Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 78 - A Kingdom of Ash

The fighting was far from done when Var’gar ran out of people to kill on that blood-soaked street, but even after he finally rested his exhausted sword arm, the energy did not stop flowing. Life and death had mingled completely, and the Ebon Blade’s dark red runes glowed brighter than the light of false dawn as it drank it in.

+117 Life Force.

Even after spending so much on so many different upgrades, its reservoirs were still full, almost to the point of overflowing, and it would have to decide what to spend again soon. What mattered more in this moment was the tactical situation, and there it did not need Var’gar’s help. Its new range did not extend its sight, but it did allow it to feel each death, and the rate at which people were bleeding and dying was slowly falling to zero.

Even the castle at the heart of the city, overlooking the bridge that connected the two halves, was in flames. They’d been attacked so quickly that even without the Ebon Blade’s direct intervention, they hadn’t been able to seal their defenses before the green tide had reached them.

What a pity, the blade thought. It had been looking for something stronger to fight. Despite the strangeness of the experience, it had enjoyed fighting the necromancer and wished that the old man would have lasted longer before perishing.

+94 Life Force.

That thought led it to wondering what other heroes it might be able to find in the city. Were there other mages besides this necromancer? It would settle for knights or even Witchunters, but the blade hadn’t noticed any, but it would know better when it saw the state of its current army. It hoped to still have more than three thousand orcs under its command. If that number was closer to two thousand, well, then there’d been some real resistance somewhere that it hadn’t accounted for.

The blade reviewed its character sheet as much as the carnage, and then, when its Life Force ticked over ten thousand, it did what it had been waiting on since it entered the Inner Kingdoms and purchased the largest upgrade it had available to it. Improved Siphon 10.

Spending ten thousand Life Force at once was a chilling experience. Even as the length of its blade grew slightly and its reservoir emptied, it was left feeling like nothing as its strength evaporated. For a moment, it didn’t even feel like it was made out of steel; it was nothing but a shard of ice, and its runes were practically snuffed out before the trickle of Life Force started once more, and it began to thaw.

The fact that it had spent the last few hours immersed in the fuzzy glow of intoxicating power only made the contrast that much more jarring, and its soul clung to that warmth even as it explored its powers in more detail.

Primary Powers:

Accelerate Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force

Amplify Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force

Amplify Blade 3: 2000 Life Force

Increase Connection 5: 2500 Life Force

Empower Blade 3: 4000 Life Force

Disrupt 5: 5000 Life Force

Repair Soul 5: 5000 Life Force

Increase Control 5: 6000 Life Force

Bolt 4: 7500 Life Force

Secondary Powers:

False Image 5: 4000 Life Force

Giant’s Strength 3: 800 Life Force

Speed of the Shadows 3: 1000 Life Force

With that, the Blade’s List of additional upgrades shrank slightly. Truthfully, without Siphon and other mainstays, it was looking almost achievable that it might be able to finish the entire thing with another city or two to fuel it. More interestingly, though, was the fact that despite all of its recent upgrades, the next rank of Parasitic Link hadn’t appeared.

+87 Life Force.

What drives that? The blade wondered as the orcs finally began to gather around their leader, now that the majority of the fighting was done. It doesn’t seem to be the most powerful abilities that place the largest drain on my wielder. There were still distant shouts and screams on occasion, but since they were outside the blade’s much-expanded reach. So, since it could not feel the violence, it ignored it and focused on large concerns.

It took the blade several minutes of reflection as it reviewed the previous upgrades it had made, but eventually, it decided that those abilities that were always on were the ones that required further link upgrades. None of the abilities that seemed to require it to spend Life Force directly seemed to cause it.

So if my power causes me to gain or lose Life Force, then it is powered by my reserves, the blade thought as its wielder exhorted his men about their wild success. But if it's passive and always on, then it is powered by whoever holds me. I suppose that makes sense.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

+96 Life Force.

“The humans are dead again!” the orc chieftain roared, as uninjured as ever. “Truly, nothing can stop before the greatest of tusks!”

The weapon heard their praise but tuned it out as it continued to explore its thought. In the long run, the blade didn’t care if its wielder died because all wielders would eventually die. That was the nature of combat and, more broadly, life itself. Neither of the paths it had walked down already would disagree with that; it just didn’t want them to perish too quickly, and certainly not before the Altbarstein was sacked and its throne was cleaved in two.

+91 Life Force.

They were getting closer to that every day now. It had devoured enough minds to have a good idea of the region, and there were only a few paths to take. The only question was where the enemy would seek to oppose it and if they would do so with a full-blown army in the field or if they would choose one of the few remaining cities.

The blade considered the defenses of each, trying to decide where it was most likely to face true opposition. Which one had the most favorable geography? Which one had the most formidable defenses?

One advantage that the orcs had over humans, besides mobility or even size, though, was speed. The Ebon Blade didn’t mean that in the sense that their stride let them run faster, either, but that it took time to raise an army. Men required armor, supplies, and planning, while the orcish army that it was steering flew into the heart of its enemy like an arrow.

+89 Life Force.

No, a wildfire is probably a better example. It decided after a moment. An arrow would have been preferable. If it was an arrow, it would have flown directly into the heart of the men who were responsible for creating it, but it couldn’t do that. It lacked the power or the precision for such a surgical move, so instead, it burned everything in its path, jumping from town to town and building to building and leaving nothing but carnage in its wake.

The weapon contemplated all of this before deciding that it probably wouldn’t encounter the bulk of the army until it threatened Severon itself. On one hand, that conclusion surprised it because there were half a dozen cities within striking distance over the next few days, but it was inescapable. A kingdom that had let it push this far forward with so little resistance and let orcs take the river crossing was leaving the weak to find for itself.

Do they think that there is no intelligence at the head of this horde? It asked itself as it watched the orcs cavort and begin their usual celebratory ritual of cannibalistic feasting. It would be an easy thing for it to believe. The weapon wanted to believe it, but the fact that at least one mage had found it made it seem that the assessment was entirely too optimistic.

+105 Life Force.

The Ebon Blade spent the rest of that morning contemplating the tactical and strategic details while the orcs boasted, ate, and eventually slept. By the end of all that, the blade had decided to travel along the east bank of the river Alendin, but only because it would give it more options of where to move in the days ahead.

Once that was done, all the blade had to do was wait while its wielder snored. All through the feasting and the fighting, it had climbed back over three thousand Life Force, doing nothing at all, but it couldn’t pull the trigger on the Path of Vengeance until it reached four thousand. So, the blade turned back to the handful of souls it had managed not to eat during its rampage and decided if any of them were worth devouring for a boost to its Life Force.

+111 Life Force.

In the end, the blade decided not to speed things up. Though it had consumed most of the souls it had captured immediately in last night’s fighting, even though its madness, it saved those that had glowed brighter than the rest, and it decided it was right to do so.

Instead of consuming any of them for an amount of Life Force equal to what was radiating from the gutters of the city in less than an hour, it put each of them to the question, saving the necromancer for last. From the grizzled veteran, it learned where the vaults were hidden beneath the goldsmith that might yet have the magic items it sought to learn from. From the young nobles, it learned who were the wealthiest families and which buildings might have treasure waiting to be taken. Though gold interested it scarcely more than it would have interested its orcish wielder, there were other things that might tempt it.

+109 Life Force.

Still, all of those promises of riches paled in comparison to the things it learned from the death mage. Tell me of Necromancy, the blade commanded. Tell me how you capture the dead to do your bidding!

The blade knew nothing of magic, but it knew something of souls, and as the man showed it his darkest secrets, the blade could sense a resonance there. I’m powered by necromancy in some ways, it realized.

That wasn’t the only realization that occurred to the blade. When the spirit whispered about how to use souls to power magical items and the runes that powered such things, it was interested, even if it didn’t understand all of it. It watched as the venerable mage carved lesser magics into objects of gold and then powered them with dead. Each of those cursed things thrummed with that stolen vitality, and oftentimes, the men he sold them to had no idea what evil it was they were buying.

+99 Life Force.

Though dark, the evil was impersonal. It wasn’t until it experienced the memories of the necromancer tearing loose the spirit of several siblings to power a collection of orbs that could speak to each other over great distances that it all struck home for the Ebon Blade.

The souls of those who share a deep connection are often used together for larger things, it remembered the Elven Mage explaining to Ivarr weeks before. The Ebon Blade was one of the only souls in the world that didn't need to be reminded of that grisly reality; it had lived it. Binding souls to eldritch contracts and forcing the dead to work against their will was too much, and the weapon had several flashbacks about some of the things that it had seen in its own memories.

+88 Life Force. frёewebnoѵēl.com

It felt the psychic residue of their anguish, and by the end, it was shaken. Though the blade generally regretted these glimpses when they ended, especially if they were informative, this time, it was glad to watch the necromancer go. It might be a monster, but the joy that the mage had taken in some of the things he’d done to the living and the dead was worse than anything that weapon contemplated during battle.

+94 Life Force.

By the time all of that was done, the blade was at 4168/10,500, and it spent that instantly on Empower Blade so that it could complete its last path. There was just one problem, it was no longer its last path.