A whole host of questions were running through Greg’s mind. Was this botched ritual the reason he was able to cross over to this world? Was that entity on the other side a deity, or just a powerful being? Was this entity the one that sent him through the doorway into this world? Or was it something that happened naturally? If, it was indeed the first case, then had that deity been watching him all this while? And if so, what were his motivations? Was he planning to use Greg to gain more power? Or was this just some form of amusement for him? Was this entity even a ‘he'? It felt like a storm had been let loose in his mind and try as he would, Greg just simply couldn’t unravel even the smallest of questions that this revelation had raised. Knowing that it would be pointless to let himself be distracted by questions that wouldn’t help his present situation, Greg forced himself to turn his attention back to his cousin.
“How did I end up in the infirmary? “ Greg posed. From all that he’d heard so far, there clearly hadn’t been any animal attack that would cause him to suffer the kinds of injuries he’d been bedridden with.
“You were the closest to the second tear when it opened, and inside the protective circle that my father had drawn on the ground around you. I don’t know how or why, but your body… it just started to break down,” Nolruk replied. “The tear was only open for a few seconds before we erased the symbols and caused it to collapse. That short time frame, however, was enough to cause you all the damage you suffered,” He stated.
Greg couldn’t help but frown at this. ‘Is that possible?” Greg quietly asked through his bond with Olivia.
‘If they have a mind to, even a seventh-tier mage can kill a mundane human being with their aura alone,’ Olivia replied. ‘If it was truly a deity-level being on the other side of the doorway, then the real mystery isn’t that you were harmed by the aura of such a being, but that your body wasn’t immediately reduced to nothing by it,’ Olivia stated plainly, causing a chill to go through Greg.
“That tells me how I got injured, it doesn’t tell me how I ended up in the infirmary,” Greg pressed.
“My father found a group of hunters close by and implanted some false memories of an attack by a snow bear in them. Memories where your father died and you took serious injuries and had them rush you to the infirmary,” He replied.
Greg’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Why would your father want to save me?” He asked.
“He still hadn’t succeeded in the second sacrifice,” Nolruk answered simply with a shrug. “He needs you for the ritual. You being dead would have been rather inconvenient for him. Your death would have forced him to involve your sister, for want of a suitable target. My father, however, had been hoping to avoid involving your mother and sister, after all…” Nolruk seemed to catch himself as if he was about to say something he shouldn’t have.
Greg realized that when he wasn’t answering a direct question and just volunteering extra information, his cousin could exercise some measure of control and stop himself from saying things he didn’t want to be known. Unfortunately for him, he'd caught himself a moment too late. “After all what?” Greg questioned, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
“Once both you and your father were dead, your mother and sister would be his,” Nolruk replied directly, unable to fight the compulsion of the confessor’s tincture.
Greg could feel his hand clench tightly into a fist, his mind able to put together what his uncle had desired with them. “What’s the other ritual that you saw your father perform?” Greg posed. He knew perfectly well that time wasn’t on his side. Angry as he felt about the machinations of the despicable man that was his uncle, Greg couldn’t allow himself to indulge in those feelings. He needed to ready himself for what lay ahead.
“Other than the sacrifice. The only other ritual I’ve seen my father perform is the one that summoned the dark crawlers!” Nolruk stated, looking relieved to move on from the former subject.
“The what?” Greg posed, not having any idea what his cousin was referring to by ‘dark crawlers’.
‘Abyssals,’ Greg ‘heard’ his familiar mutter before producing an annoyed tsk.
‘Do you know them?’ Greg ignored his cousin’s description of gigantic centipede-like creatures and turned his attention to Olivia, knowing that she would be able to give him a more detailed answer.
‘Dark crawlers are creatures from the seventh level of the abyssal plane,’ The familiar replied. ‘Equivalent in strength to a powerful third-tier mage. So long as they are well-fed, they mature within hours of coming into existence. They have a carapace that is almost impenetrable to anything below tier four. Their only weakness is that the carapace doesn’t cover every inch of their body. Their underside is nowhere near as sturdy as their shell. That, however, doesn’t mean that it’s weak. Anything below tier three won’t even put a dent in the things. The things have sharp legs that can tear through steel armor like it’s rotting wood. Their strength is just obscene. Even if a boulder is big enough for the creatures to only be able to coil around it just once, so long as the tail meets the head, they can summon enough strength to crush the boulder. They have long pincers, large enough to split you in half at the waist, and a tail-end stinger shaped like a curved blade that can both stab and cut. A stab of that stinger would probably go right through both the mana shield and the moonlight silk armor like it was nothing. A swing of that tail blade, with next to no effort, would cut you in twain from your head, down through your chest, and out through your waist between your legs. For creatures as large as they are, they are surprisingly good burrowers. They can move through the ground faster than most people can sprint on the surface,’ Olivia gave a summarized rundown of the creature.
‘As bad as all that I’ve just told you sounded, it’s nothing compared to its main weapon. The most dangerous of the dark crawler’s weapons isn’t its monstrous strength, sharp claws, pincers, or stinger, but the black liquid that drips off both its pincers and its stinger. Essence of corruption, it’s usually called. It’s not exactly a poison, a hallucinogen, or an acid. It can, however, show all three effects depending on how it’s used,’ She explained. ‘The liquid ‘corrupts’ anything it touches. If it’s an inanimate object, it will eat into that object like a strong acid. If it touches living flesh, it turns into a potent poison that is almost impossible to cure. The poison itself won’t kill you quickly but you will wish that it did. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever died from being poisoned by a dark crawler. Most of those who are poisoned die within minutes of doing so because they kill themselves. You see, once the liquid comes in contact with living flesh, it causes constant, unrelenting, and excruciating pain. If it were to come into contact with the tip of your finger, then after just fifteen breaths of time, you would cry tears of joy and relief if I were to cut off that finger. That’s how bad the pain can be,’ Olivia relayed.
‘If a dark crawler manages to inject the venom into your brain, then there is nothing that can be done for you other than death,’ She declared. ‘Not only will your whole body be subjected to a kind of mind-bending pain that you can not even begin to imagine, but all your worst nightmares will be brought to life around you. You’ll be dragged into the deepest darkest part of your mind where all the worst things you can imagine are. You’ll be forced to live in a warped reality where, you see all the things that you fear, hate, avoid, or are ashamed of the most, for every single moment of the rest of your living life. The worst part is that neither one interferes with the other, the pain won’t stop you from hallucinating and the hallucinations won’t stop you from feeling the pain,’ She explained. The stuff is so bad that in most places it’s an illegal substance to have. In the right markets, however, a single vial of it is worth more than your whole town and everyone in it combined,’ Olivia explained.
“…it only took the things about three hours to decimate a whole herd of red-horned bisons,” Nolruk was continuing when Greg cut in.
“How many?” He asked. “How many dark crawlers did your father summon?” he further clarified.
“Four?” Nolruk replied. “Three are currently with him and the fourth… the fourth…” Nolruk paused twice clearly hesitant to tell where the fourth dark crawler was.
Greg couldn’t help the bad feeling that gripped his heart as he remembered the threat that his cousin had made against his family. “Where is the fourth one?” Greg growled, his tone turning glacial.
“The fourth one is deep in the ground, right under your house,” Compelled by the confessor’s tincture, his cousin was forced to answer the direct question.
Greg could feel his jaws clench tightly, a flame of rage burning within him. An overwhelming desire to run back to town and protect his mother and sister came over him. Greg, however, knew that it would be pointless. Until the root of the problem, which was his uncle, was dealt with, he’d just be playing whack-a-mole with every threat that the man sent his way and that of his family. Besides, it had probably already been there when his cousin came for him. The thing was probably left there as a way to ensure that Greg complied with their wishes. His uncle might die if left alone for two weeks, but clearly, Greg couldn’t afford to let the lunatic go on breathing for even another day! “What about spells? What spells have you seen your father cast?” Greg posed, all the more eager to learn all that he could about the man
His cousin took about five minutes to list everything he had seen over the past few weeks. He didn’t know the name of any of the spells that he had seen, so he just described their effects. When Greg learned of the scrying that had been done on him, he wasn’t sure how to feel. A part of him knew that he couldn’t be too hard on himself as he hadn’t even been aware that his uncle had magic at the time. Before this interrogation, he’d been under the impression that his uncle was just a mundane human. Another part of him, however, chided him for being naïve and forgetting that he was no longer back on earth. He was now in a world of magic and should have therefore made plans to counter any magical means that might be used against him. To just assume that no magic would be used against him, no matter the circumstances, was just plain stupid. Greg engraved the lesson in himself to always be vigilant against both mundane and magical tactics.
A small part of him wanted to ask Olivia why she hadn’t made him aware of this oversight. The familiar, however, had already given him the answer to this just the day prior. Unless his life was in danger through no fault of his own, she wouldn’t be babying him. She was content to sit back and watch him stumble and make mistakes so that he could learn from them. Greg could have easily ordered her not to take this approach. The fact that he hadn’t however, told him that, on some level, he too could see the wisdom of not being spoon-fed everything.
‘What’s your assessment?’ Greg asked Olivia once his cousin finished listing out all the spells he had seen his father perform.
‘He isn’t as weak as I’d have liked him to be,’ Olivia answered honestly. ‘The dark crawlers around him are especially problematic. But as is the case with most summoning mages, the weak link is often the mages themselves. The dark crawlers are flesh summons. Since they came into being through the flesh of the summoner, their existence on this plane is anchored by your uncle. So long as he draws breath, they won’t be dispelled as natural summons usually are. However, by the same token, if their anchor to this plane were to die, they would immediately be banished back to the Abyssal realm,’ Olivia explained. ‘Your uncle, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have powerful spells of his own. This is why I said at the start that his ignorance of magic is already a plus for us. The power and knowledge that he has obtained really shines through when he is given the space and chance to hold a ritual. Otherwise, he seems to only be able to cast the most basic of spells. That means that we have to make the person our main target. If we kill your uncle, then we eliminate all four dark crawlers in one fell swoop,’ She relayed.
‘We'll split up then,’ Greg suggested. ‘I can go deal with my uncle while you head back to town and protect my family,’ He said. ‘Just in case of anything, I can’t have anything happening to them,’ He declared.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?' Olivia countered. ‘I am your source of mana,’ She reminded him. ‘If I were to separate from you, and head back to town, I wouldn’t be able to share my mana with you over such a distance. All the magical items on you would be rendered useless,’ she informed him. Greg froze as this flaw in his thinking was pointed out to him. Since Olivia had always been with him, it had never crossed his mind to consider whether there were any distance limitations on the bond between them. Before he could get lost in his thoughts, Olivia presented him with a solution. ‘Luckily for you, however, we don’t have to pick between the two options,’ The familiar relayed piquing Greg’s interest.
DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE HIGH-GRADE TIER-TWO HIVE MAGIC SCROLL FOR 140,000 MAGIC POINTS?
YES/NO
DO YOU WISH TO BUY THE HIGH-GRADE TIER-THREE CONTAINED ALCHEMICAL BOMBS FOR 195,000 MAGIC POINTS?
YES/NO
‘You’ll only need one hive scroll, and six alchemical bombs,’ Olivia explained.
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‘What’s the plan?’ Greg asked. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Olivia. He just wanted to understand her line of thinking, that way, he could work better in concert with her, or suggest some corrections and adjustments if he saw any room for such.
‘The hive scroll allows a person to duplicate themselves into up to ten copies of themselves. It can even duplicate one’s abilities up to the second tier. It, however, won’t duplicate any gear or magical items. The only catch with the scroll is that the more copies one makes, the shorter they last. If you make just one copy, it can last a little over a month depending on how it’s used and how much magic it’s made to expend over that period. If you make ten copies, on the other hand, they can only last a tenth of the time, which is about three days. Once again, dependent on how they are used and how much magic they expend in that time,’ she elucidated. ‘The upside of the copies the scroll the makes of you is that, they don’t need to eat, drink or sleep. They don’t feel pain, fatigue, or despair. So long as you give them a goal, they’ll stop at nothing to ensure that they achieve that goal!’ She explained. ‘They make the perfect death soldiers,’ She explained.
Greg could feel his brows rise higher and higher the more he heard his familiar explain. ‘Wait, but won’t the burden of mana expenditure be higher the more copies we make? Can you support ten different drains of your mana for the whole battle?’ Greg asked. As good as what Olivia was saying sounded, it wouldn’t mean anything if mid-battle all the copies stopped moving, or worse still, disappeared because they couldn’t sustain the mana supply that they required.
‘Scrolls are not magical items, master,’ Olivia replied with an amused smile. ‘Unlike magical items, scrolls are usually already infused with all the mana that they will require to execute the function for which they were made,’ She explained. ‘Other than a little mana to activate the scroll, a scroll doesn’t need anything else to work,’ She stated. ‘Unlike magical items which can be used over and over again, however, no matter how powerful they are, all scrolls are one-use items,’ She explained. ‘Once a scroll is used, there is no getting it back!’ she added.
Greg’s brows rose as he took in this new piece of information. He also gained a new understanding of why spell scrolls were among the most expensive items in any tier in the magic shop with the exception of magical legacies. A spell that came with all the mana it would need to be executed was almost like having an extra caster beside you. In a pinch, the right scroll could mean the difference between life and death. ‘What are contained alchemical bombs?’ Greg asked, seeking to gain a greater understanding of the tools the familiar had suggested for this attack.
‘Normal alchemical bombs go for a large area of damage. A typical tier-three alchemical bomb can level your whole town,’ Olivia stated. ‘Contained alchemical bombs, however, sacrifice the area of damage in exchange for concentrated damage into a small area,’ She explained. ‘Remember that a dark crawler’s shell can take a lot of punishment. Only tier-four items are certain to break through it. We, however, don’t have access to tier-four items. This is the best option we have available to us. With all the damage a tier three alchemical bomb can cause squeezed into a radius of five meters around the point of detonation, even a tier four mage wouldn’t want to be caught up in that explosion,’ She explained.
‘Don’t my copies have a self-preservation instinct? Is there a danger that they’ll hesitate to blow themselves up at a crucial moment?’ Greg posed.
‘The reason it’s called a hive scroll is because your copies are like drones. They may be able to move around, they may be able to talk but they don’t have any self-awareness or personality. They draw their purpose for existence from the one they are copied from. In other words, only one mind controls the hive,” If you say that they need to kill your uncle at all costs, then they won’t hesitate to blow themselves up to achieve this goal,” She relayed.
When Greg didn’t raise any more questions, Olivia continued. ‘Remember Greg, the sole reason for the bombs being so powerful is because we can’t lack a way of dealing with the dark crawlers,’ She said. ‘Our real and main target, however, remains to be your uncle. We are not looking to have a long drawn-out fight where we take away his pawns one by one. If we can kill him in one move, then all the better! We can’t afford the chance to let him go berserk,’ She warned. If that happens, then the fight becomes completely unpredictable and all your copies may be lost in the process,’ She cautioned…
***
When his uncle had jumped on the back of the dark crawler that had saved him from smashing into a tree, Greg had made the three copies that had already revealed themselves to pretend to chase after him. This was so that they could drive him towards the fourth copy that had remained hidden behind the tree. The ruse had worked like a charm and another explosion had sent his uncle flying back towards the center of the clearing. While his uncle was still trying to get up, two of the three copies that had come to the center of the clearing once again moved back to its edge even as the third one crouched low beside his uncle’s body.
BOOM!
Another node in the network went offline.
The feeling was odd. At first, when Greg used the scroll, he’d been afraid that he would be overwhelmed by multiple sensory inputs, just as had been the case with the heightened sense potion. After using it, however, Greg found that it wasn’t anything like the potion. If he had to put it in words, the closest description Greg could come up with was that this was probably what a computer network would feel like if the computers were self-aware. He was the server that all the other nodes in the network connected to and also the main computer that controlled what they did. Greg wasn’t overwhelmed in any way because each of his clones had its own brain and could process any sensory input that it received on its own. If Greg wanted to, he could ‘synch' with one of them and experience the world through their senses. In the end, however, it was just a remote connection and not unduly taxing on his brain.
Olivia’s explanation that the copies of him didn’t have self-awareness was in a way right and in a way wrong. It wasn’t that the copies were zombie-like drones that only responded to commands. Instead, it was as if a copy of Greg’s personality was transferred to every clone of his that was made by the scroll. With his personality copied over to them, they could interact naturally in any setting just like Greg would. The only difference is, they would consider any order given by the main mind, which was Greg, to be law and would stop at nothing to accomplish it. According to Olivia, this was part of the enchantment weaved into the scroll to ensure that one didn’t make duplicates of themselves only to later have a disagreement with said copies.
Greg was currently standing in the very same cave that his uncle had found, watching the fight through the very same scrying pool that his uncle had used to spy on him. Having learned of this place in the course of interrogating his cousin, Greg didn’t hesitate to commandeer it for his purposes. His cousin Nolruk was currently lying belly down on the floor next to the wall. His head was turned towards the wall, the paralytic that was currently flowing through his system making it impossible for him to turn around or see it when Olivia took on a corporeal form.
In truth, this wasn’t where Greg wanted to be. After the plan had been settled and his duplicates made, Greg wanted to rush back home and protect his family and allow his copies to do all the work of attacking his uncle. Olivia, however, had informed him that this wasn’t a wise idea. By using the hive scroll, they had given themselves the same weakness that his uncle had. In the same way that his uncle was the weakest link when put together with the dark crawlers, Greg was now the weakest link on his side. This wasn’t because he was exceptionally weak or anything. It was simply because if anything happened to him, all his copies would be like marionettes with their strings cut. They had come up with a great plan that had a great chance of success, but for better or worse, for it to work, they couldn’t risk losing the original Greg, and as such, he was forced to avoid both battlefields.
Greg had sent one of his copies running towards the town. Greg had bought shoes of haste for every single one of his clones to give them the extra speed of movement they’d need when dealing with the dark crawlers. It was only the clone that he sent towards the town that he also bought subtlety pants for. He needed it to move through the forest as quickly as possible and get back to his family. Based on what Olivia had said, Greg had taken a gamble. According to Olivia, controlling a summoned creature gets increasingly harder the greater the distance between the summoner and the creature itself. Given the distance between them and the town, and the fact that his uncle was still new to magic, chances were that other than asking the dark crawler to hide deep below Greg’s house, his uncle had no way of having the dark crawler mark the occupants of the house. It was only if Greg failed to show up that his uncle would come back to town and be better able to command this hidden card of his. Given this, Greg had made his first copy reach his house seconds before the second one appeared before his uncle. With his uncle seeing one of his copies appear, he would have no reason to command the worm under Greg’s house to do anything. Not when he thinks he has Greg firmly in the palm of his hand.
Unlike his uncle, Olivia knew how to mark a moving target as the conduit of the scrying. The bird that was currently watching the fight between Greg’s clones and his uncle, could freely move if it felt it was in danger. it, however, would settle down very quickly once it was safe and continue to observe the fight. Through its eyes and that of his clones, Greg watched as the dust cleared from the crater that had been left behind by the tier-three alchemical bomb. The number of clones he had had now gone down by three. The first two had each tried and failed to kill his uncle because one of the dark crawlers had protected the man. This time Greg was certain that regardless of what the man or the worms, tried, there was no getting out of this last attempt. His clone had simply been too close to the man when the bomb went off. Even if the last of the three dark crawlers that had been with the man appeared, then it too would have been destroyed by the explosion. It was because of this certainty that Greg could barely believe his eyes when the dust cleared up to reveal his uncle still on the ground but under a grey shield that kept him safe from any harm.
The shield was covered in ichor and viscera. No doubt, some of it was from Greg’s clone, but given the copious amounts that Greg could see, it was clear that the third dark crawler had tried to come to his master’s defense before it was reduced to mush. Half of its body was still buried in the ground. Its head and the first half of its body, however, were reduced to bits all around the crater.
“Fuck! How hard is it to just kill one person?!” Greg ground out through gritted teeth, unable to help his frustration.
“Send the other two clones. Now!” The urgency with which Olivia gave the instructions made Greg’s heart skip a beat. Without asking why, he made the last two copies in the clearing to run towards the center. Greg knew that the familiar wouldn’t panic unless the situation was serious enough to warrant it. The two clones that had been waiting at the edge of the clearing immediately turned into blurs as they shot towards the center of the clearing and threw themselves into the crater inside which his uncle was.
BOOM!!
BOOM!!
Two explosions resounded one after the other even as the alchemical bombs in the hands of his clones went off one after the other. Greg didn’t have to wait for the dust to settle to know that his foe wasn’t dead yet. Through the link Greg had to his clones, Greg could feel a foreboding aura effusing out from the crater that had been expanded by the repeated explosions. Greg didn’t have to hear it from Olivia to know. His uncle seemed to have realized that he had no way of surviving the onslaught that was facing him. As such, he seemed to be drawing on every ounce of power he could in a bid to take down his enemies along with himself. Drawing on all the mana that he could, the man was about to go berserk.
“Begin phase two, now!” Olivia instructed. The look on her face clearly relayed that things weren’t going how she’d hoped they would.
Even if they failed to kill his uncle with the alchemical bombs, a critical point of their plan was that they had to eliminate the dark crawlers around the man. With them out of the way, phase two of their plan could be initiated. Phase two could be summarized in two simple words, carpet bombing. The reason they had been forced to use tier-three bombs was because of the dark crawlers, not his uncle. With them out of the way, mundane arrows should have been enough to do in his uncle. Greg, however, hadn’t been willing to take any chances. Three clones emerged from behind the trees they’d been hiding behind. In their hands was a bow, and strapped to their backs, a quiver full of explosive arrows.
BOOM!!
BOOM!!
BOOM!!
As soon as Greg gave the order through his link to the clones, a chorus of explosions could be heard ringing out through the scrying pool. Each of the three clones was repeatedly targeting the center of the clearing where his uncle was. Relentlessly, they kept sending arrow after exploding arrow at the shield protecting his uncle. Frustratingly, however, the arrows seemed to be barely making a dent in the man’s shield. Greg and Olivia watched helplessly as the man rose off the ground and into the air. Powerful winds were swirling around the man even as he turned eyes that had gone completely black in the direction of the three clones.
‘Space out!’
Greg had barely given the order to his clones when his uncle waved his staff. Looking at it through the scrying pool, the motion appeared casual. One would use more effort in trying to swat away a fly than his uncle put into that wave. Greg, however, felt his back soak with cold sweat as he could feel through his clones just how much power had gathered onto the tip of that staff. Before his clones could even take a step to distance themselves from each other, what could only be described as a black comet shot forward from the tip of the tip of the staff.
Three nodes in the network went dark.
The clearing became completely silent as the cold and unfeeling eyes of his uncle stared at the spot where the three copies of Greg had been. Right now, an even deeper crater had formed there as a result of his one attack compared to the one formed by the combined might of three alchemical bombs. Just by looking at it, one could feel the wrath and hatred that had been behind the attack. Even the trees around had not been spared as everything within ten meters of the hole had been reduced to splinters.
By a pure stroke of luck, the long-tailed wind hawk through which they were watching his uncle had been on the other side of the clearing and thus had been spared. This made it so that they could continue to keep track of their foe and know what was going on with him. For five whole minutes, his uncle remained in the air, levitating as he looked in the direction of the hole. It was almost like he was daring the decimated clones to come back to life and try him again. When, after five whole minutes, no new copies emerged, however, whatever power his uncle had been drawing on slowly began to recede. His body slowly descended back to the flat ground even as the inky black color faded from the man’s eyes. As soon as the man’s feet touched the ground, all strength seemed to leave him as he leaned heavily on his staff and coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Greg didn’t need telling to know that this little berserk episode had severely cut down on the remaining time that his uncle had left to live. Looking at the man’s now, almost skeletal appearance, it was clear that the man had just burnt up almost nine-tenths of his remaining vitality. Two or three days would have been the most he could live, if that, after drawing on so much power. Greg, however, wasn’t going to grant him even that.
One clone had gone to town to protect his family.
Five clones had blown themselves up using alchemical bombs in an attempt to kill his uncle.
Three more clones had tried to blow the man up using explosive arrows and been decimated.
That made a total of nine clones.
“Let this be a lesson to you, Greg,” Olivia spoke in a cautioning tone of voice, even as the last of Greg’s clones that had stayed roughly a hundred meters away from the fight, produced a floating dagger set. “The most dangerous time in a battle…” the familiar continued even as the daggers turned into blurs, shooting forward towards his uncle. “Is right after you think you’ve won!”
Greg watched as his uncle’s head rolled off his shoulders and onto the ground, his body collapsing soon thereafter…