“Come forth and die Hero.”
The Orc Hero actually faltered when he heard that. Perhaps he knew he didn’t measure up to the Heroes that had come before him. Jaren had faced two of the previous ones along with his companions and estimated them as being the top of tier seven. He couldn’t imagine how many elites those monsters had killed to get to that level. The thought of all of those veteran soldiers and adventurers slain just to power up these monsters drove his Rage further, and he could almost feel the skill’s growth under that impulse.
A memory of Royal Champion Claudius’ party returning from battle with the first Hero crossed his mind. Three members of the five man party had returned. Claudius’ wife was weeping in her sister’s arms. The veteran tier five healer had lost her nerve after failing to keep her husband alive and retired to the capital to raise their two young children. The sister, a tier five Archmage, had joined another team and died facing the second Hero. The other survivor had been the Shadowstalker Darian. After his sister’s death in the fight against the first Hero, he had participated in all of the others. Due to the value of his skills, he was selected to lead one of the first groups through the portal. Jaren couldn’t rely on his help in this fight, but the Rage he felt was sharpening his instincts and they told him that killing this Hero was not just possible, but highly likely.
The Hero’s hesitation confirmed his instincts and Jaren capitalized on it. Instead of moving forward to engage the hero directly, he surged towards the left to target the two Shamans there. There were two Orcs in front of him with Warrior type Jobs, he guessed they were Champions or Warchiefs. Jaren couldn’t be certain and his connection to Arinth had weakened enough that he was certain he needed to spare any divine power he had access to for emergency spells instead of casting Identify on them. A rough estimate was enough, his years of experience and instincts told him that the first was slightly stronger than him, while the second was significantly weaker.
Knowing this and that he only had so much time before the others reacted, he feinted towards the first. As that one moved its ax to block his spear, he switched targets by shifting the spear’s trajectory and increasing his speed in a burst of movement. The second one took the spear in the throat before even realizing he had been targeted. Jaren heard a snarl of rage from the initial target but ignored him, swinging the spear into the nearest of the Shamans. That one was able to quickly defend the lateral swing with its gnarled staff, but was knocked off guard from the force and stunned by the backlash from its interrupted spell.
Jaren sidestepped the vicious swing from the Warlord behind him as he stabbed three more times at the Shaman in front. The Shaman was only able to block the first, taking the second in the gut and the third in his right eye. The spear only stopped when the bladed lugs impacted the face of the Orc, a full half foot of the tip protruding from the backside of the Shaman’s skull. Jaren kicked the body from his spear before spinning it in a defensive sweep, catching three of the lower tier chaff in the arc and reaping their lives. As he focused on the fight and the sensation of his new skills, he felt them improving in real time.
He ignored the system prompts of skill and level improvement and unleashed a flurry of attacks on the Orc behind him. The aura that augmented the chaff around him gave him away as a Warchief, a tier four martial leadership Job, and possibly a more dangerous foe than the Hero that had still not truly joined the fight. This Orc Warchief was canny, defending only the most deadly strikes, while minimizing nonlife threatening ones in a hope to save time for the three surviving Shamans to prepare their spells. A fresh rush of goblin and orc chaff separated the two for a moment, while the surviving Shamans unleashed their spells at the same time.
[Skill changed: Instinctive Perception lv 4 -> Instinctive Perception lv 5]
As their arcane energies surged to launch the spell, Jaren sensed their intent and surged towards the Shamans and their guardians on the opposite side. Two blasts of arcane energy struck where Jaren had just been, killing half a dozen of the low tier chaff that had rushed to contain him, while he barely noticed the disorienting effects of some form of enchantment due to the stacking resistances from his Fighting Spirit and Rage skills.
The Shamans were caught off guard as he approached them and one of their guards was also half a step late. The other was ready though and the Ogre swung its wolftooth club down at him from above, forcing Jaren to choose to back off rather than taking such a crushing blow. He responded with a flurry of attacks at the Ogre which had not recovered its stance, culminating in a lethal strike into the armpit. He sought to approach the Shamans once again but was thwarted by the other Champion and the Hero who had finally moved to engage.
Jaren was pushed back by a series of exchanges with those two opponents, before he was finally able to sidestep the Champion and place him between the Hero and himself, but before he could capitalize on it, he had to dodge to the side again as his Instinctive Perception triggered with the intent of the three Shamans. This time they worked together to spread the area of effect of their spells and he was caught up in one of the blasts. His mind registered the pain coming from his left side, and he channeled a small amount of his remaining divine power into the area to stop the damage from spreading.
Though it was only a small amount, it still amounted to a full third of what he had left. A part of his mind registered it as he continued fighting. The area of effect spells had cleared a significant part of the narthex they were fighting in and had even caught the Champion he had just been fighting in the blast as well. The Orc had been much less fortunate than he, with a significant portion of his left arm eaten through by the acid and most of his armor in tatters. Significant portions of his skin were bubbling even now and its porkine screams ended mercifully as the Warchief mercifully dispatched it.
Jaren tsked to himself as he registered the experience the Warchief had taken for itself and denied him. It was a rather ruthless move, but the analytical part of his mind recognized it for what it was. The Warchief was probably tracking his experience and had judged that if Jaren had taken the kill himself, he would have leveled and the accumulated injuries and fatigue from the fight to this point would have been reset by the leveling process. Jaren had to admit that the Warchief was most likely the most dangerous foe in the room so instead of facing the Warchief and the Hero at once, he attacked towards the side again, cleaving through several groups of chaff infantry that had attempted to clog the space between him and the single unprotected Shaman on that side.
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Once more, he sensed the intent from the Shamans and even saw the sneer form on the face of the one in front of him as he approached so he forcefully changed his direction once again. He felt sharp pain in his right knee as a ligament tore, but he still forced his body to move at full speed to dodge whatever trap they had set. Another blast rocked the room as the three shamans once more used their wide range spells to try to suppress him. This time his reaction had been sufficient to avoid the blast altogether andJaren was rewarded with the surprise on the Shaman’s face as his thrown spear had pinned it to the wall behind it. He drew his sword as he dashed towards the pinned Shaman, ignoring the growing pain from his damaged knee. From the other side of the room he heard the roar of the Warchief who was rushing to intercept him.
Fortunately for Jaren, even though the Warchief was faster than him, the distance was too great. He beheaded the impaled Shaman and spun to defend himself from the Warchief as the light of a level up shone around him.
[Level changed: 2 -> 3]
[Body changed: 73 -> 79]
[Agility changed: 61 -> 64]
Along with the light came the promised healing and refill of his stamina. He ignored the status notifications as he deflected the overhand strike from the ax to the side. The calculative part of his brain told him that this was his chance. In his fury, the canny Warchief had committed too much into that attack and destroyed its posture. Capitalizing on it, Jaren stuck down with a sweeping overhead attack of his own that drove the ax further to the side, followed by a flurry of stabs to the face and armpit, before cleaving down onto the freshly exposed neck of his opponent. The Hero that had been rushing forward halted his steps as the Warchief’s head landed in front of him.
The room went quiet momentarily as the various monsters stared at the head of their Warchief and felt the power of his aura leaving them. The silence was finally broken with the unsettling sound of Jaren pulling his spear from the wall and the corpse that had been pinned to it. The eyes of the stunned monsters turned up from their dead Warchief at that sound and fear began to take root as they saw the bloodied foe in front of them.
They could tell that his injuries and fatigue from before had been wiped away by the recent level up, as evidenced by the unblemished skin where the acid attack had struck him before. Meanwhile, the aura of the Warchief which had been bolstering their morale was gone and his death was recent. The narthex was filled with the corpses that served as proof of why they individually didn’t particularly need to be there in this moment. As these thoughts began to take root in their heads and encourage them to find better places to be, it was the Hero that acted first. He had made eye contact with the human warrior and those eyes had looked upon him not as if they were looking at an opponent but rather as if they were looking at prey.
The moment the Hero started to move towards the door, Jaren was already moving to intercept him. He swept aside any chaff that got in his way and struck out viciously with his spear at the unprotected legs of his opponent. The Hero felt pain and fell to the ground. He rolled over in fright and sought to bring his ax up to protect himself. As he did so he sought with his eyes for assistance, but the room was quickly emptying as the surviving Shamans and chaff followed his example to flee from the room.
His weapon was quickly battered aside and flung from his hands as he screamed out his terror. He felt the spear penetrate his abdomen, arms and legs several times. It seemed as if his opponent was not willing to let him die quickly. Even as he screamed for mercy, he remembered his own deeds and the number of humans he had slaughtered slowly and knew that mercy would not be granted. Finally, the spear sliced through his throat and he heard the human warrior roar out his rage and indignation into the night sky as he gurgled his final breaths.
As he finished off the enemy Hero, Jaren saw that the area around him had been emptied. He felt that the fight was over and he knew that his Rage was not spent, so he shouted it out into the night sky. It started as something between a scream and a shout, releasing his hopelessness, self-recrimination, fear, pain, and anger, but even as his voice cracked, he felt as if the well of emotions had grown deeper instead of emptying so he shouted louder this time, and as he did so he felt and heard a change. What had once been something between a shout and a scream had become instead a roar so primal that it would have startled him if it hadn’t felt so natural. As his roar continued he felt a deeper change within himself that accompanied the deeper emotions that were flowing through him.
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Deep in the mountains Pravmajin stirred from her slumber. At first she could not tell why, but then she heard a sound from a great distance, weak and small. She felt it in her blood as much as she heard it with her ears. It sounded like the mewling of a hatchling. She cast her senses to the hatcheries deep within her lair, but all of the eggs lay dormant as they should, not one had hatched, so she cast her senses further.
As her senses stretched out beyond the mountain lairs of her kin and into the realms of their human vassals, she began to grow alarmed at the devastation she witnessed. She cast her spirit further, towards the place where the sounds of the hatchling could be heard and as she did so she sensed the emotions of it and the affliction peculiar to her descendents.
When her senses finally reached the place where the sound that woke her came from she found him, a young manling, bearing the markings of her descent, still young enough to be a hatchling in her eyes. He stood in the entrance to her father’s temple and all around him was fire and blood. She now knew what had triggered her bloodline’s affliction as she saw the scene within the temple. In the alcove dedicated only to her father, the high priest of her father’s faith among the humans lay slain upon the steps to his altar. The evidence of the killing pointed to the demihuman monsters that she saw within the temple, the city around it, and the kingdom devoid of its people.
Among the proginitors of her kind she was known as one of the most calm, but all Dragons have reverse scales. Hers were few. The lesser of the two, born of her position as matriarch was the wellbeing of her progeny. The greater of the two, born of her bloodline’s affliction, the very affliction the recently awoken manling was suffering from, was her sense of loyalty. Every one of her descendents could potentially experience this if they chose their loyalties poorly. The defining feature of her bloodline, at least in comparison to her kin, had always been their profound loyalty and whenever that sense of loyalty is profaned it serves as a tremendous assault upon their identity, bordering on existential crisis. She could tell from the emotion in this hatchling’s cries that it was this crisis that had awakened him and the scene she witnessed had touched both of her reverse scales. Her fury thundered across the skies in a roar of her own.
“You dare!”