Chapter 40
Hollow Languish
Asher’s heart thumped loudly but he forcibly calmed it down.
It was pointless, in so many ways, to ponder upon the offering; firstly due to anger boiling within him and telling him to choose the third option, circumstances be damned. And though he desperately wanted to squeeze Qyne’s neck and watch the light leave her eyes, he didn’t desperately struggle to survive just to throw it away out of petty vengeance. And however deserving her death may be, it should not come at the expense of his life--not yet, anyway.
Secondly, his choice was predicated on him surviving this stage--and she’d just made that a hundred times harder, breaking down the gates and nearly killing him all in one strike.
Whipping hair away from his eyes, he didn’t have time to think--no, he didn’t want to have time to think. He wanted to empty his mind and surrender it to the moment, confer himself to the world, and let loose the madness.
The monsters kept coming--hundreds surged from the fog, newly reinforced it seemed by the second wave. Among the spittle of goblins and kobolds and direwolves, a new breed of deformed appeared in the shape of orcs. They were a tall and broad bunch, each well over six feet tall, ranging in skin color from Castleton green to blue-green. There weren't all that many just yet, some fifty altogether, but more were sure to come, Asher postulated.
He didn’t wait for them to encroach further, electing to press onward once more. While Havar reorganized what few troops they had left after the ordeal, Loe once more stepped forward and joined Asher. The man was wounded, his right ear wholly cut off and his left thigh coated in blood. Evidently, Havar did a bit of the same magic he did for Asher, stopping the bleeding, though not wholly healing him as either he ran out of Mana, or it was a privilege only the ‘journeymen’ could enjoy.
Asher dashed forward in the monsters’ midst, slashing in a wide circle before using the reset dash to heave upward above them, spinning cyclically along with the blade as he executed Heartrip toward one of the orcs. The tip of the blade stripped apart the muscled flesh and tore open a hole in the beast’s heart; its gold-suffused yellow eyes widened in shock for a moment as its massive body toppled over, bereft of consciousnesses.
Landing, he nearly slipped into the muddied dirt, forcibly using Sword Dash to rip through further into the enemy ranks. However, a moment later, he retreated--not because it was an unfavorable position so much as the monsters' target wasn't him but rather the castle.
Loe was barely holding on to one of the flanks while the other had already broken away, heading toward the castle.
Asher sped away, rain belting his face, sword in hand, quickly catching up and beginning the slaughter. Corpses began to pile up one after another, forming tiny molehills, though, in due time, Asher could see it becoming the same as it was in the final ‘tutorial stage’ where thousands of corpses made up the terrain.
The world paused all of a sudden, prompting him to finally exhale the rancid breath he was holding in, staying his heart.
Dawn Ripper [UPG+1--!!--Evolution Pathway]
Evolution Upgrade [One with the Blade]: ALL your other active abilities will be permanently disabled and you will not be offered another for the duration of the stage. ‘Dawn Ripper’ evolves into its ‘??????’ form, ‘Death Ripper’.
...
New Effect is Added:
Woe be Thy Fear -- every attack ignores all of the target’s defenses, attacking their Souls directly.
Heaven Splitter [Epic]
Effect: conjure a massive array of sword light spanning a hundred yards into the sky and cleave it downward, dealing damage to everything and everyone it collides with. Damage is split among all enemies hit. The Ability is charged through Blood and can only be executed after a certain number of monsters are defeated.
Damage: 839
Death Threshold: 100
Swift Strike [Uncommon]
Effect: your next strike will be executed at 300% attack speed, will deal +50% bonus damage, and will count towards your ‘Consecutive Strikes’ bonus.
Cooldown: 3,9 seconds
Asher thought for a moment, eventually selecting Swift Strike. Though it was the ‘worst’ one of the bunch, the other two were gambles he wasn’t willing to wager on. Heaven Splitter could only be executed so many times in the stage until it becomes impossible, and he’d be unable to use it when it mattered the most--for the boss fight. On the other hand, Dawn Ripper's upgrade was... ambiguous, at best. While the newly added passive was nice, it wasn't good enough to replace even just Heartrip. That would mean banking that the further upgrades would be of equal if not higher value.
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And, for all he knew, that might have been the case and he was making a blunder akin to few others, but he had enough of RNG-begging to last him a long while. Certainty, even if substandard, was vastly closer to his heart than the dreary hope of magnificent.
A sword-light came darting toward him as soon as the world unpaused; he easily deflected it, turning his eye toward the source--a mini-boss, no doubt, had appeared. And he was right.
In the monsters’ midst, he saw a person--no, a skeleton draped in loose, tattered, and wet gray robes. The wind had pulled back the hood and revealed a skull decorated with gems, though a skull nonetheless. It wielded a sword similar to Asher’s, though one whose age showed far more. There were nicks and cracks running along the surface, and the weapon wasn’t long for the world.
The skeleton swung again, unleashing yet another array of sword-light; rather than deflecting, Asher ran onward and dashed past it, managing to nick three monsters in the process and using the reset to dash immediately after, slashing out violently at the skeleton. The latter heaved the blade up and, in a perfect motion, blocked his strike. However, because of the momentum, the skeleton was pushed back as the wind erupted outward from their collision, slicing apart nearly a dozen monsters. Just as Asher was about to pursue, he felt the nape of his neck tingle and immediately dashed the side, just in time to bear witness to the iron-cast tip of a spear push through the empty air that once housed him.
Another skeleton appeared, this one draped in worn-down iron armor, cracked head to toe.
He wasn't allowed a breather, though, as the sword-wielding skeleton attacked from his flank, sending both the spiraling array of swordlight as well as attacking itself. Asher attacked the sword-light, shattering it, and used Swift Strike immediately after, accelerating his next attack and deflecting the skeleton’s; the latter shook, its bones creaking, as the force of the strike sent it barreling backward once again.
Though Asher wanted to pursue, the spearman attacked once more, perfectly from his blind spot; gritting his teeth, Asher didn't dodge wholly. He slid to the side, letting the skeleton's weapon spear through his left shoulder, and used Heartrip to retaliate. Though the synapses fired off in droves upon being struck, he ignored the pain and watched the skeleton’s entire left side be obliterated into ash and dust. But it did not die.
It let go of the spear and used the arm to grab Asher's ankle as it was falling down, rooting him. On the other end, the swordsman came flying back in, stabbing swiftly toward Asher's heart. The latter dogged the pile of bones beneath him for a moment before executing the dash to dodge the sword and using the reset to dash back in, activating Swift Strike and discharging it directly into the swordman’s skull.
The bones shattered into flying shards, some even flying back into Asher, embedding themselves into his flesh and even managing to deal a few points of damage--not enough to matter, though.
The pile of bones fell downward and apart, soon scattered into the wet dirt, forever to be buried.
Asher retreated from the pile of monsters before he was surrounded, slowly nursing his wounds; he first pulled out the spear, yelping in the process, and tossed it to the side. He immediately got inflicted with Bleed, taking around 1 point of damage every couple of seconds. Nothing too dangerous, but, as he’d already experienced before, a major blood loss, even if healed, would still have an effect on him. He quickly tore parts of the dead skeleton's robes and mended his arm, stopping the bleeding.
Loe, on the other side, was being pushed back--there were more and more wounds apparent on his body, and he was clearly struggling... but Asher couldn’t help. There were only twenty or so monsters on Loe’s side, while there were over three hundred on Asher’s. And they were coming.
Taking a deep breath, he forced back the drowsiness, the anxiety, and the pulsating pain. This was not just a battle any longer--it was a war. No, it seemed most of his journeys into these strange, seemingly disassociated lands were just him being flung into the flames of war and told to overcome it. His feats were monumental, book-worthy, and yet he fully expected that no soul would remember them... for if he could do such grandstanding so quickly, what of the world's natives? Would they not be collapsing the mountains by the age of four?
He dashed onward, using Heartrip on one orc and following it up with Swift Strike on another. The sword in his dance rived with joy and ecstasy, almost crying like a sentient thing, as blood and limbs flew. He was a reaper of death, dashing around the ranks of the monsters and destroying them all without recourse.
In the midst of his bloodlust, he was pulled back to reality rather abruptly--he heard a low grunt at the back end of all the sounds that dominated the battlefield. Extracting himself back, he glanced over at Loe and found the man on his knees, six different weapons embedded in him.
He was looking up toward the ashen sky, corners of his lips like waterfalls of blood. The monsters had proceeded onward, pushing toward the castle, as Asher rammed back as quickly as he could, killing them all and reaching Loe whose eyes drifted from the sky onto him. They were glazed in calm and peace, eerily enough. They weren’t the eyes of an ‘NPC in a game’, though Asher never thought that were the case with anyone.
The man kneeling in front of him, housing six weapons within his shattered body, was not some figment or a conjuration. He was very much real--a living, breathing, conscious creature. As for whether his death in this stage would be permanent or whether he’d be revived to suffer endlessly for the entertainment as the next journeyman challenged this place... it was a question beyond his current scope of understanding, but a question worth asking nonetheless.
"It's an ugly sky to die beneath," Asher said, sparing a moment. There was little emotional connection to the man there--they'd hardly met, and have known each other less than an hour. But empathy was like a drug that could never be weened off of, no matter what. The man stood next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and held his ground. He fought nightmares bravely, never yielding. He fought so that those boys behind him needn't. And whether a stranger or a brother, the death of someone like that was tumultuous. "Just pretend that the heavens are weeping for you."
“...” the man forced a smile on his pale face--whether it was because it was drained of blood, or because of the rain, or perhaps it was just his natural complexion and Asher never noticed, the pallid skin appeared rather ghastly under what little light there was in the world. “S-s-save... them...”
“...” Asher didn’t make a promise, not even as Loe closed his eyes, and not even as his lungs exhaled for the last time. He couldn’t make that promise. Though his heart was willing, his lips would not part, and words would not leave. Death was all but a certainty in this hell, and he could scarcely keep himself alive by all accounts, let alone do the same for the boys wet behind the ears who could barely hold their weapons and not quiver in the rain.
He had neither the time to mourn nor to bring his body to the castle--the monsters, after all, did not care. Hundreds of theirs died and they pressed onwards, while they only managed to kill one. But one was enough to spur the yearning--if they could kill one, they could kill two. And three. And five. And ten.
Asher stepped away, taking a deep breath once more and drawing out his sword. A flurry of energy flew out for forty yards, depressing corpses into the dirt and killing over thirty monsters while he got a massive shield.
They were everywhere--left, right, front... the horizon was swarmed by one disfigured thing after another. It was a tide that seemed to have no end, and now he stood as the solitary dam. The weight of everything pressed down on him, but he endured. Life was worth living, even here. And thus, he pressed onward once more, his back facing a cacophony of wails and tears and mourning roars of anger, and his front beholding the opulent death, one worthy of terror and nightmares. And he, a one man, stood between them, sword in hand, fearlessly stomping forward and letting loose the anger and rage which fueled him.