Chapter 72: A Legatee of the Undead
He picked a section of the tide near the eastern edge of the fighting line, about two hundred bodies, and he went into the middle of it and made as much noise as he possibly could.
He kicked a barrel over and let it roll the length of the street until it fetched up against a doorstep. He put his sword through a shutter. He shouted, once, in a dead city, which was a thing he would not have believed himself capable of a month ago, and the sound came back off the walls twice before it died.
Then he ran.
Behind him, two hundred Inheritors did not chase him. They turned, all at once, and they stopped, and they stood.
And forty seconds later something came up the street to see what had happened.
It came alone, with a clear stretch of ground around it that the others did not step into. It was wearing the half-armour of an Alderkeep officer and it moved like a person, not like a tide. And carried a spear.
Theo went flat behind a low wall and put the eye on it.
[Legatee]
[Classification: Undead / Assimilant - Bearer]
[Current Rank: Elite Realm - Early Stage]
[Threat Level: B - Regional]
[Claimed: 9]
[Note: This body has been permitted to keep what it knew. It commands the bodies that were not.]
’Somebody is deciding who gets to keep themselves. Of course! How else can it keep order over so much Inheritors!’
The Legatee walked to the place where Theo had made his noise. It stood there. It looked at the barrel he had kicked over, and then it looked at the shutter he had cut, and then it did a thing that put a cold line straight down Theo’s back.
It crouched, and put two fingers into the cut in the wood, and measured the depth of it.
Theo did not breathe for a long moment. With his cheek down in the dirt of the gutter he watched two grey fingers come back out of the shutter and rub together slowly, the way a carpenter checks a board.
Then the Legatee straightened up, turned its head, and looked directly at the low wall he was lying behind.
The thing stared at the wall a while, and eventually raised its spear slightly, to about its arm level. The helmet on its face was like something that had melted into the mummifying body but still gleamed with a dangerous red light.
And that light blazed for half a second before the creature burst forward violently and sent its spear through the brick, and the whole of the wall came apart in a spray of dust and grit.
Theo, though, was not behind the wall when it shattered. From the dark behind the creature he plunged out, and his sword whispered coldly through the night wind as it slashed across the creature’s calves.
Theo felt the flesh give but the creature did not react like it was just cut. It pulled its spear back, twisted its upper body with a frightening speed and drove the edge of the spear down on Theo with devastating power.
There was not enough time for Theo to use Shadow Movement of course, so he rolled out of the way, and the point went into the cobbles where his ribs had been. The undead was bastardly fast though. It had recovered a new position and without needing a step to gather itself it leaped like there were springs on its legs, reaching Theo before he could stand up.
Its leg swung round and smashed Theo, sending him through the horde a great distance.
It was a lot of hitting things and pain on his back and scratches across his body. But that was sort of the Legatee’s problem. Now that it went and gave Theo so much space, the boy did not bother returning.
He went into the dark and came out of it in a doorway thirty feet away and was sick again, one hand flat on the cold jamb, and was breathing hard while the shallow wounds on his body slowly hurt less.
Then he ran, properly, over four streets and two roofs, and the Legatee did not follow because it had stopped caring the moment he was no longer in front of it.
Theo lay on his back on a warm slate roof at half past four in the morning with his heart trying to leave through his throat.
[Your body has Adapted to a superior technique] [+3 Speed] [+2 Battle IQ] [Shadow Sword mastery has increased] [Shadow Movement mastery has increased]
And then, underneath it, small, in a panel he almost scrolled past:
[Circulation Art: Limitless Flow]
[Due to the unique nature of your Circulation Art, the flow of your mana is determined by the unconventional movement of your body. As you move, and adapt your body more, distancing your limit from your effort, your Limitless Flow swells and circulates.
[This is a rare Circulation Art where all you have to do is move around, fight and adapt]
[Mastery: 0.0% — 0.1%]
Theo paused and went completely still. Somewhere below him a shutter banged twice in the wind and he did not even turn his head for it.
’Wait, that’s all I need to do to circulate my mana and improve my rank?’
He was surprised at how really easy that turned out to be. Which felt wrong because according to what was preached of the Tower, Circulation was supposed to be extremely difficult.
So Theo felt like he didn’t have the complete information.
Anyways, he stood up, brushed the roof grit off his palms, and found a path for himself into the horde, slaughtering them and slowing their march.
By dawn he had killed one hundred and sixty-one of them.
He had done it in eight separate streets, quietly, from the dark, never more than twelve at a time, always leaving before anything with a clear stretch of ground around it could come and measure his sword.
He was not trying to win. He knew he could not win. He had worked that out on the roof before he came down.
What he was doing was the only thing a man in his position could do, which was to find out what the rules were and then get paid in experience for every hour he survived them.
’One hundred and sixty-one, and the front didn’t move west by a single street tonight.’
’So it can be slowed.’
Theo sat on the edge of a roof as the light came up grey over the eastern half of Alderkeep, filthy to the elbow, with a plain sword across his knees and a bowl of cold stew out of a chest that made time lazy. The stew had been warm going in, days ago and an hour ago, and the fat had set across the top of it in a pale skin.
He ate all of it, because he had been raised properly.
Then he looked west, at the Sixth Wall, where the lamps were burning low and nobody had come out.