I Level Up by Killing Gods-Chapter 50: A Day’s Ride West

Lira woke to the sound of a knife scraping against stone.

Pale dawn light seeped through the inn’s grime-caked window, painting Kael’s silhouette in shades of ash.

He sat at the room’s lone table, the air smelled sharp, metallic—the scent of preparation.

"You ever sleep?" Lira croaked, squinting at the dark circles beneath his eyes. She tossed aside the moth-eaten blanket, her boots hitting the floor with a thud.

"Or is being robotic just your aesthetic?"

Kael didn’t look up. "You said the caravans leave at first light."

"Uh-huh. And staying up all night helps with that?" She rummaged through her pack, pulling out a dented canteen.

The water inside tasted like rust. "Relax. We’ll charm our way onto a wagon, steal some breakfast, and be knee-deep in cursed ruins by noon. Easy."

He sheathed the blade of here dagger he was sharpening, the sound final, like a tomb sealing.

"You talk too much."

"And you don’t talk enough." She lobbed the canteen at him. He caught it midair, his reflexes inhumanly precise.

"Drink. Wouldn’t want you passing out before the fun starts."

They left the inn under a sky the color of bruised flesh.

The Shroud Market’s usual chaos had dimmed to a murmur, vendors still shuttering their stalls from the night’s Ravager raids.

Lira led the way, her stolen Razor Teeth lockpicks jingling in her pocket like a morbid lullaby. Kael kept a step behind, his gaze sweeping the shadows—always watching, always calculating.

The caravans were camped at the market’s western edge, a ragged assembly of armored transports and scavengers bartering passage with everything from Blight-tainted jewelry to their own teeth.

Lira whistled low. "Pick your poison, corpse. The one with the skull banners looks festive."

Kael’s eyes narrowed.

"No. The third." He nodded toward a battered convoy, its wagons reinforced with high grade alloy—stolen, judging by the crude welding.

The caravan master stood at its head, a woman with a mechanical eye and hands stained black.

"Ah," Lira smirked. "A woman after my own heart."

As they approached, the whispers coiled tighter, louder.

He ignored them. For now.

— — —

The caravans was set to crawl across the Blightlands like a scarab dragging its carcass. Twelve wagons, their axles groaning under the weight of rusted Etherite engines and scavenged armor, kicked up plumes of ashen dust.

Kael kept to the rear, his Duskwyrm cloak pulled low, while Lira bartered with the caravan master—the woman with mechanical eye and fingers stained black from handling raw cores.

"A day’s ride west," the master growled, her voice sandpapered by decades of grit. "You stay quiet, you stay useful. Touch my cargo, and I’ll feed your bones to the Ravagers myself."

Lira saluted, her grin sharp. "Wouldn’t dream of it, boss."

They claimed a spot in the third wagon, its bed littered with cracked soul cores and the stench of rotting leather. Kael sat with his back against a crate, his sword a phantom itch beneath his palm.

The other scavengers—a huddle of sunken-eyed drifters and twitchy Ether-smugglers—eyed him like vultures circling a corpse.

’Too quiet’, he thought. Even here, in this rattling metal belly, the whispers slithered.

*...you hunger...you remember...*

Lira elbowed him, nodding toward a cluster of scavengers hunched around a flickering heat-stone. Their voices carried over the wagon’s creaks.

"—Blight-Queen’s pack took out the Iron Pact’s forward camp," one muttered, gnawing on a strip of cured Ravager meat. "Saw the aftermath. Looked like a god’s fist punched through the earth."

Another spat. "Heard she’s not a natural Blight Borne. Some spliced abomination—half-Ravager, half-whatever. Got a crown of Blight-crystal growing right outta her skull."

Kael’s hand tightened. ’Blight-Queen’. The words tasted like prophecy.

---

The attack came at night, as the caravan camped beneath the skeletal remains of a shattered forcefield tower. Kael was sitting dazed when the first howl split the air—a sound like metal tearing through flesh.

Lira froze mid-sentence, her coffee tin slipping from her fingers.

"Oh, hell."

Ravagers erupted from the shadows.

Not the mindless, slavering beasts of the First Reach, but organized hunters. Their hides shimmered with Blight-fed mutations: serrated spines, claws dripping corrosive venom, eyes like smoldering coals.

At their center stood a towering figure—the Blight-Queen.

Her humanoid frame was encased in jagged crystal armor, pulsing with violet light. A crown of Blight-thorns coiled from her scalp, fused to her skull. She pointed a clawed hand, and the pack surged.

Chaos.

Kael moved first, Aether’valis materializing in a burst of cerulean light. He severed a Ravager’s head mid-leap, its body dissolving into acrid smoke.

Lira danced behind him, her stolen lockpicks replaced by twin daggers forged from Etherite shards.

"Left flank!" she shouted, ducking as a Ravager’s tail whipped overhead. "They’re herding us toward the tower!"

The Blight-Queen watched, her expression unreadable beneath the crystal mask. Kael met her gaze—and staggered as a memory slammed into him.

Kain, blood-soaked and laughing, standing over a god’s corpse. "You think this ends with me? The Null remembers. It hungers."

"Kael!" Lira’s scream snapped him back.

A Ravager lunged, its Blight-coated claws raking toward his throat. He pivoted, but not fast enough—the tip grazed his shoulder, searing through the Duskwyrm cloak.

Lira wasn’t so lucky.

A smaller Ravager, all needle-teeth and spindly limbs, slipped past her guard. Its claw caught her forearm, tearing through fabric and flesh. She hissed, kicking it away, but the damage was done.

The wound glowed.

---

They retreated to the ruined tower, the caravan’s survivors scattering into the night. Lira leaned against moss-eaten stone, her breath shallow. The gash on her arm pulsed faintly, tendrils of violet Blight creeping beneath her skin like parasitic roots.

"It’s fine," she said, binding the injury with a strip of her coat. "Just a scratch."

Kael gripped her wrist, turning it toward the moonlight. The Blight infected veins throbbed, spreading toward her elbow.

"You’re lying."

She yanked free. "And you’re wasting time. We need to move. Now."

He stared at the Blight-Queen’s pack circling the tower, their growls vibrating in his teeth. The queen herself lingered at the edge of the battlefield, her crown blazing as she communed with the darkness.

She’s waiting, Kael realized.

"Follow my lead," he said.

Aether’valis flared, its light a challenge. The Ravagers recoiled—all but the queen. She stepped forward, her voice a discordant rasp.

"The old clan... blood... i smell it..."

Kael froze. ’She knows.’

Lira didn’t hesitate.

She hurled a vial of Etherite Disruptor at the queen’s feet. The explosion of green light blinded the pack, their howls turning to shrieks.

"Run!" Lira dragged Kael into the ruins’ entrance—a jagged crack in the earth, half-hidden by thorned vines.

---

The passage swallowed them whole. Kael’s boots sank into ankle-deep sludge, the air thick with the reek of decay and ancient metal. Behind them, the Blight-Queen’s roar shook the walls.

Lira stumbled, catching herself on a rusted pipe. Her injured arm trembled.

"Keep... moving."

Kael gripped her shoulder, steadying her. The Blight had reached her collarbone, its glow faint but relentless.

"If you focused on yourself instead of calling out to me then, this wouldn’t have happened...i can handle myself."

She laughed, weak but defiant. "You’re my ticket to the Titan’s Heart, corpse. Can’t let you die before I get paid."

He didn’t believe her.

The tunnel widened into a cavern, its ceiling strung with bioluminescent fungi that made a sickly green haze. Ahead, the ruins proper began—collapsed archways, machinery overgrown with Blight-coral, and the distant hum of automated defenses.

Lira sagged against a pillar, her face ashen.

"Five minutes. Then we keep going."

Kael nodded, but his eyes stayed on the darkness behind them. The whispers rose, hungry and eager.

*...she will die...you will watch...*

He silenced them with a thought.

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