Johan frantically paced the halls of the cathedral, his expression a mess of nerves and misgivings. So deep in thought, he would find himself down the wrong path and need to turn back, over and over. So forgetful of his surroundings that he nearly bumped into a fellow cardinal with a familiar face.
“Ah, Cardinal Hans. Forgive me, I am not minding myself properly…”
“There is nothing to forgive.” Hans returned bluntly and genuinely as the two walked naturally down the same path. “What has trapped you so deep in thought, cardinal?”
“The otherworlders earlier today… I have just come from bringing guidance and sermon to the people besides themselves in fear. The carnage those invaders left in their wake…” Johan recalled the bodies littered the war torn streets.
“Yes, those heathens were frightfully powerful. Had I arrived a moment later Sir Reinolt may well have perished. Such vile magic. Even I could not fully restore him. I must lecture him at a later time. His rash attempt at a second conflict would surely have seen his end if not for Agathe’s noble sacrifice.” Hans spoke bluntly, pausing in a moment of silence out of respect. “...while I am not certain, i believe that among them was the one who defeated the Vampire King.”
Genuine shock spread on Johan’s face, his volume of his response raised a notch. “The champion?”
“Indeed. I have already reported as much to His Holiness. Fortunately, in his wisdom he has elected to take measures so that such a thing will not happen again. Now, I must return to my duties.”
“Yes, of course…” Johan bid Hans farewell and turned down his own way, the frayed state of his bearing quickly melting to an unremarkable calm.
Hans was ever the asset of the church and a good man, but more relevantly a true devotee of the faith in the highest degree. Johan hoped that once he found proof for the insidious true nature of it that he would be able to adapt. However, there was something of far greater concern to him at the moment.
He had accounted in his plans for the some of the invaders to be powerful, but this surpassed his expectations. It may likely prove more difficult to manipulate them and their situations than he previously thought. Although, if they were not so powerful, he might not have had a chance to begin with.
The road ahead was perilous, a single misstep could spell his end. With the new information he gained, Johan decided he would first gather the lesser otherworlders and band them together before approaching the more formidable. And above all, he must find a way to get the Champion on his side.
---
A party of paladins patrolled the small town in the dead of night, all of them vigilant and moving in formation ready to act on a moment’s notice. Two faint arrows shattered the heads of the casters before any could sense them coming, and before any of them could fully shift to realize their situation, four enemies flickered through.
Shin and Ashley reaped three heads each in a blur of aura and metal and Mujin’s spear punctured holes in the faces of two others with deft perfect strikes. The middle aged woman donning slight additions to her gear that designated her as the leader drew her sword and a swift jab of concussive impact dropped her like a sack of flour.
Karla hoisted the paladin over her shoulders and Chariot fled the scene, none within the town the wiser due to the veil of Silence masking the commotion from them. She threw the paladin leader against a tree in the distance outside the town and vines ensnared her, hardening and strengthening from the mana and aura they drained.
They waited for a little while until the draining stopped. Donny lightly smacked the paladin’s face but she showed not a single sign of stirring from her stupor, Karla’s skill of Greater Concuss simply too pervasive. With their time valuable, Jean cast Greater Disrupt and the paladin came to her senses only to be immediately captured in Ashley’s mesmerize.
“How many paladins in the capital?” Donny asked.
“...I’m not sure…”
“Rough estimate.”
“Thousands…”
“How many rankers. Ranked initiates?”
“...more than half…”
“Seriously…?” Yen grumbled.
“What about the other half?” Donny continued.
“...heretics and heathens…”
“Yeah, we need someone a bit higher up.” The knight rose to his feet as the interrogation seemed hardly useful.
“Where can we find higher ranked members of the church than you, outside of the capital?” Kamala asked.
“...captains lead companies within the larger towns and cities… Bishops manage the churches…”
“A large town is our next goal then.” Kamala stated with stoic bearing and a hint of something else. “What we learn out here may not be applicable, but it is a start.”
“I wanna go back to the capital~” Karla voiced.
“It is too risky. We’ll whittle them down gradually while improving ourselves, then eliminate the rest when they are weak enough.” Though unsurprised, Kamala denied the battle maniac's request.
“So violent~” Ashley teased, earning herself a cold emotionless look.
“...we should cooperate with other invaders for now, since they will find themselves in the same situation.”
“And share the rewards? No way.” Yen objected.
“It is the safest method.”
“Fuck safety. Let’s find out exactly what we’re up against and figure out a plan to win this thing. Look, we got too careless, yeah. But now we know better. Don’t forget the real goal here, we need the best reward or we’re gonna fall behind.”
“How bout we go find a few higher ups first, then argue about the next move?” Donny interjected.
“Fine.” Yen answered, while Kamala’s silence was her approval.
“There might be someone strong in the towns.” Shin cheered Karla up.
“Yeah~”
Ashley turned the paladin party leader into an epic tier wight and sent it off towards the town, for no particular reason or gain, and Chariot sped off in search of a town in their path of carnage.
---
Basem scouted the large town from a bird’s eye view in the early hours of the day. “Two hundred paladins.”
“How many blues?”
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“Ten times as much.”
“Doable.” Donny considered. “How are we doing this? Lure them all into big attack? Hit and run?”
“Just kidnap who you need. Don’t fight when you don’t have to, less risk of dying, idiots.” Basem asserted himself more strongly this time, the dangers of the capital abundantly fresh in his mind.
“We won’t die.” Shin spoke.
“You are the biggest fool of everyone.” He snapped. “Only stealth goes. We find the VIP and leave.”
“Even if this is not the capital, it would be best not to split up again.” Kamala reasoned.
“That many, someone will be a scout! They will find us and then we have to fight.”
“True.” Donny agreed. “But it’s also a good chance to test things. We might all have to move through somewhere like this as a group at some point. Best to see how to handle that.”
“You-” Basem paused for a moment as something caught his attention. “Someone came through a portal.”
“Local or invader?” Donny asked, his demeanor turning slightly more serious.
Basem watched as the mundane looking old man in spellcaster robes stared at a locket for a few moments, then morphed into a moderately intimidating man in blue uniform. “Don’t know. But he turned into a blue soldier.”
“Probably an invader, right?” Yen posited.
“What’s he doing?” Donny asked.
Basem followed the man carefully, moving his vantage point as needed and making use of the all encompassing sphere of vision from his Third Eye to read the lips of the target as he spoke to others one by one throughout the town.
“Talking… Mostly to other blue soldiers. Dis…lusionment with the church… talking bad about paladins. They abuse their power. People need to protect themselves. Worry about danger. Complaining about the church. Says they're hiding something.”
“Recruiting.” Dante surmised.
“Long term intrigue strat?” Yen mused. “Waste of time… eventually they’ll have to fight and a mob of random goons gets wiped by an army of elites.”
“Causing a rebellion would be ‘impactful’.” He pointed out.
“He’s moving." Basem reported. "Going back to where he came through.”
“Might be part of a bigger group. Catch him.” Yen insisted, and the party moved. The fastest of Chariot tore through the guards on a section of a wall in crude brute force and the target in question didn’t realize what was happening until after a large rust colored palm pinned him to the ground.
“We’re moving. Don’t try to escape.” Shin warned and the man gave a compliant nod wracked with nerves.
Spells and arrows crashed against the wall of wards Mara formed as she appeared, barely enough to break through just the first layer even in their quantity. The clanging of a tower bell resounded throughout the whole town as warnings of enemies erupted as battle cries charging towards them.
Yen strained every ounce of her willpower channelling spells in her hand to their maximum and unleashed two giant explosions on the small army stampeding their way. Their roars turned to ash and screams, those within range dying in scores and even more on the range of the skills had their flesh burned to the bone and those bones broken by force as they crashed away through buildings.
Ashley sped off into the fray with a giggle outside of the plan, forcing the party to adapt. Without hesitation, Donny, Karla and Mujin followed, as well as Inari who had her own demands answered by Shin. Together the five slaughtered with abandon, three more eagerly than the rest.
Karla broke and ruptured her way to a blond man in red and white who met her charge with forced intensity behind a piercing thrust of his sword. A thrust effortlessly parried away as a flying knee destroyed his head. Karla landed with mellowed enthusiasm and stepped back from a lunge, her spine bending kick rupturing the organs of the paladin before returning to her search in the fray.
Dante watched the massacre calmly from behind the kinnara’s ward with the others until he found the flow of battle needed. A sharp whistle signalled the five to fall back, Ashley the first to return and Inari the last with reluctance, and the party fled together back over the walls, disappearing over the hills in moments.
They changed directions twice once out of sight of the walls before coming to a stop, Shin pinning the shapeshifting captive to the ground once more. Ashley leaned over with mesmerizing eyes but it had no effect on the man. She walked off without a care, leaving the others to form their own deductions.
“Regular interrogation, I guess.” Donny sighed.
“Wait, wait!” The black haired man in blue soldier’s attire pleaded. “You are otherworlders, yes? There is opportunity for a mutually beneficial deal here.”
“You a local?”
“Yes.” With the time afforded him, the man immediately dove into his pitch. “You must have some inkling of the state of this world by now, yes? But the church is more powerful than you realize. The capital hordes most of the power that has risen from the trials. It is there that has what you likely seek, but its security is near flawless. Trespassers fall into their many traps, they brutally detain and interrogate anyone suspicious.”
“Yeah, we have first hand experience with all that.” Donny interrupted him.
The man paused as a realization formed in head. “You were the ones… the ones who broke in and escaped.” He looked at each of them before resting on Shin’s rust colored face. “You, you’re the Champion… the one who defeated the Vampire King, yes?”
The form of a mangani faded from Shin and he allowed the man to sit up, tilting his head in confusion. “He’s a dhampyr?”
“...whatever the system deems to call him, here is the King of the Night. The enemy of many that leads the forces of evil to prey upon them in the dark.”
“If the church is so powerful then why is this vampire still running around then?” Donny brought the conversation back to their main interests.
“Because the church is compromised.” The man spoke with a severity about him.
“Told you.” Yen said matter of factly.
“...I don’t know who answers to who, I suspect the Pope and the Vampire King cooperate in some form.”
“It’s the pope.”
“Shut up for a bit, yeah?” Yen soured in slight annoyance at the knight’s words but kept her silence. “Got any proof of that?”
“None as of yet…” The man admitted. “But while the church may be free of vampires, there are other kinds of monsters… What you saw in the capital is only the surface. You must realize how powerful the Theocracy is. It serves us all to ally, and grind them down from all sides until its heart is exposed.”
“I’m hearing everything except why we need you, specifically.” Donny said bluntly, with a subtle intimidation about him.
The man paused and started to open his mouth, when Basem whipped around and fired a surging arrow that clanged off the head of an attacker to no effect. At the same time a second similar being lunged from the other side, and met the Dynamic fist of Karla.
A prismatic fist struck the unidentifiable assailant but Shin felt the resistance of an indestructible soul. Shin swatted away an cleaving axe and broke through a breath of frost as he struck twice more with duality flared and the man shrieked from behind his cloth wrapped mask.
The second, bloodied under the attacks of the amazon and a joining reaper did the same. The two beings emanated a fiendish presence as their bodies morphed into monstrous amalgamations of foul creatures.
“Heresy!”
“Heathens must die!”
Grisled voices that grated on the ears screeched dreadful words as their charged but their onslaught was more dreadful still. Another snipe from Basem did as little as the first, nor did a stream of flames or the swing of a scythe fare any better. The chimeric warrior burst towards Yen with blinding speed but an explosion from an invisible mine held it at bay.
Dante’s Trick Mine inflicted no damage either but it deterred the creature enough for roots to spring up and ensnare it still. Karla flickered with surging fist but the creature blinked away, crashing its clawed fist down on the wings of shields she formed just in time. But the sheer impact send her flying back.
The grotesque head of a dragon stretched out of its shoulder as lightning gathered in its maw, and Donny sent it crashing away with a shield charge, but powerful sparks of lightning from the contact left him stuck in a spasm. The chimera sprung to its feet and Karla’s fist cratered it into the ground again. Barbarism surged through her body, enhancing her martial fist as she struck twice with Dynamic that damaged its face bloody. But she didn’t want it to damage. She wanted it to break.
A sharp tendril impaled her heart as light shattered off her body as she slammed down a fist of baleful aura. Half the chimera’s face disintegrated and with a pained shriek it blinked away, straight into the reaper’s blade that severed it in half at the waist, light shattering off her smiling form as well.
Tendrils shot out between the two halves pulling themselves back together and Ashley blurred, severing it in a dozen parts. Still, the creature stitched its flesh back together and a hail of black and white prismatic strikes broke its soul to pieces with ease. The creature fell dead, joining the other Shin left behind, their statuses laid bare.
[Chimeric Human (legendary) - Greater Monarch]
Strength - 3000
Agility - 3000
Constitution - 3000
Vitality - 3000
Dexterity - 3000
Perception - 3000
Force - 3000
Spirit - 3000
Control - 3000
Willpower - 3000
Skills:
Maul lvl. 7, Lightning Lordship lvl. 4, Voltaic lvl. 5, Greater Haymaker lvl. 10, Greater Rapid lvl. 10, Greater Swiftness lvl. 10, Greater Blink lvl. 8, Greater Overpower lvl. 10, Greater Agile lvl. 10, Greater Lacerate lvl. 10,
Traits:
Indestructible (mythic), Indomitable (mythic), Unfettered (mythic), Amalgamation (mythic), Lightning Overwhelming (mythic), Voltaic (mythic), Truth and Lies (mythic), Golden Body (mythic), Golden Mind (mythic), Golden Soul (mythic), Poison Immunity (mythic), Disease Immunity (mythic), Curse Immunity (mythic), Fire Immunity (mythic), Frost Immunity (mythic), Lightning Immunity (mythic), Charming Immunity (mythic), Weakness Immunity (mythic), Rapid Regeneration (legendary), Cryptic (legendary),
“What the hell is this?” Yen murmured as she inspected its traits along with the others.
“Inquisitors.” The captive man answered. “Hounds of the church who answer only to the Pope. Tell me… how can the one who holds the leashes of corrupted hounds be pure. As for my usefulness…”
The man’s body started to morph, taking the shape of a pale young man with coarse light brown hair. “I am Johan von Stein, one of 43 new cardinals of the church, and the only one who can get to the truth.”