Lord of a Fief Quest [Xianxia/Western Fantasy Fusion, CK2-ish]

While your retinue rested in a camp a safe distance from the red gash, messengers were dispatched to Toril to summon the adventurers who lived there. There was a monster to be slain and it was their patriotic duty to assist you in the endeavor. You would pay them but your messages made it clear all available adventurers were being summoned to your position south of Jiaju.

Twelve adventurers arrived after a week of waiting. Some were as talented as your Knights, others were nearly as talented as you. It was a reminder that when your Survey of the fief and its environs was over, you would need to focus your energies on acquiring more power. There was a ruthlessness to life and you were small, oh so small compared to the monster that you had just encountered. You were merely a young man when your Clan needed you to be a powerful elder. It might require shortcuts, it might require eating the spirit cores of beasts raw but you would find a way to augment your power rapidly.

You had no desire to face another monster that made you feel small and weak. You had merely driven it off, at a heavy cost of men. It had killed a dozen and left several of your knights badly injured. It would take them months to recover their full strength, months you did not have with raiding season nearly upon you. You would be short of knights and short of men when the raiders came and that was a problem you were, frankly, too weak to handle by yourself. You might need to call in that favor your family owed you for taking on Bai Chenshen to get the assistance you needed with so many wounded.

You could see the haunted looks in your men's faces as they rode through the grassland and back towards that monster's territory. They knew what they faced now. A monster that could rip mortal men limb from limb and was more powerful even than their Lord Bai, to say it tested their courage was an understatement.

The adventurers, mad creatures that they were, sang songs and made merry during the journey. They mostly kept to themselves as they tried to avoid being infected with the morose mood of your regular troops. It was just as well, you supposed, that they did so. They would be the ones taking on most of the risk since you intended to toss them at the monster first, to reduce its strength. You and your knights would run it down and go for the kill this time, there would be no third battle to fight. No third slaughter of men under your command.

You had your people set camp on the same site as your last battle with the creature. The difference this time was you, your adventurers, your knights did not sleep in tents safely in the center of the camp as befit your positions as cultivators. Instead, you waited awake as sentries surrounding the camp in place of common soldiers. Your preternatural abilities making a night without sleep a minor thing, sleep was something you could go without for days at a time if need be. It would weaken you but it could be done.

It came for your men under the cover of darkness, just as it did before. Its eyeless face filled with lotus petal like jaws had no need of light to guide its path. It found an adventurer first, a weak one, who was quickly torn apart by the creature. However, the adventurer's screams roused the camp to battle and you followed those sounds until you found yourself face to face once more with the monstrosity.

It was an unnatural, monstrous creature with four clawed arms and a face that opened like lotus petals lined with row after row of teeth. A creature with two legs which clawed into the earth, leaving claw marks in the grass. Its flesh had an oily sheen beneath the blood from the adventurer it had just torn apart. It felt wrong to you, something you immediately knew should not be. An Outsider. A creature from outside of reality, alien and predatory and hungry for spirit cores. You watched it devour the adventurer's core, his soul in a single gulp.

The adventurers arrived moments after you did and moved to engage the creature, as their contract dictated. It was their duty to fight it on your behalf, it was not your duty to intervene should the battle go badly and they should die. You had no intention of spending more of your own men to fight this monster. It was a bit ruthless of you but you were a Lord now, not a man. You were a creature whose primary attribute was ruthlessness if you were to survive, let alone thrive.

A monk in shaolin robes was the first to take a shot at the creature. The man moved with preternatural speed and landed blows that were as light as air on the creature. A blow to the chest, to the arms, and even right below the creature's jaw. Speed alone, however, was not enough to defeat this creature. You needed strength, strength that could shatter stone.

The creature was unmoved by the attack and simply backhanded the monk in shaolin robes and sent him flying.

The next to follow up was a party of four adventurers, likely a permanent adventuring party, who moved in unison. Their fight with the monster was as intricate as any dance, each thrust of a weapon in time with its fellows to limit the space the creature could dodge within. It simply jumped on one them, accepting the sword blow through its chest, and tore the man apart while his compatriots tried to attack the creature. It ripped out its victim's spirit core and devoured it while his companions watched. It is said if your spirit core was destroyed, you would not be reborn into the next cycle as you should be. It was said you died the true death, the final death, in such a case.

The three continued to dance with the creature, stabbing at it with their swords. Each blow fell a little short of hitting its mark, the creature was simply too fast for cultivators who were not of Fire or Air or of the 4th rank more generally. The creature simply turned on another of the trio and ripped his left arm from its socket before tossing it into its maw. Whatever it was, it was a predator that viewed men as prey.

The other two helped their screaming companion get out of harms way, there was nothing more they could do anyway with their qi nearly depleted.

The next adventurer to face the monster was a man you respected, Zanila Chou. A true blademaster who had mastered all the known sword forms and a cultivator of the third rank, roughly equal to yourself in terms of power. He would not be enough but he was a man used to fighting spirit beasts on his own. Unfortunate, that.

Master Zanila executed Apple Blossoms in the Wind with perfection and the monster simply deflected each of the blows with its clawed hands. No blood was drawn.

The blademaster flowed into Spider Dances In Its Web, a series of feints followed by a singular blow. The creature caught the blade in its jaws and tried to yank it from the master's hands, to no effect.

Master Zanila switched to Moon Rises Over Water and the creature simply dodged every thrust.

It was then the creature went on the offensive, a singular charge that cost it a limb but cost Master Zanila his life when the creature wrapped its jaws around his face and ripped the flesh clean off. Only the skull remained. The third realm cultivator collapsed to the floor, dead.

However, for all its power the creature had begun to slow, begun to weaken. Even a cultivator of the fourth rank had its limits.

The remaining six adventurers moved as a group to attack it, each glancing sideways at the knights and at you. A part of them hoped you would not hold them to their contract you suspected but you simply nodded at them to proceed. A ruthlessness you never knew you had filled you as you sent men to their probable deaths to weaken a creature so that you could land the killing blow.

The monster was less interested in killing and more interested in escape as it correctly estimated it was simply being worn down through sheer numbers and bloody minded courage. It danced with the six but each time it darted to make its escape, it found you or one of your knights to block its escape. It would then retreat back into the center of the circle that surrounded it and fight.

Blow after blow was exchanged by the monster and its circle of adventurers. Each round slowly exhausting both the monster and the adventurers that hunted it. It was then the creature charged another adventurer and ripped out the poor bastard's spirit core only to devour with its lotus-petal like maw. Its power crept up a little from the devouring but that power was then converted into healing energy to recover from the wounds that were quickly inflicted on it while it stood still, swallowing its prize. Another soul lost, never to reborn through the cycle of rebirth. Fights like this is why you considered adventurers madmen.

It was time to intervene. They had worn down the creature enough. Sacrificed enough.

You gestured to your men to move in for the kill and they did. You were grateful for that.

The adventurers that had surrounded the beast backed off, breathing heavily and nearly exhausted from their relatively short fight with the creature. When one fought to preserve one's own soul, one tended to put everything one had into the moment and let the future take care of itself.

You stepped forward as your knights loosely formed a ring around the monster.

The Ironwood Fortress covered your flesh as the first claw struck you. The blow was minor, little more than a series of four paper cuts about an inch long but it still stung.

You fell into the Cyclone Rages, a series of seemingly random blows designed to force your opponent into a position for you to land a single solid blow.

The creature simply dodged with preternatural speed but you could tell it was nearly exhausted.

Its claws slammed into your forearms as you blocked a series of seemingly random attacks. Each blow leaving half a dozen minor paper cuts. You were Ironwood and you could endure the blows of monsters, as long as fire was not involved.

You executed the Tower of Morning, a couple of solid blows intended to stop anything you hit in its tracks. Bone crunched as the blows were blocked by the creatures forearms, leaving two of its four limbs crippled.

It kicked you in the chest and you staggered. The blow tore open your silk robes and leaving paper cut thin marks on your chest that were several inches long. It simply lacked the strength to sunder your Ironwood Fortress, depleted as it was.

You retaliated with Folding the Air and landed several relatively soft blows on its torso. Each blow still would have killed a mortal man.

The creature staggered and went to one knee, and then you snapped its neck.

[ ] Consume the creature's spirit core. ( Results in ??? and +40 Power)

[ ] Sell the creature's spirit core. (+400 Silver Bars)

[ ] Gift the spirit core's sale price to the family of the adventurers that fell this day. You owed them nothing but it would be overly generous compensation. Gain the Trait: Generous (+2 Diplomacy; Upgradeable).