Wasting no time, Ren searched the bodies of the three assassins he’d just killed, leaving bloody streaks on the hardwood floors as he dragged the lifeless bodies together for an easier search. The dagger wielder had nothing but his weapons on his person. Kicking the body away, Ren moved on to the crossbow wielders. The first one had nothing but a wedding ring, and the second only had a bracer. Ren tossed their limp hands away and tsked in disappointment. No coins or loot.
Wait. Bracer!
During the fight, he noticed one of the assassins had deflected his daggers with an energy field. Reviewing the footage, he noticed the very same bracer glow just before the field popped into existence. Ren quickly pulled the metal bracer off the man and examined it.
Up close, he ran his fingers over etchings of fine runes, forming chains that intertwined across the bracer’s surface. The metal itself was dyed black, preventing light from glinting off its surface at inopportune moments. Carefully flipping it over, he felt the velvet layer fastened to its interior, to prevent chafing.
All in all, it was very well crafted. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t get the bracer to emit the same protective energy he had earlier observed. As he recalled, the energy it had emitted had been white with a slight gray tinge, matching the energy he had seen flowing in the dead assassin as well as all the other Acolytes he had met.
So he guessed he could call it an Essence field. Maybe a shield?
Shrugging, he decided to call it an [Essence Shield]. Ren started to move away but paused once more, glancing at the wedding band on the man’s finger. He quickly pulled it off the dead assassin and pocketed it. Death had already parted the man from his lover so as far as Ren was concerned, everything on his person was fair game. From what he understood of human marriages, the contract was only binding until death. No need wasting the now defunct jewelry on a corpse.
“Hmm,” he looked around the quiet floor and rooms littered with corpses. “I could spare some time to …recycle. Yes, recycle!”
All those poor, ownerless items. Bereft of love, just like his golden knife had once been. A greedy grin spread across Ren's face, and his fingers trembled with anticipation. Without wasting a second thought, he darted from room to room, pilfering every loose gem and coin he encountered. The corpses sprawled on the floor were not spared either.
His looting spree was underscored by sounds of battle streaming in from far away, but Ren only focused on his immediate task. It took him six minutes to scour the second and third floors, picking items that caught his attention. He was careful to select only items that would not be immediately missed by a casual observer. That would only make things needlessly awkward.
When he was done, he carefully balanced a pin on his room’s door, before carefully shutting it behind him. Next he dusted a weak neuro-toxin onto the door knob facing the hallway. Looking at his work, he nodded in satisfaction. Anyone who dared sneaking into his room to steal from his horde would be in for a rude awakening. And, in the off chance that they weren’t immobilized by the toxin, he would be able to immediately tell if his room had been tampered with by the position of the precariously balanced pin.
With that taken care of, he moved down the stairs towards the first floor. Like a siren’s call, he was drawn by the sounds of battle and he took cautious steps until he arrived at the foot of the stairs. Like the floors above, the first floor lobby was littered with the dead and dying, but there was no active fighting. Instead his attention was focussed on the double front doors leading outside.
Despite the thick doors attempts at muffling the sounds, the intensity of the battle outside continued to seep in.The air quivered from the sounds of steel clashing against steel and the heaving thud of maces hitting armor. Ren walked towards the door in a trance, letting the sounds of bloodshed pull him forward. He paused right in front of the doors, breathing in deeply, eyes closed as he enjoyed the distinct war cries of combatants, the rhythmic chaos of battle occurring just behind this final barrier. Euphoria!
This was going to be fun, he could just feel it. Raising trembling hands, he readied himself to open the door. First he activated his camouflage, planning to sneak around the battlefield under its cover, but then it sputtered to a stop. A pop-up in his HUD informed him that it was still on cooldown. He tsked in annoyance, remembering how useless it had been in hiding him from the stronger assassins. That was one more of his utilities that had been rendered useless in this world.
Opening the door carefully, Ren slid out to the intense sounds of a feverish battle. He saw movement to his left and stepped back, pressing himself against the closed front door as a screaming Acolyte on fire ran past. To his right, a horse raced by, its rider skewering an assassin and the acolyte he was fighting with an enormous polearm.
Close by, a group of axe wielders tore through a barricade and the weeping women hiding behind, eliciting blood-curdling screams that almost proved fatal for Ren. His hand shot up in the nick of time, batting an errant arrow away before he rolled away from a fireball that crashed against the cart he was just crouching behind.
Ren found himself surrounded by battle, and grinned in pleasure, finally feeling at home. He ducked a sword strike, pulling his sword and taking the knee of the attacking masked man. The man screamed in pain clutching his stump but Ren rolled behind him, using him as a convenient shield against the arrows heading in their direction. Ren plucked a belt knife from the dying man, and tossed it into the head of an assassin that just killed a small child.
Looking around, he noticed a group of Temple guards brandishing shields and spears forming a tight formation, pushing back against an onslaught of masked swordsmen. Across the way, he noticed a skilled guard perched atop a rooftop, raining arrows down upon the enemy ranks. It looked like the guards were finally mustering up for a meaningful resistance. The hooded Acolyte, brushed past a guard just before an arrow pinned the guard to ... Ren momentarily lost his train of thought as he heard a horse neighing behind him.
He turned around to see a guard on a battle horse charged at a group of black clothed assassins setting fire to a shop. The guards swung his curved saber, taking the arm of one assassin and severing the spine of another. One of the assassins must have been a high tier Essence Cultivator, as he effortlessly jumped behind the rider and slit his throat. He pushed the dead rider off the horse and turned the horse around.
The mounted assassin spotted Ren and spurred the horse into a charge. Ren sent the dagger he stole earlier, spinning through the air at the man but the assassin easily swept it aside with an [Essence Shield] and continued his charge. Ren jumped over an abandoned cart and rolled away. The rider jumped over as well and tried to stomp him with the stampeding horse’s hooves. Speeding up, Ren quickly changed directions, running past the horse’s flank and opening its belly with his sword like a bloody zipper. The animal reared up on its hind leg in pain, throwing the Assassin off its back. Ren rushed over and quickly stabbed the disoriented man through the heart with his golden Knife.
“Sorry, sorry. I know his blood wasn’t worth pulling you out, but look how pretty you look,” Ren muttered to his favored dagger as he quickly wiped it clean of blood and stored it back in its sheath.
Ren made his way through some side streets to find more exciting battles and he discovered some delinquents using the cover of battle to steal from abandoned shops. He smiled to himself as he wished the enterprising young men goodluck on their endeavors. A few moments later he was back on a major street and noticed some homeless looters trying to break into Zainab’s bakery. Fury took hold of him as he sent daggers into all four unprotected necks in less than a second. He retrieved his daggers and left the bodies there as a warning to others.
Ren noticed that this street had more fighters with high tiered Essence cultivation and so he reduced his speed and chose his fights carefully. He sensed someone sneaking behind him and dodged the brass knuckle punch that was meant to break his spine. Spinning around, he noticed his attacker had a sword strapped to her waist but ignored it in favor of her brass knuckles.
The hooded man appeared out of nowhere and tapped his opponent on the shoulder but she ignored it. A blink later, and he was gone. What? Ren frowned in confusion. Why had he blinked? During normal interactions with humans, his system automatically activated routines that made him do a plethora of human microexpressions that let him blend in. However, during periods of stress or battle, he usually turned the function off. And he swore he had done so before leaving Kara’s room. And where had the hooded man gone? He couldn’t find him anywhere!
His attention was drawn back to the present as he noticed the muscles of his opponent flex slightly, her eyes flickering imperceptibly to his left side. He didn’t flinch even as she feinted a jab to his face, but then swiftly blurred forward and sideways with a speed technique, sending her brass wrapped knuckles into his left ribs. On impact, a shaped force of Essence burst into him at the site of the impact, shredding his muscles faster than they could be repaired and inflicting additional damage to his broken ribs.
The punch blasted Ren away, blood leaking from his lips as his feet left furrows in the ground. His attacker lunged after him but Ren turned invisible since camouflage was no longer on cooldown, dodging the follow up punch and repositioning to attack from an unexpected angle. The woman seemed to sense him at the last second but a dagger sticking into her brain made that a moot point. She let out a muffled groan as her eyes stared at Ren in unresigned fury, her body already twitching as death took a hold of her. Ren pulled his dagger out of her skull, wiping the brain matter off the blade as he took a brief scan of his surroundings. A few steps away, he noticed Kala fighting back to back with another acolyte.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
They were surrounded by six assassins and Kala was bleeding heavily from a cut above her right eye. Ren watched her fight for a few seconds, marveling at the graceful sweeps she made with her saber. Occasionally, her weapon glowed mid swing, sending a saber shaped attack past the normal range of her blade. Kala looked up catching his gaze across the battlefield for a brief moment, before parrying an overhead strike and refocusing on her fight. Outnumbered and injured as she was, Ren estimated she had a 26% chance of survival, but he moved his gaze elsewhere to see if there were any more interesting fights to be observed.
A busty Acolyte with crazed eyes ran towards him brandishing a sword. The fog of battle must have clouded her mind and if left unchecked, she would run him through in seconds. Ren’s fingers flicked a dagger out of its sheath, as he readied himself to kill the threat, but the thought of potential witnesses stilled his hands. He tsked in annoyance, sending the dagger back into its home and cast a wary look around. Having to think of human ethics during a battle was truly exhausting.
[ To hell with the puny lifeforms! Spill her blood for it is poor form to deny a willing sacrifice! ]
It truly was tempting. Who would notice one more dead person? Alas, from the incoherent scream and frenzied eyes, the Acolyte was more of a threat to herself than to him. Killing her would be too easy and could end up being more trouble than fun. So instead, he timed her charge, dodging to the side of the pointed blade and planting a heavy punch into her solar plexus. The choked gasp she emitted was music to his ears as she dropped to the ground. This way if the idiot died from her injuries, he could easily argue it had nothing to do with him.
Turning his head back to surveying the chaos and acrid smoke-filled battleground, he finally noticed something his subconscious had long identified as odd.
[ Ignore him. You’ve had your fun. It’s time to depart the area ]
A hooded man dressed in Acolyte clothing, was wandering around the battlefield, touching fighters in the midst of battle. For a moment, an overwhelming feeling of Déjà vu washed over Ren. It felt like he had seen this before but he could not fathom how or why he felt that way. Shortly after the hooded Acolyte made contact with the fighter, the marked person was killed by his opponent. The strangest thing was that neither the person touched, nor their opponent reacted to his presence. In fact, now that Ren thought about it, no one had attacked the hooded man.
[ Bloody Fool. Leave Now!!! ]
A series of curses filled his head as he ignored the bloodthirsty voice, instead keeping his eyes locked on the hooded man’s movement. Lost in his observation, Ren’s steps took him towards an assassin with her sword locked against a Temple guard. A quick stab to the kidney followed by a new bloody smile on her throat and Ren was off, getting a thankful nod from the tired but relieved guard.
That was when a blistering cold slammed into his chest, pushing him backwards in a stagger. It felt like he had been picked up and dropped in the midst of a tundra with an ice storm billowing around him. His eyes however told another story—he had only moved a few steps. The juxtaposition of ice quickly crawling up his skin against the reality his sight reported unbalanced him more than it should. Like his very thoughts were being slowly frozen.
[ Good luck, brat! You’ve gone and brought calamity to me before I am ready ]
Faster than he could imagine, the crazy voice receded into invisibility, like it had never been there in the first place. Ren’s head shot up in realization, frantically searching for the hooded Acolyte only to see the void of his hood staring right back at him. The man was standing just 20 paces away but the freezing force of his presence slowed down Ren’s thinking speed. It was with a sluggish realization that he discovered he hadn’t been attacked earlier. Just gaining the attention of this entity was enough to freeze him to his spot. Like killing intent, weaponized.
Alarm bells rang in his head and he knew with absolute certainty that he was about to die.
He blinked and found his neck gripped by powerful hands, all while staring into the abyss of the hooded man’s face. The man hadn’t moved an inch, but Ren was somehow summoned directly into his grip without feeling anything.
“You can see me?” The man asked in a familiar voice. “This is my Territory! Who do you serve?”
Ren felt the man’s grip tighten, and his enhanced bones creak. He lost 10% of his system integrity from that slight twitch of the man’s arm. Ren, remembering that he needed to keep his secrets close, especially to an existence like this man, tapped at the hand gripping his throat and kicked his feet frantically. Although he was receiving damage, he had no need to breathe and could redirect his audio voice to a different orifice, he decided to act as human as possible.
“I …ca…bre..” he wheezed out.
The man released the pressure on his neck without saying another word, waiting for an answer from Ren.
“Your excellency, apologies. My master commanded me to silence, regarding him or the purpose of my presence here.”
“Him?” The man boomed in that hauntingly familiar voice. “That narrows it down some.”
Ren was confused. He literally had a photographic memory. He could not understand why he couldn’t remember where he had heard the voice before. Ren noticed that in the presence of this man, the battle had become muted. Seasoned warriors locked in deathly battle, subtly shifted away, even at the cost of putting themselves in mortal peril, completely ignoring years of experience.
“I should just kill you,” the man said and Ren groaned in actual pain, his eyes bulging in surprise. The casual words of the man felt like a judgment that bent reality into taking its will. His bones groaned as reality chomped at the chance to squeeze him into so much paste, trying to appease the man whose hidden face continued to stare into Ren like an exotic specimen.
“But, you are not human,” he continued after some time. “You look like one, but your Karma is one I haven’t seen before. That means you are probably an experiment of that man. If my main body was not locked in secluded meditation, I would kill you all the same and deal with your master. ” The hooded man spat in irritation. Ren groaned again as reality seemed to be squeezing him into oblivion from the man’s ire.
The man paused for a few seconds then started to chuckle. It was the most daunting sound Ren had ever heard. It was like the sound of early morning dew coating a freshly dug grave. Like the gentlest summer sunshine, shining off the broken swords and bodies of a blood coated battlefield. It was so cold and all encompassing, like the inevitable embrace of death soothing troubled souls from a life of suffering. Ren shivered at how the laugh could sound so kind despite being everything but.
“On second thought, I’ll let you live and continue with your petty games. But, I can not have you remember this meeting. And whether or not you are that Immortal’s experiment, these are MY LANDS!!!” The man growled out. “I will obliterate you if you disrupt my plans. Now …”
“FORGET THIS ENCOUNTER”
Ren panicked as the world froze around him and his short term memory and all its stored backups began erasing themselves. How was this possible? The hooded deity hadn’t sent any energy into Ren, but his command was somehow forcing his body to acquiesce to his demands. Looking within, he watched in horror as his memory of the past few minutes was steadily being deleted against his will and Ren estimated that he had less than five seconds before the whole conversation with the deity was wiped completely.
Worse, unlike with the Diviner, there was no stopping this invasion. There was no energy to fight against but Ren’s nature buckled at being at the whims of this man, deity or not. That was when he had an idea that he rushed to implement. Racking his brains in the fractions of seconds he had, he noticed that only the memory stored in his innermost Datacenter was being erased. His peripheral backups were ignored since he rarely used them.
In the few moments he had, Ren cobbled up the key information he had gleaned from his conversation with the mysterious man and copied them over to the peripheral backup in a separate secured compartment. Next he isolated the compartment further with instructions that its contents were to be reuploaded to his memory in 48 hours. He hoped that his last minute idea worked.
Everything was going dim. The hooded man melted away into the ether as the battle continued around them. A rush of sound and color invaded Ren’s senses as he was dropped back into reality with no one else the wiser. He felt sluggish and disoriented, but he couldn’t spare any energy for his surroundings, as he focused on protecting his mind from the mind wipe.
A sudden spike of pain jarred his struggling mind as a force hit him in the chest. With struggling eyes, Ren looked down at the sword sticking out of his chest, and the emotionless eyes of the assassin holding the hilt. The assassin sent lightning essence through the sword into Ren’s chest, before pulling it out and moving on to his next fight.
As he fell to the ground, his body limp and out of his control, Ren was grateful to Blackstone Industries for the myriad of complex procedures they had set up to deal with all sorts of unexpected situations. Right now, his body was doing its best to repair the stab damage to his muscle and skin, but it was having issues cordoning off the lingering essence. His body hit the floor with a heavy thud, and his head rolled to face the glassy eyed stare of a woman, her face frozen in the last emotion she had faced before her untimely death - despair.
Despair. Such a lovely word. Wait, was he supposed to be doing something…?
His twitching body startled him awake from his stray thoughts as he fought against dimming consciousness. Gritting his teeth in concentration, he trapped as much of the lightning essence introduced by the assassin's sword, into his core. As expected it tried to continue wrecking his insides but the higher order Qi easily absorbed the errant lightning, with nothing to show for it but an occasional tongue of sparks bubbling up within the radiated mass.
With considerable effort, he refocused on preventing the mind wipe and adding any relevant data he observed into his growing emergency database. Just as Ren was losing his last strands of consciousness, he finally remembered where he had heard the familiar voice of the hooded Acolyte. He hurriedly added this information to the data he was storing in his core.
“No way! That was –”