Chapter Seventy-Two

Ambrose’s world became a shadow, painted black—all except for Eric, a beacon of red light moving away from him. The little girl’s scream was a distant echo, drowned out by the undulating, pulsating red light that was Eric’s fleeing form.

Ambrose Severen ran towards the red light and away from the little girl’s screams. He was unaware of the orcs attempting to break through the wooden door behind him, which led to the people huddling below for safety.

He didn’t care.

All he cared about. All he wanted. Was Eric Delrosa dead before him. Anything else, everything else, was secondary to that. An orc tried to attack him, a flare of fire, the smell of burning flesh, and the orc was no longer a problem. Eric’s laughter was an insidious, living serpent coiled around Ambrose’s world of shadow. It spurred Ambrose on, his heart pounding in beat to it.

“It was always going to end that way, you and Alice. You’re a killer, Ambrose, not just of monsters or people but of everything around you. You kill all the joy and everything good that you attempt to build. We are alike, in that way, both of us killers. The difference is that I embrace it; I revel in it.”

Eric’s words carried to him like slow, methodical hammer blows.

Hellfire raged around Ambrose as he rocketed himself forward.

Only to have his world of shadow shattered by a hammer blow to his front as Ambrose was pounded backward like the crack of a fastball on a major league baseball bat. He slammed into a tree, the bark a thunderclap around him as it splintered, the tree breaking in half from the force of it, falling to the side in a slow fall that boomed across the island.

Ambrose coughed, his body twitching from pain. Pain that he hadn’t felt in a long while. His eye narrowed as he slowly looked up. A genuinely massive orc swung a hammer up to rest on his shoulder. He was outfitted in the same gleaming green-gold plate armor he had seen many the orcs wear. This one did not have any runes.

His hammer was a seizable black weapon, with a pointed, sharpened end and white light-like wisps of frost melted off of bright pale blue runes. The orc himself had the largest, sharpest tusks he had seen on an orc yet. His features were gruff, with a noble edge, and his eyes were bright pink pricks of red that were just as dead as any of the other orcs Ambrose had seen.

Beyond him, Eric stood on a hill overlooking the western beach. He held up an orb, which contained rivers of flowing lava and blackened stone within.

“Do you know what this is, Ambrose? No, I suppose you don’t at that. I bought it on the System store. It allows me to enter another realm and go on a little incursion of my own, so to speak. My orc here will do his best to kill you, Mr. Severen. I doubt he’ll succeed. In the meantime, I will be on a bit of adventure in this realm and see the sights. Ta ta!”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Eric flicked the stone to the ground, and a vertical slit of fire cut through the air like a knife. It opened into a doorway, and beyond it, hell itself—a world of blackened flame and even darker stone. Ambrose could have sworn he saw a giant of fire off in the distance.

He also had no intention of allowing Eric to escape. Silver chains spiraled outward to try to wrap around the orc and succeeded, much to Amrbose’s surprise.

For a moment.

The muscles around the orc bulged, his hammer shone with blue light, and the chains shattered as the orc roared his defiance. But it was enough of a delay for Ambrose to get around the large orc, where he could launch his axe, infused with an [Infernal Smite] and pumped full of his mana.

It flew, spinning end over end in a moment Ambrose saw in slow motion.

It hit Eric in the shoulder just as he hopped through the portal. There was a spray of blood, and then the portal winked out. Ambrose could not recall his axe, which was no longer on this plane.

The orc spun around, hammer coming toward Ambrose like an oncoming train.

Focus came to his call in the next breath, and he pored his spirit and mana into [Infernal Aegis]. Fire met the cold blue light of the hammer runes, and the hammer could not complete its descent. Ambrose flared the skill, and his spirit was like the fist of an angry god, pounding doubt into the orc.

Ambrose felt his eyes widen. The orc gritted his teeth, his tusks moving upward as another spirit met his own. The two spirits went to war with each other, pressing against one another as Ambrose focused his mind and will into a sword.

The orc's fist turned a white-green around the grip of his hammer, and the muscles under his biceps bulged like he was lifting a great weight. Ambrose felt his nails curl into his palm, sending a sharp, tingling prick up his wrist.

Ambrose sent the chains of [Infernal Sanctuary] out to distract his foe. His spirit surged as the orc had to split his focus to deal with the chains, succeeding in beating them back but losing as Ambrose’s spirit brought him to his knees.

Ambrose walked slowly towards the orc, who struggled to raise his hammer, frost billowing around him, and his spirit was even now trying to keep back Ambrose’s own. As Ambrose walked, he held out a hand. From his palm, hellfire began to coalesce, to build and thread into an axe.

Ambrose stood before the struggling orc, raised his axe, and, with an effortless slash, cut through the shoulder holding the hammer. The orc's mouth opened in a scream he could not give a voice to. His arm was blackening ash. The hammer rested on the ground, runes casting winter shadows on the beach.

He kept his spirit going, savagely beating the opposing spirit down as Ambrose picked up the hammer on the ground. He allowed the axe to disappear as he hefted the hammer. Ambrose glanced at it, whirled it around, and flicked his single gaze to meet the orcs.

Normally, Ambrose’s anger was a fire, a storm of flame, lightning, and thunder. He kept it leashed, kept it under control, under a carefully cultivated focus.

But now? Now it was a cold thing, the clarity of a clear blue lake frozen on a winter night, pale moon light glinting across its surface. Eric was gone, and he would follow in time.

First? First, he would end the threat to his island, and put things right. Then he would buy the same orb Eric bought and follow him. Pursue him, hound him, and eventually, break him. With a blow backed by D-Grade strength and the blazing fury of a grieving man, Ambrose smashed the orcs head in with the point of his own hammer.

It burst apart like a watermelon dropped from a great height.

The corpse dropped to the ground with all the finality of a period at the end of the sentence.