Chapter 8
Drosso smirked as he barreled through the forest, sometimes slamming straight through trees if they stood in his way and shattering them apart with brute force alone. After absorbing the ranger, her mage, and warrior companion, he had grown far, far stronger. None of these knights knew what they were in for. They would all be food for Zagan, and the demon, as per their contract, would grant him strength.
"Onwards, brothers!" roared Drosso as he slammed into another tree, reducing it into a shower of splinters.
The bandits behind him carried his cry, galvanized by the overwhelming power he showed.
But there was something wrong. Drosso felt that their cries were quieter than usual. He was no fool: he knew some of them followed him out of fear, but still, things were too quiet. Then the footsteps around him began to disappear.
Drosso stopped. A cold sweat had formed on his back. This was instinct telling him something was wrong. He turned around.
Complete darkness. He strained his eyes for any stray torchlights and his ears for the footsteps of his brothers.
Nothing. Just the dark of the forest looking back at him, the gnarled trunks haunting in their expressions.
If was as if his bandits, a formidable force numbering fifty, had simply ceased to exist. There were no traces of them, no stray boots, no leftover torches, no bloodstains, just complete and utter nothingness.
Drosso immediately took up a battle stance, his sword out in front of him as he slowly circled around, trying to make sense of what was happening. Perhaps he was under the effects of an illusion?
"Great Zagan," said Drosso. "Do you sense any foul magic upon us?"
Zagan's voice resonated from his arm as a throaty growl. "No such thing, my subject. But have no fear, for the power I have vested within you eclipses any that mere mortals of flesh and blood can muster."
Drosso squinted as he tried to peer into the dark of the forest. With Zagan empowering him, he had always felt secure in the darkness because he knew that he was the one to fear in the dark. But now, that old, familiar, human sensation – the fear of the unknown – came back to his icy heart, and it made him sweat.
But he was no green boy. He knew battle. When he was a knight, he had fought against forest elves and watched as his compatriots were dropped seemingly out of nowhere by arrows that fell like rain among the trees. His training kicked in and he immediately rushed to a clearing in the forest.
In a clearing, any hidden opponents had to make their presence known, and if they used bows or magic, then the direction of their attack became more obvious.
The clearing was nice and s.p.a.cious. Easily forty paces across with gra.s.s growing low so as to maximize visibility. The moon shone high and bright, illuminating the clearing like a stagelight. He stood at the center of this theater of nature, watching the ring of trees around him for an unwelcome audience.
Though he believed he had long since discarded his humanity for demonic power, he still felt very real, very primal, very human instincts telling him the forest around him was a prison, the ring of trees walls to enclose him in for slaughter. His skin crawled and his muscles s.h.i.+vered.
Dead silence hung in the air. Not even insects chirped. The gra.s.ses themselves felt unwelcome, picking at his feet, hungry to devour his corpse.
A figure emerged from the trees. It walked slowly and leisurely. Drosso could make it out as human. Tall with a slender build, but with shoulders broad enough to make it obvious it was a man. Without any hesitation, he used the palm of his non-sword hand to gather wind.
The winds whistled as they swirled and coalesced around a single point above his
Drosso willed the sphere into a sickle-shaped blade and cast [Wind Blade], ejecting the deadly projectile towards the figure. He breathed hard as his vision shook a little. He was a warrior by cla.s.s and death knight by specialty, so his mana reserves weren't up to par. The stolen spell taxed him heavily, but it was a deadly one. No knight, regardless of the thickness of his armor, would ever stand up to it.
The blade of condensed wind whistled forwards, howling as it crashed into the figure. The condensed wind blew apart as it collided with the figure, fizzling out into gentle winds.
Drosso grunted. His battle-worn mind worked quickly. He deduced that this man held some form of magic resistance. Perhaps a ring or amulet as mere magic resistant robes were not enough to withstand an offensive Celesium-rank spell.
No matter. He preferred beating and hacking his enemies to death. Made it more personal. He grinned, swallowing down instincts that screamed at him to run and instead rousing himself into a battling rage. He grasped his longsword in both hands and charged.
The figure did not do anything but walk forwards. Did not pick up his pace, tense up, get into guard, cast a spell – nothing. As the figure came into closer view, Drosso did not understand why he felt such fear. Dirt-caked boots, worn leather trousers, tattered linen s.h.i.+rt, and roughly hewn hood were the only things on this man. Nothing of worth.
Drosso wondered for just a second whether this was some unlucky peasant who had entered the woods in some delirium of drunkenness. No matter. He brought his blade straight down on the figure's head, aiming to cleave the unlucky sod in two down the middle.
"What!?" Drosso's eyes, small and squinty as they were, managed to widen immensely.
He had sundered down at this peasant with all his might, with power fueled from the blood of almost a hundred sacrificed souls.
But the figure had simply raised his arm and grabbed the sword with his hand. An explosive and metallic burst of sound emanated as Drosso's blade slammed into a hand that seemed indestructible, solid like mithril.
The man pinched the blade between his thumb and index finger. Drosso grunted as he tried pus.h.i.+ng back to pry his blade free. He dug his feet into the dirt and as his muscles strained and his sweat poured, his feet caved craters into the forest floor – a testament to his immense power.
But it was nothing compared to this man.
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No matter what Drosso did, he could not twist the blade from the man's mocking grip.
A flash of pain. He felt his vision go white as he roared in agony. He took steps back, his body feeling lighter. With shaky sight, he looked at the man.
The man held Drosso's sword. Still gripping the handle to it was Drosso's tree trunk of an arm, cleanly dismembered at the shoulder joint.
Drosso took a few seconds to register what had happened. Pure shock had slowed his thinking. It was only when he felt the pain of blood spurting out of his empty arm socket that he regained his senses.
"Who are you?" said Drosso as he used his demonic hand to press hard at his wound, attempting futilely to staunch the bleeding. The crimson liquid leaked between his fingers, dripping onto forest gra.s.s hungry for more. "Your equipment is cheap – it's obvious you're using an illusion to conceal its true power. But your strength is formidable, too. You're a Hero, aren't you? How much did the d.u.c.h.ess pay to use you has a hound dog? Did she wh.o.r.e herself out like her kingdom?"
The man tossed Drosso's arm behind him. He took a step forwards and Drosso took three steps back.
"Hero? Nothing like that." The man stopped. Drosso didn't know if he was hallucinating, but he felt he could see the gra.s.ses growing around the stranger, curling around his feet affectionately. "I'm just a farmer here to pluck out some weeds."
"You dare mock me?" said Drosso. He knew he should run, every instinct in him told him to run, but his instincts also told him that he couldn't outrun this man. He had to stand and fight. "I did not expect to face a Hero so early, but so be it. Zagan, draw upon the souls we have feasted upon. [Demonic Transmogrification]."
Drosso's demonic arm shook uncontrollably before exploding into a ma.s.s of writhing, serpentine darkness. It slithered over his entire body, covering him in waving undulations of black until he was no longer humanoid but instead a brutish ma.s.s of amorphous darkness. He howled into the air, his voice completely b.e.s.t.i.a.l.
With the howl, his form stabilized, the darkness regenerating his lost arm and molding his limbs into monstrous things covered in coal black fur and brutish claws. His body lost its armor and became that of a beast's, doubling in muscle ma.s.s and covering itself with a protective hide of thick black fur.
His head had become lycanthropic, his eyes glowing a feral red and his jaws lined with serrated fangs long and sharp like daggers.
He stood almost as tall as a tree and three times as wide. His sinews coiled monstrously under his fur and his breath came out in deep, rattling clouds purple and noxious.
"A hundred souls have I devoured to be reborn in Zagan's form," said Drosso, his voice laced with a guttural growl. "My strength surges. No knight will fell me. No mage will slay me. Not even you, a Hero, will match me. "
"Are we doing transformations now?" said the man. Compared to Drosso's new demonic form, the man was tiny. Not even a quarter of his size. But the man sounded bored. "I see. You think strength is everything? That bigger is better? I can play that game too - [Shapes.h.i.+ft: Fist of Ymir]"
The man held a fist to the sky. It began morphing. The linen sleeve tore apart and disintegrated into nothingness, revealing a bare, human arm. Then the arm grew. As it grew, it changed, the skin becoming blue like the ocean.
All the elements of the world began sprouting on that arm – crystals of ice emerged like warts, cracks of igneous magma flared like scars, and vines grew like hairs.
And then, the arm grew even more. It grew and it grew.
Drosso's jaws opened wide as he took steps back. He kept looking higher and higher. Soon, a great shadow was cast over him. The fist stood high in the sky like some colossal obelisk, blotting out the moon. It was like a floating mountain, an image of the primordial giant from whose body was fas.h.i.+oned all the lands of oceans of the world.
Compared to that, Drosso felt impossibly small. He knew now that he was nothing. All his dreams of enacting change, of toppling kingdoms, meant nothing. Compared to creation incarnate, he was no more important than an ant.
The fist began to lower slowly and surely like a meteor. Finally, fear overtook him, and he ran. He ran faster than he had ever done so in life, even faster than he had so many years ago when he deserted, but he knew as the shadow of the fist grew darker around him that his fate was to go return to the earth, mashed into a fertilizing pulp for the soil.