Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 177 - Bloody Work (part 2)

Days flowed by after that almost as quickly as they did when the blade had been forced to watch the world pass it by at the altar. This time, they were not spent in a waking dream, though. This time it was not starving, or gods forbid, lonely. This time, it was feasting almost every day.

+2146 Life Force.

+102 Lesser Monster Souls.

Except for Geral’s trips home to visit his ailing wife and share his exploits, they were killing almost constantly now, and the blade was using those deaths to fuel itself. More than that, it was using the struggles of its wielder to stoke the fires of its soul that had almost been smothered by the choking poison of hell.

It enjoyed training the young man almost as much as it enjoyed tasting the meat of their foes. I remembered that it had once disliked the taste of the goat men compared to the flavor of humans, but now, it had no trouble with them, and every time it split open the bone of one of the horn-headed warriors, it savored the taste of their fatty marrow.

+3307 Life Force.

+131 Lesser Monster Souls.

+ 6 Monster Souls.

The Ebon Blade knew it would not remain satisfied with such petty victories forever, but for a few weeks, or a few months, they were fine. One day, and one week at a time, they slowly made their way around the valley.

Treat each fight as a whetstone, and each wound as a lesson you failed to learn, the blade counseled him.

While the other villagers had thought that Geral was lying, or at least exaggerating at first, the truth soon became clear when the night watchmen stopped seeing any activity, and even herds went unmolested. The other men of the village expressed surprise, and then, when that wore off, a mixture of praise and jealousy.

“I’m less curious about how he’s killing them than how he’s coming back alive time and again,” one of his neighbors gossiped. “Have you seen his clothes? They’re completely shredded and covered in blood, but there’s not a scratch on him!”

Mostly, the blade went from an idle curiosity to the most talked-about thing in town. The blade could hear them on the nights when Geral slept beside his wife, though it never once heard the name it was listening for, ‘The Black Blade of Baraga.”

That was its fear. That even in this far-flung place, people would remember the cursed blade. If that happened, word might make its way outside the valley to someone who cared, and if a champion of the Gods, or worse, a priest or an avatar of the divine might find out. Then the deities would interfere directly, and it didn’t much care for that idea.

In the past, it might have simply struck down everyone in the village to avoid discovery, but even if its wielder would have accepted such an outcome, his wife wouldn’t have. Simone was a kind, gentle soul whose cheer almost managed to touch the sword’s cold steel heart on occasion as she improved.

Its place was not in the village, though, getting attached to the men and women that lived there. It was on the rocky slopes, scything down the beastmen, and eventually, after nearly a month prowling the places where men once feared to tread, that was Geral’s place too.

He was not as quick to learn as Baraga or Ivarr, but he still learned faster than most, because he had things worth fighting for. Soon, there wasn’t a single goat-man tribe left within a day’s ride of the village, and goblins were all but extinct. That was when they started on the orcs.

Those burly green skins weren’t any stronger than a magically enhanced Geral, but they were worlds more savage than he was, and every victory came with agony. Over the course of several days, the weapon’s wielder managed to break each limb at least once because he’d let one of his fearsome opponents survive long enough to hurt him.

+1669 Life Force.

+34 Monster Souls.

He even had fingers bitten off and an eye gouged out. Those grew back. He was thankful for that, but eventually, there came a battle in which the blade was forced to reveal more of its strength. Until that moment, it had tried hard not to guide its wielder’s hands or show off its true power, but one night, when the young warrior was finishing off the last of an orcish warband before he went to a pond to wash the green blood off him and then return home, he was ambushed by a troll.

The blade had not expected it, and though it should have sensed it, it had been too busy critiquing its wielder’s moves when the monster emerged from a cave like the shadow of a boulder.

Geral moved to cleave the monster swiftly in two, as soon as he saw it out of the corner of his eye. He’d obviously thought it was just another orc, but the wound regrew even as the blade passed through its spine, and it did not fall in two as its fellows had.

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“What in the…” he gasped as he watched the wound mending shut.

That surprised him even if it didn’t surprise the weapon, and as he backpeddled to regroup, the troll lashed out with a fist the size of a shield and sent Geral flying twenty feet. The blade maneuvered his body so that he held onto the weapon, and landed on his feet after tumbling twenty feet, but none of that helped its wielder’s caved-in chest. Despite his added toughness, the troll had broken every one of his ribs, and as Geral spent a few seconds trying to figure out why he couldn’t draw breath, the troll roared in victory. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

-341 Life Force.

It was as confused as anyone when the human warrior rose again. It wasn’t under Geral’s power, though, not completely. His mind was still spasming in fear. The weapon restrained it. Staggering back a step or two as it struggled to force the man’s broken body to obey.

Geral’s ribs weren’t just broken; his spine was snapped in two places, because his leather armor had done nothing to hold back the pure force of blunt impact. At least the pain didn’t affect it.

You would have died a dozen times before now without me, the blade whispered in his mind. But this is the moment you would have died, even with me in your hand. Now I will show you what you could become if you take our fight more seriously.

It had avoided showing off for a long time, but if it was going to save its wielder in an obvious way, it might as well give the man something to aspire to. It was definitely going to have to use Hellfire to put a troll down for good, but first, it wanted to put on a demonstration of what they were capable of.

The blade staggered back one more step, but only to narrowly avoid the next blow, and give its wielder a fraction of a second to heal. His body, as it currently was, was halfway to crippled, and tumbles and rolls were largely beyond it. Attacks weren’t, though, and as the trunk-sized arm of the troll moved past it, it moved into the monster’s blindside, hamstringing its left leg before bringing the stroke higher to undercut the gluteus maximus and the iliotibial band on the troll's right leg.

-288 Life Force.

+43 Life Force.

It healed both wounds almost instantaneously, but not fast enough to keep it from losing its balance and tumbling forward. It is not enough to kill your enemy, the weapon explained as it moved forward with its wielder's broken body to hack twice at the troll's tailbone, rendering the legs of its opponent to limp meat. You must cripple them with every stroke. Cripple them, as you are crippled now, do you understand? A mercy killing is a mercy you cannot afford when your opponents are inhuman and nearly as immortal as you.

+129 Life Force.

Geral, to his credit, didn’t struggle against the blade’s grip. Instead, he took heart in the fact that his pain had stopped, and he could breathe a bit. One of his lungs had fully reinflated, and the other was on its way. The spine had partially reconnected, too.

-113 Life Force.

The same was true for the troll, though. It was already moving, and rising to its feet with huge blundering strikes that the blade had no difficulty dodging. It could move more freely now. It could spin, and a few seconds later, it took off one arm that came for it at the wrist, and the other at the elbow, as it flowed like water around the blows. In both of these cases, it used a prying motion to force the tendrils of flesh that tried to reconnect the limbs from taking proper hold, seriously maiming the monster for the first time.

That gave it a chance to explain its technique to its wielder as it watched new hands start to grow out of the stumps of the old. For the smaller wound that might take minutes, but for the arm that had been cut off at the elbow, that would take hours or days; even trolls had their limits, and that was the point that the weapon emphasized to its wielder.

Dice them apart a chunk at a time, if you have to, it explained. When you find their weakness, strike it again and again.

I thought trolls couldn’t be killed without fire? Its wielder asked silently, now that his body was more or less whole.

They cannot be killed easily without fire, the weapon agreed, but with enough time and effort, even a mountain can be ground away to dust.

+236 Life Force.

-64 Life Force.

To prove its point, the blade scythed and danced, using his body to carve increasingly large chunks of flesh off of its regenerating enemy. It took pieces of its gut, legs, its left foot, and eventually its right ear. While the sword enjoyed the feeling of such disparate flesh, it eventually grew tired of its taste.

So, once its wielder was fully recovered, it shattered the troll’s kneecap, making it stumble, and then it thrust into the giant’s heart and filled it with Hellfire. The result was explosive. The troll vomited volcanically, and its eyes exploded as green fire flashed outward. The blade stepped back then, mindful that the toxic flames would hurt its current wielder a great deal more than they had its previous one.

-25 Life Force.

The fire didn’t kill the troll immediately, though, and neither did its wounds. Instead, it blundered around, flailing and catching anything that could burn on fire, creating its own version of hell that guttered and died as it did.

+1 Greater Monster Soul.

That was when it released its wielder. The blade expected that the man’s first question would be about the fire, or about controlling him, but he asked about neither. Instead, he asked, “How can I move the way you do? My body is clearly capable, but my mind… my experience, is lacking.” He was clearly in awe at the way the Ebon Blade had made its dance of death look easy, and it took some deserved pride in that.

There is no substitute for a lifetime of practice and training, the blade told him. Or in my case, several lifetimes.

Geral promised he’d do just that, which reminded the blade of one point it had overlooked, and on the long walk back to the distant lights of his village, the blade explained to its wielder that he didn’t exactly have a long life to look forward to.