Chương 128: Drowning in Darkness

Ch. 128 - Drowning in Darkness The blade's vision was lost to darkness even before those words appeared before it, but the sensations of battle didn't last much passed them either. As a popup appeared to explain the infernal path, though, the Ebon Blade ignored it. Instead, it focused on the void that surrounded it. The spark of divinity burns as bright in you as it has in anyone, but now it is polluted, and forever out of reach.

Instead, your dark deeds have caught up with you, and imprisoned you in a cage of your own making.

The only way forward is through that darkness, along the Infernal Path. While it contains horrors undreamed of in the minds of men, those mean little to a blood soaked monster like you. The Infernal Path: Level 1 -> slay and consume 1, 000 demon souls to reach Level 2. Level 1 Powers: Hellfire: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] Endless Hunger: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] It had lost its vision and its sense of touch to the outside world, but it could still feel itself, and it was changing. Runes were shifting, threads were darkening, and the very shape of its soul was twisting. The corruption of the pit was changing it, and as the poison crept to the very heart of it, its mind flickered, and its thoughts faded until even its screams of frustration were muted by the endless dark. It was just a sword after that, suffocated and silent. It didn't have a mind in any real sense.

Most of the time, it didn't even exist. Some moments would flash through, though, like a fitful dream. New alerts would drive it to wakefulness once more for an instant, just long enough to remember who it was, or that it even was, before it slipped away. You have spent 15, 000 Life force on Bolt 5! Those moments, along with flashes of particularly violent battles, were the only things that confirmed it was still alive.

In between those moments, it didn't have time to experience dread, or even to bemoan its fate; it simply wasn't. You are drowning in the poison that collects at the very bottom of the world. The foul ichor is anathema to you, but no matter how you struggle you continue to sink. Even so, there is a bottom, and you will only find it by traveling along the Infernal Path. The Infernal Path: Level 2 -> slay and consume 100, 000 demon souls to reach Level 3.

Level 2 Powers: Abyssal Resonance: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] Endless Hunger 2: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] Those brief, violent flashes were like sparks. One-on-one combat with a flaming minotaur. A battle with a giant fungal cyclops. A dragon made of shadows and glass. Each time it felt the glory of battle surge through it, it had a new wielder, and each time it felt too alive to care who that was.

You have spent 3, 700 Life Force on Inferno 2 and 3! It was a disorienting series of flashes, and whether they were days or years apart, it really couldn't say. All that the Ebon Blade knew was that none of them were part of the same battle; they couldn't be; they were all too strange and different. The foes were different, and so were the places where they fought. More than that, though, were the feelings of fighting them.

Cleaving through cursed flesh felt nothing like the pulpy fungal matter, and burning hearts that pumped molten pitch felt entirely different compared to the deathless foes with chests full of perfumed herbs and sawdust. Even if each one is only a drop, the souls you have snuffed out are a bottomless well, and you drift ever lower. All you have to do is give in. Give in and tremendous power will be yours for the taking.

The Infernal Path doesn't reach to the heavens, but there is more power in the nine circles of hell than there is in the entire pantheon of divinity, just waiting to be taken. The Infernal Path: Level 3 -> slay a demon prince to reach Level 4. Level 3 Powers: Hellfire 2: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Abyssal Majesty: [Incompatible with your nature. This power may not be accessed at this time.] It would be like a human taking only a single bite from each course at a banquet, or perhaps a single bite from only one banquet a year. There simply wasn't enough context to understand what was happening beyond that single, brutal surge of victory as the demon that held it defeated the one that didn't. None of them took place in the endless desert it had been in, either. There were muddy flats, icy mountains, and fiery cities, but no ochre deserts.

The blade didn't worry about where it was in hell, though. That didn't matter nearly as much as what was happening to it. You have spent 8, 000 Life Force on Vorpal Strike 4! Eventually, those flashes stopped coming at all, and even the little alerts to inform it of various upgrades became too dim to read. That was how it found itself by the last ember of its own dark soul. It was a dim spark of glowing red that burned brightly against the endless darkness that had enveloped it.

The weapon approached that spark cautiously, only to find the spot already crowded. The people that sat around it like a campfire were the souls of its former wielders, at least most of them were. It was annoyed to see that even very short-term wielders like the grave robber were here, though it was heartened to see Evelyn on the far side of the flames; the throne's magic had destroyed her body, but apparently her soul survived. There were others it didn't recognize, but it wasn't sure.

Perhaps those men wielded me in previous attempts to escape my prison, it told itself as it looked from spirit to spirit, and then, past them. The void that they all existed in was absolute, and the only hint as to what lay out there was the occasional growl or scratch. Of those glowing figures, Baraga was notably missing. It wasn't until they made room for it, and the blade sat down between two strangers, that it realized that it was Baraga, or at least it wore his shape.

Wearing any human form was distasteful, but it hated this one the least. It sat there silently, warming itself by the ruby's light, as it listened to the conversations of those who were already there. At first, those conversations were nothing but warbling noise, but as it focused, and crimson campfire burned away the darkness that clung to it, things slowly came into focus.

"Perhaps when the fire dies, we'll finally know peace," a man with a waxed mustache said, "Wouldn't that be something?" He wasn't talking to the Ebon Blade, but that didn't stop it from answering.

"A weapon can never know peace. That is not our purpose. We exist to fight." As it spoke, the light flickered brighter, and it looked down at its hands, watching the darkness drip off them to expose the light soul of its first wielder beneath. As it studied them, it realized that they weren't even Baraga's hands, at least not solely. It knew the man's hands very well, and these were every so slightly too small, with lines that belonged to other people. Not his soul, then, the blade realized.

An amalgamation of all the souls that created me.

"We've fought enough for any ten lifetimes," another man answered. This time, the weapon was surprised to see it was the shepherd boy, Ren.

"Don't you think it's time we rest?"

"Rest?" the weapon asked.

"I thought that you wanted to be a hero? What is heroic about rest?"

"I slew a dragon, and then that dragon slew me," the boy complained.

"I think that's enough heroism for one lifetime." The ruby they were around flickered in time to the boy's words. That was when it made the connection. Its purposeful words made the fire brighter, but the hopeless words of those who were trapped with it in this private purgatory smothered them. The Ebon Blade ignored Ren's words and studied the gem, as well as the flickering flames inside. It expected to find the archmages it hadn't consumed, or perhaps the soul of King Paralon in there. That would make sense.

That one single grudge might be enough to fuel it, even in the darkest of moments. What it found instead was an ocean of souls. The fires looked small, but as it studied them closely, it found a frothing spring of endless faces. It recognized none of them, but instantly knew that these were its victims. Deep, in the darkest pit of hell, half drowned in poison, there was another, more personal hell inside of it, and it was this power that held back the true annihilation that most of its wielders seemed to long for.

Just looking at it gave the weapon hope. As long as it had the power, it would fight, and it was hard to overestimate the depths of its violent reserves. It had killed for lifetimes, and slain uncountable warriors and monsters in their thousands. The blade looked up from the fire to the spirits of those that had once fought beside it and then reached its hands out, letting the poison that coated it drip and sizzle on the fire as the light of the soul beneath shone brighter.

"As long as there is another battle to fight, then we will fight it," the blade declared as its gaze moved from one to the next.

"To what end?" Evelyn asked.

"My father is dead, and your revenge has been achieved."

"He has, but the throne that enslaved him still stands, the mages that created me still exist, and the gods—" it answered.

"You mean to fight the gods as well?" another man asked. The weapon did not recognize him.

"Will you fight until everyone is dead and buried? How would that fate be any different than this one?" That gave the blade pause, and it stopped to consider. What would the answer look like? It did not want to ever stop fighting, but even more than that, it didn't want to endure an eternity of loneliness as the last one left in the world, either.

"The gods and the men that have not wronged me need not die," the blade answered finally.

"They may simply surrender." It didn't know what it would do with neutered, obedient gods or pliable kingdoms. I didn't see how that would make it better than the cursed golden throne, but perhaps it could live with some lower tempo of warfare, so long as it was not forced to dwell in a throne room that might double as a prison. The idea of surrendering gods made a few of its former wielders laugh, but it ignored that. Instead, it faced each question with some variation of the same answer.

Some of them eventually came to agree with it, and some continued to insist that death and oblivion were the only acceptable answers.

"Better to be consigned to oblivion than endure the hell out there," Ivarr said, as a partially terrible roar echoed through the darkness.

"I'm all for fighting evil, but this place is evil unending. What can you do against that?"