Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 181 - Solace
The trek up the mountain a few days later was more or less uneventful. Most of the creatures were toward the center of the valley, and once they’d started burning every corpse they’d created, the blade and its wielder had attracted much less attention than they had at the start of all of this.
They’d both wanted to stay longer, but the impossibility of hunting precluded that. Geral’s flesh was already picking up enough contamination from the air and water of this place, and food would only hasten the changes.
He didn’t have much to worry about. Decades of this would be another story, but neither of them expected him to last more than five or six years; but he wouldn’t last for five or six months if he ate some of the things they’d killed on this trip; he would have quickly ended up as mutated and deformed as any other beastman.
It was during that trip uphill one night that the blade finally spent its Life Force on the Path of Undeath. That decision was driven as much by the fact that its reserves were completely full as by a desire to see what else might appear when it did so. Even with its current level of power, 15,000 Life Force was a lot. It was almost everything the blade had, and for the first time since it had found a wielder, it dipped under 1,000 Life Force in an instant while its wielder slept just short of the mountain pass, and a few seconds later, all of the monster souls and lesser monster souls it had captured were devoured in a stream to partially refill it.
-15,000 life Force.
+3,784 Life Force.
Even though that torrent of souls only gave it back a pittance, it kept the Greater Monster souls for any future emergency that might erupt, for they were full of power. That grand oscillation of energies was enough to wake Geralt with a start, but it said nothing, and after he looked around and verified with his own eyes that nothing was about to kill him, he rolled over and went back to sleep.
The blade merely studied the information about the new power. It was not particularly interesting. What was far more interesting was that it had zero upgrades left available to be purchased. Nothing left? It wondered. I wonder if that will change when this path is eventually completed.
Even if something else did appear, though, it had no idea how it would pay for it. 15,000 was about the most it could pay. Perhaps if it filled its soul reserves with greater souls, or used the soul of the demon goddess, it could pay a higher cost, but it had doubts about that. Part of the weapon hoped this was finally the end of its upgrades, but the rest of it was disappointed by the idea that there would ever be an end.
For centuries, you have bathed in life and death. Now you finally unify the two and move beyond them both, for the true mastery of both involves being able to step outside them. Now you must learn to stitch together the flesh as well as the souls of your enemies and use them for more than just fuel.
That can only be done with the Path of Undeath. For most, it is a path that leads only to madness and damnation, but you are already well beyond such things.
The Path of Undeath: Level 1 -> raise a zombie from the dead to reach Level 2.
Level 1 Powers:
Master of Life and Death: Raise a corpse from the grave for the cost of five souls. The strength of the corpse will depend as much on the flesh you use to create it as the spirits you use to animate it.
Such animated minions must be paid for by your own essence, and strong ones can be quite expensive. Despite all this, they make very poor wielders, and are no replacement for the living at this stage.
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Castigate the Righteous: For the cost of 10 Life force, you can transform your damage type from ice, fire, poison, or any of your normal modes of damage to unholy for one minute. Unholy damage does extra damage to divine creatures, as well as their avatars and their minions.
The blade reflected on all of that, and while the second power might be useful if it ever faced the avatar of a god again, the first one seemed core to the point, but it was extremely uninterested in testing it.
Being wielded by a corpse doesn’t sound much better than a goblin or a demon, the blade sighed to itself. Perhaps if I could piece together the Juggernaut’s body, it might make a worthy wielder, but I’m sure it’s long since rotted.
As Geral returned the blade, it contemplated its deficit of Life Force and its new powers. It hadn’t been a worthwhile trade, but the Path of Undeath might yet lead somewhere interesting, even if the things it created couldn’t be a proper wielder.
The most useful thing it could have done with this power, by far, would have been to make a zombie that could have carried it somewhere more prominent. If I had possessed this power, then I would not have wasted a decade watching the world go by, it thought. It was a painful realization. Of course, it hadn’t had enough power to maintain a zombie, but it was easy to dream about how moving it even a few hundred feet downhill would have spared itself endless amounts of anticipation and boredom.
Still, it tried to stay positive. Perhaps I could use them for training, or as distractions, the blade reflected as Geral returned home to his loving wife and spent the days in her embrace.
Five souls would be an expensive activity for such an activity, of course. However, in battle, if it were to reanimate a maimed corpse with five lesser souls, perhaps that would be enough to distract an opponent by grabbing at its ankle or something.
It had possibilities, and as its wielder spent a few days in domestic bliss, and the blade did a little healing on the sickly woman, it spent most of its time reflecting on the various powers that it had. For every power it actually used, it had a dozen more that it hardly ever touched. That felt wasteful, but then, it had never asked to be made as an experiment in magical versatility.
Swords existed to stab, slice, and parry, trying to trace the grudges of a community, or decide whether or not it should burn, freeze, or shock a given opponent, was not in accordance with its nature. Generalship was enjoyable, and it certainly missed not having an army to command, but grand strategy was meant to be decided before the battle was joined. Once the fighting had commenced, it wanted merely to act and react. Those were the moments where its soul synchronized with its wielder.
If I want armies, I’m sure I could slip back into hell and find whole legions to command, the blade whispered to itself as the loving couple discussed baby names and whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. Such an idea was as repugnant as the idea of having to decide on baby names, but it endured one by fantasizing about the other.
Still, it reflected on other, more useful battles, specifically, the one with the strange guardian they’d seen from a distance. The blade imagined it as a demonic dragon, or something similar. The only thing that made it think it could be divine instead was the color. All the other hell blighted creations they’d seen were chartreuse, black, or red. Purple fire was an odd choice, but it wasn’t sure what god would have channeled such magic into a champion, so it considered all eventualities.
While its wielder dallied, it imagined truly catastrophic fights, where attacks were blocked by corrupted scales, and parrying even a glancing blow was impossible. Even after running the battles dozens of times in its mind with variations, it decided that its wielder wasn’t going to be able to take a dragon much bigger than the beast that had claimed Ren’s life so long ago.
We’re just going to have to find bigger things for Geral to practice on, it decided, making a note that they needed to visit that other ogre after they’d slaughtered its tribe.
Geral didn’t stay home forever, though. A week after he arrived, they were walking back down the pass again. Its wielder was well rested and conversational, but the blade was hungry. It had spent its reserves and was finally starting to feel like the weapon it had been before it had gone into hell. It needed to be fed and had an entire valley of monsters upon which to feast.
