Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 193 - Hallowed Ground (part 2)

While Geral and the Ebon Blade fought the mysterious swordsman who had declared himself the defender of this place, the blade moved the zombies into position. Against such a skilled opponent, they would have been wasted in direct combat. Instead, they seemed to flee the battlefield and then moved around the long way, toward the walls of the monastery.

When they reached them, they began to climb, not the stone. That would have been too difficult for their clumsy hands. Instead, they climbed on top of each other, in a mass of flesh that was more of a pile than a ramp. Slowly but surely, though, they reached the top. Two monks noticed before it was too late, and fetched swords, but swords wouldn’t stop these undead monsters, and they died falling down thirty feet into the courtyard of the monastery, before rising again as zombies to join those that had killed them.

+22 Life Force.

+3 Human Souls.

-7 Human Souls.

-3 Monster Souls.

The blade couldn’t raise every body, so normally it chose the least injured, but right now it wasn’t picky. It needed minions to force open the back door of the monastery and let its minions in while it distracted their guardian, though, because as the blade saw it, that was the best way to defeat the man.

While his skills were impeccable and even enjoyable, it was his armor that was the problem. Something about the magic was tuned to the blade specifically, and that prevented the sword from cutting him, even when Geral did manage to strike the odd hit. There were places where that armor did not extend; however, the nameless warrior was too smart to let the blade strike his face or hands, so it didn’t even get to taste his blood for the first minute of the fight.

-164 Life Force.

That wasn’t true for Geral. Despite his best efforts to keep up with his opponent, with the blade focused on breaching the monastery’s defenses, and the scattered battles that were breaking out throughout the buildings once the doors opened and the dead poured in. After that, it became harder for the blade to concentrate on anything at all as the blood and death started to mount.

+343 Life Force.

+18 Human Souls.

Geral lost an eye, his intestines, and at one point, he nearly lost his head, but he didn’t stop. While the damage that the gods had wrought on him had made him thoughtless, it had also made him nearly as relentless as the Ebon Blade’s other zombies.

-372 Life Force.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the swordsman from cutting him to pieces or forcing him to shut up. The man talked at length, going on and on about every trick that Geral tried to use, from Accelerate to Bolt.

-221 Life Force.

“I expected more from the Black Blade of Baraga,” he taunted. “Once, when I was young, I even longed to wield you myself, but I can see that the foul magics that infested that hero’s spirit have long since destroyed his honor.”

Those words angered the blade, but it did not retort. Instead, it focused on breaking into the main hall where the energies that fueled his magic streamed from. That took another minute, but once the zombies smashed through the wooden shutters of several windows, they started to pour in, and soon, the blood was pouring out.

+271 Life Force.

+24 Human Souls.

Somewhere in all of that, the blade’s Path of Death advanced, but it ignored the notification. Trying to fight the avatar of the god of war, and managing a ravening horde of zombies caught in a dozen smaller battles of their own, took all of its attention.

Now that you harvest the dead in mass and use them against your foes you understand how precarious your grip over the battlefield is. They are not your wielder. You are barely their general.

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You are less and more than that. You are their God and their creator, their conductor and their composer. You alone decide what happens to the lives you take. Will they be left to rot, rise as a stalwart death knight, or rise up as something altogether stranger? No one can decide that but you. Even the Goddess of Death herself must bow to creations entirely outside the natural order.

The Path of Undeath: Level 4 -> Substantially modify an undead minion, making them a unique and powerful creation of your own design to reach Level 5.

Level 4 Powers:

Strength of Spirit: It only takes half as many souls as before to create and empower zombies.

Greater Horrors: Other, spirit based undead such as ghosts, shades, are also now available for creation with their own costs, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

The battle that followed wasn’t short. Many of the monks had martial training, and weapons soon came out, but the sword didn’t care. They could stab or even slay its zombies; all that mattered was that they were distracted enough to stop kneeling and sending essence to their champion.

Almost none of the monks were praying anymore before the weapon’s true opponent noticed the shift. His brow furrowed as he spat, “vile curr. You focus on the helpless instead of the strong.”

“I focus only on victory,” the blade said through Geral’s mouth, with only a slight slur. Its wielder didn’t fight the urge, which showed how far gone he was. This combat and the pain he’d endured throughout it had turned Geral into a rabid animal. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“So you can talk!” its opponent boomed as blade and wielder surged forward together in a series of savage strikes.

The magic that protected him still held, but it was no longer a layer of heat shimmer with limitless power to keep him preserved. His armor had turned to glass, and though each plate blocked the one more strike, or perhaps two, it soon shattered. That was enough to stop the blade from tasting his blood, but only a little longer.

The first cut that came was a small slice on the forearm. It was nothing but a scratch that the warrior got when their tangled blades disengaged. In any other battle, it would have been nothing, but for the blade, it was enough to rob the man of his strength in that limb, making him take two steps back defensively as he tried to understand what had just happened.

+61 Life Force.

“Another trick?” he spat as he tried to pretend he was unscathed. “Tricks fall before skill every time.” The truth was different, though. The truth was that even as the blood leaked out of that tiny wound, it was frozen, and that it would only take another half dozen similar scratches to stop his heart.

He was clearly focusing what power he still possessed into his sword, though. Unlike all the other spells that danced around him, it held the longest. There are so many holes in your armor I could set you alight from here, the blade noted silently. It could easily blow a hole right through the warrior or slice him in two now that whatever magic he’d used no longer spared him.

It didn’t do any of those things, though, because it wanted to savor this. The battle was all but done, but there was no telling when it would face a foe of similar skill again. So, instead of annihilating him, it let Geral advance for the final dance of death that the two would share.

This time, the warrior-monk no longer cut its wielder to ribbons. More aware than ever of just how vulnerable he was, he fought a losing defensive battle, but one that kept the blade from tasting his blood again for longer than it anticipated. Even with one half-dead arm, he kept pace until that final moment when his sword shattered entirely.

One moment it was twisting and clashing in a series of deft maneuvers as he looked for an opening, and the next, the translucent blade of magic became nothing but a shower of sparks as the Ebon Blade broke the last of its power. That pelted its wielder with shards, but Geral recovered even before he brought the dark sword down into the heart of their enemy, forcing him to his knees.

“You may have beaten me,” he gasped, “But you’ll never beat Argandin. I will watch him smite you…”

Then he was gone. The warrior no doubt expected to be whisked away to whatever afterlife waited for the faithful, but the blade stole it away just as it did all the other monks it had slain.

It considered burning that soul on the spot, but instead it waited to see if the god might lash out in vengeance. As Geral drew the sword out, it waited, but the blow never materialized.

A god like that would want to fight me himself, the blade decided.

The blade considered forcing its wielder to linger for a while in the abbey. There were plenty of corpses, but also tools and supplies. If it wanted the final step in its current path, that would have been the perfect place to modify a corpse into its most gruesome and dangerous evolution. It didn’t, though, and the reason was simple.

Geral would not have enjoyed it. He obviously did not like the zombies and was already walking on toward their final destination. So, instead of engaging in any unholy experimentation, it just raised a few of the most intact corpses, which then scrambled to catch up to them as they walked deeper into the mountains.

-38 Human Souls.

-1 Monster Soul.