EmEs_etherious
patreon
Chapter 138- Aftermath
🕑 Added 2024-02-20 23:59:01 +0000 UTCThe once silent forest exploded into motion. The man with the rocket launcher dropped his weapon- it had proved useless already- and instead raised his hands to cast some magic. A female Lorak rushed at Arthur, carved dagger clenched in her hands, she was moving fast, with a grace that belied her amphibian nature, more surefooted than any forest ranger he’d seen.
400 agility? No, she's closer to 500.
Unfortunately for her, Arthur was quite literally twice as fast. Surrounded by enemies, he had no sight of those behind him. Hoping they wouldn’t shoot him in the back out of fear of hitting their own was being too optimistic, and so Arthur leapt forward to meet the dagger-wielding Lorak. He saw her eyes widen in shock, the dawning realisation that she'd bitten more than she could chew. The next moment she was dead, her throat crushed completely, her spine severed. These creatures had surprisingly weak bones.
Arthur heard the distinct chime of a system notification but no flash of blue overcame his vision. He’d configured it to not show any logs whilst he was in battle, and he’d personally selected the least offensive ringing sounds. The one Arthur had heard right now, was one he’d chosen to ring only when he got a kill notification. From the moment the battle had started till now, less than ten seconds had passed and he’d already taken two people out. From the observations Arthur had made within the fog, he still had twelve left to go.
He wasn’t moving fast enough, a realisation that was confirmed a second later when a lance of pain shot through his lower back. He’d been shot. Whilst the bullet did little to no damage, it stung like a bitch, about twice as much as when he’d gone paintballing as a kid.
Cursing, Arthur dropped to the ground and prised the daggers from the corpse's grip, rolling rapidly to the side to avoid any more fire. He wasn’t altogether successful, getting hit twice more, from a different direction this time, before he caught sight of the first offender. Arthur threw one of the daggers as hard as he could. There was no finesse to it, and the knives hadn’t been made for throwing in the first place. That mattered little when the metal weapon was launched at over two hundred miles per hour. It hit the man in the chest, handle first, and he heard the distinct spap of bone.
He didn’t stick around to see what became of him though, already moving onto his target, the rocket launcher turned mage. Besides the captain, he was the only mercenary actively trying to cast magic and Arthur didn’t want to introduce any more variables into this chaotic fight. Since leaving the locus, Arthur had been directing his health regeneration at his bottomed-out ether pool. In two minutes, he’d regenerated a little under 300 ether, not enough to make a difference in this fight. Whilst his legendary class was powerful, it was incredibly expensive. He had an equally large budget to work with normally but he’d left the locus with practically zero ether and his regeneration was at 50% of its standard. Even then, a mere five minutes would have given him over a thousand ether to work with but the bastards hadn't waited for long. What happened to scouting out your enemies?
Grumbling internally as he moved towards the mage, he saw the growing panic in the man's eyes as he tried to finish casting his spell. He could have been the greatest genius of his generation, an extraordinary mage who would have single-handedly turned the tide of battle. Arthur would never know. His dagger took the man under the chin, piercing upwards towards his brain. The Lorak had of course tried to dodge, but the pitiful half-step backwards he’d managed didn’t really make a difference. The magic he’d been preparing dissipated harmlessly into the air.
“Human!” The captain's voice screeched in accented English. “You’ll die for that.”
So the man could get angry. Arthur was starting to wonder if he was emotionless or something. I guess the mage was special to him then. Arthur didn’t bother to deign the captain's threat with a reply. Whilst things had gone well for him so far, he was still in a disadvantageous position. All it would take was a single weapon to get past his absurd defences and then the tables would turn and find himself hard-pressed to survive. Eleven left. Ten if he counted the one he’d thrown a dagger at. The odds hadn’t improved by much.
Gritting his teeth, Arthur started the hunt for his next target.
In the end, the forest brawl lasted six minutes. Three of them, he’d spent fighting against Garak Kinslayer, who lay in a bloody puddle before him, the rest of his team having fallen early in the battle. Everyone else was dead, even the Lorak he’d thrown a dagger at, having suffered from two collapsed lungs and thus death by subsequent oxygen deprivation. A painful way to go. At least the others had died quickly. The poor man had still been alive when Arthur found his body five minutes after he’d hit him, drowning in his own blood, his mind conscious but his body spasming as if it was attached to an electrical current.
Thirty seconds later, Arthur had gotten the notification for the kill, unable to grant a mercy kill though he almost missed it as he was violently sick all over the forest floor. He’d idly noted that the little acid contained within his vomit was potent enough to burn through wood, all substances he produced having gone through the same enhancement his stats provided him.
Now he stood before Garak, the fallen leader of the mercenary corps that had come after him. The man was an incredible fighter, having survived against him alone for the same duration the rest of his team had together. A powerful water mage, he’d supplemented it with a secondary affinity for earth. Fighting the man in melee range had been a pain in the arse when his feet kept sinking into the ground. In the end, Arthur had taken a page out of his fight with Issania. By his fifth minute outside the locus, he’d generated enough ether to at least use some of his spells. A water bullet to the knee, enhanced by Cloaked Blade so he never saw it coming, ended the fight in an instant, and a weaker one to the chest was the final nail in the coffin.
The once powerful Lorak lay against a tree, his left leg blown off and a hole in his chest. He had a minute tops before he joined the other side. Unless Arthur healed him, of course, but he didn’t feel particularly inclined at the moment. Whatever the reason he may have had, no matter how impersonal it might have been, he had been forced to take sapient life today because of him. In hindsight, Arthur now knew that these creatures hadn’t posed much of a threat to him, but he hadn’t five minutes ago. By that point, he’d already killed four people and the rest of them had been hellbent on taking his life.
Because of this man.
Garak had brought them here, and it was he who had ordered them to kill him when capture failed. Even when things looked hopeless, he hadn’t given the order to retreat and for whatever reason, be it collateral religious, unique to the species or a misplaced sense of pride; the Loraks hadn’t run. WHY DIDN’T THEY RUN!? He would have let them go had they just retreated but no, they’d thrown themselves against him to the very end.
Garak wheezed for breath and tried to say something. Instead, he was wracked by coughs that sprayed phlegm and blood everywhere. “Bossman wanted the green bitch,” he whispered. “She killed two of my men. You... finished the job.” He smiled at him, a feral bloody grin. “The man doesn’t know where his targets lie. You’re the special one, aren't you? Not her.”
Arthur didn’t answer the alien's question, instead asking one of his own. “Why didn’t you run? You should have the second you realised your weapons didn’t work. But you stayed anyway.”
Garak didn’t say anything for a while and Arthur wondered if he’d finally lost consciousness. The fact he’d held on for so long was surprising. Fortunately for him, the Lorak still had the strength to say a few last words, reverting back to his original tongue instead of the English from earlier, “Not allowed… on the planet. It’s illegal. Aaron got us here. Only he can get us out.” He paused for breath. “We failed at our job. Either we die trying to fight you, or we wait and get hunted down the moment the dimensional lockdown on Earth is lifted.”
“A quick death, against a powerful opponent, is better than a slow one spent in fear running. The moment you killed one of our own so easily, our end was written in stone. We just choose to write a final chapter worth reading.”
With those words, Garak finally grew silent, his head drooping onto his chest. Only the unhealthy rasp of breathing told him he was still alive. Arthur didn’t know what to say after hearing Garak’s explanation. He couldn’t begin to understand the complete lack of a self-preservation instinct, the decision to just… die, because that was exactly what the Loraks had done. They should have quickly realised fighting him was hopeless. Arthur felt vaguely disgusted with himself, though the emotion was being rapidly replaced by anger.
It was hitting him all at once. What he’d done. The lives he’d snuffed out. Logically Arthur knew his actions were justified and so there was no guilt to be found within him. Yet he felt like he’d lost something precious in the process of the short battle, a part of himself that couldn’t be recovered. It didn’t make any sense and he couldn’t quite explain what he was feeling. Arthur didn’t even realise he was talking, his voice getting louder and louder with every word. “It doesn't matter what flowery language you used. You chose to commit suicide today and I was the cliff you decided to jump off. You knew you were going to die so you… what! Gave up! Decided to make me a butcher because you wanted a warrior's ending. Your men chose to follow you and you lead them to death. Because you were too scared to fight for life?! To risk running away?" He was practically shouting by the end of it, his accusations hardly making any sense even to him. That didn’t matter right now. He needed to get things off his chest, get whatever closure he could from this pathetic man.
Garak, however, had no answer to give him, his voice now forever silent as he breathed his last. Arthur stood before his corpse in resigned silence for a long time. As if echoing his sombre mood, the sky broke and rain began to fall, first softly before quickly growing into a full-blown thunderstorm. He didn’t know how long he stood there, but by the time he finally moved, his body had been washed clean of all blood and gore.
This wasn’t the last time Arthur would have to take intelligent life. He knew that as he grew more powerful, he’d meet people he didn’t agree with. Some of those people would come after him and others would come for his head simply for the challenge and strength it would grant them. That didn’t mean he had to like it though. The locus had changed him, it had taken his base potential and forged it into something grand. His actions in this forest were just a few refinements to a newly forged product.
Spitting to the side, Arthur began to walk away. He didn’t deign his foes worthy of burial. Nature's cleaners would get the job done. Sighing wearily for the first time in a while, Arthur set off for home an exhausted man.
Comments
Benjamin Collins
I'd prolly change the name of the chapter to "aftermath" or something like that, refining doesnt really make sense
Benjamin Collins
After reading sleycas chapters yours are so short, but it's still good, thank you for the chapter
