Sworded Affair

Chapter 156: Toads Seeking Swan Flesh

Emma stepped through the doorway and emerged in hell. The walls and ceiling were of unfamiliar design, plain white with oriental script lining the support columns distributed equidistant on every side. They were also painted liberally in blood, while mad things that might have once been men writhed on the floor, screaming and chittering in an unfamiliar tongue. That was all they could do, bereft as they were of arms, legs or sanity and covered in wounds that wept boiling black blood, tortured faces forming momentarily in the steam wafting from their bodies.

[Toads Seeking Swan Flesh - Level 1]

“What the hell?”

Emma approached the crawling torsos slowly, wary of a trap; when nothing happened, she repeated her earlier destruction of the lamp and brought her shovel down on the nearest head.

[5 EXP gained.]

“Every little helps,” Emma grunted, going around the room doing a bit of mercy killing.

[30 EXP gained.]

The room now empty, she took a moment to glance out the window; it might have been a beautiful sight, were it not for the myriad fires that burned all the way to the horizon, leaving naught but a vista of smoke and ash. Suddenly reminded of the Blackflame Elemental that erupted back home, Emma shuddered and proceeded to the next room.

This room contained nobody at all, to Emma’s disappointment, though upturned chairs and shattered tea cups marked the passing of some disagreement turned violent. A single cup of tea remained upright, on a stool by the corner. Emma decided to try it, half-expecting to trigger a secret encounter. No such thing happened, alas, though the tea was excellent: smooth and mildly fruity to taste.

“The first room had a few nobodies, and the second room was empty. The next room will probably be a boss encounter,” Emma guessed, sliding open the thin partition that hid the next chamber from view.

“It’s not possible. It’s not possible. It’s not possible!”

“Did I come at a bad time?” Emma quipped, sticking her head into what looked like a boxing ring, albeit with far more elaborate decorations than any pay-per-view match she’d ever seen.

“It’s not right. It can’t be. The Sectmaster wouldn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t!”

The unhinged ranting came from a man in the corner of the ring: a big, scarred man whose body told the tales of a lifetime of battle. He might have been intimidating, even, were he not curled up in a foetal position, muttering to himself.

[Core Disciple - Level 20 Core Formation

Status: Confusion]

He didn’t even look up at Emma’s entry, continuing to sit and ramble, staring at the ceiling all the while.

[Shovel stored.]

Emma, on her part, summoned Epitaph in bow form, and drew her first arrow free of charge.

“This feels like maybe two thirds as high as I could push it in the past,” she noted, gauging the arrow in her grasp, before firing it point blank into her opponent’s skull, because Emma didn’t care about playing fair, and was always happy to take first blood.

[Ephemera (Toggle: ON)

Null Zone (Toggle: ON)]

The moment her arrow flew, Emma reactivated both her defences; in doing so, she escaped both the backlash of her arrow exploding in a confined space, and the fist to the face that marked her foe’s retaliation.

“What foul sorcery is this?” The Disciple roared, as his arm flew through Emma’s head to no avail.

His robes were gone above the waist, his body a patchwork of bleeding wounds, and his face an expression of utter fury.

Gobble him up.

The Leech King made his first appearance in quite some time, summoned around and over the cultivator to swallow him whole.

[Ephemera (Toggle: OFF)]

In well-practised fashion, Emma returned to the physical plane, switched Epitaph to sword form, and began to stab through her summon at the enemy trapped inside. Despite his state and being caught by surprise, the Core Disciple fought back valiantly, punching holes through the Leech King’s thick membrane with every swing of his fist. It was enough to keep Emma at a distance, using Epitaph’s superior reach to inflict thin stab wounds on the enemy while staying safe; none of them did much damage individually, but that was fine by her. She was fishing for a proc, and even if the odds were low to begin with, try enough times and sooner or later she’d come out on top.

[Wolf, Ram and Heart activates, inflicting Instant Death.

Core Disciple slain!

400 EXP gained.]

“Heavens take me!”

[The Leech King defeated.]

Before Emma could celebrate her win, a blinding flash of light erupted from her fallen foe, reducing the Leech King to a dried out husk. Emma herself remained unaffected, thanks to Null Zone, but it did lock another one of her summons for ten minutes.

“Should’ve recalled,” Emma chastised herself, promising to keep an ear out for any more dialogue that hinted at a suicide attack.

Still, despite the ending, she got the job done, as reflected by a portal appearing at the end of the arena.

“Onward and upward, I guess.”

—

1247

“This is impossible,” Elder Wang of the Artefact Pavilion rasped, every word bubbling faintly from his torn throat. “What are you?”

Around him, two dozen suits of living armour lay in pieces, many with their claws still intertwined: all of them victims of the madness that turned them on one another to leave no survivors.

“Someone you should have left well alone,” Edith laughed. “Did it not seem strange to your outriders, that I was entirely unprotected? Was there no paranoia, when you compared the singularity and palace of my peers, contrasted against my humble cottage? Paradox cares nothing for politics, and Overmind does her best work from a posture of aggression. I am by far the best equipped to fight from a position of supposed disadvantage, and so I make myself the path of least resistance, the obvious target. It works every time.”

“The alliance of the righteous will avenge us!” Elder Wang gasped, already struggling to form words as his lifeblood poured.

“The Alliance signed treaties of non-aggression with the Empire. Be glad I’m killing you here and now, because at least your death will be swift. The Son of Heaven would do far worse to an oathbreaker.”

Elder Wang’s eyes closed, and his expression changed; his fear of death at last reconciled with acceptance, the last dregs of his vitality burned to play one final card.

“An adequate test for my descendant,” Edith assessed, inclining her head a fraction to the dead Elder.

She laid him down gently, next to his final and strongest creation, both of them sealed in a bubble of frozen time to await the next to breach the Artefact Pavilion.