B5 Chapter 614: Woodland brawl, Finale
**Ding! You have slain Human - Level 371 Knight of the Empty Blade! Increased Experience for slaying a creature of significantly higher Level! Significantly Reduced Experience due to Group Size!**
**Ding! Runeblade Hellion has grown from level 265 > 266!**
**+6 Int; +5 Con, Str & Will; +2 Vit & Dex; +3 Free - from Class & Racial Traits!****Ding! Class Skill Notifications Consolidated!**
** Infused Glyph of Drakthar has reached level 301 > 303!**
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**Hellblade Investiture has reached level 253 > 257!**
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**Infused Glyph of Felmenia has reached level 239 > 241!**
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**Dissolution Edge has reached level 205 > 209!**
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**Runeblade Hymnfocus has reached level 188 > 190!**
**Ding! General Skill Notifications Consolidated!**
**Rapid Adaptation has reached level 300 > 304!**
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**Liturgical Bladeform: Primus Ordo has reached level 315 > 319!**
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**Seargent’s Insight has reached level 278 > 282!**
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**Tempered By Dissonance has reached level 279 > 286!**
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**Spellblade’s Harmonic Control has reached level 285 > 287**
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**Greater Regeneration has reached level 310 > 312!**
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**Moment of Flow has reached level 274 > 278!**
Kaius flicked his blade clean of muck, grinning wide. A High Gold lay dead and cold at his feet. He’d slain them alone! Well, mostly alone. The lords peppering Brokenlight with shots had been a welcome distraction, forcing the Gold to split his focus and burn his resources.
Then there was that last shot. Cracking open the man’s iron guard would have taken way longer without that concussive shot knocking him through the air.
Okay, maybe he was exaggerating a little bit. Kaius was pretty sure he would have had more trouble with the barbarian that Porkchop tangled with, even though that Gold was lower level than the corpse that cooled in front of him.
Brokenlight had been a bad swordfighter. He knew why: the man was far too used to leaning on the overwhelming offensive might of his void affinity. Even with plenty of combat experience, and a good mastery Skill, Kaius had been able to tell the man was unused to someone actually blocking his attacks. Against any other blade, the void-coating Brokenlight used would have at least gouged his enemy’s weapons, eventually breaking them entirely after a few exchanges.
As soon as Kaius batted aside the first few blows, the man felt the pressure. It had only grown heavier when Kaius had cleaved through one of the man's void barriers with his sword’s Ghost of Severance enchantment. To that, Brokenlight responded with tempo. Kaius assumed that normally would have worked in the Onyx’s favour — an unrelenting storm of unblockable attacks. But…Kaius could block them, and summoning void was ruinously resource-intensive.
Every second that had ticked by must have felt like a noose cinching tighter around Brokenlight’s neck as his mana and stamina bled like a stuck heart. Frantic, he’d gotten sloppy — and that only created more opportunities for Kaius to force Brokenlight to call on his void ever more frequently. Even without the nobles’ gambit, he would have drained the man dry eventually.
But even with a good match up, and a bit of outside help, he’d still done it without Porkchop! That counted enough.
Taking a moment, he checked on the lordlings. They’d slowed to a cantor, weaving through the trees. None of them had stopped moving, despite Brokenlight’s death — hells, Julian was still keeping a damn firm grip on that crossbow. Kaius couldn’t blame the man. There had been eleven lords that had walked into the dark, and only five remained. They might have come from a pit of vipers, but men that fought and bled together formed bonds. Losing six, two of them to betrayal no less? That would put anyone on edge.
Kaius sheathed his blade, wincing as the cut in his thigh tore open once more. Void energy festered in his wounds, a potent malignancy that Rapid Adaptation scoured with fire. It was nasty stuff. Even without an affliction-focused skill, it gnawed at the health that rushed toward his injuries, slowing his recovery. Only Greater Regeneration gave him the fortitude to fight on unhindered.
“You close to done?” Kaius pushed through his bond. He could feel the ache of Porkchop’s wounds, and the burning heat of his hunger.
“Close. Bastard’s got a good mix of recovery and toughness Skills. Wait. Kenva just blew off his knee.”
Kaius got the distant sense of his fingers punching through someone’s chest.
“Now we’re done.”
“Great, fetch Kanmost and the others and we’ll meet midway — I want to get into the walls of those ruins before something comes sniffing around.”
Unbuckling his helm, Kaius vanished it into his storage ring. He waved to the distant nobles, grinning.
“Ho! Join me!”
One of them started. That was weird, but the five of them did nudge their mounts to approach.
Turning his attention back to the corpse behind him, Kaius leaned on Truesight as he scoured the man’s gear. The plate was honestly fantastic: a full set of second-tier Unusuals. Unfortunately, he preferred the extra mobility his scale afforded him, and with the tufted helm and black enamel, the set was rather…distinctive. Considering Brokenlight was Onyx, that didn’t bode well. He was far more interested in the man’s jewellery, anyway. Three rings and a necklace burned to his mana sight — but strangely, none of them held the distinctive hues of spatial mana.
Where was the man’s storage artefact? He wanted it — and needed the correspondence that was likely within. It could hold key information for tracking down Wilting Rose — and foiling the Onyx plot for the Bloodstones.
Hooves crunched through the leaf litter behind him, drawing closer.
“Kaius?” Julian asked cautiously.
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“Hmm?” he said, looking over his shoulder. The five men sat stiff-backed in their saddles, watching him cautiously. Like he was feral. He frowned.
One of the retainers twitched, his crossbow dipping up. Kaius was on his feet in moments, hand on hilt. Gods’ blood, were they mad? After all he’d done to aid them, they thought to strike?
“Really?” Kaius said evenly, staring at the man with the crossbow. “You want to do this now?”
Julian’s eyes widened. Beside him, Kel snapped to the retainer next to him and slapped his crossbow down.
Kaius relaxed his grip on his hilt and cocked his brow at Julian. What in the hells had gotten into them?
“We just watched you dismantle a High Gold with a void affinity. My men are a little jumpy.”
‘My men’, as if Julian himself wasn’t acting like a skittish deer. He’d let that one lie. But…perhaps their reaction was a little more understandable. They hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms with the nobles, and Julian was the only one who’d actually talked with them.
“Unless I am forgetting something, did you not ask me to follow you to do exactly that?”
“I did,” Julian replied, somewhat hesitantly.
“Then bloody deal with it and stop waving crossbows in my face. In a moment, we’ll meet with my team and head for the ruin — it has sturdy walls, and the gods’ know what horrors are going to come after all of this racket we’ve made.”
Turning his back on the men, he crouched over Brokenlight’s body once more. There had to be a storage ring! And a big one — it was the only explanation for the sheer amount of stuff the bastard had back at his camp.
Yanking off the man’s sabaton’s, Kaius searched for a hint of magic. He scowled. The socks didn’t count.
“Kaius? What are you doing?” Julian asked.
“Looking for his storage artefact — he has to have one.”
“Huh?”
He whipped towards the noble, dread building in his belly. He needed those messages — not to mention how convenient it would be to have yet more storage space. How could the man not have a storage ring?
“He was a void user — it is one of the known affinities that can develop storage Skills. Receiving one in the second tier would be rare. But the man evolved all of his Skills, so it’s possible.”
“What?” Father had only told him about its lethality, and that he couldn’t rely on Rapid Adaptation to keep him safe! “Where’d all his belongings go then?”
They couldn’t just vanish!
“They vanished. When a storage Skill fails due to its user’s death, the items held either forcibly erupt, are shredded, or they vanish into whatever plane the Skill created or accessed. I’m fuzzy on the magical theory behind it.” Julian gave him a weak smile.
Kaius spun and booted Brokenlight’s corpse in the chest. His armour clanked. “Rat-faced bastard!”
“Why are you so desperate for it, anyway?”
“Kanmost managed to decode one of Brokenlight’s letters,” Kaius growled. Crouching down, he yanked off the man’s enchanted rings and amulet, vanishing them into his storage artefact. The sword followed quickly. Nothing had jumped out to him as particularly useful for him and his team, but they held good value. “It was from a Talon I'm chasing — the Onyx are plotting something on the steppe in eighteen months' time.”
“I very much doubt you would find anything anyway,” Julain said softly. “I suspect this man was an agent at least partially tied to the Franlen kingdom. If he was, he wouldn’t have kept anything incriminating — though I suppose with his storage Skill, it didn’t really matter.”
Kaius snapped back to the man. Franlen? Well, their border was close — but to play at something like this when the whole world was going to the hells? Rotten roots, he hated politics.
“Edmund was too much of a hotheaded fool to come up with something like this,” Julian explained. “I stand by that assessment. We overheard Brokenlight’s name in the camp, and it had a Franlen origin. Given his bearing and accent, it seemed a reasonable assessment.”
“We should move,” Adrian cut in, nervously scanning the surrounding woods. “This dark plays hells on my eyes, and I wouldn’t mind a bit of that solid stone around me.”
Kaius agreed with that. He nodded, giving Brokenlight a final punt — and nearly jumped as Julian let loose three shrill whistles. The sound carried through the silence.
“The chargers,” Julian explained when Kaius glared.
They set off quickly, trudging through the trees. The remnant horse-beasts appeared in ones and twos out of the gloom, falling in around the remnants of Julian’s retinue. Five in total.
“There should be one more,” Julian said, frowning at their number. “Only one fell to the barbarian — unless that mage got your man and mount both?” He turned to Kel.
“Just Rimekeep,” Kel said grimly.
“Then we best hurry,” Kaius said, picking up his pace and reaching out to his brother. “Potential danger in the darkness, stay safe.”
“Really? You think?”
Kaius cracked a smile — trust Porkchop to stay flippant even in the demesne of some Adamant horror.
“Kaius,” Julian called for him. “Take one of the mounts — it’ll be faster.”
He eyed the towering beast warily. It was easily as large as a draught horse, and he’d seen the ruin the things hooves could make of a man’s chest in Brokenlight’s camp. Plus, he didn’t know how to ride.
However, he did have a lot of Dexterity. Kaius stepped into the stirrup and hauled himself into the saddle. It felt weird. Too narrow, and too tall. The only being he’d ever ridden was Porkchop, and their bond meant he had an instinctive feel for the way his brother moved.
Julian snapped his reins, and Kaius rocked back in his saddle as his mount lurched forward.
“Never ridden before?” Kel asked.
“Only greater beasts,” Kaius grinned.
The lord blinked at him. “Well, I can’t say I can speak to the similarities — but these windsoul chargers are trained to follow the leader. Just clench with your thighs and don’t yank on the reins.”
He knew that much!
Now mounted, their pace picked up — and Kaius swayed like a drunkard as he desperately tried to get a feel for the charger’s gait.
“We need to make a small detour!” Julian called. “We have a man to pick up!”
“You have another surivor?” Kaius asked.
“One of my men,” Adrian replied, a worried frown on his face. “He lost his leg — stayed behind so he wouldn’t slow us down.”
“I’ll get my team to come to us, then! I have an Imperial prosthetic he can use until we get out of Vainblood. It’s a bit heavy, and he won't be able to feel it — but he’ll be able to defend himself if need be.”
Adrian gave him a long look. “Thank you.”
They veered to the right, heading closer towards the cliff and the ruin below it. Thankfully, Kaius didn’t have to do a damn thing to guide his charger — it just stayed close to its fellows, flicking its ears at every snapping branch and rustling bush. It seemed that even the train warmounts were nervous about what could lie in wait in the dark. After a few minutes, they slowed.
“We left him around here somewhere,” Julian murmured, before he raised his voice. “Sir Humbolt!”
Kaius frowned, searching the area. The dark might have been unnaturally aggressive, but he could see through the gloom for a good distance compared to the others. Broadleafed underbrush coated the forest floor, broken up by the odd bramble — but there was no sign of the lord’s man.
“I can’t see him,” he said, twisting in his saddle.
He paused, settling on a trunk that was fifty or so strides ahead of them. Leaf litter had been kicked up around its base, and he thought he might have seen a slight smear of something dark across the bark. It was hard to say exactly — the small bubble he could see was drenched in deep shadows that his Skill failed to pierce.
Kaius jumped down, his hand drifting to his pommel. This stank, and he didn’t have the training to fight from horseback.
Waving for the lords to follow, he approached, stopping a few steps away. He’d been right about the smear, it was a bloody hand-print, black as ink. More of it was smeared over the churned ground — though it looked old. The man had lost a leg in Vainblood — even staunched and healing, he would have had to be sitting in a pool of the stuff. Yet that was not what he saw. Blood-coated leaves were strewn wide and something had clawed at the ground.
“This is where we left him,” Adrian said, his voice grim. “That’s my hand-print on the trunk.”
“Then we need to get back to my team, now,” Kaius replied.
The noise of their battle had drawn a creature of the Crater. They were being hunted, and it had managed to take an armed man without a sound.