Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 190 - The Walking Dead (part 2)

The Ebon Blade’s first thought was to use Bolt to escape, but with its tip buried in the soil, that was impossible. It tried to set her on fire with Hellfire next, but all that did was set a patch of grass where it rested ablaze.

“To think,” she said as the blade struggled to make its wielder lift his arms without much success. He might as well have been asleep. This wasn’t mind control in any traditional sense; she’d done something to his body that made it limp and useless. “No aura at all. No matter how closely I look, you’re just another blade. Such a disguise won’t save you, though. Not when you’re this close to me.”

Proximity matters for this magic? It asked itself as she let that detail slip. How much? How far away do I have to move to get free?

It couldn’t move, of course, but it could do other things. The sword immediately warped space with Position of Privilege, doubling the distance between them again and again in an effort to get far enough away from the avatar to attack, or at least flee.

-200 Life Force.

She must have noticed the magic, because in response to that, she took several steps forward as it tried to move them away and then rested her hand on Geral’s forehead. That intensified the paralysis she inflicted on both of them.

She’s right there, the blade strained. Right there, but he can’t so much as raise his arms. Then a word she’d said before entered its mind. Living. She said all living things long for peace. Does that mean her power cannot work on the dead?

It was a slender thread of hope, but the blade grasped for it immediately, used Master of Life and Death to raise a zombie. No, against the avatar of a goddess, even that surprise might not be enough. It raised all the zombies.

-24 Human souls.

-47 Monster Souls.

-14 Lesser Monster Souls.

The blade often felt the cool loss of energy flow through it when it let too many souls slip away at once, but as its myriad of monster souls flowed into the maimed and scattered bodies of the soldiers spread out around it, it felt something darker in that magic. It was neither the taint of hell nor the icy grip of death. It reeked of the grave, but before the weapon could analyze that or study the weave, it was interrupted.

At first, that interruption took the form of a scream as she realized what it was doing; then it became a pop-up informing it that it had reached the third level of The Path of Undeath. The blade dismissed that for now, and instead focused on the scene unfolding around it.

“What is this vile magic?!” she cried. “Has hell truly tainted you so completely that you would pervert life itself?” The avatar was a delicate thing; she was used to being worshiped as the living incarnation of love and light. Being on a battlefield did not suit her, but being surrounded by a growing mob of the animate dead was anathema to everything she was, and it was clear that all she wanted to do was shrink away and leave the dirty work to others.

She couldn’t do that, though. If she did, it would strike her down immediately. She had a dragon by the tail, and she knew it. So, she commanded the men who remained under her command to defend her.

The blade ignored her insults almost as easily as its zombies ignored the weapons of her soldiers as it focused on what it was doing. Controlling more than a dozen zombies was nearly impossible to do with any skill. Each of them had different limbs and was lying in a different position. Just forcing them to rise while keeping those who had risen was a challenge at first, though it became noticeably easier after a few seconds of practice.

The blade quickly learned it could not try to puppet all of them in detail as it did with its wielders on occasion. Instead, it had to command and release, trusting in those souls bound within dead flesh to do as they were commanded. That worked better when all of the souls were of the same type, but they obeyed regardless.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The avatar’s living guards weren’t in great shape. All except for two were wounded, and a couple of those, severely so. While they could knock down the blade’s zombies, they didn’t seem to be able to keep them down, and once the sword started upgrading them to Death Knights, the tide turned relentlessly in its favor.

-21 Monster Souls.

One by one, they murdered her remaining defenders, and the weapon turned them from corpses into additional attackers. It used over a hundred souls for that, and it was probably overkill, but it would not skimp when faced with the power of a goddess.

-30 Monster Souls.

“You will not touch me!” she shrieked when the first zombie grabbed her by the ankle. The scream was a weapon that reduced the zombie to a crumpled set of armor and a thin red mist, but that was all it really needed. It had raised all of these creatures simply to provide a distraction, and it was working. The rest of her murdered defenders flowed toward her like a tide, but the avatar was so revulsed by the abomination of undeath that she didn’t even notice they were all closing in on her from the side where Geral knelt.

As she staggered back, screaming them to death in ones and twos, the Ebon Blade worked together with its wielder to grip the blade that much tighter, and when it finally succeeded, it knew her magic had waned. She couldn’t Geral to the ground with tranquility when there was no peace in her heart.

In that moment, the weapon Accelerated its wielder, and they surged forward together with a bolt. She barely had time to refocus together and see what had happened. The avatar opened her mouth, but regardless of which of her wicked magics she planned to bring to bear, she never got the chance. Before she could utter a syllable, her head was separated from her body, and her neck spouted a fountain of blood before falling to the ground. The sound of distant thunder rumbled.

+1 Divine Soul.

Someone was unhappy with this sequence of events. They obviously weren’t supposed to win, but whether those unhappy viewers would intervene… that was a more open question. Geral walked forward, resuming his trek toward the far-flung mountain, but the sword continued to observe the weave of the world. It would not be blindsided again.

As they went, it’s remaining death knights who could walk fell into line behind Geral. Those that were too damaged fell behind quickly enough that it was able to make good approximations for the range of its new power, but the rest it kept, despite the moderate cost.

The blade was expecting more trouble, and it would not throw away a tool that had so effectively distracted Lusitiverie’s avatar. It was only hours later, when another reckoning did not materialize, that it finally studied the upgrade to the Path of Undeath that it had earned in their last encounter.

Even past death, there is subtlety and artifice. You are beginning to see how those pieces fit together. In some ways, those choices can be made even more carefully. A zombie can be made for a specific purpose, just as you were. Its limbs can be grafted and its flesh stitched until it is the perfect tool for the job. Or it can be harvested from your crop of death and put to use as is until all life exists to feed your hunger.

The Path of Undeath: Level 3 -> Use the undead at your command to kill at least 100 human or demihuman souls to reach Level 4.

Level 3 Powers:

The Touch of Decay (Advanced): Your Undead Minions no longer feast on decay. They cause it, tainting the life essence of creation, to fuel their existence. Not only do you no longer need to pay the cost to fuel them, but the dead will perform with up to 20% increased strength and speed.

Feast of the Dead: You zombies and death knights now feed you 20% of the damage they inflict as Life Force. Additionally, those that have killed and fed on the living recently and 50% faster and stronger. This ability does not stack.

While the second ability was interesting to the Ebon Blade, the first struck it as little better than the filth it had just waded through. Am I to taint the flavor of everyone I kill now? It wondered as it watched the zombies shambling behind them.

They were moving too quickly to leave a noticeable trail in the ether, but it was sure that would change if they stopped for the night, or perhaps even a major battle. It wasn’t happy about that, but it reminded itself that it didn’t have to use them. It had many powers related to the social web of humans that it often ignored because it was uninterested in such trivialities.

Still, it was having less and less trouble understanding why it couldn’t simply use a death knight as a wielder when its current wielder expired. It wouldn’t enjoy that nearly as much, of course, but the new abilities, combined with strong souls. Even a death knight made with human souls was noticeably clumsier than a human, but with these advantages, well, if a powerful zombie was under those effects, then the only drawback that would remain was their inability to be healed.

While that was a large problem, the blade was sure it wasn’t an insurmountable one. It didn’t want a corpse for a wielder, of course, however strong, but there were certainly occasions when that could be helpful between wielders.