I like to view my Circles as something between rival companies, lesser fiefdoms, and a delightfully insulting version of a French noble family in the way that the constant interchange of people betraying, leaving, joining, betraying again, and rejoining the various Circles has rendered most factions in the Claimed Hells practically incestuous.
Thankfully, the skulduggery they get up to is relatively contained. My lawyers ensure it to be so, and with the amount of contracts in active across my realm, and with the transgressions of the individual also applying fines to their associated Circle… well, let’s just say in-house discipline is also quite good.
This is why most intra-Circle squabbles usually spill over onto worlds we are hired to raid. Proxy wars are easier to fight beyond my notice, after all, and far be it for me to enforce the law. On foreign soil, many things can happen during plunder and raids. Like the bold British East India Company of old using privateers against the Dutch, a little competition has always been healthy for the mainland.
All this isn’t to say that one must join a Circle. There are other players involved here as well. I have long been a supporter of enterprise, both foreign and domestic.
Perhaps, if you are interested in multiversal mercantilism, the Crossroads might seem a good fit. For those that fell into the Fathoms from the “old world,” the Inheritors and the Trespassers' Lodge more than welcome you, albeit for clashing causes.
Finally, however, one does not need to stride alongside a party. For the true ronins, with enough skill, capacity, and wit, you can go it alone. But understand that though the Claimed Hells are endless in the choices they offer you, know that the wrong choice might see you devoured—quite literally even—such is the fate of many who run afoul of a Demon of Gluttony.
So. Maybe just sign the contract. A free resurrection Skill is usually offered anyway—that’s always useful.
-Mepheleon the Harbinger
54
Hunting Hunters (II)
Wei guided hyper-accelerated blades shaped from falling rain with a thrust of his spear.
Mulver Groon didn't react. Instead, the orc simply held his arms out and bade his summoned demons to stand aside. The fluid slashes crashed into his body and left two deep furrows before they broke into wet mist, parting tissue and exposing bone.
The orc simply chuckled as he looked over his injuries. "Damn kid, that's a hell of a hit for a Level 25er. You haven’t even done your Class Tier Ascension yet, have you? Did you put all your points in strength?"
Usually, the Wei wasn't one to exchange banter with a foe before the bout was fully decided, but there was an infectious glee to this orc that radiated from this orc. Wei took happiness where he could these days—from whoever he could. "Not nearly," the young master replied.
His Aspect of Omniscience granted him perfect awareness of everything within an approximate 400-meter radius. As he focused his perception on the Knight of Pride, his attention was fully captured by a building sensation of weight and undeniable power emanating from the orc's wounds. Different essences mingled within the flowing blood.
With a casual gesture, Mulver drew forth strands of viscera and shaped a new demon from it. Strings of red stitched a beast with a pincer-like head sporting rows of sharp, ringed teeth. Its body was humanoid, while its appendages were like that of a horse. Chimera was too light a word to describe this monstrosity.
More than that, however, Wei felt a connection form between Mulver himself and each of his demons. There was a feeling of overlap the young master couldn't quite shape, as if they were all different entities, but all shared a point in space.
Then there was the disconcerting speed at which Mulver healed. Within mere seconds, tendons reknit, muscles reattached, white of bone faded, and a layer of gray skin returned, making it seem as if the orc had never been harmed at all.
By this point, Wei was relatively certain that a higher Constitution would allow someone to heal faster. Both the Knight of Lust and Mulver had demonstrated similar abilities, after all. However, the orc was on another level entirely, making the young master suspect that he was dealing with someone who possessed an absolutely incredible Aspect of Constitution.
Definitely not the thing to target if he needed to use his System.
"Alright, you took your opening shot. Wasn't a bad one. But I gotta tell you — you're not gonna like what comes next."
The young master sneered. "Why, are you a prophet? Don't presume to know me. Knight, show me your—" In an instant, every single blood-shaped demon blasted toward Wei in sprays of explosive viscera.
The young master, forewarned by a dilation echo, responded by stomping down on the cyclone he was using as a platform, kicking it toward the rushing horde. Afterward, he flipped back and used his Omniscience to gauge the position of his foes. A current of wind drew him backward, creating 120 meters of space between him and the horde as he channeled more Arrogance into his Heart of Calamity.
Arrogance: [765/850]
Immediately, he assumed the Form of the Manticore and unleashed a flurry of slashes. His initial barrage of attacks fed speed to the cyclone, building it into a typhoon that he brought down upon Mulver and his demons with every ounce of Authority he could muster.
Velocity Charges: [12/180]
The young master expected to tear his foes from the sky, to rip Mulver from the ground. But the demons simply surged on, defiant of the winds, cleaving through the storm walls with contemptuous ease. Mover, meanwhile, simply folded his arms, new wounds adorned his body as his dagger dripped fresh blood. Crimson tendrils held the Knight of Pride in place, and his hydra barely reacted to the crushing force as well.
Wei remained undeterred. He stabbed his Broken Crescent out at his foes. A bolt of lightning jumped from the spear’s tip and forked across space, stabbing through a dozen demons before whipping against Mulver’s skin. A roar of thunder drowned the world.
A small patch on the orc’s right pec sizzled, before healing a second later.
Wei's attacks continued, raging tsunamis splashed down over Mulver, battering him and his demons while the ground beneath him erupted, slicing everyone within the radius with sharpened fragments of shrapnel. A shard of glass sank into the orc’s right eye. The organ vanished in a smear, bloody tears trailing down his cheek.
Mulver lifted his thumb and flicked the shard from its socket. A blink later, his eye was back, and his wounds were closed. During it all, his smirk only grew. As did Wei’s Authority.
Authority Advanced > 32
[4/10] Aspect Advancements to Core Ascension
Mulver called out through the storm. Without Wei's Aspect of Omniscience, he would have never heard what the orc said. When Mover spoke, the young master received every word. "It’s a pretty nasty licking your giving me, kid. Hell of a punch you got. I’m liking this. I’m liking this a lot.”
Wei found himself uncertain about how he was meant to respond to these words. The Knight's growing enthusiasm was at once a delight Wei partially shared, but the orc’s willingness to take harm and genuine sadomasochism left Wei wondering if he was fighting a fellow warrior or just a psychotic degenerate. The thought that both things might be true passed through his mind, but Wei did his best not to dwell on it.
Just as he prepared to sacrifice a few Velocity Charges to amplify his next attack, Wei's relativity triggered. A dilation echo saved his life. A scene played out before him: a torrent of red would breach the walls of his cyclone and clear the hundred meters of space between him and the horde of demons. Only then would it bite down on the young master's body, swallowing him whole, and only then would he realize that a hydra's head had taken him—too late to do anything otherwise.
Foresight received, Wei plunged down through the air and barely evaded the fated blow by an arm's length. A shockwave surged down the hydra's body as it broke through the sound barrier. Wei parried the residual force using a slash of wind channeled through his Broken Crescent, ensuring his flight path was undisturbed, but then his Omniscience caught something else, and another dilation echo granted him a new portent.
Omniscience Advanced > 27
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Relativity Advanced > 29
[6/10] Aspect Advancements to Core Ascension
Wei moved again as a second hydra head ruptured through his collapsing cyclone, and then a third, and then a fourth. The remaining heads also move to encircle Wei’s routes of escape, the body of the creature extending and growing to absolutely colossal proportions.
As Wei considered the coming vectors of attack, he tried to plot a course of escape before a dilation echo triggered for a third time. This time, however, even the buffer of foresight was not enough.
Mulver shot out from the neck of the first hydra, emerging with ten demons in a geyser of gore. Crimson tentacles extended from his hand as he finished his transposition across space, reaching for the young master with his dagger held high. As the orc sailed through the air, the young master responded, sacrificing a Velocity Charge to avoid the approaching Knight.
Lightning exploded out from Wei’s Eidolon and wreathed his body. He accelerated hard. Mulver’s tendril reached out, but caught nothing. A gulf of ten meters formed between it and Wei in a fraction of a heartbeat.
And then the tendril flattened into the shape of a portal, and the head of a third hydra emerged. Wei expended another charge as he dove, evading the attack by little more than blind instinct. A rushing stream of red passed over him and took off the tip of his nose. Another dilation echo triggered, but there was nothing Wei could do this time. Even as he expended a Velocity Charge, a forth hydra head sprouted free from the one that just missed him, and this one finally clamped its teeth down around his right leg.
It was then that Wei learned an ugly lesson.
Sometimes more was not better. If his aspect of fortitude had been what it was an hour ago, the hydra's teeth would have split clean through his leg. Or, failing that, his sudden acceleration would have ensured another means of dismemberment. Right now, however, he was tougher than ever before. Tough enough to survive falls from impossible heights. Tough enough to fight titans and survive blows that could deface small hills. Tough enough that the hydra couldn't just bite through his leg, and the Velocity Charge couldn't allow him to tear it clean off.
Sickening snaps sounded from his knee, and Wei cried out in pain. And then pain was all he knew. Suddenly, he felt foreign essence contaminating his injuries. The weight was there again—a weight that he couldn’t influence or control. Wei felt an unseen will widen his injuries, felt what seemed like slicing tendrils of blood carving him from the inside, only to dissolve against the power of his Source a moment after.
The young master gave a hoarse cry as he triggered Essenceshift.
Just in time to avoid the slashing limbs of a dozen demons leaping at him. The orc's lesser beasts surged free from the fourth hydra head’s flesh as if it was also a portal unto itself, or some kind of spatial conduit.
Wei became as if wind, and for the first time, felt the change he made to his class take effect. He applied the Knight of Lust's Telekinetic Skill modifier fragment, and all around him, where the currents of air flowed, extended telekinetic tendrils as well.
Wei felt his Arrogance evaporate with how resource intensive the skill was, but it let him unleash hell against the demons. He wielded his telekinesis against his lesser foes. He seized them, tore at them, pulled their forms apart, and he began to assault the hydra as well. It bit at him several more times, but as he remained wind-shifted, they found nothing to clamp down on. Likewise, his telekinesis, though capable of peeling a smaller demon apart, found the hydra too great in power and force to penetrate.
Worse yet, its form was entirely composed of blood. He sensed nothing organic within it. No organs, no tissue, not even its eyes were truly of the flesh.
Arrogance: [350/850]
Taking stock of his situation, Wei rushed down along the surface of the Moongrave and made some distance. He needed to reorient himself. Come up with a plan to handle the Knight. Or maybe just start breaking the fiend conceptually.
Wei arrived near a calm pond as he infused his Intent into an invisible cat-demon nearby. The creature barely had time to screech before he broke its invisibility Skill. The creature screeched as its channeled essence shattered and turned into an [Harvest] of Source. A blossom color of black and white infused Wei as he felt the bulk of his wounds fade.
Good thing he picked Source Eruption. It would have been hard to contend with the orc’s absurd healing potential otherwise.
Through the mists, his Omniscience warned him of Mulver’s approach. The orc was now sitting cross-legged upon the head of one of his hydras, and they were slithering closer to Wei.
The young master just sighed.
His enemy had almost twenty levels on him. He knew they had a lot more resources to expend, and a fight of attrition did not favor him. But even still, the young master didn't want to draw upon his System to win.
It wasn't even the unfairness. It was just something about the orc that made him want to do this properly, class against class.
There was also that general mood of affability they had—the kind that made breaking them a loathsome prospect.
Wei despised this damned place. It wouldn’t even offer him proper foes anymore.
"Hey, you're still alive, kid?" Mulver called out. "I felt you heal up pretty quick there. Lost my Concept right away. Don't tell me you put the rest of your Advancements into Constitution?"
Wei didn't say anything about that. Instead, he simply triggered his Heart of Calamity again and rose into the air. Flicking out with his spear, he made the mists around him part like a curtain to be pushed aside as he took in Mulver's approach.
The orc had well over fifty demons trailing behind him now. But also, his hydra was even bigger than before, its eight heads, each the size of a small mountain. The knight himself sat leisurely upon the first, staring at the young master. "I will not lie, you're doing pretty good. Fuck, really good. I should have had you easy. You should be dead. But you are a squirrely bastard. And your hits pack some sting. Though you were done for good when I got your leg, but you got away. What was that, Essenceshift? Hadn't seen that in a while. That's a rare Skill to have, kid. You selling?”
Wei just stared at Mulver. "Are you truly trying to get me to sell one of my Skills to you right now? Truly?"
"Yeah," Mulver said without any hesitation. "Why not? Hell, I'll even trade you for it. I got another Skill shard I made a while back. Call it Wound Scry. It'll let you peer out of any injury inflicted within the radius of your Perception. Sounds pretty good, huh?"
Wei looked at the orc for a moment in disbelief. "No. Abosolutely not."
"Well. Had to try.” An awkward silence settled between them before the orc coughed. "So, speaking of which, that class you have… you got a Calamity's Herald."
"Cataclysm's Herald," Wei corrected.
"Yeah, right. So, you somehow managed to beat up a Dancer of the Calamitous Spiral, didn't you? During your Class Specialization?”
Wei pressed his lips together. "Perhaps. What is it to you?"
"Nothing, it's just—what level were you at the time?"
Wei stared back at the Knight, wondering if the orc knew about his System. "Thirteen," he said.
The knight whistled. "Thirteen. Harbinger be blind, how did you do that?"
Wei decided to give him an interpretation of the truth. "I used the Dancer against itself. Managed to make it run into its own lance."
The knight threw back his head and laughed. "Shit, you could do that? Nasty work, kid. Well. Looks like my journey down the Tower isn’t pointless. You think about signing on with a Circle? Anyone offer yet?"
The young master just stared on, unsure how to react. "You are… extremely friendly for someone I’ve been trying to kill.”
"Yup," Mulver said without any hint of confusion. "We're already in hell, there's not a lot of point in being an asshole."
"But You were chasing three Faebloods. Two of them were bleeding."
"Oh, them." Mulver replied with a sigh. "Yeah, I was trying to get them to sign this." Space crumpled around his hands as he summoned a contract from his Inventory. Wei's Omniscience allowed him to peek at its contents. At the top of its page, two large numerals were printed. Ten.
I PLEDGE 10 YEARS OF CONTRACTUAL LOYAL TO THE CIRCLE OF PRIDE PER THE CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT
Wei blinked. "What is that, a writ of slavery?"
"Worse, it’s a recruitment notice. I was going to give this to one of the elves and have them sign it, so I had something to show my Count.”
"Elves?"
"Fey bloods," the orc replied.
Wei's frown deepened. Why did all these different species have so many names?
"Anyway," Mulver continued, dismissing his contract. "You wanna make this interesting.”
“What kind of interesting,” Wei asked.
“You hit me with some rough blows. But I think you still got something in the tank. I’ve seen how the Dancer fights during System Raids into other worlds. I’ve seen the Lance. Never been hit by one, though.”
Wei just stared. “What?”
“Hit me with the Skill if you got it.”
The young master blinked. “You are serious.”
“Yeah. Why not?”
There were many things Wei wanted to say, but something deep down inside him of him just surrendered. “You know what? I accept.”
"Fuck yeah," Mulver said. "Give me the best you got. If it’s enough to finish me off, I’ll kill myself after and let you get your Class Divergence. Pride and Wrath, right?”
Wei nodded slowly.
“That’s a good one. It’ll suit you. Especially the ascended Invocations.”
Damn this orc. Why was he like this? Why was he making everything so strange? Pushing through the discomfort, Wei began shaping his Lance of Calamity. A construct began to form in the air. First, droplets of rain converged together, forming a massive spike that was 400 meters long. Then, Wei wove lightning into the fluid as he fed it with chunks of stone and chambered it with a building spiral of wind. Finally, he aimed it at Mulver and prepared himself.
Arrogance: [50/850]
Again, the Knight stood atop the head of his hydra and held his arms open. "Alright, kiddo, when you're ready."
The moment was so surreal that the young master almost decided to stop. "I fear you might regret this, Knight."
"I think that's impossible. If it doesn't kill me, I won't regret it. If it does kill me, nothing's left to regret." He gave a chuckle. "Now let the bastard rip."
And Wei did just that. He did just that, and he also fed every last Velocity Charge he had into the lance as well.
Velocity Charges: [0/0]