Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 132
“Friendsh?” the drunk barked with a laugh. “Imma retainer, not a friend. Name’s Walter Nemor an Imma knight-cadet. Baron employs my dah and he’ll employ me too. Paysh for my drinks and lesh me go to dungeons an’ I laugh at his jokes. Shimple transaction.”
“Micah Silver,” he replied, offering a hand to the drunk man. “You do realize that our two carriages are going to be fighting an entire cult’s worth of monsters that happen to look human, right? I wanted to clear them out, but I expected Baron Harris to at least stop long enough to pick up weapons and armor rather than load our entire troop into carriages and head out immediately.”
Walter shrugged theatrically before raising his cup as if in a toast. The other rowdy nobles in the vehicle joined him. Despite the shaking and jostling of the carriage, none of them spilled a single drop. Evidently, they had experience in environments such as this.
“Oursh is not to reason why!” the knight-cadet shouted cheerfully. A boisterous shout of approval was the response, and Micah could only shake his head and smile.
Idiots, but pleasant ones. Beyond his family, people like this were why he was working himself to the bone to save Karell. None of the men in the carriage with him were paragons of virtue or righteousness, but they all seemed like decent folks who were playing the mixed hands that they were given.
Admittedly, given what he knew about the powers of the daemon cults, they were playing said hands rather poorly. Nonetheless, the rowdy energy and good cheer in the carriage were infectious. For twenty or so minutes, he let himself get carried away by the moment.
Not so much that he drank to distraction. Gods no, Micah was enjoying himself, not trying to die the most pathetic and anticlimactic of deaths when the Third Prince inevitably sprang a trap upon him.
Finally, after almost two hours, just about midnight, their coach came to a stop. A small hamlet sat in the sand, clustered around an oasis that looked like little more than a grassy spot with a well.
Both of the carriages unloaded, revealing the dozen or so nobles that had made the journey. Micah had been able to pick up his spear and armor before they left the party, but other than him, the only one wearing any sort of proper equipment was Baron Harris. The man was clad in his scout officer uniform, an oversized and bejeweled saber at his hip.
Adrian looked every part the virtuous soldier, but Micah couldn’t help but notice the wobble in his step as he walked across desert sand. Some of his imbalance could be explained by the unsteadiness of the footing, but that didn’t cover the entirety of the situation.
Micah let his mouth smooth into a disapproving line as he took in the Baron’s flushed cheeks and glassy eyes. The man was reckless. Admittedly, it was partially his fault for egging him on, but Micah couldn’t pass up the opportunity to investigate another collection of daemon cultists. He’d just hoped that his counterpart would have taken basic precautions to sober up.
“I’m a spellcaster, you know,” Micah offered as the Baron approached. “I could use Refresh to clear the alcohol from your system in a sec-”
“I’m not drunk,” Harris replied. He wasn’t slurring as badly as Walter, but there was clearly a hint of inebriation to his voice. “And I certainly don’t need your help, Silver. Plus, I fight better with a couple of drinks in me. I won’t have you using your magic to undo twenty attunement worth of the Leel river’s finest whiskey.”
Another idiot. This time, an unpleasant one. Still, Micah thought, fighting back an audible sigh. He was partially responsible for the man’s predicament. Even if Gwen found the man as annoying as he did, she likely wouldn’t be happy if he let Adrian get sacrificed and turned into some sort of life force crystal to power the Third Prince’s daemonic magic.
“Have it your way, Baron,” Micah said unhappily. “So what’s your plan? As far as I’m concerned, I’m just here to watch and witness unless you specifically ask for help. Afterward, I plan on investigating some of the folk involved to see if I can find out who they’ve been in contact with, but you were clear from the beginning. Any glory from clearing out this nest goes to you.”
“Damn straight it does,” Adrian grunted. “For now, I just go into the village and start killing. Anyone that didn’t join their weird cult died months ago. As best I can tell, they’ve built some sort of workshop or laboratory underneath the church to Luxos. I just need to fight my way down there and destroy whatever abomination is fueling this. Then I can report back to the Princess and be showered in accolades.”
“I’m not sure about this,” Micah replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know if you’ve fought the converted in the past, but they’re hardly ordinary forgo-”
He didn’t get to finish his thought. Baron Harris whipped the saber from his belt and held it high above his head. It flashed with light as if reflecting the noontime sun as the drunken idiot bellowed out a challenge.
“For the Empress! For Sandrovok!”
Then he was gone, sprinting toward the sleepy hamlet, his glittering sword held in front of him.
Micah gripped his spear tightly, biting back a curse as he watched the drunken Baron charge recklessly. A couple windows clattered open on the one-story adobe huts that made up most of the town, and he could almost feel the curious gazes of the villagers as they peered out into the night.
Then Adrian swung his saber. It shone briefly in the moonlight before a crescent of destructive energy shot from its blade into one of the nearby houses, gouging a deep hole in the dried mud, straw and clay that made up its walls.
That seemed to be the signal. There wasn’t any shouting or ringing of bells. None of the normal signs that a rural village would use to warn the inhabitants that they were under attack. Rather, bursts of emerald fire sprang to life, starting in the house that had been hit by the Baron’s attack.
A chill ran over Micah’s body as he stared at the town’s transformation. The sudden flames weren’t enough to consume the houses, but the successive flashes of light turned their windows into leering portals, illuminating the town in an eerie, flickering emerald glow.
He debated moving to assist Adrian. On one hand, he had promised not to intervene unless the man was truly at risk, but that certainly seemed to be the case. Ultimately, Micah held himself back. Clearly, the drunk man overestimated himself, and attacking early would only cause problems. It wouldn’t be too late to step in once the scout captain realized how deep of trouble he was in.
Skeletal bats erupted from the well, familiar crystals wedged into their ribs. Their arrival didn’t slow the charging Baron or prompt any of his friends to help. Instead, they stared blankly, jaws slack and drinks in hand at the growing cloud of monsters.
This time, Micah stopped hesitating. He barely realized what he was doing as he charged forward, shouting out commands with each step.
“Watch out for the villagers! They don’t have levels, but the weakest of them will be as strong as a level 20. I’ll handle the bats. Unless you have enchantments that protect you from soul magic, don’t even think of fighting them. One touch from their tentacles and they’ll rip your spirits from your body.”
Adrian swung his saber, sending a crescent of light up into the air and scattering the bats before Micah could target all of them with an area of effect attack.
“Stay out of this, Silver!” he screamed, not even looking back as the first set of peasants wreathed in green fire began exiting their adobe houses. “I can take down this cult without your help. I found these hovels and the glory for burning them down is mine!”
Micah was tempted to respond, but he knew his words would land on deaf ears. Maybe when the Baron actually saw how dangerous the converted were, Micah would have a chance to get through to the stubborn man, but with the appearance of the bats, he didn’t have time to waste on waiting.
He caught up to Adrian in a second, the words to Flight leaving his lips just as the first of a dozen translucent tentacles reached down from the sky. Now the Baron was terrified. Micah could see it in the man’s eyes and jerky, panicked movements as he threw himself to the side to avoid the attacks.
Without speaking, Micah’s hand darted out, grasping one of the ephemeral tentacles tightly and pulsing arcana up its length. It was like exercising a muscle. At first, the Arcana skills had seemed alien, like something strange and utterly beyond his understanding. After repeated use, Micah found the abilities coming more easily.
His hand blurred to the side, absurd attributes enabling him snatching another translucent streamer out of the air with ease. He flexed his Arcana. It was almost second nature at this point, reaching beyond himself and touching the something else that hid in the core of his being before pushing it into the daemonically corrupted monster and overwhelming it.
Adrian took a step back, then another. He swung his saber at another one of the skeletal bat’s streamers, only for his attack to pass right through the attacking organ.
The Baron blanched.
“W-what are you doing standing around with drinks in your hands? Get down here and help me!” Adrian’s voice was reedy, high-pitched and breathy with panic as he turned and ran toward the waiting carriages.
Micah leapt into the air, using Flight to help him slip his body between the attacking monsters and the fleeing noble.
For a second, it was working. Whatever foul energy animated the bats, it didn’t give them any of the self-preservation instincts that the creatures possessed in life. The flock simply saw Micah as the nearest target and mobbed him.
Ten or so of the tentacles hit him at once, wrapping themselves around his limbs like ice cold noodles as they sought to break through his defenses and assault the very seat of his soul itself. His skin crawled as they slithered across it, and the first push from his Arcana skill wasn’t enough.
The feelers swelled, as if they were wineskins being pumped full of water, and the bats wobbled drunkenly in the sky. Micah pushed again, this time reaching deep inside himself, his mind brushing across an uncomfortably familiar primal hunger as he threw everything he had into counterattacking the attackers.
This time, they fell burning from the sky, a rain of green cinders that illuminated the tiny oasis town. In their flickering light, dozens of shapes stood around the village well. Eight of the peasants had their hands linked, forming a circle around the squat stone shape of the well.
Micah took to the air, flying toward the cluster of converted, spear at the ready, only for his instincts to scream danger. Without pausing to think, he jerked right a half second before his Major Arcana skill tracked a pulse of energy ripped directly from the very mists of Elsewhere itself burning a line through the desert soil and slamming into the body of one of the peasants.
She exploded. There was the customary green fire, but it didn’t burn her body. There wasn’t anything left to burn. Her soul and physical being evaporated in the same moment, forming the catalyst for the titanic surge of energy that blasted toward Micah in the form of a billowing cone of gas and flame.
He pushed himself to the limit, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as every skill and instinct in his body warned him that as powerful of a defense as his Arcana skill was, there wasn't a chance that it could shrug that attack off.
It was strange. Foresight wasn’t active, but Micah felt like he could almost tell where the corrosive Elsewhere energy was flowing and what it would do when it got there.
The blast soared past him, literally corrupting and devouring the air in its wake. Toxic soot began to float down from the sky, and Micah felt his breath catch in his throat as he looked down on the cluster of converted. Other than the members with their hands linked, every other human in the city had their lightly glowing eyes locked on him.
Arrows and spells began to fall amongst their ranks, breaking the tense moment and forcing the converted to raise walls of green flame to protect themselves. The drunken nobles might not have their best gear or wits about them, but evidently, a couple of them had found hunting bows, and they were stepping up to help out the handful of spellcasters. Their attacks were dealing some damage to the forgotten barriers, but more than anything, they forced cultists to play defense. With any luck, they wouldn’t be able to focus and fire any more of those suicide attacks.
Micah circled the formation, mouthing the words to Haste, Regeneration and Foresight as he took stock of the battle. There weren’t any more destructive bursts of energy trying to swat him from the air, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure that they would be necessary. Without his intervention, the nobles were as good as dead.
Already two of their disorganized number were down, an overweight healer struggling to use a combination of Wood and Water magic to keep them from passing while the rest struggled with forgotten. Their initial tactic of peppering them with ranged attacks had been useful to draw the cultists’ attention from Adrian and Micah, but ultimately, it wasn’t the best choice. Lashes of flame flickered across the empty desert, forcing the drunken nobles to spend more time dodging than returning fire.
Whether it was their alcohol, lack of armaments, or general lack of skill, Micah couldn’t put his finger on the cause, but there was little doubt that outside of Adrian, the rest of his companions were incapable of even approaching close enough to put their skinny dueling swords to any use.
As for the scout captain, he was already locked in battle with three of the forgotten at the same time. The blasts of energy from his saber were enough to knock the cultists over and cause their flaming green shields to fade and dim, but a couple of seconds after every blow, Micah would feel another trickle of energy from deep beneath the town and their defenses would restore themselves. He wasn’t sure how many more of those strikes the imperial officer could unleash, and given how the man was heaving for breath with sweat pouring down his face, Micah’s first guess was “not many.”
All of which led to only one conclusion. The battle was out of hand. It wasn’t even a question of forgotten spies escaping at this point. Without Micah’s intervention, all of the drunken nobles were going to die.
He raised his left hand, casting Pressure Spear with a thought. A heat mirage of air magic appeared between his clasping fingers, and he drew back his arm, carefully waiting for one of Adrian’s attacks to damage the armor of one of the forgotten.
Before he could strike, a wave of revulsion rolled through his body and somewhere on an instinctive level, Micah knew that something wrong was about to happen. Energy was welling up once again from the ground beneath the well, but this time, it didn’t have the sudden and destructive feel of an attack. There was violence toward it, but it was the violence of a scalpel rather than a mace or runaway bull.
As one, the eight humans with linked hands erupted, their viscera spattering the stones surrounding the well where they immediately began to glow with green light.
Micah’s eyes widened as he stared down at them. The blood and bits of cultist hadn’t landed in a random pattern. They were runes. The runes of a summoning ritual.
“Shit,” he muttered unhappily as reality was ripped asunder.
TWENTY-TWO
ONCE AGAIN, AGAIN
The mists of Elsewhere poured out of the rift, obscuring the battlefield. Blasts of green light speared through the roiling fog as if it weren’t there, driving Adrian and his men further back. The group’s healer was using Refresh repeatedly on the drunk nobles, sobering them up and restoring their stamina as they fell back into defensive positions.
Now that their wits were back about them, Micah suspected that the fight would be a lot more even, but that wasn’t his primary concern.
A hand, human except with eight fingers ending in sickly blackened nails that were filed to a razor edge pushed through the crack in reality. It was easily the size of Micah’s torso, and had no trouble gripping the edge of the portal. Then another came through its back to the first, and barely making it through the opening.
Micah dove toward them casting Explosive Thicket as he dashed through the air, but he was too late. He had opened up too much distance to avoid the dangerous suicide attacks from the converted that were protecting the summoners, and now that mistake was coming back to haunt him.
The hands pulled, and with the screech of metal on porcelain, reality ripped. Micah’s spell scored the bottom of the hands, but as close as they were to the portal, his spell barely had enough cohesion to stay together long enough to draw a couple drops of brackish blood.
Another pair of hands pushed through the widening gap, and Micah could feel the energy from Elsewhere flooding into the world. The stone blocks of the well-melted, fusing together and turning into a slurry of gray refuse that flowed across the town square.
The forgotten surrounding the summoning raised their hands exultantly, no longer bothering fire bolts of green fire at the nobles as they turned and slowly began to walk toward the tear in the world. Their conversion protected them somewhat, but by the time a third pair of hands came through the hole and began ripping at it again, it was more than their forms could bear.
Faces lost definition as their features dissolved and flowed together, and sure steps fumbled as nerves died and legs lost their ability to move. At least in one case, a man’s foot fell off entirely. One second, he was pacing forward, and the next, his shoe and half of his calf was sitting upright on the ground and he was tumbling face forward. Slowly, the definition and outline of both began to dissolve.
Frantically, Micah glanced around the oasis. He had his gear, but it was equipment for putting down cultists and ordinary daemons. The thing clawing its way out of that portal was as far from an ordinary daemon as he was. Unfortunately, that meant that all of his weapons and spells would degrade under the force of its aura before they even had a chance to hit it. He could still do damage, but there was no way that he would be able to defeat the monster without a protracted battle that would tear up half the desert.
