Eric raced through the well-lit streets lined by perfectly manicured parks and gardens and tall futuristic buildings of glass, chrome, and glittering topaz alloys and smoke and rubble and screams and a child desperately crying for her mother and Eric was now racing straight UP the building because momentum was for suckers and inertia, gravity, and basic physics was pretty much optional, at least when it came to racing in whatever direction he wanted, where he wanted, and when he wanted and when the desperately screaming child who was covered in burns and gashes, and spurting way too much blood from an arterial puncture finally slipped from her perch, desperate to escape the roaring fire, Eric had already caught her.
Caught her and kissed her brow and commanded the blood to stop flowing from her wounds. Commanded the injuries to seal and the blood to BURN away the infection in a neuro-friendly flash and Eric was racing back down the broken building to see where all the Professionals who normally liked browsing during the day and enjoying the magical city they had all secretly yearned for even pre-apocalypse where everyone was valued, everyone was trained, everyone MATTERED. Yet still, to this day, psychopathic assholes STILL wanted to cause injury and despair.
And he was handing off the dazed child to a man who’s odd mixture of gratitude and panicked pleas just washed over him because of course he was going back up to face the fire and why the hell had some psychopath placed a bomb in the middle of a residential building, top floor, with absolutely no tactical significance at all?
His Mad Bomber perk made it clear that the building was absolutely fine, so truly the arsonist had been a fuckup. It was just that shrapnel and smoke and a brooding fire were taking a tole and Eric LOVED training up his skills. LOVED that his Dominion’s Command had just hit Rank 7 and it was about time and healing was AWESOME!
He should do it more!
Ranking up skills was awesome and something he loved to do and he knew that both Blood Mastery and Swordsmanship were on the cusp of ascending yet another level… at least halfway to Level 35! How glorious was that? But he had no time to meditate on a sword battle where he could finally admit that his opponent had been holding back so much of his own fearsome potential, so eager to grow and advance like Eric, and it totally wasn’t that guy’s fault that Eric had a Synergized 14 Essence Ranks he had evolved to an absolutely kick-ass transcendent attack, because his mother was a Seraphim who had just ascended the very night she hit Gold, and Eric could so EASILY blaze as a brilliant phoenix eager to grow in power, even if not spirituality, because with his father’s bloodline… but he wasn’t about to burn a world for his own greed. Not when he was smashing through doors like nothing, reaching inside smoke-filled bedrooms lined with so much gloriously posh shit, including high end holographic entertainment centers and hyper-powered electromana computers and keeled over teenagers dying of smoke inhalation and there he was, racing down the building the wrong way… no HIS WAY! Again. Ignoring the screams of a terrified mother before his mad dash straight down instantly leveled out with the road and a dead stop without jostling a hair on either girls’ heads before he placed them down, gently kissed twin sister’s brows, ignored the screaming mother who was crying for an ambulance… did they even have ambulances now? And commanded their diaphragms to BREATHE!
Congratulations! You have saved 2 additional lives and expanded your mastery over your Healing Arts! The perils of life & death have enhanced your focus and drive!
Dominion’s Command is now Rank 8, Hero!
Eric snorted at that. He was the farthest thing from a hero as he raced back UP the building, glorying in his Dominion Map Interface… and the fact that he had DREAMED literally every building and person into being in this city… even if he really did NOT like accessing that truth, because they were their own autonomous people and he was just a lazy goofball slacker who REALLY liked powering up and didn’t want the responsibility of so many lives depending on him, NEEDING him, and why was this door in the way? Go away, door! (it did) HAH! Fresh people to save… level-up with!
You have successfully reversed Fatal Blood-loss! Experience Earned!
Eric squeezed eyes tightly shut that were stinging at the worst possible time. Having no problem with the smoke at all. It had been so easy, so effortless, to bring back the young mother whose blood had painted the entire back wall arterial red. To summon that blood BACK where it belonged and COMMAND the gashes shut. Even if he hadn’t purged 100% of the germs and pyrogens, it was 99% clean, and Blue Corp antibiotics were LEET!
And she was regaining consciousness and screaming, but Eric couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t understand a word she said as she coughed and begged and his Perception was 629 and he COULD NOT HEAR HER! Because there was nothing he could do.
For the crushed child pulpified under a slab of Alutopaz, there was nothing he could do at all.
Even though he TRIED!
TRIED To command the flesh to heal, the injuries to SEAL!
But all his STUPID Interface did in a too cheery voice as ask if he wanted to make a fresh revenant.
NO! He did NOT want to make a fresh revenant. (there were no vile shamans to balance the soul for true autonomy with, and two-year-olds did NOT make good Revenants or autonomous Underlords) so all he could do was hold the screaming sobbing woman close and race back down the side of the building, gazing at the solemn crowd and the shell-shocked woman... and why the hell was no one taking this sobbing person off his hands? He had SAVING to do and SKILL RANKS to EARN! Because he was LEET and BADASS and even BunBun thought so.
So Eric just stared out at nothing for long seconds, rubbing his eyes, while the building above continued to burn.
“I’m sorry,” he softly said.
“She was all I had.”
And there was nothing Eric could say to that as the young mother with the haunted eyes broke down in sobs. And why the FUCK hadn’t he dreamed her a happy husband while he was playing god? What the heck was wrong with him?
“I’m sorry,” Hhe said again. He looked back into the crowd. “I have to go back up now,” he softly whispered.
An experienced-looking Professional… who certainly didn’t look old, and now that Eric thought of it, absolutely no one looked old. He seemed to have dreamed everyone up with fully rejuvenated bodies, which was awesome, but certainly not impervious bodies and the motherly woman gave Eric a too gentle smile.
“It’s alright, Hero. Go on. We’ll look after her.”
And Eric was racing back up the side of the building like a bolt of lightning because YES! Awkward social dialogue and painful poignancy scenes had been successfully SKIPPED! He hated those scenes in his games and why was he crying? Why? Oh yes! Smoke irritation! He really should max out more of his resistances. Hell, even his Physical Resistance could use another 30 points, because being fucking immune to 24-Pounder Cannonballs hadn’t blocked that half-step Silver’s piercing strike from cracking his sternum, even through his mithril mail! Ha ha!
He then stopped cold.
Took in the building in its entirety, and said the words he should have said minutes ago.
“Debilito dicio ignis plures dies!”
His words echoed like thunder as his Mana and Qi both crashed a whopping 300 points. Four times what a certain orc keep had cost to render orc gunpowder inert. Because he had dreamed up big fucking buildings. Pretty buildings, with plenty of space and public parks between them, and floor-to-ceiling reinforced alloyed windows that he could make clearer than any glass, yet had left tinted just enough so that no one would accidentally walk into them, and because sun glare was a pain and privacy was important and he had dreamed up an ENTIRE CITY! (Even if he couldn’t save everyone.)
He could hear so clearly the awed murmurs of the crowd below.
And the desperate cries of those still trapped inside.
Still injured.
Still suffering from smoke inhalation because that would take time to fully dissipate.
And he knew where everyone was… so he got back to work, and didn’t stop until the job was done.
“Thank you, hero!” Sobbed a young woman holding an infant who couldn’t have been any older than him. Any older than Rica. Eric swallowed the painful lump in his throat, and forced a smile.
“Happy to help, mam!”
Because that’s what you SAID when playing the virtuous path in any game.
Everyone knew that.
And even if the girl was biting her lip, looking so painfully like Rica, even if her Professional Parents were behind her, supporting her and their grandchild, clearly assuring them both a happy ending. Clearly not needing him any more, not really… and that was okay.
That was GREAT!
Because Eric still had shit to do.
Couldn’t stop now!
Not with his interface flashing with so many reds.
So many problems.
He couldn’t stop until the job was fully done.
Quest? Who the fuck needed a quest?
He was a completionist. Like every good gamer SHOULD BE!
He wouldn’t stop until the job was DONE!
****
“Stim, hurry the fuck up! This place is hot, and we do not want to be here when the feds come down on our ass.”
The bulky bear of a man wearing the nondescript coveralls of any low-rung service worker who could be found anywhere, paused in installing the bomb to one the building’s central support beams and glared at his wiry, anxious-looking counterpart. Twitchy wild eyes, bad teeth, and a constant rash made it clear that his companion’s hadn’t been a perfectly clean Pod ascension. But then again, when did the average Joe get a break like that? That was for all the glossy actors and models and spoiled upper class shits and vid-cam whores that always had the easy life. Spoiled fuckers like those deserved everything coming to them, as far as he was concerned.
“Tim, if you don’t shut the fuck up and get back to your post, I swear I will throw you off this building myself!”
The shorter man blanched, nervously looking down from the naked support beam he stood on, down to the street far, far below.
“I think something went wrong. Kevin was screaming something before comms went off.”
“Really? What was Kevin screaming about?”
“That something was fucking up the ambush, but didn’t say what. And why are we still planting bombs if the ambush worked? Because then the city’s ours. So why the fuck would be blow it up? And if the city’s not ours, that means that we’re just sowing confusion and making noise so that the fucking higher-ups can get the fuck out safely while the working man takes the heat, like always. So why the fuck aren’t we just running, Stim? We shouldn’t even be—”
Tim’s words died off abruptly when he finally registered the change in voice, glancing up from his brooding stare to find a distinct absence of both Stim and the massive bomb they had managed to cart past everyone by acting like perfectly casual maintenance crew, even using a luggage cart dolly and a cardboard box like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Tim opened and closed his mouth, rubbing his eyes to be sure.
Yup. His oversized partner, oversized bomb, and the luggage cart dolly were all gone.
In their place was a kid wearing fancy ass crimson mail with a tricorn hat who was smirking at him on the support beam with his legs crossed, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re not Stim.”
“This is true.”
The kid flashed a grin that showed off beautiful white teeth. The absolute perfect smile.
Tim felt his guts burn with envy. He even forgot to be scared.
At least not until the kid’s smile grew.
And grew.
Grew so fucking wide that it could swallow the world. And those teeth?
What the hell had been thinking?
No toothpaste commercial here.
Just wickedly sharp teeth that glistened like bone with just a tiny bit of coveralls still caught on one.
A piece of fabric revealing a single word that a now whimpering Tim could read perfectly.
Stim.
Tim whimpered and lurched back a step. So terrified he couldn’t form a single coherent thought. So dizzy with fear that he couldn’t even keep his balance, not even with his 14 Finesse.
He only screamed when he fell, plummeting down 35 stories, his Vitality assuring that his powerful lungs marked his terror the entire way down. Until abruptly ending with a crunch.
Then nothing at all.
And the wildly laughing boy whose grin had seemed to take up a suddenly dark and stormy sky to the doomed eyes of Tim had disappeared.
As if he had never been there at all.
****
“Henry! Thank god, you found my baby. Thank you, thank you!”
Eric found himself smiling with that stupid lump in his throat again and the smoke irritating his eyes which was crazy with his stats because he sure wasn’t crying with happiness after saving another child when he had been forced to leave the father behind, the poor man’s skull having been obliterated by shrapnel that had come so close to missing him completely. So close to another happy ending.
But not quite.
Not quite for Henry’s father, and the young woman gazing at Eric so hopefully, as if expecting the young hero to flash a winning smile and dart up for her husband and hop right back down crumpled when she saw the look in his eyes. The stupid moisture dripping free of cheeks that lasers, at least Tier-I lasers, would probably bounce right off of with no more than reddened skin. He doubted he would hold up quite so well to Tech-II blasters and sure as hell not Tech-III, like the ones used in that ambush he had been so happy to stomp…
Yeah. He’d prefer dealing with a few volleys of those to the sight of the poor young widow crumpling to her knees and holding up her trembling baby as if that would make a difference, screaming for him to save her man as if he hadn’t already tried…
“I’m sorry,” he said, hanging his head before her despairing wails before darting off so fast that even sound fought to catch up.
So why were her desperate cries still echoing through his head?
He stopped, choking back something awful crawling up the back of his throat… certainly not a broken boy’s sob, and took a deep breath and made himself look at the positive. Focusing on what he could do… not in the things he couldn’t.
You have successfully Neutralized 1 Block-Buster Bomb.
You have successfully claimed 3 Fire bombs.
You have successfully put out 5 fires!
You have directly rescued 57 men, women, and children.
You have averted a potential 3000 additional casualties!
You have successfully eliminated 20 additional Red Scorpion Affiliates!
“But not all of them,” he said softly to himself, ignoring the strange looks he was getting from wide-eyed professionals as he stood in the middle of the boulevard. So many people were walking on egg-shells, wide-eyed and primed to flee at the faintest hint of danger, the earlier halcyon mood of the city of just a days ago shattered for the spite of psychopaths and monsters.
And here he was, to most of their eyes appearing as if out of nowhere.
Focusing on what was blinking on his interface. What filled his growing sense of emotional exhaustion to brilliant diamond-hard focus once more.
The twenty or so odd reds all racing away, most in the direction of Ashland or Picksonville, which made it clear that the Red Scorpions were probably affiliated with the merc companies that had claimed territory he had every fucking intention of getting back. Very, very soon, were not what troubled him.
It was the cluster that had stopped in the middle of the city.
And after trusting his gut and rushing to intercept any number of clandestine meetings… or bomb set-up operations… he feared he knew exactly what it meant. Because what was worse, far worse than anything else...was the location of this final grouping of half a dozen crimson lights.
The Blue Palace itself.
His guts twisted as he spun around, ignoring the fleeing rabble, focused only on those who had chosen to stick around.
In his experience, two men meant an incendiary explosive and three men together had meant a Block-Buster bomb which had horrified him to read the System’s description of, which meant that six Red Scorpions at Blue Corp’s crown jewel where his own personal posh pads were at, where his Rising Sun crew was now recuperating, where he suspected Caliban’s own family discretely lived…
“FUCK!”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
If he had thought he had been going full out before, it was nothing compared to the speed with which he was racing through the city now.
ES - Caliban! Get your wife and kids out of Blue Place NOW! - Bomb imminent! -
ES – Bennett! Get everyone out of Blue Palace NOW! (Be fucking discrete!) Red Scorpion (might) be planting a massive bomb! - I’m moving to intercept.
His interface lit up with messages. First Caliban then Bennett, then a host of others.
And it didn’t even matter.
All that mattered was the awful feeling of dread twisting inside his gut as his Danger Sense began flaring desperate warning. Even worse, his Mad Bomber perk which had built up pressure like an awful heaving stomach exploded into sheer dismay when he dared to visualize the entire city as one interconnected object.
One interconnected pattern.
A pattern he realized he recognized.
A pattern radiating absolute MALICE.
FUCK!
His heart was pounding, breath hitching with what he’d finally acknowledge as fear.
Not just fear.
Terror as he raced for the Blue Palace glittering in all its Khalifa-like glittering brilliance that his perk made horrifically clear was the absolute PERFECT place to place a bomb that could, say, level an entire city, much like low altitude thermonuclear warheads would explode just over a metropolitan center, in hypothetical war game scenarios to assure maximum kill yields.
Every message he had sent out had been pointless.
Every action he had performed up to that moment, he realized to his absolute chagrin and horror had been worthless.
Meaningless.
A distraction.
Somehow, by some unbelievable degree of twisted fuckitude, his enemies had gained access to a weapon capable of destroying all of an extremely technologically sophisticated, and resilient… he had made sure of that… Freetown.
And he could think of only one possible weapon that could so easily damn a city… And a hell of a lot more than that.
He had no doubt that there were dozens upon dozens of hideously deadly devices out there that he knew absolutely nothing about. Perhaps nothing like the one he had once dared to use before, had no choice to use before, that had instantly ignited an entire city. Perhaps an entire continent, setting fire to the highly charged magically refined atmosphere… and utterly eliminating an entire clan of those that had once dared to cross his mother.
Just one of the worlds they had destroyed in a single endless night, embracing a glorious fiery transcendence that had happened just days ago.
Had happened, for his mother, over two thousand years ago.
An ascension equally witnessed by for the vile monster he would NEVER call father.
A monster who knew damn well what had happened that night. Knew absolutely everything that Eric and his mother had done in pursuit of their furious, faction-destroying ascension.
And now the most bitter of serpents was coming home to roost.
Eric wanted to scream, but no sound came out beyond his own exhausted breaths.
All he could do was move. Move FASTER!!
Even as his racing thoughts seemed to race ahead.
Tearing through the air in a merging of Dominion Map Interfaces and his own mastery over the city that had once been a figment of his own imagination and he was right THERE in the room with a pair of orc shamans and a trio of furiously chanting mages who looked so out-of-place in a chamber of floor-to-ceiling windows, glass and hardwood conference tables, and cushioned leather recliners. There were even pitches of lemon ice water! Water that one of the trembling mages actually drank with obvious relief, brow covered with sweat from the strain of the monstrous act they embraced.
Two goblin assassins that had hidden from his map interface despite his mad Perception could also be seen, Tier-II blasters held in casual grips as they glared at the one entrance into the chamber, save for the windows, of course, which meant that they weren’t Red Scorpion at all… unlike the trio of purple-eyed mages radiating twisted magic and furious hate… men he’d all but SWEAR looked like kin to the clan he had eliminated, yet somehow hadn’t.
Somehow, they were were here for payback.
Somehow.
And between them, the focus of their sweaty brows and chanting, like some horrific glittering prize, was a massive crystal cage containing a miniature crackling energy field that was made, he KNEW was made, by exceedingly exotic Blue Corp tech that STILL required those three dark robed arcanists to channel every bit of their potency into stabilizing that field.
Because held within it the heart of that deadly crystalline vessel was EXACTLY the nightmare vision that Eric had feared above all others.
A pulsating hyperion starship core.
Glittering like death’s own diamond.
A diamond beyond which was a crackling portal field from which a single shadowy individual could be seen seated upon a throne of jade and gold, distant windows giving just a glimpse of a city of ivory towers, grand pavilions, and stately buildings. A city filled with life and wonder that even Eric could sense in that split second’s epiphany as he raced so desperately for ground zero. And what a juxtaposition it was to see at the heart of that lively Grecian city its emperor glaring into Eric’s world with eyes filled with such ice cold hate, looking on with a sneer.
Lord Augustine himself.
Because of course it fucking was.
“Everything is in place?” the monster said with such ice-cold indifference as he gazed at the assembled crew.
“It is, Lord Augustine,” Stony, the fucking OGRE! Of all people declared, along with the pair of gnolls quaking before the killing aura of the Silver, even if he was a portal and a world away.
The Silver-tier monster nodded. “Good. Then you have made sufficient amends to reclaim your lives. You will now all be permitted to take the portal, along with all of your associates. Each of you will be granted ten million credits and free passage out of this sector.” He flashed a bleak smile. “And with the destabilization and loss of this ascending CESSPIT! Blue Faction will realize that there is a price to be paid… all of your foolish factions will realize that there is a price to be paid… To any that would dare harbor any man guilty of striking my son!”
Eric choked back a scream that would do nothing at all.
OF COURSE he had been set up with no-win situations from the very moment he had woken up, such that any and every move forward he made would only have escalating consequences, all but assuring the absolute destruction of everything and everyone he had ever loved.
OF COURSE it had Malice’s foul stench all over it, now that he knew to look for the tiny tendrils of cold malevolence and hate glittering like puppet-strings from so many pairs of eyes.
And it didn’t even matter.
All that mattered was that he use every last fucking option available to him, no matter how extreme, no matter what the cost.
Several pertinent facts that struck him so viscerally at that moment were that the portal was only two feet by two feet wide. Any transfer of personnel would happen by touch transfer, not the physical motion of stepping through. That, and his interface made it clear that everyone he personally knew, everyone he had rescued in this life and the one before, had already left the tower.
Even if it would do no good at all against a destabilizing continent-destroying hyperion core… it might still be enough.
Which made step three painfully obvious.
All he had to do was accept the horror of his own origins and the extremely high likelihood of his imminent death.
Because if it didn’t actually kill him… the entire galaxy would still be eager for his absolute destruction. One final bit of malevolence from the horrific wretched demon that really should have died when countless thousands of tons of disintegrating steel had crashed down upon it.
Yet somehow hadn’t.
Eric flashed a cold, bitter smile beyond even his terrified desperation, finally forced to embrace living nightmare as he commanded his ring to make him look EXACTLY like what he would look like if Aurelia Seraphim Silver’s blood had never flowed through his veins.
Very much as if Malicent Bane alone had forged him.
“NO! FUCK NO! I REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT!”
Strangely, it was that thought that blared so brightly in his mind as he caught the tiniest glimpse of his features as he raced for the glass window at the speed of sound.
Faster than the speed of sound.
Interface screaming at the last second that this chamber was protected by MULTIPLE Silver-tier wards crackling with potency that shouldn’t even be on this world in this time and place. And it didn’t even matter as his transcendent blade CUT THROUGH REALITY ITSELF and he was now inside, phoenix blade sealed back in his soul once more, before the fucking bastard glaring at the other end of that portal on his fucking throne could do more than flinch, and Eric was already racing forward before Stony could do more than blink, before the three corrupt mages of a world that should be no more could shift their arts on the container that clearly wasn’t enough to keep a catastrophic cascade from occurring on its own… yet just as clearly, the container was at least sufficient for the three concentrating mages to stabilize the core within, and would no doubt buy all the fools present the handful of seconds they needed to jet right the fuck out of that room and jump right through the gate before the core finally erupted and doomed Eric’s world.
“Now, Wormy! It’s time for the grand fucking finale of our lives!”
“Stop! Wretch! Or I will catalyze the hyperion core you see before you, this very instant! Do you understand?”
Eric stopped cold. A jolt of screaming terror from Mad Bomber and Danger Sense making it exquisitely, horrifically clear that this was no idle threat, even as the three mages and absolutely everyone else looking on that conference room gazed at Eric in wide-eyed terror.
There would be no delay for everyone to jump through, should the Silver-tier monster who only thought he was pulling the strings here choose to eliminate them all with an active surge of a spell that must have a local catalyst or trigger. But it didn’t matter, since Eric had no way to dispel it without dispelling the gate and the containment field, instantly dooming them all.
“Wretch? My, how crass you become when you allow your emotions to run ragged, Prince Augustus.” Eric uttered from ring-granted hood and shadow with a killer’s smile. “I understand your threat perfectly well. Just as I understand why the gate’s still open. Why you haven’t closed it already. When you really, really should have.”
The Silver-tier monster glared Eric’s way with cold hate. “You think to intimidate me with my own weapon? My own ANSWER to the transgressions this monstrous realm has DARED to commit upon a member of my house? Multiple members of my house? You think I’m so cowardly that I will run in fear and give you fools time to save yourselves with three panicked slaves now so EAGER to serve you? Fallen scientists of a lost realm that have such a unique affinity with that very core? HA! You think I’d place in your hands a prize you are so UTTERLY unworthy of? When it’s only purpose is to destroy you?” Hatred twisted into a sneer. “That, fool, shall not happen. I promise you that. No… no, no, no. This way is so much BETTER! This way, I can kill you all in an instant, or watch you writhe in despair for my pleasure!”
Eric laughed coldly, voice dripping with contempt. In that moment he felt such a surge of wild mania, and absolutely free of all fear or horror or regret. Because why should he fear a damned thing? Now or EVER?
Right now, he could TASTE so many dark and twisted possibilities in that perilous moment where an entire world hung in the balance.
Two worlds.
A fulcrum of choice, unspeakable loss, and limitless power.
Oddly, his cavalier amusement had caught the brooding Silver lord’s curiosity.
“I would know the name of the fool who dares to address his better so cavalierly, worm.”
Eric snorted even as his messenger rapidly ascended.
He ignored the screams and panicked shouts of absolutely everyone in the chamber when he allowed the disguise over his disguise to drop fully, shadowy cloak now gone to reveal every inch of a body fully clothed in crimson silks with facial features that would make any mother throw him off a fucking balcony.
Features that, despite being hideous and twisted, were still most DEFINITELY his own.
“You may call me Spite Bane. Son of Malice Bane. The one who took such exquisite pleasure in the death of your son.”
Eric allowed himself a split second to mock the man with the most twisted smile imaginable, one that came so EASILY in this hideous form... somehow knowing that his foe needed to PROCESS the sheer significance of what Eric had just uttered… needed to let his towering fury be far more MEANINGFUL than an instant jerk reaction that would haunt Augustus with its absolute insignificance far into the future.
The powerful Silver NEEDED to at least inhale deeply to roar his furious rebuttal and unleash unholy destruction in the heartbeat Eric had already darted away for absolutely everything he was worth.
“FOOL! You think you can escape from me now? You think I don’t know how weak your faction truly is? Hanging to existence by a single claw? Your final moon will be OBLITERATED! This last bastion you dare to linger upon will also pay the ULTIMATE price for you and your father’s betrayal!”
Eric laughed coldly, taunting his furious foe in the hyper-speak that came so naturally to all those with Quickness so far beyond mortal ken. “Think again, asswipe! I’m just backing up to give death plenty of room to come for you and adding yet another realm to my kill-count. So long, sucker. I wouldn’t want to be you, or your world! HA!”
Eric, or Spite Bane, perhaps, had time to flash his foe one final mocking grin before most of the conference chamber, including Stony, the shamans, assassins, gnolls, and the trio of mages trying to stabilize a very ANGRY looking core, were swallowed in single gulp as Wormy manifested fully into Freetown’s Crown Jewel with a temporary Quickness boost exactly matching Eric’s own, paying a price he didn’t dare think about, and destroying the prized building utterly.
Yet what mattered most to Eric in those horrifying moments as the entire world hung in the balance was that Wormy’s gulp instantly cut off, thanks to Rank 2 Essence of Impermeability, the Silver psychopath’s desperate attempts to trigger whatever insta-destruction device he so obviously had. A device that might be fancy electromana artistry at its best, a high-tech marvel that could even be catalyzed through a dimensional rift. But unlike Silver-tier wonders, it clearly couldn’t cut through Wormy’s impossibly resilient scale-coverd hide for shit.
Even if Wormy’s hide was now beginning to glow all the colors of the rainbow in the nanosecond before the tip of the topmost of Wormy’s tri-fold jaws touched the tiny projected portal hovering in the middle of the air. And Wormy was far more than a puppet or a projection. He was a fully sapient and autonomous Underlord and a Half-step Silver that was ABSOLUTELY capable of wishing himself through.
So he did.
And Eric was already racing forward, screaming as the flesh began to sear off his bones from the flare of hyperion energy erupting from the portal and he could STILL see Prince Augustus’s horrified look of absolute dismay as a third of a mile long bomb abruptly ported right on top of him… glowing so hot that Augustus’s entire city was beginning to burn and it was all Eric could do to utter the desperate word he needed to say in a panicked shriek before his own world turned white and all was lost and—
“REPUDIO!”
The rift slammed shut with an abrupt snap, an ultimately fragile structure utterly obliterated with a transcendent-tier disjoining. Reality itself seemed to vibrate and tremble with such force after snapping shut the gate that he could sense reverberations causing electromana circuitry to short out throughout the city like an EM Pulse bomb.
And Eric was already racing away for all he was worth.
He didn’t look back. Even if his eyes hadn’t been seared out right of his head, he didn’t dare to, as he headed for the wild red territory West of Freetown.
He absolutely did not want to see, or at least sense, the infrared afterimages of the top floors of his once priceless building crashing to the ground, no doubt killing countless Professionals in the heart of the most technologically advanced city in the world, and he most certainly did not want to know how many lives had been lost, simply with that final flash of Hyperion Radiation.
And the worst part of it was, he could have saved them.
Saved dozens. Hundreds, perhaps. Maybe more. If only he had screamed out the words that would have halted the building’s fall. Or at least slowed it to a gentle feather’s descent.
If only he was willing to reveal that Spite Bane was far from the callous psychopath merely using this tragedy as an opportunity to lash out at his enemies. That Spite Bane, in fact, cared very much for this fragile city in this precious world… and that concern might doom all of Terra, after the heinous act he had just committed while now the farthest thing from being his mother’s puppet, with absolutely no Silver Phoenix talisman in play.
No. Horrific as it was to admit, the building had to fall. People had to die, and Spite Bane had to be mocking the entire city with his cruel laughter. “Enjoy your collapsing city, suckers! You thought you could escape Bloodtear that easily? FOOLS! We own you, body and soul! The only reward you’ll get for your stubbornness is death! And when old Augustine comes knocking on Terra, Bloodtear will make sure YOU all take the fall for daddy dearest losing his city!”
He cackled like a madman, continuing the entire city that their doom was all but assured for daring to cross the Bane Clan and refusing to accept their place as Bloodtear’s rightful property. Declaring to one and all that the Augustine ruling family would be eager to send them all to hell and that they had Spite Bane alone to thank for their just comeuppance, even as he darted back to the twisted hell he had come from.
Now, every Professional, Bronze-tier mercenary, and citizen who could make out his words could swear without a flicker of dishonesty that Malice Bane’s ultimate pawn, his son, had set them all up to pay the ultimate price for not allowing the goblin faction to enslave and destroy them. A truth that even Imperial Inquisitors, if there was such a thing, could judge the veracity of.
Did Eric know for sure that he had to take this tragic farce this far? Of course not. A thousand innocent people, so like the ones he had so desperately struggled to save earlier that very day, might perish for absolutely no reason at all. And he was betting so much on the idea that a 1/3rd mile long monstrosity that so many people knew of in Freetown had somehow completely avoided notice. Even if it wasn’t quite so absurd as it might seem at first blush, Call to Battle and material phasing having allowed his Underlord to appear in a fragment of time so quick that it mirrored Eric’s own Battletime-enhanced speed. So fast that it had gulped its pray and touched the portal in a nanosecond. Faster even than a Silver-tier monster who, granted, might have been the furthest thing from Speed Focused, could do whatever simple or extremely complicated procedure was necessary for him to close that world gate before Wormy had jumped through.
Yet in that nanosecond that had passed, the only real residue was the first fifty stories of Blue Palace being utterly obliterated and the remainder of the tower falling down on anyone close by who might, or might not, have been looking up for that split second in time. And thanks to Wormy’s own Impermeability essence, anyone less than a Silver-tier specialist actively looking for trouble in that split second would have had absolutely nothing go off on their magical radar.
Just a cackling madman of a Contender gloating his contempt and spite for the entire city after destroying the prized jewel of Freetown before finally flying off as fast as he could.
An act for which he doubted he would ever totally forgive himself.
Yet he was terrified that any other move he might make that was even an iota less ruthless, an iota more restrained, showing even a spec of concern... would see his world burdened with a doom that might destroy them all.
Yet all those deaths… all those screams… after fighting so damned hard to save the entire city…
It was more than he could bear.
So he did the only thing he could, as the air echoed with his hypersonic laughter when he wanted to scream his despair, reveling in his own momentary and already healing PAIN as the least of what he should be suffering as he raced away so FAST after taunting the entire city with their supposed doom. So damned fast for wild crimson territory not in any direction he had intended to travel as Eric for quite some time….
To hide from the (hideous, awful messages!)
To hide from the (genocidal fucking MONSTER!)
To hide from the fact that his ring (had not reverted when he had dared to embrace a higher order attack! WHY? That wasn’t the real him. It was a HORRID MASK!)
To hide Spite Bane from the entire fucking WORLD as he SCREAMED and SCREAMED and found himself DEEP in a wonderland of mile-high towering forests and giant grass and undergrowth as big as any normal woodlands, all of it saturated with wild magic and home to massive wasps and bees and a thousand lethal colonies of flying killers that swarmed and swarmed and he TORE RIGHT THROUGH THEM like a fucking comet, choking back a SCREAM as his mind blazed with the horror of what he had just done.
SYSTEM-WIDE ALERT!
SPITE BANE – PROGENY of MALICE BANE (GOBLIN FACTION) HAS COMMITTED AN ACT OF GENOCIDE!
SAPPHIRA 3 IS NOW SUFFERING FROM: CATASTROPHIC MANA CASCADE.
AUGUSTINE BRANCH OF SAPPHIRA ROYAL CLAN IS NO MORE!
SELF-DEFENSE EDICTS IN EFFECT.
IMPERIAL PURGE WILL NOT BE AUTHORIZED.
PERSONAL VENDETTAS WILL BE PERMITTED.
And before the messages could take on a more personal System tone, telling him things he really didn’t want to know, offering boons he was horrified even to look at, let alone accept… he tore himself free of his Spite Bane persona. Even as he sensed an inbox instantly filling with warrants and edicts and black oaths of hate, writhing with so much malice that it would have done his ultimate -don’t think it! - proud.
He flushed it all away as he did his entire awful identity.
Gone.
And he would never ever become that horrific genocidal killer for a moment, ever again. Even if his ring, not rupturing his disguise when he had dared to embrace both a transcendent Phoenix Strike and a higher order abjuration… was implying something REALLY Horrible that he absolutely refused to think about.
No. That vile mask was forever dead to him.
Not simply for his own sanity, but so that Earth, and his family, would never be imperiled by a momentary blip on the galactic radar that had already disappeared. For all they knew, Spite Bane had perished in the very territory he had fled into.
Certainly, he would never be seen or heard from again.
No matter how many god-awful titles that he might lose out on, no matter how sweet a boon they offered.
Maybe if he never assumed that identity, never looked back… he could pretend he hadn’t just doomed an entire world... or at least an area so large that a Silver ruler’s entire family had just been obliterated for the crime of imperiling his own.
All because Eric had actually been arrogant enough to believe he’d be able to take a young master’s life in a duel without being forced to pay the most abhorrent of prices. No matter that he had been set up, the duel just a pretext to allow a potion, artifact, and spell-boosted young psychopath to assassinate him.
All because he refused to let himself be constantly curb-stomped and ground to paste by a never-ending stream of his supposed galactic betters.
Yet no matter how clever and ruthless and savage he strove to be, the ultimate price for his daring to buck the status quo was still beyond horrific. Even if by some miracle, he hadn’t been the one forced to pay it, this time around.
It was still an awful weight upon his soul.
Her Soul, as Luna Archer, now holding a bow so true to her namesake, finally lurched free of monstrous bee and wasp-infested jungles while sneaking past entire regiments of monstrous ants to dart through far more natural-looking forests. And then, upon crossing a final ridge-line that no abomination would dare cross as sharp wild mana became the rich soothing spiritual nectar of New Arcadia, she found herself stepping into a realm of such wonder and magic that she burst into tears… feeling like she had finally come home.
