Chương 70: Two on Two

Ch. 70 - Two on Two The blade spent the next few days thinking about the souls it had devoured often. Between the elf and the mages, it had a much wider view of the world, but it also had a much better idea of the resources at work to strike down its wielder. That made it more wary, and it zoned out less than it had in the past, cognizant that with all the damage that its army had already done, anyone in power who cared was aware of them by now.

They may not know that the army was being commanded by the Ebon Blade via its wielder, but in time that secret would leak out just the same. +1134 Life Force. +44 Human Souls. +19 Greater monster Souls. The other thought that was on its mind, though, was the Path of Blood. It was a thorn in its side, and it had been ever since it had killed the elf. The Ebon Blade had accomplished every task that had been set before it except for one. It had killed men and women, as well as nobles and paupers.

It had killed an elf, a mage, and even a few dwarves and halflings. All of them tasted different, and it had enjoyed some of them more than others. It had tasted the blood of every sort, but it hadn't drawn the blood of a mythical beast soon enough for it to matter.

The damn thing only seemed to count the blood that had been spilled after the requirement had been established, which was a shame because it had killed several mythological beasts in the months leading up to reaching the second level of its current path. A dragon and a manticore certainly qualified, it grumbled to itself. An ogre probably did too.

It didn't matter, though, because all of those kills had happened in the past, and as the orcish army sacked village after half-empty village, moving ever north and east, it began to fume over that. It had killed so many farmers and their wives that it was able to spend 4, 000 on Lesser Soul Reserves 4 without hesitating, but no amount of blood would make up for the one thing it was lacking.

The blade found itself wishing that they would find some terrible magical guardian or that a mage would summon a demon fierce enough that it would have something to fight that might qualify. That didn't happen, though. The worst they faced was some archers on horseback that sought to harry their flanks. Var'gar wanted to fight the ragged band of two dozen, but the blade quickly saw the flaw in that plan.

A seven-foot-tall orc might sprint with terrifying quickness over short distances, but it would never catch up to men on horseback. It was a fool's errand to try. Instead, the blade counseled its wielder to cross a river and go through a small wooded area to avoid them. That denied them a couple of smaller villages and only delayed the inevitable, but it was still better than being ground down by two dozen orcs a day as the riders picked off the weakest of them. It would only get worse in the days ahead.

Those small, scattered bands of would-be heroes would join together and become a fearsome force. That was what the blade was waiting for, though. When they were strong enough, they wouldn't just nibble around the edges. They would commit to a strike in a desperate effort to stop the thousands-strong horde from leaving more burned fields and ravaged towns in their wake. +1244 Life Force. +39 Human Souls. +8 Greater Monster Souls.

The Ebon Blade expected that to take weeks, and probably only when they were about to reach the city of Eldimeer, which had real walls and a population of over 50, 000 souls, but it happened much sooner than that. Three days after they'd crossed the river to avoid the archers tailing them, and less than a week after it had ripped apart the screaming souls of the mages in Ogden, it saw the first real force arrayed against it, grouping up on a ridge near the horizon.

The blade instantly commanded its wielder to array his army into a formation that could better withstand the charge of heavy horsemen. If the enemy had been made up of men at arms and pikemen, then it would have happily charged them, but as it was, they had to be a bit more judicious against such powerful foes. The enemy commander seemed to know his business, though, because he didn't strike immediately. Instead, he waited and moved his forces back and then back again as if he was waiting for something.

The blade worried about a trap, but they had to continue to move forward, which was exactly what they did. When night was coming, it thought that the opposing force of some several hundred knights and riders would retreat entirely rather than risk a fight with orcs in the dark, as they had superior night vision. Instead, in the waning light of the setting sun, the horsemen finally attacked. The blade pleased but uncertain why they would risk it until a dark spec in the sky above it started to get larger and larger.

It wasn't there a moment before, and for a moment, it worried that, somehow, the humans had enlisted the help of a dragon. As Var'Gar and his orcs started to charge toward the hundreds of horsemen coming toward them, the dot was streaking like a thunderbolt toward the chieftain and the Ebon Blade. It was only just before it struck that the blade realized what it was: a griffon. In all that time, it didn't even bother to warn its wielder.

Var'gar was the opposite of subtle, and if he'd been made aware of the beast, then he would have stopped and looked, giving away the game. The blade let him continue to charge, and then, just before it struck, the blade seized his body in a tight grip and forced him to spring upwards, leaping half a dozen feet in the air with the power of the blade flowing through it. +264 Life Force. To say the maneuver was unexpected was an understatement.

Var'gar hadn't been expecting it, but however much he was surprised by it, their opponent was even more surprised. The griffon had dived down toward the hapless orc, indicating that it somehow knew exactly who the leader of the orcish army was. That concerned the blade, and it feared the work of wizards. However, as it forced its wielder to jump, it noticed a new detail. That changed the entire nature of what was happening. The blade didn't manage to make its wielder clear the griffon's swoop entirely.

Instead, Var'gar's broad chest made contact with the near wing, which was far from insubstantial. The force of the blow broke the orc's ribs and caved in his chest, but it also broke the giant feathery wing. It screeched in pain, and the man who had been riding it shouted in alarm. Var'gar no doubt would have joined them, but his lungs had collapsed and been pierced in multiple places, so he said nothing at all as the three of them fell toward the earth in a tangled ball of confused flesh. -118 Life Force.

The Ebon Blade didn't let that, or the fact that they were now falling toward the ground with a dangerous amount of force, stop it from making one good strike, though. Even as the orc tried to process what had happened, it brought the blade down like the executioner's axe, striking several inches into the beast's neck. One-handed, it lacked the force to behead the thing properly, but it bit deep into the thing's spinal cord, which was enough to make sure that it would never rise again. +41 Life Force.

The blade devoured its soul just before the three of them impacted the ground. That's where everything went wrong. For several seconds, the weapon had been pouring its energy into its wielder, and the orc's ribs had started to put themselves back together so that its lungs could inflate. However, when they hit the ground, the blade was yanked out of its wielder's hand as the heavy orc bounced one way, and the giant carcass of the griffon went another.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. -86 Life Force. No, he hadn't let go, the blade realized. From the elbow down, he was still holding on in a primitive death grip. That portion of the arm had wrenched free from Var'gar's body, though, which caused quite a conundrum. What am I going to do next, it wondered. -18 Life Force. The griffon was hopelessly dead, while the man in the saddle was still alive and slowly stirring.

What was less clear was if its wielder was still alive; that was less certain, given that he was missing an arm, had blood in his still punctured lungs, and was buried under half a ton of griffon. The knight was clean-cut and bearded, which made him a noble of some sort and clad in shining, gilded plate mail from the neck down. The man was too out of sorts to notice it yet, but the blade was certain it was only a matter of time.

None of the other orcs that the beast had struck seemed to be getting up, but it was hopeful that one of them would. It had not foreseen the battle turning out like this, but the very last thing it wanted was to lose its army. While it worried about what was going to happen next, it also wondered when Var'gar's arm would let go and fall off. There was a stirring under the near wing, and its wielder staggered forward, blindly groping for the blade. He was in bad shape. His good eye had been burst.

His bad eye wasn't much better, and he was bleeding green from a dozen places. Still, he refused to let go, and the blade admired that. -12 Life Force. The emergence of the gravely wounded orc also alerted the griffon knight, too, and he pulled a dagger from his chest sheath and began to cut the leather straps that held him in his strange saddle. Both of the men were in poor shape, so it had no idea who it was that was going to reach it first. Could the orc even find it in its current condition?

What would the knight do with it when it found it? The blade didn't know, and it could do nothing to influence the outcome. All it could do was watch the orc move along the griffon's flank one halting step at a time. It had almost reached it when the knight finally stood in the saddle and drew his long sword. In the crash, he'd long since lost his lance, but now, with his blade, he didn't hesitate, and he leaped toward Var'gar without even uttering a battle cry.

The orc never even saw it coming and was impaled right through the chest, near the heart. For a moment, the Ebon Blade thought it was over. It watched as the orc sagged and started to fall toward the ground. If the strange knight had left it alone, that would have been it, but he pushed his huge, green opponent forward in an attempt to force him to the ground.

That small change in the big monster's trajectory allowed its severed arm to come into contact with the stump that was still holding the blade, and somehow, the two reconnected. The blade felt its wielder instantly, a surge of relief rushed through it that was almost as powerful as the surge of energy that left it. -82 Life Force. Even though it felt like it was too late for the orc chieftain, the weapon still poured everything it had into him. Life Force was not a problem; it had all the energy it could want.

It was already drawing sustenance from the wounded, the dead, and even its current opponent. It had power, and it used all of that power to fuel its wielder. -144 Life Force. The orc responded by beginning to mend immediately, but the Ebon Blade wasn't certain it was going to be enough. Even with that sudden surge of Life Force, his heart was still stopped, and the most he could do was slump against the griffon's flank instead of the ground.

In most ways that mattered, his arm, which had stayed connected to the blade for their minute-long separation, was more alive than the rest of his body. Still, he did not fall. -219 Life Force. The knight reacted in confusion to this and withdrew his blade from the orc's chest, stabbing him with real force several more times. Each time he did so, a new wound opened, new organs were rent, and the old one began to close.

It was a bloody scene, and it took half a dozen thrusts before the orc's heart finally started to beat slowly once more. That's when the blade figured out what had happened. -176 Life Force. Its power healed the closest wounds to it first. The power was proximal, and it had taken more than half a minute to attach the tendons, muscles, and nerves of a severed arm. However, as soon as that was done, the Life Force that it had been pouring out flooded through the shattered body of its wielder. -154 Life Force.

Var'gar began to stir then, which horrified the incredulous knight.

"No, you're dead!" he shouted. Then, he drew his blade from the back of the orc and raised it high overhead. The blade saw what he was preparing to cleave off the orc's arm again, and there was no chance it was going to let that happen. -99 Life Force. The blade took hold of its wielder's half-dead body and used the orc's unoccupied left arm to elbow the man hard enough to dent his codpiece.

The blow broke Var'gar's elbow, but it knocked the armored warrior back and made him drop his sword as he lay there in pain, giving the blade the time that it needed to finish putting its battered wielder back together. -186 Life Force. When that was done, almost a minute later, Var'gar rose to his full height and turned to face his opponent.

"This is my blade!" the orc growled in a low, threatening tone as he advanced on the human.

"The dark tusk is mine, and none shall have it but me!" -117 Life Force. The human couldn't understand what the orc was saying, but he didn't have to. He had time to draw his dagger again, but it did no good when the orc started hacking away at the man on the ground. Var'gar completely ignored the armor. Most other warriors would look for weak points, but the orc just hacked away at the steel chest plate like it was firewood until there was nothing but bloody ruin. -74 Life Force.

Even after the warrior was slain and Var'gar recovered from his grievous wound, the battle was still going on all around both of them. It was easy to see why. Though the heavy cavalry charge had been as successful as they might have hoped, they were far from victorious. Despite hundreds of orcish dead, very few of the knights had been able to break through the lines with their lances or wheel away to safety. They'd trusted the force of their combined impact to break through, and that had failed.

Now they were bogged down in bodies, and some of them were unhorsed. Many of them were still fighting in small knots. Some of them were winning, too, but even before Var'gar entered the fray, it was apparent to the blade that they were all dead men. They'd made quite an entrance, but they were overwhelmed by ten to one now, and they would need those odds to be practically reversed to have real hope of success. -56 Life Force.

While its wielder charged off to join the fray, the blade examined its real victory, the level it had achieved on the Path of Blood. While it had enjoyed single combat with a man brave enough to fly into battle, the thrill of finally unlocking its path so it could continue along it was far more valuable. The world is drowning in your efforts. You have tasted every flavor of blood, but it is all naught but life and death.

The Path of Blood: Level 4 Kill, maim, or grievously injure 10, 000 men and monsters to reach Level 4. These acts of violence can be perpetrated by anyone, but they must be within the reach of your Aura of Hunger … Level 3 Powers: Red Haze: gain 33% of your Siphon from every significant wound inflicted within your reach. Aura of Life and Death: For some time, your Aura of Hunger has been able to drain those around you ceaselessly.

Now it may do the opposite when you choose, healing those who fight alongside you by taking from your growing Life Force reserves rather than adding to them. These healing abilities work much slower than those bestowed on your wielder, and are inferior in every way. As the blade reviewed the new abilities, it found them to be lackluster. It could see how the ability to heal some of its injured warriors might be a good strategy for the long term.

Its army had lost hundreds fighting off the desperate charge of the humans, and it could only do that so many times before its army was entirely gone. Still, as tactically sound as that might be, it was loath to give away anything that could go toward strengthening it. The condition for advancement interested it, though. The blade had worried about what strange conditions might have been required for the next level. Given what it had to do for the last level, it might have been difficult, deranged, or both.

This condition, though, was easy. It was only one large city, or several smaller towns, away from achieving it, and the weapon knew it would kill that many people in almost no time at all.