Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 185 - Watchdog
The patchwork mechanical dragon landed like an earthquake shortly after Geral did. His landing was scarcely softer, but no one heard the soft thud that he made, or the almost imperceptible snap as one of the bones in his left ankle broke under the strain of the landing. The man didn’t even notice because the fear that ran through him overrode all the pain of his landing. Not only had he just fallen half a hundred feet, but death was bearing down on him like an avalanche.
“Run toward it or away from it,” he mumbled to himself, unable to force himself to move. “Standing is certain death.”
The blade had hoped that their battles would better prepare its wielder for this moment, but in the end, Geral was a herdsman, a farmer, and a father, not a hero, and he froze at the sight of a looming dragon whose head floated twenty feet above him on its long, sinuous neck. No amount of ogres and mutated wildlife could prepare him for such a sight.
If the thing still had its fire, it would have blasted Geral to oblivion then, and left the blade in the field for some new wielder to find. It didn’t, though. All it could manage was a little smoke and a few embers as it roared, definitely enough to momentarily blow out one of its wielder’s eardrums. That was enough to spur the man into action, and surprisingly, the action he chose wasn’t to flee; it was to strike.
That made the blade proud, and as Geral’s desire to survive transformed him from a quivering father into the warrior he’d been most days during the last year, he synced with the blade once more as the two of them hummed with the same urgency, and the weapon granted him the full panoply of its powers.
-255 Life Force.
When its edge met the claws of the dragon, its wielder was already Boosted and Accelerated. Its Vorpal Strike was unleashed instantly when his strike landed, cutting through steel parts and riveted dragon scales with equal ease. The fact that it sheared off one of the claws, though, didn’t stop two more from puncturing one of its wielder’s lungs or breaking several ribs.
-367 Life Force.
While Renewed Reconstitution fueled its powerful regeneration, putting its wielder back together almost as quickly as he was torn apart, the blade saw for the first time how powerful Reforged was. Any other monster that Geral had fought, he might have stood against unaided, but this was a titanic blow that should have shattered his bones and sent him to an early grave.
That didn’t stop Geral. Not in this moment. The two moved past pain, and the blade used Position of Privilege twice, warping space so that its blade could stretch long enough to strike while its opponent's strikes were shortened and its blade blunted.
-480 Life Force.
The dragon didn’t seem any more intelligent than any other member of its kind that the Ebon Blade had seen. That made it as smart as a wolf, but not nearly as bright as a man, which meant it was just smart enough not to understand the way that it and its wilder moved, but not smart enough for that confusion to slow it down as it tried and failed to understand it. It didn’t try to understand anything. It only reacted, and it did so with incredible speed.
The conflict had no audience, but if it did, not mortal eye would have been fast enough to follow the moves of the two combatants. Sometimes the sword would use Bolt, and other times it would only look that way because of how fast Geralt was moving.
-302 Life Force.
The blade was enhancing him with everything that it had, save only for Surge of Vitality, which would have cost its wielder one of his few precious years of life that remained. Even that one, it thought about, though. Every glancing blow was nearly a mortal wound, and blood sprayed across the ground with every near miss.
The Mechanical Drake did not move as fast as the Juggernaut had, or even Warbringer, but even so, with its size, its reach, and its bulk, it was a terrifying opponent. With its fire, it would have been unstoppable. Denied that, it became a slow, grinding battle of attrition.
The sword could hack off a piece here and there, but there were no vital spots to strike, even if it distorted space to make its blade that much longer. That thing was simply too large. The same was not true for Geral, though. As he leaped from attack to attack, any serious mistake would be his last. That almost happened once with the crack of its metal tail and another time with a wing buffet that sent him flying.
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-1,207 Life Force.
Each time, it was the distance that saved him. As fast as the blade could heal, it was not instantaneous, and being knocked away was better than being torn in two. The blade received no Life Force for any of its strikes. There was simply nothing for it to steal, which frustrated it. That one detail aside, along with the fact that it tasted like lubricating oil, necromantic magics, and desiccated bones instead of actual flesh, it had never been happier.
This strange mechanical beast didn’t even carry the faint taint of hell that all the other monsters of the region did. Aside from its brief battles towards the princes of hell, it had never been able to let loose so completely, and it gloried in it.
While staying in the moment wasn’t hard for it as it worked in Tandem with its wielder in the timeless dance of death, the weapon couldn’t help but compare this moment to others in its existence. It didn’t just see Baraga, either, or the simpering prince that had come after him. It saw Ren, too. Every wielder who’d ever slain a dragon with its help, and all of them were found lacking, even its first wielder.
1,943 Life Force.
That wasn’t because Barga was lacking in any way, though. He was still twice the man Geral would ever be. It was because it had been so weak. It was ten thousand times more powerful than it had been as a lifeless blade, and when combined with a worthy wielder, it was unstoppable.
Geral would race up one wing, only to flash away in a Bolt of lightning before running down the other. He struck everywhere and was very nearly a one-man army. Slowly but surely, those blows started to matter. The Mechanical Drake might be nigh invulnerable, but it did not heal, and slowly but surely it ground to a halt.
First, its tail, and then one wing, stopped working right. Those small details prevented it from shifting its bulk properly, and as its center of gravity became unwieldy, it fell over as often as its attacks landed true. For several minutes, their battle had teetered on a razor's edge, but once its performance started to degrade, it was already over. The blade could practically feel that dragon’s frustration at that. It felt it too.
-888 Life Force. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
A minute before, it had been fighting a super predator that might destroy a kingdom or an army on its own, and now, even though the fight continued, that same foe had been caged in their own failing body. Even then, there was no way to end this quickly as any fearsome opponent deserved. Geral had to hack his way into the creature’s rib cage and find the dark whirling heart of the monstrosity buried under layers of gears and mechanisms so thick they might as well have been armor.
The glittering center of the beast was itself a mechanical marvel, though it didn’t care much about those details. A crystalline phylactery might be interesting, but he was far more concerned with what it contained. It radiated power, and when Geral plunged it deep inside the thing, it shattered, shredding his face and body with shrapnel. The blade encountered something almost as deadly, though.
-92 Life Force.
For a moment, dragonfire filled its soul, and it grew hot to the touch. As it did so, the souls of every dragon that made up this monstrosity surged into it, forcing the weapon to burn a number of small monster souls just to make room. It was an overwhelming moment, and the dragon’s last heartbeat echoed through it, and then it was still forever.
+66 Life Force.
+6 Dragon Souls.
Geral all but collapsed then, as much from exhaustion as from the wound he’d taken at the last moment. It’s still better than being evaporated, the blade told him. Its wielder nodded at that, obviously thinking that it was referring to dragon fire. It wasn’t, though. It was thinking of poor Evelyn. If the power that had poured out of the dragon’s heart had done so in the form of Life Force rather than souls, Geral might have faced a similar end.
Fortunately, though, that was not the case, and by the time he’d wormed his way free of the jagged metal rib cage, his bleeding had nearly stopped. The Ebon Blade expected only silence in that moment, but Geral shattered it with a question.
-28 Life Force.
“If this was the valley’s warden, then won’t its death unleash chaos on the rest of the world?” he asked.
Eventually, the blade agreed. But you benefit either way?
“How so?” he asked as he sat down against the wreckage of a tree that had been destroyed in the fight.
That thought gives you another reason to fight that much harder, the blade answered. If you succeed, then the rest of the world is safe, and if you fail, then your home will be spared when the monstrosities leak out instead of looking for higher ground.
No matter what Geral killed, that wouldn’t stop the hellish Miasma from building up. Eventually, it would build up enough to overflow, turning the problem of the valley around the experienced into a toxic problem for the entire continent, but the only way to face that was to seal the rift to hell, and the blade had no wish to confront Nuella and find out if that was even possible.
“I suppose you’re right,” Geral answered, “but even so, I wish we hadn’t been forced to fight it.”
Because it almost killed you a hundred times? The blade asked.
“Because it wasn’t our enemy,” he answered. “It was our ally in a way. It had its job, and we had ours, but we were both fighting the monsters of this place.”
The blade didn’t disagree with that. It worried less about places and teams, though, and more that eventually someone would notice it had been destroyed. When that happened, the Aetherarchy was sure to investigate. It just hoped they didn’t have any more of those infernal hounds.
