Chương 80: A Celebration of Steel

Ch. 80 - A Celebration of Steel The Ebon Blade waited only long enough for the stragglers in its long, winding column to form up. That took less than half an hour. Once all of the orcs stood together in a vast, seething mob instead of a mile-long snaking formation, Var'gar issued the order to charge. As he did so, the Blade did the math and decided it would still have the strength to reach its ultimate goal. It might lose a thousand orcs by the time this meat grinder was done, but it would be worth it.

It might even be able to get away with less if it used some of its power to heal the worst injured once the fighting was done. The weapon would certainly be overflowing with power by the end of this. The souls… the fighting… it thought wistfully as it gazed across the battlefield at the wall of shields. Each of them might have a different heraldry, indicating where they came from or who they fought for, but all the Blade saw was a banquet.

Whether the plumes on their helms were blue, green, or white, it wanted to stain them all red with blood. It would soon, too. The war cry that came up from the orcish side was deafening, but it was the only thing louder than their thundering charge as seven thousand huge feet pounded the ground up the slope where the enemy lay. The humans were sounding horns as well. The Blade couldn't hear them over the cacophony of its orcs, but he could see them, and he could see the cavalry respond.

The men at arms were standing their ground and being the anvil that their plan needed, but the Blade knew their hammers would fail. Hundreds of orcs would die. That was a forgone conclusion given how many lances were involved, but they'd already withstood a larger charge, and when this one broke against their strength, all it wished for was that they didn't sound the retreat, too. The two forces met seconds later.

The humans enveloped the green wave on all three sides in a giant pincer move, but the orcs didn't retreat. Even if they had some direction to retreat to, they had nowhere. Instead, they endured everything that was thrown at them. They took the lances and the heavy horse before dragging their riders down from their huge mounts and bashing them to death like beached turtles. They shrugged off the rain of longbow arrows that pelted them and then savaged the front line, and the Blade was right there with them.

+334 Life Force. +64 Human Souls. +44 Greater Monster Souls. It hammered against burly, well-armed men, cleaving steel shields in one strike and penetrating the armor of its opponents in two or three more. Their gear was well-made and well-used. It even felt the surge of magic among it as the occasional breastplate or helmet would resist its wielder's ferocity, though the Blade could not connect with it.

Something about the magic in armor felt like it was practically the opposite of the weapon enchantments it was able to see access so easily. Synchronization Achieved, +100% damage, +100% dodge for one minute. In that moment, the Ebon Blade and its wielder Var'gar, were one. They wanted exactly the same thing, and for the first time in the long weeks it had known the orc, it did not care that he was not human.

All it cared about was the way he roared in bloodlust whenever a halberd failed to bring him down and the way he struck back so hard that even if the knight's magical armor managed to resist his blow, the warrior wearing it was still sent flying. +458 Life Force. +112 Human Souls. +59 Greater Monster Souls. Not all of them died from the brutal, scything blows, but they didn't need to. They were still shattered or stunned, allowing it to move on to the next opponents.

There were ranks and ranks of warriors ahead of them just waiting to be struck down, and each time someone stabbed Var'gar, the Blade felt stronger for it. The front line was a meat grinder, but even with the steel-clad warriors inflicting dozens of wounds in just a few seconds, the Blade's power was going up precipitously. They simply could not make the orc bleed fast enough to counter the tide of life that was wafting off of the dead and dying that were falling all around them. +551 Life Force. +77 Human Souls.

+33 Greater Monster Souls. The red mist that was becoming more and more common began to slowly materialize around the Blade again. It, and the power flowing into it, only intensified when seconds into the real fighting, its soul reservoir was already full, and each new soul was instantly converted into Life Force. Then it started buying more upgrades just to keep its Life Force from maxing out. Accelerate Wielder 3 was followed by Amplify Wielder 3. It didn't matter what it got, though.

It got Parasitic Link 4 after that, but only because it suddenly appeared and was the cheapest ability. The Blade wasn't thinking about anything but killing. It was just selecting whichever ability was at the top of its primary list each time its energy levels approached 10, 000, and it was buying whatever was there. It thought that all of that together was 4, 000, but as the battle continued, it knew that wouldn't be enough. Amplify Blade 3 came after that, letting Var'gar strike his armored foes even harder.

+669 Life Force. +101 Human Souls. +88 Greater Monster Souls.

"You're nothing but meat!" the giant orc roared in his guttural tongue, hacking a bloody path deeper into the enemy lines. The Ebon Blade enjoyed that more than it thought it would. It had pierced shields and armor before. In the hands of the orc, it had even felt what it was like to piece a hardened steel breastplate, which had been a rare treat. Now, though, it could feel not just what it felt to slice through the haft of someone's spear.

It could also savor the feeling of meeting a sword blade with its own and cleaving right through it. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. It was not how parries were supposed to end. Weapons were supposed to be slid past or batted aside, but in the hands of Var'gar, not even the hardened steel of an opponent's Blade could meet an amplified blow without shattering against its dragon-forged edge. +774 Life Force. +124 Human Souls. +99 Greater Monster Souls.

For several minutes there, the Blade lost itself in the flow of battle. There was nothing beyond the red-black haze of blood and death, and though its victims would eventually end, the Blade would have gladly continued this forever. It would almost have traded its quest for vengeance for ten thousand more knights for it to massacre, one at a time, but that was not to be. It's all I've ever wanted, the blade breathed. It would have preferred a touch more artistry, of course.

It would have appreciated a human hand, too. This, though, was enough. Rank by rank, it disassembled the enemy forces, pressing forward as a vanguard of death. At the beginning of the fight, there had been so many rows of soldiers between it and the archers that it hadn't bothered to count. It had been at least a dozen, though. Now it was down to three, and though the other members of Var'gar's vanguard lagged a row or two behind, the Blade could practically taste victory.

As soon as it broke through to the soft underbelly, it would scythe through the archers and the general of this force. It would consume every soul but that one. It would save that one to interrogate and learn about the distribution of forces throughout the region. The Blade studied the fearful eyes of the helpless archers who were already starting to break and run past the men and women standing further behind them. +661 Life Force. +75 Human Souls. +66 Greater Monster Souls. Women?

That struck it as odd and caused it to search through the rest of the commander's entourage. At first, it thought that the girl was just a fresh-faced page boy, but as it found other women and an old man, it suddenly realized the truth. Those weren't messengers. They were mages.

Why were they holding back, and did that one look like Ivarr, or was it— As the Blade tried to understand what it was seeing so it could decide how best to act, a pillar of fire slammed down from the cloudy sky, making the clouds ripple and retreat as it descended through the heavens to strike him, along with arms reach with a blazing torrent of flames. -231 Life Force +145 Life Force. +262 Human Souls. +244 Greater Monster Souls.

So that's their plan, The Blade thought, watching its wielder fall to one knee as everyone around him died screaming. The army was not the defense. It was bait. -298 Life Force While the mages were still fifty yards from it, the fire expanded and then expanded again. Even as Var'gar struggled to rise, the flames thickened and expanded in a widening circle of death. Five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, and finally thirty feet.

As the circle finally reached its limit, almost everyone around the Blade, human or orc, was dead. -346 Life Force +111 Life Force. +98 Human Souls. +85 Greater Monster Souls. Most of the humans were already halfway to partially shared skeletons with cooked meat, and those few humans or orcs that had been far enough away to survive were running in whatever direction they could. The Blade couldn't blame them for that. Its wielder was currently burning brightly enough that he was dead thrice over.

The contents of his stomach were boiling, and his eyes had already burst in his skull. Even then, he still crouched there, trying to rise despite the abuse. Hundreds and thousands of Life Force followed through him, refusing to let him perish, but for the first few seconds, when the fire that pinned it to the ground was at its fiercest, it captured and consumed hundreds of souls as everyone else caught in the expanding grip of the spell.

-466 Life Force That tide of death was over before the spell was, though, and then, its overflowing reservoir began to drain rapidly. The Blade consumed most of the souls that remained in its reserves then, as it wondered how long the group of mages could keep this level of raw power up, as it watched its reserves plummet precipitously. Even as it thought about that, though, the flames began to shimmer and fade.

They had cooked the world with a firestorm wide enough to take out hundreds of their own men, and from the looks of things, a few of the mages had died or at least passed out as they cast their spell, which would make what came next easier. -598 Life Force The Blade's wielder didn't move yet, though. It couldn't. No matter how powerful the healing abilities it possessed, thanks to the Path of Blood, the orc had been cooked through to the very marrow! His soul was still intact, though his mind was more questionable.

As that overheated mush slowly began to think spasmodically once more, but there were no sane thoughts in that morass that the Ebon Blade could find; it was just a sea of bloodlust. -419 Life Force That was okay because that was all the Blade needed. Moment by moment, the orc healed at an impossible rate as it stood there, looking just as wretched and carbonized as everyone else. A few men stood by the edge of the blasted area, but it couldn't make out many details because of the smoke and the heat shimmer.

-322 Life Force Those were probably witch hunters, it realized. They were meant to be its executioner, but at least for now, the inhuman heat held them back, giving it a chance to recover as muscles regrew and tendons reconnected. Var'gar had a heartbeat once more, and in a moment, -251 Life Force His charred lungs would take their first breath of new life as the orc's flesh revivified.

It took another minute and a half, which was enough time to let it glimpse its opponents through the haze in an attempt to decipher what it was they were planning next. -203 Life Force Those were tense seconds, but by the time its orcish wielder rose to his feet and took his first step toward the edge of the blast crater, his charred flesh already flaking away and sloughing off to expose the fresh new skin beneath it. -198 Life Force It almost reached the edge of that fury hellscape before the weapon saw him.

Before the mages had unleashed Armageddon, it hadn't been sure. It had thought that it might just be too drunk on bloodlust and that it was seeing what it wanted to see, but the man in the middle was definitely Ivarr, and he was standing there at the edge of the charred earth, flanked by a pair of witch hunters, and bore a silvery sword in hand.