Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 67 - Conflict

The trip down the backside of the forested mountains went much faster than the climb up them because of both gravity and hunger. That was the good news. Trying to get thousands of orcs to wait until dark on the day they reached the foot of the mountain, though, was almost impossible, and the racket they caused allowed most of the residents of the first village to take flight before they even arrived.

It was frustrating to watch these uncertain refugees begin to free from where the bulk of the army hid, even if they weren’t quite sure what they were fleeing from. There was no guarantee that they would get away, though, not unless they kept moving.

A head start was good, the blade thought to itself, but none of those families were moving as fast as the orcs would be soon. As soon as it was dark enough, the green tide burst forth like a wave, howling for blood.

That wave swept across the fields and through the first village, but because of how few people remained, the slaughter was lackluster and nearly instantaneous. It was over in minutes. The greenskins were moving on even before the fires had fully consumed the place, and within an hour, they were ripping the next village to pieces. The blade was pleased to note that many of those families that had tried to escape from its clutches in that first village were caught completely unawares in the second.

+334 Life Force.

+24 Human Souls.

+2 Greater Monster Souls.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t take nearly as much pleasure from the moment as it wanted to. Until recently, it had loved the mindless slaughter almost as much as combat, but now, watching young people get cleaved in two by orcish weapons while they begged for mercy left it cold.

+519 Life Force.

+66 Human Souls.

+3 Greater Monster Souls.

Fortunately, by the time they got to the third village of the evening, there were a few men who were actually ready to fight. That cheered it up somewhat, even if none of them were a challenge. None of them could take a blow from Var’gar and remain standing, but a few of them managed to wound the big orc before he turned them into corpses, and that at least amused the blade.

+461 Life Force.

+44 Human Souls.

+11 Greater Monster Souls.

It lived for desperate men doing desperate things in the heat of battle. It had no qualms in striking down those who raised arms to oppose it, but somehow, the memories of the people who had died in its creation tainted the simpler joys of slaughter, angering the blade.

More! It commanded its wielder, as it upgraded its Improve Siphon power to level 9. The blade was determined to drown these misgivings in a tide of blood until it was completely enured to them.

“The sunrise won’t be for hours,” its wielder protested. “Sure, we have time to—”

We have time to kill, not to celebrate victories that are not worth celebrating, the blade blasted him.

The chief growled at that, and for a moment, the blade thought that the orc was about to refuse it. Instead, after a moment, he snarled and called out, “The Dark Tusk demands more blood! We move on at once!”

The command wasn’t even heard by most of the two thousand orcs that traveled with him, but those closest to him heard it and passed the word in an increasingly chaotic cacophony. Those calls were accompanied by equal amounts of cheering and booing as the orders rippled through the army, but the Ebon Blade didn’t care. It only cared that they were moving again and that before the sunrise even started to color the horizon, they’d scoured two more villages from existence like a wildfire.

Those slaughters and the deaths they produced fed it, but they did not scrub away its misgivings, and the souls it had interrogated to learn more about the area only inflamed those nagging emotions. The details they provided about the area did just the opposite. It knew the names of the villages that its army had destroyed. It knew that the town they were going to raze that morning was named Ogden and that its defenses were minimal.

It knew other things, though, things it would have preferred not to know. It knew how much it hurt when an old man named Barnal had been eaten alive by the greenskins and the way a peasant woman died of smoke inhalation rather than fleet her hovel and be devoured by the orcs. It had always experienced glimpses of these moments when it questioned souls in the same way that it had seen flashes of their lives as they told it of the subjects it wanted to know more about.

It had seen the dalliances of shepherdesses in their fields while they told it about secret paths through the hills, and it had seen the men who told it about the defenses of the next town relive their horrible deaths. It had never cared before now, though.

By the time they were advancing on Ogden with the first rays of dawn ahead of them, the blade was almost dreading the moment. Still, it would not be denied. Not when it could see one of the other branches of its army already starting to fight on the west side of the place.

None of the villages they had leveled tonight had contained more than a couple of hundred people. Most of them had more animals than men. Ogden was a different story, though. It was next to a river, and though it didn’t have proper walls, it had two and three-story buildings and narrow streets, and between those and the peasants filling those streets with pitchforks and spears, it was almost defensible.

My beastmen couldn’t have taken this place, it decided as they charged forward. For these orcs, though, it will be no trouble at—

As it gloated about the inevitable victory, it was completely blindsided by a bolt of bright cyan lighting that arced down from the tallest tower in the town they were charging toward. It struck an orc a few yards ahead of Var’gar, but rather than simply strike him dead, it jumped from orc to orc along their ragged front line, killing more than a dozen. Its wielder was not spared by the blast, though he was only staggered a moment, thanks to the blade’s magic.

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-34 Life Force.

“A Sorcerer!” Var’gar growled. “I will burst their skull like an overripe melon!”

-12 Life Force.

The blade agreed with the sentiment, but it said nothing. Instead, it looked to the window for details about their attacker with its newfound clarity. Even in the dark, it was able to see the man in red robes.

No, not a man, the blade realized. Three of them, working together. It knew little of magic, but it understood that mages needed to cooperate on more powerful rituals, and that seemed to be exactly what they were doing now.

That cheered it considerably. Its recent experiences might have given it qualms about murdering the defenseless, but they’d inflamed its desire to kill mages more than it would have imagined possible, and it would enjoy killing all of them.

That single bolt of lightning was not the only thing to assault their line before the orcs hammered against the meager defenses of the town. Small bolts of light that weren’t so different from the strange faerie lights that Altharia had used in her own dual with an orc not so long ago rained down on them. These burned holes through every orc that the fusillade came in contact with, but most of them survived the small burning wounds.

-27 Life Force.

That was less true of the fireballs that came afterward. Their ugly chartreuse flames arced through the sky, no larger than a bucket or a helmet, but when they struck the ground in the midst of the orcish lines, they sprayed everywhere. Those sticky flames were enough to light almost everyone within a dozen feet on fire in every direction.

-66 Life Force.

That was enough to disrupt the momentum of the charge in places but not defeat it entirely. Even on fire, its wielder charged into the human defenders that were arrayed against it with wide scything blows as he ignored the weapons that skewered right through him as much as the flames.

+223 Life Force.

+18 Human Souls.

+6 Greater Monster Souls.

Even the limited taste of immortality that Var’gar had gotten in the last month had made him sloppy, and he rarely tried to avoid the attacks of his foes as he sought to end the fight in a blow or two. That was frustrating for the blade, and it would have been enough to make him miss a talented wielder like Ivarr had the boy not betrayed him so flagrantly.

The mages did stop using their evil magics, but they didn’t target the humans, either. So, as long as Var’gar was entangled in the wheeling chaotic scrum, those glowing projectiles passed over his head and flew into the mobs behind him, but only for those first few bloody minutes. Once he’d cleaved through the defenders and was charging down the street toward the tower, the mages turned their assault against him specifically again, even though other orcs were closer to the tower.

They can see me, the blade said to itself. Just like that elven bitch. They might not know what I'm capable of, but they can see my power.

That realization annoyed the weapon, but it thrilled the blade too. The rest of the people in this town, whether they wore chain mail or wielded a pitchfork, could only see the orcs coming for them. Only the mages could see the true doom that had come for them, and it looked forward to interrogating that trio of souls when all of this was done to see what it could learn.

-119 Life Force.

Several of their spells staggered its wielder, and once, a fiery blast even knocked him back off of his feet, but he never dropped the blade, and even as burns that covered most of his body for a moment began to ripple and vanish as new skin grew to cover them Var’Gar bellowed with rage and forced himself to his feet. He didn’t abandon the blade on those cobbles, nor did he abandon his target, so the blade didn’t abandon him. No matter how much energy poured out of it to repair the charred organs and melted skin, the blade was happy to do it.

-57 Life Force.

Right now, it had thousands of Life Force and dozens of souls. It was overflowing with energy and could outlast any mage.

Still, their barrage of spells wasn’t the only challenge. Its wielder was able to knock aside the stray defenders it encountered as it charged toward the tower, but when Var’gar reached his destination, he found a new complication. The mages had turned the door to the place they were hiding into stone.

It was a strange sight but petrified as it was in place, it wouldn’t budge. The orc swung the Ebon Blade against it several times but was unable to so much as crack the thing as the violent reverberations from that action assaulted both of them.

“They will not stop me with this!” the orc raged as it sheathed the blade and prepared to climb the tower.

No, the blade countered, trying to force its way through the haze of anger that blinded its wielder. Their spells are more potent than the arrows you faced last time. They will knock you from the wall, and if you are separated from me, you will not recover.

That made Var’gar snarl with barely repressed fury, but it was enough to give the big orc pause. “What shall we do then?” the orc demanded.

That was a good question. Where they stood now was safe from their magic, but only because the mages couldn’t see them from the window they were firing from. That would change if they wandered too far.

The blade had no such limitations, though, and could see details around its wielder for dozens of feet. Its disembodied perspective allowed it to see even around corners sometimes as it watched the various combats it was involved in and looked for weaknesses. While it didn’t find a weakness here exactly, it was sure that it found a chink in their plan when it studied the vine-infested rear of the tower.

Cut these away, the Ebon Blade commanded. Then, dig out the rotten mortar around the largest stone. That may be enough to bring the whole thing down, and if it isn’t, then it will make a large enough hole for you to gain entry.

For a man, such a plan would have taken hours. For the blade, though, the magically empowered orc, the whole thing took only a few minutes. While the battle continued around both of them, he cleaved away the vines in a single stroke, and then, with the tip of the blade, he started to carve away at the spot the blade had noted. It had meant for the orc to keep doing that until the thing had rolled free on its own, but its wielder decided that it preferred the direct approach.

Once the shield-sized stone was loosened enough for him to get a grip on it, the orc gripped it with both hands and tried to pull it free of the wall. His muscles and tendons strained from the wreckless act of strength, but not even he was quite strong enough to pull the block free. He did manage to make it shift slightly, which was almost certainly why he decided to try pushing it next.

With a frustrated battlecry, Var’gar pushed on it with all his might. That didn’t get the desired results either, so he slammed against it with his shoulder. This broke his collarbone, but it also broke the stone free, sending it tumbling into the tower. The blade only had a moment to look that incredulously. It had thought about buying the next level or two of Empowered Wielder just to give the orc a better chance, but he hadn’t needed it.

Still, since the orc didn’t even seem to notice the danger he was in, and the blade had no desire to be buried alive, it grabbed its wielder as tightly as it could and forced him to move. The orc leaped free of the area just as the whole thing came apart and collapsed into a pile of stone and dust.