A Richer Reality: Part 3: Coins and Blood
I awoke 9 hours later, to significant clamor in the town. Something akin to a festival was going on. I simply walked through town, my hearing and mental processing good enough to pick up every conversation within 30 meters without any trouble whatsoever. It seemed that number of Risen in the area had cratered, based on the reports of the scouting team that had gone out to confirm my kills. While I was getting fearful looks here and there, for the moment, the early release to return to their farmsteads once the day had passed so they could confirm it wasn't just temporary has massively swung sentiments in favor of gratitude. I had noticed there seemed to be fewer Risen on my way back, and I'd been going to town instead of coming from the graveyard, so retracing my route couldn't have been the cause. My eavesdropping had the added benefit of learning the name of my temporary abode. Gilvale, as the founder had apparently been a wealthy man from the big town they used to share the Mausoleum with.
I headed over to the tavern, intent on collecting my reward, only to be accosted by Nrom. "So, you actually did it." he stated, hefting a fairly large bag of coins. I caught the easily 100 kilogram weight. "Can't help but notice you looted the graveyard and Mausoleum vault though. Town's gonna run out of spare coins at this rate." he added.
I shrugged. "It's not like the Risen needed it any more. Have I earned enough trust to get access to those special jobs you mentioned? Or should I focus on clearing out the Shadow Beasts as well? If I keep this up, you're going to have the safest region in a hundred kilometers." I replied. Unlike me, they didn't have wealth-based magics.
"Hm, come back after those Shadow Beasts are taken down. The headmen are still debating." Nrom answered.
I shrugged, beginning to grow weary of this. "Let them know that if I don't see any of the special jobs or any of the novel ones related to slaying relative to what I've done so far, I'll be headed for the next town tomorrow." I warned, stalking off. With my improved body thanks to the Essence from those high Risen, 12 kilometers would take a little over 2 minutes to reach at top speed, accounting for Risen-related pauses and slight deviations from a straight line. The coins were left to my skeleton attendants to place in my Swordrealm vault, each type in nice even stacks, and the new additions added 970 copper coins, 20 silver coins, and 10 gold coins. Given that this seemed to be a significant portion of the village's wealth, it really put the minor lord's amount from the Mausoleum vault in perspective.
Several things had changed about my Essence as Color Red cultivated through the night. Firstly, with the boost from, if my hunch was correct, 1.8 Tier Fives of Essence from the last level of the Mausoleum's Risen, the Essence drained from the magic artifacts, and 9 hours of Color cultivation via circulation of my Essence, a process Numeracy Ten Thousand could keep going in my sleep, my Essence drain range had gone from 5 meters, to 20 meters, and the rate of drain had accelerated more than an order of magnitude, the drain now fast enough to reduce the few common Risen I found on my way to the dens to husks in ten seconds. Still pretty slow at my speed, but without Numeracy Ten I could see it being much more of a boost to Essence drain. As it stood, my Gold soldiers killing the Risen made stealing their Essence even easier, though it was hard to tell if their status as magic of mine was aiding it or the act of killing them and leaving their Essence to leak out was making it easier. I suspected I was nearing the point where my geometric rise would become exponential, but I was running out of nearby targets to handle that would give me any significant amount of Essence.
Meanwhile, my Sword's singing was now a small melody with each kill, even singular ones with significant space between them. That could become a problem if I were on a stealth mission, but I had to admit I was curious what song my next chain of kills would bring about. I was sure I'd find out today.
The Shadow Fox den had a pair, as opposed to the one the job had told me to expect, though by this point I was anticipating Hunted procs, one of each gender. Luckily Color Red told me they hadn't conceived, so I was left without any sticky ethical questions in stabbing them both to death. Some light experimenting allowed me to keep one of the pelts intact with just enough Essence left inside. I carted this back to town, to no small amount of shock from the guards given I'd literally taken less than 5 minutes to do this, dropped it off as proof of the kill, and departed for the Shadow Snake den. This one was 20 kilometers out, so about three-and-a-half minutes. The snakes still didn't manage to put up a challenge either, and this was honestly mostly just for the unique kills for my Sword. Once again, I let a few skins retain just enough Essence not to collapse, and dropped them off. The guards were visibly spooked when I took less than 10 minutes to go out, kill a den of 7 Shadow Beasts, and come back encumbered with a few of their corpses.
At my speed, the Shadow Unicorn's den, 30 kilometers away, was a mere 5 minute run. The Shadow Unicorn itself was another matter. I barely avoided it when it tried to impale me from behind, only sensing it's Essence allowing me to dodge in time. My confusion abated instantly when it disappeared back into my shadow. Ah, able to travel through shadows. That could be a problem. It was at least as fast as the Third Tier Risen, and if the Curse Broker's Half-Beast Transmogrification was any indication, it would hit me more like the Fourth Tiers. Not enough to take a limb off in one hit, not any more, but enough that my intellect and superior speed were crucial to winning the fight quickly. It was clearly unused to that tactic failing, but it's superior mobility with the shadowtravel it possessed caused the fight to last a full minute before my Sword claimed it's heart. Unlike the Risen, Shadow Beasts would die from destruction of heart or brain. I dragged it's corpse back with me like the others.
With the deaths of these three new types of Shadow Beast, my Swordrealm had improved it's amenities, rewarding the unique kills more than the meager amount of Essence. The pelts used as cushions became hybrids, the skeleton frames for my furniture gained additions from the fallen Beasts to reinforce and improve comfort. My attendants also gained certain lessons from Shadow Beast skeletons, and became just a little more able. My bedroom finally gained a mattress, stuffed with Shadow Fox fur and line with Shadow Unicorn hide. Unlike the common depictions, the Shadow Unicorn, as the name suggested, was pitch-black.
This time, I only got 250 copper coins from my kills, presumably because the Shadow Beasts generally avoided the town unlike the Risen, and saw nothing on the request board that would interest me. Just as I was about to take one last meal and glass of water, to top off the respective maladies those things would affect, and head to the overrun town to slaughter more high-tier Risen, Nrom intercepted me. I was genuinely curious how he kept doing that. It was physically impossible for any messengers from the guards to reach him and let him reach me in turn in the time it had taken for me to reach the tavern, prove my kill, and collect my reward.
"Alright, we've got two special jobs for you." he began without preamble, seeing my obvious impatience at the delay. Sure, I'd been up for less than half an hour, but the
nearby overrun town was a full hundred kilometers away, meaning it would take more than 15 minutes to get there and another to get back, and the Furthermost Reaches were immense. With Hunted gradually increasing in scale, at least until nothing in the Reaches could threaten me, I absolutely needed to gain more Essence to improve Red and my Sword further, hopefully enough to fuse them so that I would gain power and Swordrealm from both killing with my Sword and draining Essence away, and high-end Risen were the easiest means of that, even if they needed to be Third Tiers in significant numbers to get me anything at this point.
He pulled out a smaller, more high-quality map, with a number of locations marked as unusual or with little annotations. My much improved memory took them in. Things to keep in mind, such as a few abandoned mines. "There's the main abandoned mining site here." he pointed to a small cluster of mountains around a valley maybe 5 kilometers wide, some 14 kilometers west from the town. It kind of looked like a meteor crater. "It's been infested with vampires. Normally, we wouldn't even think of sending people there with the Rising's still going on and our warriors depleted, but with the Risen effectively wiped out for 50 kilometers thanks to a lunatic knight-errant," For once I didn't feel vaguely insulted, as he'd actually called me a knight in midst of the admittedly accurate description of my recent actions. "we'd be at least willing to consider it, especially since it'll be a while before more Shadow Beasts roll in. Then," he gestured to a forest, right on the edge of the map, 60 kilometers to the south. "there's the Conjurers over here. They aren't picky about their reagents or consent to their experiments, if you catch my drift. Not enough to cripple us by themselves, but with everything else happening before you got here..." he shook his head. "You take care of these, and we might actually be back on our feet enough to rebuild. It'll be decades before the Risen recover their numbers, even with them drifting in from areas that are still infested. We'll also give you our last 50 gold coins. Trade hasn't exactly been common on that scale for the last century or so, but some of us were pretty stubborn about holding on to better times, even if we weren't around for them."
It was a pittance to me, but the vampires and Conjurers were of interest to my Sword's hunger. It would take too long to manually search and I lacked any long-distance search magic. 20 meters was mid-range at best. So, I accepted, in interest of improving my Swordrealm. Besides, the more of the Furthermost Reaches' monsters I killed, the weaker Hunted would become by comparison. If, as the Curse had implied, it culminated in drawing huge hordes of monsters to me and finally in Outriders capable of immense destruction, it could not simply create monsters from nothing, meaning each monster I slew weakened it's total power a fraction of an infinitesimal amount.
The mine came first, because it was closer. The vampires had likely taken over the mine as a refuge against the sun, so there was little point waiting for the brief span of sunlight in a few days' time. The journey didn't even take me three minutes anyway. My Essence-sense was absolutely crucial to avoid their ambushes and to flushing the ones who realized they couldn't win out. With a range of 20 meters, it didn't even take too long to systematically purge the outside. To my mild disappointment, the mines weren't that deep, likely because the vampires weren't inclined to expand it when it was only supposed to protect them from sunlight. This meant that the 6 lesser vampires I slew were easily located, their attempts at poison mists and hypnosis bouncing off my Plate and Color Red, and the illusion magics they attempted were ignored with Numeracy Three
As I journeyed to the mine's deepest section, Numeracy Three informed me of deceit. One of the walls was unnaturally thin. Sure enough, a strike weakened it enough that I could step through the hole formed. I found myself in a long, narrow passage, leading to a dias. A throne made of gold, with a pair of braziers to either side lit with a blue flame that radiated cold and dark, awaited me, alongside the vampire lounging on the throne. With red eyes and silver hair, her features looked royal, to me, and since Numeracy Three would let me know about any 'make-up' illusions, I could assume that she was either shapeshifting, or actually looked like this.
"Hm, my underlings were as incompetent as I'd suspected." she stated, draining the red liquid that should have congealed and blackened unless it was impossibly fresh, and tossing the glass aside. "I assume you're here to kill me?" she asked, sounding more bored than anything else.
I paused. She was being much more diplomatic than I'd been thinking. As a courtesy, I neglected to try and drain her, since she'd yet to attack. "...That was the job I was given. Unless you're proposing I join you or whatever." I kept my sarcasm to a bare minimum. We had no history, so I saw no reason to go along with any such suggestion. I didn't particularly care about Gilvale, but she was a vampire. Then again, I didn't actually know how vampires worked.
"I recognize Emperor Red when I see it. If your mastery is sufficient, you could sustain me with only the barest partaking of blood and Essence for myself, as long as you lived." she said, only the compartmentalization offered by Numeracy Ten Thousand keeping me from pausing in shock.
"...I can drain it from 20 meters away." This was a gamble, but not much of one. With my Plate weakening enemy magic, and Numeracy Three to negate deceit and illusions, a planned betrayal was unlikely. If she was, in fact, trustworthy enough that she'd act according to a bargain we struck, then I could win myself a valuable ally, who could be maintained by simple virtue of the fact that I could keep her fed indefinitely. In addition, I'd like to know where she'd seen Color Red before. I'd avoid mentioning Elysian made me immortal for the moment.
The vampire seemed utterly unconcerned over being in my range. Likely due to the fact that her nature allowed her to detect any such drain. "With how swiftly it advances and how cultivation efforts are generally immune to the diminishing returns of draining Essence from common foes, the opposite in fact, it should be less than a month before you achieve a level sufficient to allow such mastery, even if you do not drain Essence from anyone else." she stood and was in front of me in an eyeblink. "I will accompany you." she stated simply.
"...What, precisely, is stopping you from trying to knock me unconscious so you can drain my blood without worry of my mastery of Essence making it a painful form of suicide?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes. "Color Magics are as much about the soul as anything else." she explained as if she were speaking to a child. "Even if I actually managed that, I wouldn't get your Color Magic out of it without a lengthy ritual that might kill me anyway and would be almost guaranteed to cause mental contamination."
"Hm, well, then we're going to have to discuss ground rules." I replied, to a delicate raised eyebrow. "I also possess Gold Magic, so unless we come across, say, an anti-sunlight amulet, I get first pick of valuables."
She stared at me with the sort of mute fascination one might reserve for a vivisected being. "Hm, normally such a thing is impossible. At very least either a powerful mystical transaction was involved, or mystical eugenics, would be necessary." she noted. Good to know, but not especially relevant. "I suppose that's acceptable. I insist you do not change my throne or my Inverted Flame braziers." I made a mental note to ask about that later. "It took me a decade to get all this gold." she huffed.
"Not a problem, I have limited knowledge of metalworking anyway." I flipped my Sword into a reverse grip. "My Sword has an internal sub-Realm I've been using to store the wealth for Gold. Anything here going to cause problems?"
She thought for a good ten seconds, which to beings on our level was a worryingly long time. "No." she eventually answered. I stowed the throne and braziers in my Swordrealm, the skeleton attendants placing them in the living room, opposite the fireplace. Just in case.
"Second thing, I'll be telling the townspeople I've removed all the vampires from these mines, which means you'll need to make yourself scarce in Gilvale. Luckily I'm only planning on going back there one more time for the reward and food." she shrugged. She wasn't particularly attached.
The vampiress nodded. "I generally avoid towns."
"Third thing. I will generally not object to you feeding, but I insist you avoid the civilian population of towns we visit. On that front, what can you drain without worry? Does it have to be human or would a Shadow Beast work?"
"More types of blood and stronger mages give me more than the common human, though like the Risen sheer weight of numbers can off-set that. Though with you I won't have to worry about degrading if I don't drain enough Essence. Risen are strictly off-limits." A disturbed expression crossed her face. "Their animating Curse doesn't agree with vampires that don't have very specific bloodlines I don't have."
That would imply that she might be able to gain those bloodlines by draining a vampire with them. "Anything else you think I should know?" I asked.
"My name is Luna Abraxas Silverlight the Fifth." She hesitated here, clearly warring with herself. I decided to make things easier on her, as she'd been very reasonable so far.
"I'm Flower, no recollection of the rest of it. How about a trade? I have an Elysian body. I am immortal in the sense that you'd have to deliberately kill me to end me. I will never age either, and I can regain lost limbs in less than a minute. Your turn." I stated. My Trinkets, Numeracies, and Verses would remain unknowns to her for now. Plenty to deal with her if she somehow conned me, and based on the look on her face, she was quite thoroughly bound to my person since I could effectively make her immortal without having to risk herself in a fight or drain blood.
"I possess the Weakness Inversion bloodline." she began, before coughing quite harshly, clearly having forced that out. "I apologize. We're trained not to hand out bloodline information to anyone but our... families." her cheeks approximated a human skin tone, which appeared to be the vampiric equivalent of a blush. I suspected she meant 'spouses' here. "The main weakness of an Ethereal like myself is that we're based on mythologized monsters, and take on their weaknesses, which means those weaknesses tend to be well known. My bloodline lets me create inverted versions of those weaknesses." she began ticking off fingers. "The classic of desecrating holy symbols and places, and making them unholy. Making silver tarnish and enhance vampiric healing and durability, and the same with platinum and jade. Turning fire and sunlight cold and dark and preventing it from halting regeneration with it's purification effects or the simply chemical effects of carbonization. Cracking mirrors and distorting their reflections beyond that. Freezing running water in place, either by halting the currents or by literally freezing it. Making any spot count as a public area, and thus letting me go anywhere I want. Giving garlic an aroma vampires find enticing. Inverted Weaknesses can also heal damage done by those weaknesses." She forestalled my question with a raised hand. "Though I can't use it for weaknesses besides my own. Not as I am at least." Hm, something to keep in mind when I let her drain a Conjurer or two. People who kidnapped and experimented on other people were pretty far down the list of entities I actually cared about.
"Sounds like a hard counter for vampire hunters of most stripes." I noted. My Sword and Gonne didn't utilize any of that, so it wouldn't be especially relevant, as other than the effects with vampires, most of that sounded like it was still the same on the physical level. Had this come to a fight, I doubted it would have been the deciding factor.
"Yes, though as a trade-off I'm vulnerable to each of those while most vampires can ignore at least a couple." she nodded.
"By the by, do you want anything special done with the vampires I killed? They didn't seem much better off than Tier Three Risen, but-"
Luna shook her head. "I sired them to act as servants. They were semi-competent at that, but I was never expecting them to actually slow down anyone strong enough to hurt me. I was somewhat fond of them, like pets." she tilted her head. "Though, hiding out for the last 40 years has certainly been dull for lack of intelligent conversation. These ferals were about the level of those Third Rank Risen, yes. I assume you've drained them dry of Essence?" she asked.
I nodded. "There might still be a little blood in there, but I don't think it'll do much for you even if it wasn't basically cannibalism."
A distant look briefly swept across Luna's face before she clarified. "Vampires with interesting bloodlines get drained by more powerful vampires with some frequency, but no, I wouldn't get anything out of vampires with the barest remains of blood I gave them." She hadn't asked me about my past, so I wouldn't ask about her past. Not until we knew each other better.
We began to walk out of the mines as we talked. I rather enjoyed speaking with someone who wasn't treating me like I was going to stab them any second, even if I'd killed all her servants and been hired, indirectly, to kill her. Was The Wretch not working on her because she was starved for cordial social interactions as well, or was it simply because she'd clearly fled one home before and likely lost much more treasured servants than these?
At any rate, we made our way over to the small forest with the Conjurers. The jaunt to the mines only added a kilometer to the journey, so it was still under 10 minutes. I got the impression she was barely jogging to my full-pelt run, but she was certainly not as strong as me. The Gold soldiers killing Risen that entered my range for extra Essence barely elicited a reaction, which strongly suggested she'd seen the like before. I wondered how many Color Magics she knew of, and if it were possible for me to get more than the two I'd avoided if I found more Jade for the Curse Broker. Red, Gold, Violet, and Green. Surely there were more than those 4? Blue, if Gold was filling for Yellow, to fill out the primary and secondary Colors.
A few minutes before we got there, I asked if she knew any Gun-Magics, just in case. Having my Gonne back up and running without needing to wait would be nice, especially when the level after Adept was the point significant Mental Contamination would start cropping up and I'd like to have Gonne-independent means of replenishing the ammo since that probably counted towards training it. Sure, the exponential increase in training time per skill level would likely at least double the time, even with Color Red's improvements, but still.
"No, few vampires make use of such things, though our unnatural strength and sight would make them much more effective than the average human's attempts, our pride in our might generally precludes such, and our homes tend to be close-quarters such as crypts and caves, which decreases the utility of all but the smallest guns, which all but the most infirm of humans can use well enough to take advantage of the limited dodging space with moderate training." Luna replied.
"Makes sense. Feel free to eat these people. They apparently kidnap and experiment on people. You, at least mostly, just killed them." I said, unconcerned with the lives of people I'd been planning to kill anyway. Come to think of it, was that Conjurer from the first night from here, or was he a loner?
At any rate, Luna could see through illusion magic due to some experience with it herself, and I mentioned that my Plate reduced most magic's effectiveness by two orders of magnitude when she offered to guide me through it. The illusory mist around the camp, unlike the real mist that Tier Five had conjured up, didn't slow us down at all.
"Draining these Conjurers of Essence, generally speaking, will strengthen my own magics." she noted as we killed a pair of Shadow Bears that had apparently been guarding the perimeter and been drawn to our intrusion by the same magic binding them.
"I'd
like to kill at least one of each magic type, but I won't get upset if I can't." I admitted. I wasn't sure of the exact mechanics of different specialties on my Swordrealm. Would it just count each type of Conjurer as essentially the same thing unless they had potent magic? Hard to say until I harvested them.
The danger of these people, I quickly learned, was that they were extremely varied, and while their clothes generally hinted at their specialty, such as a fire-red one wielding flame who was quite shocked when a blast of it turned blue and started emitting darkness the moment it reached Luna. On the other hand, and equally red one turned out to be an illusionist, who I immediately killed on principle. Sure, his illusions didn't work on me and probably wouldn't work on Luna, but it was the principle of the thing. In total, 30 Conjurers were here, three times what the request's low-end had estimated, but exactly equal to the high-end. At least they admitted their inaccuracy this time.
I killed at least one Plant Conjurer, Earth Conjurer, Wind Conjurer, Metal Conjurer, Water Conjurer, Ice Conjurer, Flame Conjurer, Illusion Conjurer, Sound Conjurer, and the sole Beast Conjurer, alongside several duplicates of the first seven I drained of Essence for myself instead of my Sword when it became clear that secondary and tertiary Conjurer kills of the same type via my Sword weren't providing additional amenities. Luna's superior speed let her pick off a full ten, including a Blood Conjurer, who luckily didn't have sufficient mastery to take over her body or anything, especially with all the blood she'd already taken on to muddle things, even though she had to stop to drain them manually as opposed to the near-instant drains I could manage through sword or direct contact Color Red. She noted that this was on of the most reliable ways to improve the quality of her bloodline effects without extremely potent blood to gorge herself on. The Conjurers might actually have been a threat by simple virtue of superior coordination, had my Sword's song not been disrupting their concentration. A Sound Conjurer had attempted to block it, but Luna had ripped his heart out and squeezed the blood from it like a sponge for her waiting mouth, while I killed his buddy.
We looted their camp, Luna taking the magical research for herself when I determined that the Conjurers were too esoteric for me to learn properly without an actual teacher, but she had the advantage of some of their Essence now in her veins and a greater direct talent for magic, whereas I was mostly relying on Color Red and Numeracy Ten Thousand.
We did manage to find some silver pendants meant to ward off various Ethereals weakened by silver, including vampires, which Luna swiftly inverted to strengthen her, inverting both the outward focus and the effect. She explained that she'd need to advance her bloodline to be able to do the effects individually. She looked a little ridiculous with 5 pendants, but the increase in strength, even of a few percent apiece, was hard to deny.
The rest were of no use to us, so I drained their Essence and gave them over to Gold Magic by consigning them to storage. The main change wrought in my Swordrealm by the Conjurers was the creation of what I could only call a large study. It was definitely bigger than a normal one, but too small to be a wizard tower or anything like that. Perhaps a hundred more would manage that. The vampires had merely granted my skeleton attendants some clothing, which made a little sense given that they were both servants.
"I'm planning to head over to the overrun town 100 kilometers to the east of Gilvale, so I can drain enough of the Risen there to reach higher along my Color's growth curve, and maybe find some valuables. I don't see the appeal if you don't literally get stronger from it, but the last Tier Five I killed had a small hill of coins stored away. The wealth of a large town would be considerable. Shall we meet up at the Mausoleum in an hour?" I didn't think my business would take more than 10 minutes, but better to be on the safe side.
Luna nodded. "I have some things to take care of. Maybe hunt a few Shadow Beasts to keep myself at 100% while I wait for you to hit the appropriate tier. I can't say I'll be sorry to leave this backwater region, but it was home for the last four decades." I informed her of my Shadow Beast kills so she wouldn't waste time hunting there, and she rushed off at a blistering speed, easily twice mine, probably more.
Without any choice in the matter, I headed towards Gilvale for the last time at a
much slower pace than Luna managed. The festival I'd seen was in full swing by now, and Norm actually cracked a grin when he saw me. "I take it the vampires and Conjurers won't be causing us problems any more?" he asked, already holding the bag, which I was certain contained my money since Nrom wasn't so much as making Numeracy Three twitch.
"I've removed the vampires from the mine and the Conjurers from the forest. I'll be grabbing a meal and leaving for the overrun town past the Mausoleum. I intend to clear it out. It would be annoying if the Risen simply streamed back in from there, and it's likely to have significant valuables." I stated. It had been less than an hour since I left, but with the Mausoleum of all places cleared out, they were inclined to believe me. "I'm probably moving straight on afterward. Do you have any better maps for larger-scale travel?" I asked.
"Sure, I'll go get one. It'll cost 50 coppers since we can't go out and survey that far these days though." he replied.
"What exactly is the conversion rate for coppers, silvers, and gold coins? I've been buying my food via my defense of the town, so it's a tad unclear to me."
"Straight multiples of 10 to 1 of the next tier." Nrom stated. Huh. Convenient, though I'd have to trade in the bag of gold coins for 50 copper ones from my vault as opposed to simply handing him one of the gold coins now if it were a full 100 coppers. I was surprised it stayed that way after society basically broke down. Seeing the question on my face, he elaborated. "Every 5 years or so, a heavily armed merchant caravan passes through, which helps keep things regular. Not due for three years though."
Ah, that made more sense. I walked off to eat my last meal here, and, wonder of wonders, I was actually provided silverware. Still the same meal though. It wasn't more than a few minutes before I'd finished, and I returned to the town gate, with Nrom not waiting for me for once. I was just about to go looking for him, when he came up. Apparently my continued cultivation of Color Red had finally outstripped whatever trick he was using to always be ahead of me.
The money exchanged hands, and I stowed the map in my Swordrealm after a good long look. I'd check it again when I reached the Mausoleum, just in case. The journey was quick, only another 8ish minutes of running. A quick look at the map to refresh my memory just inside the Mausoleum ensued. Seeing as it had been less than half an hour, I did a quick run through the Mausoleum. There were a couple of common Risen in the first two levels, but nothing beyond. I came back up just as Luna appeared on the horizon.
"Taken care of everything?" I asked.
"Yes. You?" I nodded.
"Off to the zombie town then." I stated, and we were off. As we ran I commented. "The Fifth Tier I fought in the Mausoleum mentioned 'idiots' in the town we're headed for, so I'm assuming Tier Fours at the end at absolute minimum, probably Tier Fives, though hopefully not a Tier Six. I'm not sure we're equipped for a Tier Six. I barely survived my fight with a single Tier Five, and even with roughly 1.2 times as much Essence gained for myself" I had still neglected to mention that my Sword also absorbed Essence, so the math there went uncommented on. "since before that fight began only really puts me at 1.2 times the Essence of a Tier 5. If we get ganged up on, it could be a problem." I explained.
Luna hummed. "Still, they'll likely notice that Fifth Rank you killed is dead sooner or later, which will prompt investigation, because of course it will. A pre-emptive strike makes the most sense. If nothing else, we'll likely do significant damage to their fighting strength." she reasoned. I nodded my agreement. I'd been planning to continue either way. A 50-year-old map wasn't exactly the height of reliability in terms of what towns were still intact, though given the issues they had simply hanging on in every Rising, I could assume the overrun towns generally stayed overrun.
Another 8 minutes later, and we came to the abandoned town. It was easily 4 times the size of Gilvale, with the average building being a story taller, so I could see why the Mausoleum had had so many corpses to Rise. The Risen were clearly riled up, almost appearing to be mustering. "I've never seen the Risen so... frantic." Luna commented as the pair began to slaughter them in increasing unison. She had the heightened senses of her lineage, while Numeracy Ten Thousand and Elysian allowed me to rapidly learn how she fought and synergize with it. This allowed them to be relatively quiet in their work, Flower's Essence sense making it relatively easy to find the Risen, and in turn, eradicate them.
"Strange that we haven't seen any Tier Threes." I couldn't help but comment half an hour in as I pulled my Sword out of the skull of a hulking brute of a man. The town wasn't that big, surely they had to have killed enough Risen for them to notice? We'd already slaughtered more than had likely lived here when it was inhabited, and the numbers were starting to die down. The Tier Twos barely did anything for me even in the hundreds. This many Tier Twos ought to have meant at least 50 Tier Threes, but we hadn't even seen one.
"Most likely there are catacombs. If they were burying their dead in the town and that's why the Risings overran them so quickly, then logically they may well have been doing it in ancient times as mass graves deeper down weren't uncommon a thousand years ago." Luna commented.
"That makes sense. The problem is finding an entrance. My range extends 20 meters down too, so we can assume it's quite deep and likely doesn't have many entrances. Perhaps we should actually go inside the town hall this time?" I had thought it strange there weren't any Risen in there, but we were a bit preoccupied making sure none of the Tier Twos escaped.
We entered, finding it broken down, actively ravaged, and visibly decayed, just like everything else here. Unlike the farmstead, this place had lost even the semblance of home that place had still retained. Resting places for the dead seemed to draw less ire from them than those meant for the living, so the graveyard and Mausoleum weren't quite as damaged despite much longer in the hands of the undead. Sure enough, Numeracy Three pointed me to a trapdoor, which Essence sense had missed because it was at the back of the first inner wall, just outside my range without entering the building.
Sensing the Risen lurking just inside, I stabbed the Tier Three waiting to jump out at us in the head, all the way down to the heart, disregarding the trapdoor itself. It was just wood, and my strength had gone far beyond even the wood of the Furthermost Reaches. The other dozen Tier Threes were also quickly defeated, mostly because I manifested Gold soldiers in their midst as I stabbed the first one. They were well within range for Essence drain to effect them. I actually opened the trapdoor, and we began our descent. We fully expected there to be a huge number of high-end Risen down here, but since I grew with each passing moment and each kill in proximity to me, I wasn't too worried.
AN: Normally, you'd want to wait until sunrise before sending out scouting parties. However, the sun's not coming up for days more, and it might not be out for the entire normal-human journey to the Mausoleum anyway, so there isn't much point. The huge number of Risen Flower killed, especially the high-level ones, is enough to more or less clear the village environs of Risen. Shadow Beasts will still be a problem since they'll move in to replace the fallen, but Risen have been mostly wiped out as a threat for the moment. Next Rising will do a lot to reset that, but as Tier Five stated, it took centuries to build that force. Unless the overrun town's forces mass up and head for Gilvale, Risen are not going to be a major issue until next Rising, as the other overrun towns are even further off and generally have at least some living settlement much nearer.
Nrom's one of those 'Do a bunch of sidequests, and I'll gradually respect you more.' type NPCs. Though in this case he's as much the intermediary between the village headmen and Flower's blunt 'I kill things for a living.' and Quest Broker. An internal monologue would reveal a gradual rise in hopefullness as Sidequests are completed, with the Mausoleum being cleared basically completely changing his outlook. The mines and Conjurer forest being cleared as well would likely increase this to the point of a near 180 in his demeanor, at least internally. Outwardly he'll just be notably more cheerful.
Silverlight here is a glass cannon. She hits like a Tier Five Risen, though it feels like more because she moves like a Tier
Seven, but her durability is that of a Tier Four. Her nature as an Ethereal prevents the strain this ought to cause from appearing in most non-Nullity circumstances. This makes her roughly even with a high-end Tier Five in combat, except she heals with speed on par with Elysian as long as her reserves aren't exhausted, which Emperor Red, far enough along to manage it, causes to act similarly to Adorie and Hunger's Rank consumption. She's acting entirely out of enlightened self-interest here, though she's pretty reasonable by vampire standards thanks to that. Flower, meanwhile, doesn't especially trust her, though Luna hasn't had much in the way of intelligent conversation for a while, so her defenses were a lot lower than they might have been 40 years beforehand.
As I mentioned in a previous Richer Reality, Flower's morality is skewed from the norm. She isn't especially inclined to the people of Gilvale, they just haven't attacked her yet and have been somewhat helpful in pointing her to major monster concentrations. Therefore, she has issues with vampires mostly due to 'Uh, I like being alive?' and the fact that virtually everything not a normal human has taken a whack at her. Luna not doing that probably saved her life, since a battle of stamina would have gone in Flower's favor, since she doesn't have a limited regen tank and none of Flower's stuff falls under her weaknesses so Luna can't invert it.
That being said, much like a Risen, vampires can rapidly regain health and stamina by draining Essence from people, with extra after topping off strengthening them. Luna intentionally prevented her servants from gaining much, and the boost from age merely allowed her to decrease the frequency of 'food runs' to avoid drawing attention. Her Inverted Weakness domain is much like Color Red where defenses are concerned. It's a conscious choice to activate at this level, meaning that if Flower were unconscious, Luna could theoretically drain her blood without worry, while Luna's Inverted Weakness bloodline wouldn't work if she were unconscious.
7057 Words, discounting this line.
