opened deeper than any cuts. “That’s it then: death. So be it. I will personally deliver sleep to the sleepless ones.”
Archknell raised his [Netherstring Gauntlets] made from the flesh of the Ceaseless Ones, and strings pooled. They held themselves in the sky, reaching, sprawling, grasping at the false night as if to pull down a star. To defeat the Tormented Flesh in a single blow, it required a blow of equal preparation.
He called! “Slayer System! Record video message! Auto-send to all participating Slayers in Operation Scorcher!”
[RECORDING VIDEO MESSAGE! 3…2…1…]
“Slayer Archknell of the Glory Guild lists your new orders, Slayers of Operation Scorcher! Take no care to defeat the Tormented Flesh! I will slay it! Take no care to waste yourselves on the dead! I will return them to Styx! Take no care to despair! We are hope!
“Your order is this: Track the Tormented Flesh and restrain it to a single location and standby! I task Team Luster with the duty! When ready, send the coordinates to either myself or Sage! Upon confirmation, evacuate the immediate area!
“Today, we will fell this horror! Tonight, we will do the same to Pereyra and Tewfik! End recording!”
[END RECORDING]
[RECORDING SENDING… COMPLETE!]
[Death Chance: 23%…25%…26%]
~~~
“So how are we gonna do that?” Kaiya rather calmly asked while watching the Tormented Flesh flatten itself against an office building. Once, it slammed its front—or what looked to be its front—against plexiglass. It shattered, opened to a dead audience. The Tormented Flesh melted almost, a sea of flesh pooling into the building, allowing more corpses to climb and fuse with the bloated mass.
According to the new [Sub-Quest], [Subjugation: Tormented Flesh], one of the Defeat Conditions was allowing it to reach Rank SS. Currently, it was S5 and could already summon hordes at will, so many that virtually everyone in Dawns was either above ground or below. Althea feared for the worst.
She had zero fucking clue how to do restrain it.
“Problem,” Damien nudged them. “Think out loud for us. Showcase your near-infinite well of knowledge. Tell us about curses and necromancy.”
Problem sighed with their unseen mouth, slouched over. “Fine. I’ll enlighten you ignorant lots. Curses and necromancy are two very different fields but they share some overlap. In this case, you can say it’s a perfect fusion. Here’s my theory of how the Tormented Flesh came to be:
“I said before that a tragedy is a bedspawn for negative energy. I should amend that statement with a but. So, but: we live in a very non-magical world. A non-magical world, surprisingly, does not have natural magical occurrences.”
Althea concluded, “So something intentionally did this—“
“No. Sage had investigated earlier: it was formed naturally. How can a non-magical world have a natural, let alone cursed, occurrence? The answer should be simple: the Comets, where one of them is our likely culprit.”
“They used a curse then, right?” asked Vernon, visibly wincing seeing the Tormented Flesh swallow bodies whole. “Right? Like c’mon, that’s gotta be the most cursed thing you have ever seen.”
“Your mother is a start.”
No one said a word. Jury seemed incredibly disappointed.
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Problem cleared their throat. “Okay, this is not a good time for humor, I understand now. I apologize. Initially, I thought a Comet did, in fact, engrave a heinous malediction. But I’m beginning to believe otherwise. Curses come in a variety of forms: inflict negative properties on living and non-living things, as for example turning an arrogant prince into a beast, or a pen forever writing in blood. They’re exact in nature, performing what is due. I have never seen a curse so multi-faceted: reviving the dead, possessing multiple necromantic traits, having the ability to grow stronger.
“So no, it cannot be the former, where a Comet merely made a curse. No, it has to be the second: the curse manifested itself due to the harmful energy present in Gallery Street. That’d be a contradiction however, as I already explained that we live in a non-magical world, thus impossible. The only natural conclusion is this: the Comet performed a miracle.”
“A miracle?” deadpanned Kaiya as the Tormented Flesh devoured a chunk of building. “I respect you, Problem, but that doesn’t look like a miracle to me.”
“In my field, it is. The answer becomes obvious when you think about it for more than a second. Under no circumstances, in the environment allowed, that the Tormented Flesh would come into being. That is the magic performed: the ability to turn a ‘non-magical environment’ into a ‘magical environment’; though I don’t know if it is something akin to environmental transformation, the description is in the name, or amplification, dramatically increasing the present mana levels. Or conceptually even, which is my guess.”
Conceptual magic? That was something Althea had zero knowledge in nor did she want to know its implications. The premise made logical sense though: a typical curse couldn’t be made, so why not change the environment? That was how the Tormented Flesh was made: in a typhoon of negative energy.
“So…” Althea thought out loud, “...if we wanna chain that thing down, then we need a lot of curse energy, right? Or anything intensely negative. It feeds on that like candy.” Like zombies who died unfairly.
“Exactly. We could draw sticks and pick someone to be cursed…” Problem looked around at the current party. No one wanted that. He looked at Damien in particular, and he stuck out his tongue.“Alright then. Jury, send a message on my behalf.”
Jury raised an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering then?”
Problem shrugged. Without much hurry, they came onto the ledge. Two audible clicks echoed, and a roar sent small shockwaves throughout the block. Their cloak swayed in the wind, and their hood tilted towards the party. Behind there, Althea could make out two thin, glowing red eyes. “Seeing as I’m cursed, it’s only fitting that I’m a conduit for such energy.”
“You’re…cursed?” Keen asked. It was a surprise for everyone, except for Jury, but it was not far-fetched. Problem had the aesthetic of a dark mage; hearing that they were cursed was frankly par for the course.
“I am. It is the very reason why I wear this cloak,” answered Problem. There was a somber swing with their words.
“So that’s the plan?” asked Vernon. “Since you’re a ‘cursed being’—I’m sorry by the way, being cursed must suck—but uhm anyway, you’ll act as our distraction? What about us? Or the rest of the Slayers?”
“You’ll prepare for what happens after the fact. There’s no guarantee that the thralls will sleep; most likely, but not certainly. You’re quite fortunate, I have to admit. All you have to do is watch.”
“Are you okay with this, Jury?” Althea asked her. She herself didn’t find any problems (pun not intended) with this plan, though she wasn’t the leader.
Jury sighed, glancing at the Tormented Flesh who grew larger by the second, consuming swaths of zombies and buildings. A blue screen appeared before her. “What do you want to send, Problem?”
“Send this: ‘All Slayers, the plan is this: Allow for Problem to distract the Tormented Flesh and await for Archknell’s judgement. When finished, standby for future orders.’ Do you have it, Jury?”
“I have it. Sending your message now.”
“Good.” Problem began levitating. “Stay here and watch.” And with that, they flew towards the tallest building, a skyscraping chrome giant, moving past missing windows and whatever horrors that laid between the floors, up, up, up, to the roof. In the false night, the stars glew and gave enough light to illuminate Problem and their ambiguous figure, determined only by their cloak.
“Can Problem really attract it?” Delphian worried.
“They can,” answered Jury. “They’re plenty capable, though there’s a reason why we call them ‘Problem’. It’s because of situations like this; they do their own thing sometimes. At least they asked first.”
“Thea…” whispered Vernon, clutching the handle of his S68 for security. “I can’t believe we have front row seats to this.”
“Not as glamorous as I hoped,” Damien cut in. “But it’s the best course of action: leaving things to the professionals. However professional Problem is.”
“Mhm. Shut up and pay attention. Things might change at the last second,” Althea told them.
They could do nothing but watch. So they watched. Their eyes scaled the many defaced rows of foundation and concrete, witnessing desks and chairs and random things dribble from the brutalized metropolitan maws, higher until reaching the dutiful cursed being who stood on the ledge below the rampaging disaster.
“Here I go…” muttered Problem, raising their empty sleeves. Then flung them downwards, bellowing a mana circle underneath their feet. It was a simple spell, simpler than that mana detection ritual earlier—this was merely an exhibition of the cursed energy locked inside now released, chanting.
Every second as the circle persisted, Problem’s figure darkened, bearing the afterglow of dark energy burning from their cloak like ember to a fire. They flourished their sleeves again, rumbling their Krait, and more, the embers became fire and the fire whined into a pyre. It was a buffet of the cursed.
The Tormented Flesh took notice of the increase of delectable negative forces, leered at the source, eyeing it like a lion to a gazelle. Then it smashed against the building, tore out the bottom floors as if clawing for them. Beneath their cowl, Problem grinned without a supposed mouth. “Humiliatingly easy. To think the others kicked up such a fuss. All I needed to do was let loose a little and you are all worked up. I understand though. Being a cursed entity, you thrive in the dark.
“And I am the dark. Perhaps it was worth getting cursed after all.“
The Tormented Flesh slammed itself in agreeable applause, so strong that even Problem felt it from where they were standing.
They sighed. “All things die, Tormented. Remind yourself of this lesson and face death once again. Slayer System: relay the following message to Slayer Archknell and Sage...”
[SENDING…COMPLETE!]
Far away across Dawns was Archknell, maintaining his place upon Field Alpha. Above him grew a twisting abyssal twine of netherstring, crimson red and night black, calling for another in a harmonious marriage. The coordinates were given, the coordinates were known. The end of the present threat was nigh.
“Confirm the location, Sage!” ordered Archknell, holding his arms high, mastering the future attack yet unleashed.
“Coordinates confirmed! It’s the location of the S5 Horror, Tormented Flesh!” called Sage from her end of the System.
“And Problem?”
“That little kid will be just alright, Sage knows it!”
“Heh. He really is a child.” Archknell’s fingers contorted each their own dancer. The strings warped, unknotting themselves and formed the death-giving weapon. A massive thing, large as the glory of the creator, mighty as those he swore to protect. It was a ballista of his own devising, and in a snap, the ropes pulled back as his arms did, mimicking a bow-draw motion.
In the absence of a physical projectile, a thick ebony log rounded to a needle-point, tucked in and secured in the bed of netherstrings, nestled and ready to give sleep. Archknell coiled his arms far apart, clenched both hands, looked towards the souls’ direction, answering their obsession with a somber smile.
[Death Chance: 100%]
“You are clear to fire,” Sage commanded.
“Rest,” and so declared Archknell. He opened his palms and the ballista roared. Ropes snapped, a shockwave rumbled bone-quakingly next, and the quarrel galloped across Dawns as a shooting star crafted by mortal arms.
The Tormented Flesh wailed as the ballista casted a deeper shadow over the urban tops where survivors pointed and gawked. They lifted their fingers and traced the trajectory: high, higher, beyond the concrete tundra, towards the Tormented Flesh.
And when their fingers traced down, the bolt sunk, parallel to the building Problem mounted. It took no less than a second to dash down the height. The speed of it sent galewinds that shattered what remaining glass remained within the block and several more, blew a tempest, blew cars off their wheels and tore apart the flickering street-lights, nearly knocking Problem off themselves.
And a thunderstrike was heard next. To many, it sounded like a fingersnap that belonged to only God, a sound so crisp yet absolute, calling the definitive start of things and the definitive end to everything. It was a snap heard across Dawns.
Problem was oblivious due to standing in such close proximity, briefly going blind and deaf even. But ribbons of thin flesh had risen upwards to their view. A resounding success. Looking down laid the current Tormented Flesh. It had been a mound, a hill flattened into a plateau, and a giant stepped on it. Crushed it, stomped it, smashed it good until paste.
Easily, the gore spanned sprawling streets, splattered into open establishments and splashing red onto ruined wallpaper, and made hills of toppled cars. The zombies, however, was still standing, facing their devastated master, slouched and glazed, but inoperable.
Because at the center of the Tormented Flesh, sleeping as if, was a corpse glowing with the same burning black as Problem. It was a skinless child, oozing gray smoke from its caged lips. The mountain was merely a shell for its heart, attached with several still-connected intestines.
This would be its true form if it had reach Rank SS.
“There you are,” Problem said. “You are the heart. Slayer System, relay a message to all participating Slayers in Operation Scorcher: The Heart of the Tormented Flesh has revealed itself! Before it comes to, do whatever you can to neutralize it! In other words, kill it before it kills you!
“Archknell provided us this opportunity! Let’s not waste it!”