EmEs_etherious
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Chapter 173- Watch Your Back
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 23:59:01 +0000 UTCSorry for the delay with posting. IRL issues that I don't want to disclose online have prevented me from working on my story online. These issues may persist for a while, perhaps up to a month and a half. I'm still up to date with writing my chapters on pen and paper, just having troubles typing it up.
Hovering twenty thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps the strangest gathering of races Earth had seen to date. Three humans, three elves, a Gujralite, a fae, and a dire wolf beastkin. There was a joke somewhere in there. Five different species, two of which were notoriously known for their bitter animosity- elves and beastkin didn’t see eye to eye– and all of them had come together to take down one man.
No one knew what the Harvester's agent looked like, nor even the species of the foul individual who had betrayed his kind to serve such a genocidal criminal. There was bad, and then there was 'wiping-all-life-from-two-worlds' bad. That was the level of depravity of the individual their target had chosen to work with. He’d be shown no mercy from Arthur Ward, or any of the group for that matter, not even Bonak, who didn’t have a mean bone in his body. Actually, do octopus people even have bones?
“I was expecting more, you know,” Ryka, the older elf twin, remarked, interrupting Arthur’s wandering thoughts. She gestured with her hands. “Barbed tentacles or something. You know, evil-looking.”
“Sod off, there’s nothing evil about having tentacles,” Bonak replied, stroking his rubbery chin with one of his many feelers. “You’re just jealous you’ve only got two arms.”
“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with my sister here,” Iroh added, “but you’re the most menacing-looking thing in a thousand miles, Bonak. And I say this with a 400-pound beastkin who could snap me in half standing right behind me.”
“470 pounds, actually,” Ursula corrected proudly. “I’ve packed on some muscle these last few months.” She flexed her biceps, each larger than the elf’s thighs, and grinned widely, her sharp teeth flashing in a deadly, gleeful expression.
It looked like she was finally beginning to relax, but then her eyes caught Arthur’s, and her demeanour deflated as suddenly as a popped balloon. The change was so dramatic that even a blind person would have noticed, but the rest of the team ignored it. Everyone had their secrets, and prying into why the beastkin was so uneasy around a level 103 human- exactly half her level– would only reveal sensitive information Arthur knew she would have to reveal when she came face to face with Lady Sleyca. Until then, he appreciated the polite civility the group was trying to maintain. He could almost believe they weren’t all incredibly curious about him. Arthur had caught Benjamin attempting to gouge him with his eyes more times than he cared to count.
“I’m not going to lie though,” Farrah began, filling the sudden silence before it could become awkward, “but I expected the Harvester’s agent to be more… unique, I guess.” She scrutinised the screen hovering before her, where an image of their target played in real-time, captured by the ship’s cameras from thousands of feet above. The Harvester's agent looked like an ordinary middle-aged man– albeit in excellent physical shape– with sandy blonde hair cropped short and leathery, sun-worn skin that suggested a lifetime outdoors. Arthur agreed with her assessment; the agent looked as ordinary as they came, like a friendly older man who spent far too much time at the beach. Yet Arthur knew, beyond a doubt, that this was their target. Now that they were so close, he could sense the predatory link between them, growing stronger every second as the man on the other end tried to drain him, no doubt aware that his latest ‘victim’ was near at hand.
Arthur wasn’t worried about the agent’s link. Now that he could sense it, he could gauge its strength, a thin, pulsing red thread in his mind’s eye, drawn to the part of his soul hosting all his skills and class abilities. Either Iris had overestimated the agent’s power, or she had underestimated Arthur’s defences. Likely, it was a bit of both. Arthur estimated the link would need to be around three dozen times stronger before it could drain even a single stat from him. Unless this was an elaborate ploy to get him to lower his guard, he had nothing to worry about.
And you just had to go and jinx it, didn’t you?
“Hold on a second. Pause the video,” Iris suddenly instructed. “Go back a bit, another second, to where he raises his hand to scratch his head. There. Right there. Zoom in a little.”
Farrah followed her instructions and pressed a few buttons to bring the image into focus.
“Zoom in on his hand. Do you see it?” Iris asked.
Farrah complied, and Arthur watched, bemused, as the group collectively gasped in surprise at what they saw. He looked closer, trying to spot what had everyone in such a twist. At first, he didn’t notice anything unusual, just a bit of wrinkled skin, but then he saw it. It was such a small detail he would have missed it without specific instruction: just over the man’s inner wrist, there was a black mark, about the size of a bottle cap, surrounded by faint, purplish lines that looked like varicose veins.
“What exactly am I looking at?” Arthur asked. Lady Sleyca’s group looked at him in surprise. They had assumed he was part of Iris’s entourage– a misconception he hadn’t felt the need to correct. Clearly, this was information someone serving her was expected to know.
Iris answered without missing a beat. “You know how newly evolved planets are always warned to watch out for doppelgängers? It’s the main reason the system gives everyone an identify skill, to help better equip the populace to handle the threat. That mark right there,” she said, pointing to the Harvester’s agent on screen, “is what happens when one of them slips through the cracks and is allowed to evolve: a Ghoulish Skinwalker, a monster that steals the skin and life of its victims. It makes a sick kind of sense that such a foul creature serves the Harvester.”
Arthur digested this information, regarding their target with fresh apprehension. He looked like an ordinary man because he was, or at least he used to be before his very body was stolen from him.
“How do doppelgängers work? The way everyone talks about them in disgust– they’re obviously treated differently from regular monsters. Even the system seems to detest them.”
Iris sighed wearily. “I’m not the best person to ask. A system scholar would give you much better answers. Some say they’re the by-product of a planet’s evolutionary energy– the excess that isn’t used for one reason or another. Others say they’re the foul creations of Anti-life, the beings of chaos we constantly battle at the edges of system-controlled space.” She raised her hand to stop Arthur’s incoming question. “I can’t say more. Even with my status, I’d face hefty sanctions. You’ll find out more before the…” She stopped herself, looking at him apologetically. “Sorry, I can’t say anything else. That just cost me a million system credits. Damn, another hundred thousand. I thought you’d know that by now. Alright, alright, I’ll stop talking now. Don’t suspend my account.”
Arthur watched Iris as she muttered angrily to herself. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, an impossibility given his high perception, which meant some kind of magic was in play. The others appeared tense, their faces lined with frustration and a hint of fear. It was clear they weren’t responsible for the sound distortion– meaning something else was blocking his ability to hear. Judging by everyone’s expressions, they’d heard every word, which meant Arthur was the only one singled out.
But why?
It didn’t take him long to figure out some possible answers. The only major difference between him and the others was that he was new to all of this. Despite his strength, Arthur was classified as a freshly integrated human. He hadn’t learned what they all seemed to already know. So was it the system itself preventing him from hearing? But why? It had taken a hands-off approach until now… or was it more sentient than he’d been led to believe?
Everything Arthur knew about the system, everything he’d learned and deduced from Lord Rufeus the Third, was now in question. The system was supposed to be a tool, a means of easing a planet’s transition to an ether-rich society, managing skills, class development, and progress tracking. It wasn’t supposed to actively censor information or have any specific agenda. Was it? From what little he’d overheard, it almost seemed as though Iris was conversing with the system directly. Does it monitor every conversation? That level of oversight would require an insane amount of energy.
Just as Arthur began to connect the dots, he realised how eerily silent the room was. Not the regulated kind from before but absolute quiet. He couldn't even hear his heartbeat. Arthur's stats allowed him to think quickly, but not to the extent that the world stood still by comparison.
Time had frozen, or at least slowed down enough that the effect was practically the same. His beastial instincts flared to life, screaming at him louder than ever before about incoming danger. Arthur moved his arm and felt the slight resistance of time magic trying to slow him down. His Draconic Vitality was high enough to shrug off the AOE spell with little to no difficulty, only causing him to move ten percent slower than his usual speeds. His magic, however, felt like it had been delayed significantly, his skills almost unresponsive. Arthur hadn’t been the fastest mage on his best day and now it felt like he was trying to juggle whilst drunk. Besides him, only Ursula had the requisite constitution to particularly shrug off the magic’s effect, though it looked like she was moving in slow motion, nowhere near fast enough to react to what was coming, because something certainly was. In a flash of purple light, the Ghoulish Skinwalker was amongst them.
Time and space. I swear they’re supposed to be rare as fuck. How’s he got both of them?
An aura of violence oozed from the monster, drenched the room and sank into its walls. A grunt of exertion came from Ursula, her eyes wide in fear as she tried to move. The monster chuckled, patting her condescendingly on the cheek.
“I’ll save you for last. I’ve never had the chance to wear beastkin flesh.”
The monster's voice was dry and crackly like it hadn’t seen water for the past month. He pulled a black dagger from his waist and approached Iris, a rictus grin of sadistic joy on his face. Grabbing her chin, the Harvester’s agent pressed her lips with the tip of his blade, drawing a drop of blood.
“I’d love to drain you dry. Fate-breaker's daughter. I bet you’d be delicious. Master would reward me so much too."
"Alas, we don’t have the time.” Doing his best impression of a creepy pervert, the monster raised his dagger to his lips and licked Iris’s blood. He groaned in pleasure, sounding almost aroused by the taste, a haze of desire descending over his eyes.
That was the exact moment Arthur’s fist broke the bastard's jaw.
Comments
EmEs
No time to use magic when it's not working for him. Otherwise a good old soulspear strike to the brain would have probably ended things.
EmEs
His Draconic Vitality was high enough to shrug off the AOE spell with little to no difficulty, only causing him to move ten percent slower than his usual speeds. His magic, however, felt like it had been delayed significantly, his skills almost unresponsive. Arthur hadn’t been the fastest mage on his best day and now it felt like he was trying to juggle whilst drunk.
NetWon
Punched him in the jaw? Not cut his head off? Or removed a limb?
