Novels2Search

41

Is someone whom contradicts himself crazy, how come the world has so many exceptions to its own rules.

You might understand what I say with a single phrase "Some people are more equal than others"

A brilliant phrase that shows the even equality can have a different meaning to some, people, that words are what we make them to be, illusions of the mind, tools to do our biddings and like good and evil they are subjective and not complete in their meaning.

A rock, a boulder, a pebble, a stone words that have similar meaning and might even describe the same thing, so how can people not contradict themselves where they might call someone a stonehead, when they make the world pleasure sound sinful, when they make the world love equal to lust, when they make the word virgin something to be shamed about.

Christopher spent months in the cult's hideout, for some reason he was being passed from one cult to another, each giving him promises that if he joins them they would give him a good life, power and some even sent hot chicks to draw his attention.

He however was tired and plainly disgusted by their antiques, they were simply to shameless and in a single word disturbing, it was as if most of the people there were crazy.

Of course his thoughts were mirrored to them, as they thought the same thing about him, was he even a man, was he gay or something, how could he not be interested in power, after all in their wold power ruled supreme.

Christopher however gained one piece of knowledge that could be called precious, if you believed it of course.

The oldest cults, ones that have no idols called Truthseekers, imply that Ecclesis and the Demon God of the 100th floor were long ago Otherworlders, summoned heroes from earth whom changed their class into the Only godly classes that exist in Axis, the Godly Healer and the Godly Mage.

They also implied that The otherworders' strange powers are not gifted by Ecclesis but are simply awakened the moment they step into Axis starting from the top of Axis, but since Ecclesis doesn't want them there he sends them to whichever place summoned them to Axis.

Of course these heretical doctrines were brainstormed into him, but they probably weren't completely false or maybe they were, but it was strange why they had to ascend the dungeon pillar if he could simply send them back in the first place, after all historicaly all the heroes ascend the tower as they give up on fighting the demon god.

Of course there was no proof, other than that the the cults were originaly started by heroes whom in the end died because of Ecclesis' followers.

It might sound distressing, but the most enticing cult were the devil worshipers, what they promised was a ticket back to his own world, they promised to take him up to the 99th floor, but the price was simply disturbing, they wanted him to become some sort of breeding machine for three years and one year it would take them to bring him up to the 99th floor and meet Ecclesis and as a hero whom made it so far he would no doubt send him back.

Time passed and patience hit its thresshold, Christopher had gone through all cults and all propositions, but he answered to non, until threats begun to come.

Threats about killing his classmates, threats about crippling him for life so that even Ecclesis couldn't fix him, stuff that any villain would say.

Their classes contained many theories that could not be proved and would be considered heretical, but one stood out the most, The balance of the world, by the Yin Yang society as they called themselves.

Their theory was that Axis was originaly divided into two sides, the Light and the Dark, one was given to the god or light and the other to the god or darkness, but they weren't Good and Evil, both of them can do both good and evil.

The Pillar that connects the two sides together is called the Axis and there were records that Demons and monsters were also intelligent, their only flaw is that they were more primitive and didn't need to have intercourse, they were simply spawned out of thin air.

The Bosses as they are called whom exist every 10 floors are responsible for the spawn rate of monsters, they have the ability to increase the spawn rate and even control them, in other words what they are doing descending and killing the demons was no different than invading their rightfuly owned land, conquering it so that they could gain profit, sincee it wasn't exactly a matter of land to live, most of the "surface" world was after all barren and wild, they hadn't settled it fully and were already claiming land in the lower floors.

Of course whom started first was historicaly unclear, most probably it was the demons and monsters since their spawn rate is supperior to that of intelligent beings whom have to live and propagate, the monsters simply spawned randomly.

In other words one could be controlled with laws and other stuff while the other was sort of like a force of nature, in other words the spawned monsters were overwhelmingly increasing in numbers, thus they had to migrate to find new territories and once the floor was full there was only two ways to go, up and down and since a beast can feal the danger from downstairs they decide to migrate upwards, where there weren't so many strong predators, or at least not so bloodthirsty ones.

Christopher was between two choices, believe what they said and not believing them, it was a rather intracate question of trust and he of course trusted no one.

In the first place he never trusted anyone and had no will to go to the final demon boss or something, he simply didn't care about them and perceived this place as a sort of game world, he didn't take life seriously and although there was pain involved, believe me it was much less as when you are ganged uppon until your insides hurt, but the most painful thing that a child can ever feel is abuse from their parents, of course I don't speak about stuff like torture, I speak about everyday punishments when the child misbehaves, doesn't want to do its homework, lies to its parents, fights with other children, in other words the more energetic kids.

Christopher had been one of the naughty kids, the punishment he undergone as a child did in a way help him become more reserved, but it also cause some rather unwanted side effects, his tendency towards masochism and sadism, well his endurance to pain as well.

Of course he was always unyielding and maybe he was somewhat crazy, as he came to thank his parents for the beatings, not because it gave him pleasure or something, but because it helped him develop his indecisive and cautious personality, which he himself enjoyed.

The lessons went on and the threats begun to develop into harassment, both sexual and violent. He was forced to reconsider many things, he was confused and simply could not understand why would god give him such a trial.

Days passed and he begun to adopt to his new reality, his face became like a stone mask, showing no emotion whatsoever, his eyes dim and hazy as he looked at everything as if it was all irrelevant, if he wanted to become a buddha then it wouldn't be too hard in his void state.

The cultist were becoming desperate as they were at their rope's end, there were only three choices forwards, drugs, crippling and lastly abduction.

Till then they hadn't drugged him with dwarven drugs in a wishful thought that he might still cooperate, but they had already made sure that he would not be able to escape as they did put a little something in his drink to make him unable to cast spells.

The mind drugs however and the brainwashing and addiction was one of the last resorts they had in place, they would try and make him a zealot, a fanatic whom didn't even know his own name, why they didn't do that before, well two reasons, not all of the cults agreed with it and secondly those drugged fanatics were not exactly useful.

Of course crippling him was a rather far fetched thing, but if they could not do any better they had no qualms in cutting his tongue, gushing his eyes out or even cutting his limbs off leaving only a head and a dick, like some sick perverted fetish.

Lastly they had the idea of abducting another hero and use Christopher as a detrimental, kind of an example as to what will happen to them.

Every time Christopher would fall asleep there would be nightmares instead of dreams, in his dreams he was enjoying himself doing all the things he wouldn't dare in real life, he was a warped villainous character a pervert and a merciless killing machine.

All of that however was a dream, he never had much control over his dreams, whom however can say that it isn't himself whom decides what he does inside those dreams.

Each day passing his personality becoming more and more twisted as now they had begun adding drugs into his food and water.

=========================================================

Marilena was the one from Winoria whom had gained the most from all the disaster due to a twist of fate.

Marilena was a scout, meaning that her abilities would be of the support type, her cheat power was called Scan, she could detect anything around herself as if she had a sonar radar implanted in her head.

Her most however prized possession was the mutated skill "Leech Luck", she could steal the fortune of other beings, in general it could be called useless since luck is something intagible, but it was a cumulative skill, meaning that the more she used it the more fortune would smile upon her.

It was of course ridiculous how she was only level 28 after so many months, but there was a reason for this, first of all she was simply too lucky, she didn't even encounter any monster at all as her logistics army travelled from one point to another carrying supplies, the harpies always missed them by a hair or ended up being ambushed by them instead.

She of course had no great power in battle, all she did was touch the captured enemies and suck the luck out of them, making them die of organ failure or catch some terrifying decease.

The main however problem was that she had difficulties leveling up, due to the abnormaly huge amount of luck she had absorbed.

Of course as people say sometimes you will run out of luck, in a way the saying is particularly true in Axis, Luck is a hidden parameter that changes daily, but she had gained a basic luck parameter.

For example if your Luck=X where X ranges from 1 to 100, then her Luck=X+Stolen Luck, meaning that her luck will never dry out, unless of course she encounters a deadly crisis which would normaly kill her, but instead it drains her luck.

In general words luck rules over three parameters, danger encouter, stumbling upon fortunes and lastly critical chance in combat. Of course the stronger the danger the more luck you will need to avoid it, the bigger the fortune more luck you will need to stumble upom it and lastly the more skilled the oponent the less are your chances to cause him a critical wound or even fatal ones due to sheer luck.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Of course the main problem was that she didn't gain any experience since she didn't encounter any monsters and as for fortunes, she was too focused on her task to even notice them as she flew them by, leaving treasures and fortunes lost under her feet and leaving them far behind her as they flew rapidly carrying supplies.

Areti and Mary by that time had already reached level 100 and higher, making it somewhat difficult for her to look at them in the eyes, she felt useless, like with the time when Mary was burning and Areti was doing her best, thus she did her best in suporting them, bringing the supplies on time, carrying the wounded from the battlefield back to the fort and other fortified locations and camps.

She was today responsible for scouting for survivors, she and her army was there at the battlefront, well mostly responsible for the aftermath of the war since they were only scouts and rogues.

It was then that among the survivors she saw Areti and a bunch of other birdmen she didn't know. With one view she could tell that they weren't injured at all, probably had just arrived, the two of them then went to group up with Mary whom waited for them in the nearby camp, a fortified cave complex where they camped since it was easy to defend in the narrow passages against overwhelming odds.

The plan was simple they Birdmen's plan was simple, they would hold their ground until the demon king revealed himself, then their already trained hero would descend with the bravest soldiers and defeat the demon king, the end.

This was the standard plan of most Countries whom saw no reason to figt against the endless waves until the demon King is dead and spawn rate returns to normal.

Only the expanding kingdoms of humanity and beastmen had a reason to build villages in the lower floors of the dungeon pillar.

Even so however Areti's plan was not without faults, they begun to analyze ways to make it more practical. The three girls might not have been physicaly strong before, but the three of them were model students and top scorers in tests, their brains worked wonders when it came to calculations.

Combining their experience in their new fields, logistics, defence and offence, the three of them begun to create a more solid plan or better said plans.

Each one of them was given a task, the most dangerous being given to Marilena, the reason being her ability of stealthy flight, only she could do the task.

The other two were given secondary tasks, what Marilena was tasked to do was poison the Blue Harpy Queen and leave a bunch of green feathers on her corpse.

Marilena however told them that for the plan to work she would need the sneak skill or something similar, since her luck would probably not be enough, to sneak all the way into the Blue Harpies' territory assassinate the Queen and sneak back alive.

Truth be told she had many opportunities to get the skill, but she was saving money to get a better armor set, since hers didn't even offer the slightest of protection, it was of course better than the thing they wore back in Nivava when they were so high level that even clothes would be difficult for them to carry around due to their low physique.

The neverending night was her only cover as she stealthily flew all the way to the west. She was given a small vial of poison, an enchanted cloack that raised her stealth and lastly a ring that could turn her invisible for 30seconds.

Marilena didn't know what to make of this, she was nervous and frightened, she wanted to turn back and talk it over with the others, returning to the logistics, just travelling back and forth making rounds through the fortresses.

She however couldn't disappoint her friends Areti and Mary, whom in turn had their own missions to accomplish, which used their powers.

She scanned again and again with her cheat power called Scan, it was more like a sonar as already explained, she could easily detect if there were obstacles in the dark, thus she had to use it more than once as she flew over the rocky badlands.

She shivered every time she detected a living monster and turn another way, the strange innate compass showing her the right direction to go, it was a strange ability that birdmen had.

She had been flying for three days strait, in the eternal darkness, she herself felt tired, but she didn't dare stop and rest, she was fully devoted to her mission, the once short glass wearing girl with the well bushed hair had now the visage of a valkyrie as her dark wings flattered in the winds, her eyes filled with courage.

She was approaching as she found more and more monsters in her path, it was now practicaly impossible to fly in the air, forcing her to stop and rest and wait for them to go and sleep.

Each day she would travel only by a little, stealing luck from any creature she found sleeping, she wouldn't kill them but she would take all their luck away, essentialy dooming them to a miserable death.

Travelling deeper and deeper into the lands of monsters she begun to falter, she could tell just how danger it would be to go forwards as monsters were now everywhere, it was as if she was heading to the eye of a tornado.

Her journey was becoming dangerous, but her luck was good, only problem was, she found herself not knowing where to go next, ending at a completely empty valley.

People might think that she didn't know where se was and in truth she didn't know as well, her biological compass said that she was already there, meaning that in this empty field lived the Harpy Queen.

There was seemingly no monster at all in the Huge empty field, thus she decided to stealthily fly over it.

It didn't take long to detect a large Birdlike monster that was also flying in the air, thus she turned invisible and flew at a safe distance after the Harpy Queen.

It was strange how the Harpy queen would at times find the strange Zephyr birds in her plains and hunt them down. The Zephyr birds were human sized birds that flew at extreme speeds that could catch up to a plane in our world.

The huge Harpy queen however didn't hunt them for food, she did so in order to level up. The Zephyr bird monster was categorized as C rank and had a basic intelligence, but it didn't help it much to overcome an A rank being like the Harpy Queen.

Her song was enough to make it submit to her fubbleminded and then she violently shred it to pieces.

Marilena followed the large Harpy at a distance and was shocked to find out just how powerful the monster was.

Its speed was far supperior to her own, of course it wouldn't fly at full speed as it soared in the sky bellow her, Marilena had taken the high ground and followed her from a great height, she could feel the cold permeneating her flesh as she flew behind the monster that was her target.

Two days later the monster at last decided to return to its nest. Marilena was rather anxious as she had to pour the vial in the Harpy Queen's mouth thus she begun to crawl closer to the large monster.

It was the height of a human, but its wingspan could easily reach 4meters in width, its female parts were fully visible now that she slept and her four royal guards, blue feathered Harpy Sirens, were patroling the nest in order to provide her with a safe nap and alert her if something were to happen.

Marilena moved like a commando, okay I was just kidding, she just crawled on the ground like a worm trying to move under the cover of darkness.

Her dark wings helping a lot in camouflaging her body, she was approaching closer and closer and in the end reached the sleeping Harpy queen's feathers.

Now came the difficult part. how to feed her the poison, but before that she begun to leech out all of her luck, after all a monster that was born into nobility would have lots of luck.

One hour later, two hours later, three hours later, her anxiety was getting the worst of her, but she wouldn't chicken out, she slowly and carefully drained the queen of her luck, in hopes of her dying from some heart attack or something, but the idea was to make her so unlucky that she won't detect her, while she herself would be lucky enough to escape undetected.

After five long hours she finaly gathered enough courage to approach the Queen's head and sipped the vial into the queen's mouth. She then begun spreading Green feathers all around the queen and then begun to slowly retreat, this was their plan, hoping that the harpies would be foolish enough to fight it amongst themselves when they see the green harpy feathers.

Without even taking any loot from the queen's nest, Marilena fled as if hunted from the empty plains, the royal guards from start to finish hadn't seen even a trace of her feathers as she flew with the invisibility ring on, 30 second when flying is more than enough to escape from pursuit.

It was rather late however when she discovered that she was unfortunately lost, there were thousands of monsters around her and she hid inside a cave to lay low, she probably wouldn't be able to travel for days as the blue feathered harpies were gathering, they were all heading towards the once empty plains.

From time to time she would enter a dazed state and then come out of it, the harpies were singing as they flew, their song was weaker than the queen's but non the less deadly for her, whose mentality was simply too low with a pathetic 3, having put most of her points into physique, since it would make her faster.

As she entered deeper inside the cave, trying to escape from the singing voices, she stumbled upon a strange stone, the moment she touched it a message popped up.

"Would you like to change your profession into Heroic Assassin?"

Thinking that it might be better than being a scout she of course accepted the change and then it begun, a huge downpour of experience out of nowhere.

Unknown to her the assassin profesion gained experience from any kill he was responsible for, for example while others would not gain any experience if they poisoned someone, the assassin would, the downs however were also significant, she would not gain any experience from assists, meaning that she would have to hunt alone for more efficiency, for example if two people wounded a beast and one killed it, then they would both take half of the experience, in her however situation, unless it was she whom killed the monster, she would gain no experience and if she did make the kill, the other would gain no experience.

Of course pouring poison into your victim's drink or mouth was someting extremely difficult, especialy not letting your killing intent leak out.

She however was an oddity, she could steal luck and then let people die, the only problem being that it was too slow, it would take days to drain a person of all his luck and have him die, at most she could make it so that he/she ended up in an accident.

She had experimented a lot in her travels with weak monsters, the worst thing however was that she couldn't exactly count luck, how much luck she absorbed or how much luck they had. All she knew was that luck was a five digit value and she could only absorb around 10points per second or so she calculated, but luck is not someting as simple, people might have good luck today, but bad tomorrow, each minute she could absorb 600points of luck, in an hour it became 36000, meaning that if she could absorb luck for an hour, it was like akin to taking away 1/3 of their total luck.

The problem was that she herself could not absorb for so long due to her low magicality or rather magic points, commonly called mana.

She needed to wait for a few minutes to recharge her mana and then leech again, but that didn't really matter since by now she was lucky enough to find jewels under her feet.

Of course te reason why she was gaining so much experience was unknown to her, but not so far away in the once empty plains, the blue feather harpies were fighting amongst themselves on whom would eat the queen's corpse and evolve into the new queen.

Their plan was of course too naive, they had no idea about the monstrous harpies' habits, they had no idea that they would simply try and devour the corpse the moment the queen died and of course due to the poison, many of them begun to die instead of evolving, gifting Marilena a buch of levels, until of course one of them evolved and begun to command the others to resume their duties as if nothing changed at all.

Marilena got 5 levels, reaching level 33 and once she fell asleep she put all of her points into mentality, and stealthy flight.

Two days later she came out of the cave, the chaos outside had subsided and the monsters were no deployed wider, making it easier for her to escape and return back to their gathering spot at the battlefront.