Chương 155: Chapter 231: Experiments, part two

"The Abyss do you things want from us?" Kyle demanded, clutching his scorched hand, waiting his turn as Amy brought Bess and Roger back to full health. The fae with the burning eyes didn't seem concerned, steering their boat into the star-filled darkness, passively watching as Bess regenerated the skin of her left side. The barrier mage gasped in pain as her consciousness returned under Amy's hand. This crazy bitch had already demonstrated that she could take all of them at once while they were still wearing kit.

Now that they'd been disarmed, she was entirely beyond their Party. Wasn't she one of Fabron's servants? Kyle thought, offering his hand to Amy as she crouched beside him, sighing in relief as the balm of Granesh's favor cooled the pain. But if Fabron is dead… she must be from the set he was wearing, which means whoever took it is directing her…

"Is this another one of William Oh's childish attempts to 'torture' us?" Kyle demanded. The gorgeous fae gave them a half-lidded stare that reeked of contempt and…pity?

"You wish." She murmured. Kyle glanced away from the fae and towards the front of the boat, curious about their destination. It took him a moment to pick out the details, but eventually he recognized their destination: Steve The Bigass Snake.

"Hey, that's not a safe place to go. Steve's got parasites the size of cities, which in turn have their own parasites the size of buildings. The constellation snake is practically a continent with its own biome and monsters. People have tried exploring him before and been forced to retreat by the unending onslaught of monsters. We can't go there."

"You can't go there." The fae replied.

"Fuck that, if you wanted us dead you should just kill us and get it over with." The fae looked down at them, growing flaming talons.

"He doesn't speak for us." Amy said hastily.

"I'll take my chances with the snake." Roger grunted.

"…I can guarantee you that you will not die to any monster native to 'Steve'." The fae said, relaxing her claws.

"Although you may wish you had." The Abyss does she mean by that? It wasn't too long before they found out. Steve's back got larger and larger until they eventually were able to make out a discolored patch on the back of Steve's neck, out of sight of Zodiac Stronghold. The patch was a tiny dot in the center of a single scale, and yet, it expanded, and expanded, and expanded… revealing a swath of ash and charred monsters the size of a city.

And at the center of that swath was an emaciated man seated on a throne of charred flesh. Standing around him were three more fae, carefully peeling him apart piece by piece. The man's steady eyes and wide grin gave no hint that he was being carved like a roast turkey, thick black blood oozing down his sides as they sawed through his flesh. Pop! With a wince, a fae removed a rib and set it aside.

In front of Kyle's gaze, the man's flesh simply reformed, his white rib returning for an instant before the wound closed. Now that Kyle took a moment to study the scene, he realized that the fae were bleeding under their clothes, too. Fiery blood was oozing out of them that matched the same wounds they were inflicting on their master. Was he… torturing them by forcing them to torture him and offloading the damage? It would still hurt, right!? RIGHT!? Why would he even need to… The Abyss is happening here!?

"Oh wow, it's you guys. What are the odds? Kyle, Bess, Amy and Roger, from the wedding, right? Do you know who I am?" The man asked, casually bobbing the scepter in his hand against his knee as two fae behind him carved into his flesh. The third was cutting open his left arm.

"Aren't you…Void? The Wyrd family's necromancer?" Kyle asked. He didn't recognize the face, but the body left an impression. The emaciated man grinned.

"Well spotted. Although since I can't wear the mask with this set, a code name doesn't really serve any purpose anymore. Just call me Vincent." Pop. Kyle winced and looked away as another rib worked its way free only to instantly regenerate.

"…Right." Kyle said.

"What do you want from us, Vincent?"

"Well, I just so happened to come into possession of a set and I need some helpers to confirm a few of its effects." Kyle scanned the fae who were silently flaying themselves and their master. The pity in the fae's expression suddenly made sense. He caught the rest of his Party's gaze and nodded. As one, they turned and scattered in every direction, sprinting like their lives depended on it. If I get outside of this dead zone, maybe I can get a monster to eat me, Kyle thought, his legs pumping as fast as his heart.

"Now, now, none of that." Vincent said, his soft voice carrying in the unnaturally still air. The ground beneath him bucked up, wrapping Kyle in a suffocating embrace and carrying him back, depositing him in the grip of one of the surrounding fae. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Kyle struggled, but without his Kit he was no match.

"The monsters have been lured in, Master," A large fae said, kneeling down in front of the flayed necromancer.

"Excellent. Aria. Go stand on the mark and when the monsters get close to you, kill yourself."

"…Does Master have a weapon for me to do this with?"

"I'm sure you can manage." Vincent said with a placid smile, leaning on his palm, the bones of his forearm in plain sight. Pain did not seem to exist for him.

"… Right away, Master," she said, moving into the distance, where a large black X had been burnt into the ground. Kyle saw the constellations approaching, a variety of different monsters, from giant grabs to serpents and manta rays, all drawn from beyond the edge of the cleared area, provoked to attack by the large fae standing beside Vincent. When they got close to where Aria stood, she reached up and tore her own throat out. An instant later, a flash of light and a deafening explosion washed over them.

When Kyle blinked the tears out of his eyes, he spotted Vincent holding his thumb up to the blast. All of his wounds along with the wounds of the other fae had vanished in that flash of light.

"little bigger than my thumb, and she got…two of them." Vincent mused. The constellation crab and manta ray began shambling unnaturally to the sides while the serpent continued to charge. A moment later, Aria reappeared beside Vincent, whole and undamaged, with an extremely sour expression.

"Ah, it didn't damage your spirit."

"No, master." Aria said.

"Excellent. That means we can do that as many times as we want. For free. You may want to figure out an easier way to kill yourself…for your own convenience."

"I'll give it some thought, Master." Vincent flicked a hand and the charging constellations crumbled to ash.

"Madelhari," Vincent said, turning his attention to the largest fae.

"Yes, master." Madelhari said, kneeling in front of him.

"You've got the most mass of the seven of you. Aria has the least. I want to see if the size of the explosion is relative to your size. Go stand where she did and kill yourself."

"…Yes, master." Once again, the Fae unwillingly killed itself, seemingly unable to disobey direct orders from the set-holder. BOOM!

"Oh yeah, that one was a lot bigger." Vincent said, peering at the explosion past his thumb.

"Right?" He asked, glancing over at Kyle and the others, where they were being held still by the scenery itself. Kyle nodded, swallowing a mouthful of dry spit.

"It was bigger."

"Right. Now we have to determine if it's size or combat power that determines the size of the explosion. So the crab is much bigger, but less powerful than either Aria or Madelhari…" BOOOOOM! The shockwave nearly knocked them on their asses, the ball of fire reaching out several times further than before.

"Excellent. Seems like the explosion is entirely related to mass."

"What exactly were you planning on doing to us?"

"Well, Kyle, I wanted to figure out a few interactions that my Set is kind of vague about. What kind of powers you'll have as undead, whether your personality or Class is preserved, that sort of thing."

"We're more valuable alive!" Kyle shouted. Vincent cocked a brow, staring at them." You? How so? You're just a group of middling laborers of no particular skill."

"Hostages. William Oh will likely make some kind of concession to get us back!" Kyle said, grasping at the idea like a drowning man. Vincent thumbed his chin, staring at them with a frown. He glanced at Aria, who nodded and leaned in close to whisper in the necromancer's ear.

"Aria tells me that you four tried to convince their previous master to kill William Oh. Why, pray tell, would he give me concessions to retain your treacherous hides?"

"Because he hates us and wants to make us suffer himself!" Kyle said. Vincent frowned, staring at them for a moment that stretched and stretched, until he'd been studying them with an unblinking gaze for over a minute.

"That's a thing? People can hate someone so much that they're willing to save them so they can dish it out personally?" Vincent asked, glancing up at Aria. For an instant the necromancer's weathered face had the expression of a dumbfounded child who had just learned that the Sugar Fairy wasn't real. The inexplicable sight sent a shiver of unease down Kyle's spine.

"I'm not sure of the exact relationship between William Oh and these four, but it can happen. Revenge is most satisfying delivered personally. Anything less can be…underwhelming." Aria's hand that was out of necromancer's line of sight clenched into a fist before making Climber hand-signs that everyone save Vincent could see. Plan of attack. Later. Are they…at odds with each other? Kyle thought.

"Eh, what do I care about that kid? I can-""May I remind master that William Oh is the one who wounded Tassos with an improvised attack? The boy is one of the most adaptable Lords in The Tower. He will surely refine whatever method he used to wound Tassos in preparation for our eventual conflict. Some small leverage may be lifesaving. Even something as simple as using them as bait or a small distraction."

"Hmm…I suppose I should trust your judgement, Aria. You are the diplomat, after all." Vincent mused. Holy Abyss, are we going to survive this? Kyle thought, not sure if he was incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky at this turn of events. Vincent stroked his chin for a moment, his minions continuing to cut into him as he pondered.

"Alright, we can leave them alive. On one condition."

"Anything." Kyle breathed. He didn't mean anything, but Vincent didn't have to know that.

"You four must become my Vassals." Vincent said.

"Lord privileges will be indispensable going forward, such as being able to purchase my own Doors and pay off my own bounties."

"But… you're a Vassal." Kyle said.

"You can't…" Was that his roundabout way of saying that he's just going to kill us?

"That is true," Vincent said, waving the fae away, his wounds sealing themselves seamlessly in a matter of seconds as he stood up. A nearby dead monster's claw twitched and wrenched itself away from its former body before it leapt up into Vincent's hand. The necromancer hummed to himself as he passed the foot-long talon through his fingers, the keratin distorting under his touch and somehow sharpening into a long, straight spike a bit over a foot long.

Vincent flicked the tip of the spike, which sprouted a tiny flame.

"Do not interfere, nor allow them to interfere," Vincent said to the assembled Fae.

"Yes, Master." What does he mean by - Oh gods! Without warning the emaciated man shoved the spike directly into his own head, driving the burning tip deep into his brain. The necromancer's jaw went slack, eyes fluttering as he lobotomized himself. His body stood perfectly straight and continued the work of scrambling his own brain even as his face registered unconsciousness, like some kind of puppet being controlled from the neck down. Dear Gods, what madness have I gotten into?

Kyle thought as the sputtering of boiling blood and smell of cooked brain assaulted his senses. That is not a man. Wordlessly, the eleven captives assembled around this creature shared a look. There were three factions at play here. The fae, the Climbers, and whatever THIS thing was. It did not take more than a look for the first two groups to reach the understanding that this thing was their common enemy. As little affection as there was between Fae and Climbers in general, this was an entirely different matter.

A moment later, Vincent's arm withdrew the spike from his brain with a spurt of blood, his body drooping in place while his head hung slack. A silent minute passed.

"Do you think he's-" Bess was interrupted by a sharp inhale as Vincent's head straightened, causing the barrier mage to flinch.

"Got it," the necromancer said with a satisfied nod.

"I am now…no longer a Vassal." Vincent said, wiping the blood out of his eyes.

"The System stores that information up here where it thinks nobody can get to it," He tapped his skull.

"Just had to find and destroy the log with a bit of faefire, and viola, the System thinks I've never been a Vassal." Vincent glanced between them curiously.

"You guys didn't know you could do that?" The seven Fae and four Climbers facing the necromancer shook their heads in various states of shock.

"Well…I guess we all learned something today." Vincent said.