Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 61 - Spiritual Spoils
Even after the elf finally fell to the ground, and his sword’s blue light extinguished itself, the blade continued to replay those final moments in its mind as it looked at the box that had appeared in front of it. Var’gar didn’t see the pop up, but he ignored everything else.
He just finished his opponent, and then rather than bask in the fountaining blood, he put the last few knights who were still squirming on the floor out of their misery. Then he advanced to the far side of the room to kill the baron who was begging for his life and all the women and children who were sheltering behind him.
+2256 Life Energy.
+83 Human Souls.
This would be an ugly bloodbath, but other than spending 5,000 life force on Increase Reserves 10 to keep its energy to a manageable level, and its need to burn most of the human souls to make sure that it didn’t accidentally consume the elven soul, it ignored the violence as women and children started to scream while its wielder hacked them to pieces and bathed it in blood. While their life force might be important, it was far less interesting than its most recent interaction with the storm blade.
Accelerate Wielder 1: The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the agility and speed of the wielder by 2 at the cost of 1 Life Force every two hours.
Bolt 1: Infuse your attacks with electrical energy, adding 2-5 electrical damage to a strike for the cost of 3 Life Force. This attack cannot be combined with other strikes like Amplify Blade.
It looked from its new abilities back to its old ones, which were currently available for upgrade. They were certainly in a similar vein, but just like the other abilities it had learned from the first hex blade, they were not Secondary Abilities like the False Image it had just unlocked. Somehow, the runes that powered them had braided themselves into the runes that ran up and down its blade. They’d changed it, but still, it wasn’t sure that it wanted to spend energy upgrading them. They seemed foreign somehow.
Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force - This ability focuses the magic of the blade for a single moment, though not without cost. Use up to 3 Life Force to increase the power of an attack by 10% per life force spent.
Amplify Wielder 2: 700 Life Force - The Blade’s connection with the user deepens. Increase the strength and toughness of the wielder by 5 at the cost of 1 Life Force every two hours.
By the time the blade started paying attention to the world around it instead of the numbers. The slaughter was over, and other orcs had finally joined their chieftain in the hall. Many of them were bleeding from cuts and arrow wounds. Only Var’gar stood alone, covered in red blood instead of green, and his men looked at him awestricken, like the God of Battle he was.
Well, the avatar at least, the blade quipped to itself. It was the God of their tribe. He was just the one that got to carry it around.
Even though no one was dying anymore, it was still getting several points a second just from the corpses of the fallen and the wounded orcs around it. The blade only had 1187/7800 Life Force now, though, so it didn’t need to worry about overflowing any time soon, no matter how many helpless noble families its wielder slaughtered.
+889 Life Force.
+11 Human Souls.
Though not many human souls continued to flow, because it was mostly surrounded by the dead rather than the dying, the blade was still concerned about burning them as fast as they came in, while it considered what it wanted to do with the elf. The man had certainly seemed quite capable as a warrior, which meant that he was likely to have a very old and powerful soul. The blade didn’t know how much more powerful an elven soul was than a human one, but it likely contained hundreds of Life Force.
It might even rival a Dragon Soul, it whispered to itself. That was tempting, but the thing also possessed unique knowledge. Was the knowledge of an elven soul worth more than its power? Given the rate it was currently devouring the lives of others, the answer was almost certainly yes, but in a vacuum?
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The blade pondered this while its wielder went about his business. Var’gar was congratulating his men on their victory and ordering the smallest of the orcs in sight to begin building a great bonfire for the celebration to come. “We shall feast on their finest, softest citizens!” the orc bellowed before cautioning everyone, “But the elf is mine, do you understand? I’ve never had an elf before, and now that I’ve worked up an appetite and split the bastard open, I aim to savor every morsel.”
While the chief lectured and boasted, the younger orcs got to work dragging out anything flammable into the inner courtyard of the keep. That started with straw and farming implements, but soon enough, the pyre was stacked high with delicately embroidered tapestries and the silken ballgowns of noblewomen. The blade basked in that warm glow, delighting in the wealth of lifetimes being put to the torch.
That is the nature of war, it thought, People die, and everything else burns. Part of it felt like it should be getting power from the spectacle, but of course, no matter how beautiful an oil painting was, there was no Life Force in it to be drained from it.
Humans would have tried to have half of this as spoils, but the greenskins cared nothing for wealth unless it came in the form of food or weapons. The blade might be disgusted by their filth and canibalism, but it respected their straightforward, honest natures almost as much as their violence. Once the fire got going, they looted both wherever they could find them while all the true finery that was on offer was burned or otherwise defiled.
The feasts that followed those crude pronouncements went on for half the night and were only occasionally interrupted by screams and laughter when some living soul was found escaping from a burning building or dragged from their hiding place. The orcs were cruel, but the blade could hardly recriminate them. With all the bodies being cooked over the roaring bonfire, it was still getting hundreds of Life Force an hour without even draining the surviving warriors. It basked in an intoxicating sea of Life Force. It wasn’t as intense as the bursts from death and battle, but the sheer number of dead that were stacked around the edges of the courtyard made that thin, remnant energy linger like a perfume.
+453 Life Force.
That night, the blade considered asking the elf’s soul a question immediately, but instead it decided to check a few things first. It started with reviewing the current status of its many abilities, but the only one it got immediately was Parasitic Link 3. It still wasn’t sure how that one was powered, but the last thing it wanted was a constant drain on its own resources.
If I strengthen my wielder, let them bear the weight of that magic, it decided with almost no hesitation.
Primary Powers:
Amplify Blade 2: 500 Life Force
Accelerate Wielder 2: 800 Life Force
Bolt 1: 1000 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force
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Increase Senses 4: 1500 Life Force
Increase Connection 4: 1250 Life Force
Lesser Life Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force
Lesser Soul Reserves 3: 2000 Life Force
Increase Control 4: 3000 Life Force
Empower Blade 3: 4000 Life Force - not currently accessible
Repair Soul 4: 5000 Life Force
Improved Siphon 9: 6000 Life Force
Secondary Powers:
False Image 2: 250 Life Force
Giant’s Strength 2: 400 Life Force
Speed of Shadows 2: 500 Life Force
Everything was about as it had expected. It had a variety of new powers to choose from, and though things were getting more expensive all the time, they’d never felt cheaper to the blade. If every assault was like this, then it would be able to upgrade half a dozen abilities with every fight.
The thought was thrilling. Since it had awoken it had dreamed of nothing but gaining what former glory it might have once had, and now that goal was being realized. In the next month of battles as it fought its way to the capital city, it would gain thousands of souls and tens of thousands of essence. For a moment it was tempted to just start buying all of the cheap powers it had blindly, just to advance them, but it resisted.
I will run out of new powers before I run out of victims to slay, it decided, satisfied with that situation. It had not dined this well since the dragon, and the main course that was the Inner Kingdoms still lay far ahead.
