City in Crisis
City in Crisis
Crunch.
The sound of flesh and bone parting. The man who made that sound looked utterly indifferent. The man who should have heard it first could no longer hear or see anything at all.
The axe buried in his skull gave a faint tremor. The sectarian's eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the floor.
Blood crawled outward, soaking the ground. The man standing over him drew a slow breath and shivered once, lightly.
The alley had changed beyond recognition in the span of a few minutes.
Every sectarian of the Formless One lay sprawled dead across the cobblestones or pinned to a wall, twitching faintly.
The corpses plastered across the gray stone—those were mostly Angie's work. The ones sprawled on the ground, the ones that looked as though they had been methodically butchered—those were mostly Ereta's.
Scattered among the dismembered dead were the occasional bodies of sectarians who served the Poison-spitting Dragon. Their numbers had been small from the start, so their presence in the carnage seemed almost an afterthought.
Everyone else was dead or broken. Not a single one of them stirred. Only four people were still standing.
Ereta, an axe and a mace in her hands, blood spattered across her face, beaming.
Angie, both arms drenched red, blocking the far end of the alley opposite Ereta.
And Aslan, who had just driven an axe into the head of what would have been the fifth sectarian, shoved the body aside and stood staring silently at the fourth survivor—a sectarian on the very cusp of becoming a full priest.
Four figures in the quiet. Only their gazes tangled in the stillness, chiefly between Aslan and the sectarian.
"Fuck..."
The curse slipped out half-strangled. Aslan reacted with nothing at all—just cold eyes. The sectarian, who had sworn without meaning to, flicked his gaze around the alley, searching for a way out.
Running was not realistic. He had seen exactly what the woman guarding the rear exit—Angie—had done during the chaos moments earlier. She had split a Formless One in two with a swing of her six-foot staff, then snatched a tentacle flying at her out of the air, reeled it in, and slammed its owner into the ground. Raw power. Explosive speed. Even if he tried to bolt, the sectarian knew she would run him down in an instant.
Breaking through Aslan's side was no more promising. The rumors about the Master of Combat were bad enough, but facing him and Ereta together was suicide.
The sectarian's eyes darted, frantic, as he tried to puzzle out a way to survive. He leveled his longsword with trembling hands.
Aslan shifted his stance. He did not pull his axe free. Instead, he raised his fists, settling one just beside his eye.
A textbook fighting posture. The sectarian scowled. Master of Combat or not, his own partial priestification was nearly complete. He might not be as strong as a full priest, but no ordinary human could overpower him. The higher one rose among the Poison-spitting Dragon's faithful, the tougher one's hide became—and the more potent one's venom. The sectarian's body was already sheathed head to toe in scales that would turn aside most mortal weapons. Yet Aslan was coming at him with bare fists.
Arrogance. Unbearable, casual arrogance.
The sectarian ground his teeth and lifted his sword.
"You son of a bitch!"
Twisted wounded pride hurled him forward. He lunged straight at Aslan, no more self-preservation in it than a moth flying into a flame.
The blade came down.
Shiing—!
A longsword swung with strength beyond human limits, fast enough that the steel blurred white. It carved nothing but air. Aslan had simply turned his body and slipped past it.
The sectarian's breath caught. He tried to whip the sword up in a sharp diagonal slash. A wall was right beside Aslan—no room to dodge. If Aslan tried to evade, one clean cut and it would be over.
Aslan didn't evade. He simply snapped out a front kick. Before the blade could reach his leg, his foot slammed into the sectarian's knee. Balance buckled. Aslan stepped in behind the kick. It took less than half a breath.
He caught the sword-hand at the wrist with his right hand, forced it down, and drove his shoulder into the sectarian's chest.
"Ghuh—!"
The sword spun free. The sectarian reeled back, breath punched out of him. Before he could even register what had happened, Aslan's body had already pivoted. The spinning heel kick that followed caught him square in the head.
Crack.
His skull snapped sideways. Pain flared white-hot through his brain. This isn't normal force. He's using something.
The thought barely had time to form before Aslan stepped through and delivered another kick—a full turning kick to the face just as the sectarian's head came back around. His nose burst. Blood sprayed. He clutched at his face, and Aslan's violence kept coming.
A wet crunch.
An elbow, driven in with the full rotation of Aslan's body. The right elbow crushed into his cheek.
"Guhk—!"
A hand seized the back of his skull and yanked it down into a rising knee. Vomit spilled from his lips. Aslan stepped back just enough to avoid it, then swept low. The sectarian's knee bent the wrong way, and he collapsed to the ground.
Even as he struggled to push himself up on a ruined leg, he understood. This isn't human strength.
He had sacrificed many people to reach where he stood. He had killed those who resisted. He had matched strength against countless men. What he was feeling now was unmistakably beyond anything a mortal should be able to deliver.
His analysis was accurate. Between the permanent Strength increase granted by Wild Magic and the temporary surge from mana-augmented muscle, Aslan's physical output rivaled a stat of 3. Multiplied by the double damage of Jehaengmusang, his fists were not blows the sectarian could possibly endure.
As though demonstrating the fact, Aslan drove both fists into the kneeling sectarian's face in rapid succession.
Whump. Crack.
"Hkgh... k-khhh..."
A downward hook. An upward hook. Two punches, and coherence faded. The sectarian's head lolled. Aslan grabbed him by his thinning hair, steadied the swaying skull, and drove his right fist into the man's mouth. He pulled the head down into another knee strike while he still held it. The relentless brutality smashed into the sectarian's face again and again until the man was sobbing, begging.
"Sp-spare—spare me, please—"
The fist landed before the plea was finished. Aslan released the hair and punched him to the ground. The sectarian went rolling, and Aslan drew a dagger and pinned his shoulder to the floor.
"Metal Heating."
He spoke the spell's name aloud, channeling it into the mana tattoo through Artifice. Light rippled across the inked lines, and the dagger grew hot.
"GAAAAAAAHH—!"
The blade seared through flesh. The sectarian screamed, convulsing, as his shoulder sizzled around the glowing steel.
Aslan looked down at all of it without expression.
"The Formless One. Everything you know. Everything related. All of it. Do not filter. Do not leave anything out. Now."
He twisted the dagger. The sectarian spilled everything he knew.
*
The Emperor of the Kallus Empire had changed twice in a short span. Both times, the old ruler had died at the same man's hand. That was unusual, but Geladrion was that kind of world. Those with power could step beyond the established order. The man had yearned for that absolute freedom—that was why he had pursued strength.
It was also why he was now bound and caged in this place.
He had wanted to be strong. Not merely to wield magic, but to hold the kind of power that could bend the world itself. So he had set aside his passion for sorcery and turned instead to faith.
He had served under the name of the War God. While emperors were killed and replaced, he had maintained his influence and offered his devotion. The Ashuld family had cast him out, but he had secured a position that gave him authority across the Emperor's direct domain—and even the title of Imperial Investigator. With the Emperor's approval, he had spread the War God's faction throughout the empire, sustained it, managed it. At the end of that path, he had believed, he would become a Warrior Monk—the first mage ever to do so.
The plan had come apart before it could be realized.
A new Emperor had taken the throne. Ileina, once she rose to power, had moved immediately to purge anyone tied to the War God. The official pretext was that they had failed to protect the previous Emperor properly. No one believed it. Ileina was, unmistakably and methodically, driving the War God out of the Kallus Empire.
It was hard to reconcile with the powerless, helpless Ileina the court had known, but the girl had maneuvered aggressively and politically isolated the War God's faithful with startling speed. A few weeks was nowhere near enough time to dismantle an entrenched political faction, yet she had done it—with a mixture of audacity and ruthlessness that had driven them out entirely.
The man who had entered the Emperor's direct domain as an Imperial Investigator left it a traitor.
He had fled. He had been captured while crossing the border.
The story was simple.
At least, he told himself, he hadn't fallen into the hands of the Saintess of Slaughter, whose cruelty was legendary. The thought was both bitter and oddly comforting. The priest of the Poison-spitting Dragon who now held him seemed to possess a certain measure of restraint.
But even that restrained priest was reaching the limits of his patience.
"Why hasn't a single one of them come back?"
He didn't understand the cause, but the Formless One's attacks had driven him into a corner.
His network inside Kardi—agents, informants, operatives—was dead. His established safehouse had been swept clean. The priest had been lucky to escape with his life. Those who hadn't been so lucky had been torn apart in the tide of monsters that had overrun the place.
He remembered the sight: the Formless One's swarm flooding into his base, wave after wave of creatures made of fused bone and flesh. He had not sensed an intelligence guiding them. He had assumed that if he could slip away and find shelter, he could buy himself some time.
The warehouse he had purchased in the slums near Kardi's outer wall was meant to be that last bastion—a hideout with an underground passage leading outside the city.
Before dispersing, he had ordered his followers to regroup here.
Now the dilapidated warehouse held only himself and one prisoner. He had carried the prisoner along with his own hands; that was the only reason the man was there at all.
A more than sufficient amount of time had passed. No one had come. The priest's face twisted as he suppressed his fury.
His forces were gone. The situation was catastrophic. And yet he could not abandon Kardi. He still had a task to accomplish. He still had a mission—to capture the last descendant of the Ancient Gods and summon his own gods to this land.
The mission chained him here.
At length he forced his rage down and prayed to the Cosmic Inevitability that a few fortunate followers might still find their way.
Perhaps the prayer was heard. From the direction of the street outside came the sound of people approaching—three sets of footsteps and a scatter of hurried running.
"Ah, at last..."
He faced the iron door with rising hope. The footsteps drew close. Someone knocked.
"You've finally come, my brethren! You've done well to make it back. I am presently..."
Relieved, the priest advanced toward the door. He reached for the latch to let them in.
Something punched through the iron before he could touch it.
A blade.
It pierced the door outright and swept across his nape in a pale blue blaze.
"Kh..."
Blood ran. The priest reeled backward as the wet warmth spilled down his neck and spattered the floor. The sword that had skewered the door sliced through the latch as though it were butter, and the iron door groaned open.
Beyond it stood a familiar face—one no priest could fail to recognize.
Clutching his neck, the priest's lips moved.
"Master of Combat...!"
Aslan showed no expression at the title. He stepped into the warehouse. His gaze swept the space with mechanical efficiency, cataloguing what matched the information he had extracted and what didn't.
His eyes stopped. More than stopped—they narrowed.
He frowned.
"Kornil Ashuld...?"
The prisoner flinched at the name.