CHAPTER 578: ALMOST

Mason was maybe starting to enjoy demonic fear too much. The snake-covered abyssal horror writhed and shrieked in his hands the whole way down, liquidy, wide eyes roiling. The snakes bit his arms and face and chest, flaring his titles a dozen times. He didn’t alter his weight or plan at all.

All he did was try to turn himself in the air to land on the ugly bitch. He managed to get it turned halfway before he ran out of time. The stone floor rushed up to meet them, flat and hard and a nice reminder that gravity still sucked.

Stone and bone cracked with a wet thud. Mason felt his shoulder dislocate, but his snake-friend splattered.

He rolled to his feet, popping his shoulder back in and hoping that might be that. Except there was sure as hell no kill message from the system. He watched in fascinated disappointment as the demon started pulling itself together like spilled milk in reverse.

Well. Shit.

He smashed the ‘torso’ in the face as it rose, spraying more black goo at a nearby building like paint. He raked it with a Claw and watched the tear marks start to fill in, using all his strikes for good measure. He cut the thing to pieces. But nothing kept it down.

“So this is how it feels,” he muttered, trying to figure out what to do next. He decided abyssal arrows made as much as sense as anything, and summoned his bow as he dropped back to try every kind of trick in his quiver.

The demon’s ‘human’ torso rose up on a fresh pile of goo, a dozen snakes forming with fangs bared. It surged after him with surprising speed. He scrambled and swiped some away with a forearm, but the snakes turned to tendrils and wrapped around his arm.

He growled and raked it again, trying to slash off the goo and hit the ‘torso’ square. But it was like punching living jell-o. He wasn’t concerned, but he wasn’t sure how he’d kill the thing, either. Was he even hurting it?

More and more of the snake-tendrils tried to wrap around his limbs and neck. They couldn’t hold him worth shit, but the thing was fast and disruptive enough he couldn’t seem to gain enough ground to start shooting, either.

With a particularly effective swipe, he managed to rip the thing in half. He grinned at the torso, but stopped when it started to re-grow a new puddle. The bit he was holding started to grow another body, too, and kept on grabbing at him.

“Ah come on.”

The new, split half opened its mouth and screamed.

The awful, shrill sound pierced Mason’s ears and echoed through the city. He didn’t need to hear or smell what was coming to understand. It was calling for help. It thought maybe with its friends it could bring him down.

“Bad move. You should have run when you had the chance,” he growled, throwing off more of the sticky substance as he turned and sprinted away at full speed.

With only half of the thing’s bulk it failed to slow him down. He got off most of it by raking his fingers over himself like he was in the world’s worst shower. Then he slammed into a goblin building to knock off the rest.

He accidentally went through the wall, wincing as he stared at half a dozen terrified looking creatures eating in a nice looking dining room.

“Uh. Sorry.”

He rushed back out through the hole, tossing off the last bits of demon before he summoned his bow. Two more demons shrieked from somewhere towards the palace, and he veered their direction.

His goo-snake opponent slithered out from behind a building, and he loosed an Abyssal Power Shot right at its core. The arrow struck with a satisfying sucking sound, the creature’s ripping open with another spray of goo.

This time it didn’t heal so fast. Not that Mason stopped long to watch. He loosed a Cripple, an Exploiting, and two more arrows in seconds, and the demon stumbled as it filled with stuck shafts and explosive bits of magic arrow.

As soon as it stopped moving, he started to channel a good sized lightning bolt. The magic crackled all around him, lifting little hairs as the electricity hovered over his skin. His boom dwarfed the demon’s shriek, the bolt crackling with a blaze of light as it struck his target. And exploded.

Bits of fried demon bubbled all over the stone. Mason grinned as the text rolled.

[Abyssal Assassin slain. Experience awarded.]

Goblins were popping up all over the city to watch from balconies or rooftops. And several of the dead demon’s friends arrived just in time to see their colleague get roasted. One was sinewy and tall, with gangly, clawed limbs. The others seemed to be clones of each other, and also looked like the same ‘black liquid’ as the snake thing.

“Thanks for gathering,” Mason said, walking towards them and summoning his Marilith blades. “Easier than chasing you all down.”

These things might have been more cunning than most of their kind, but they were still sub-greater demon abyssals. They all charged, the long limbed freak taking loping strides as the others scurried on all fours.

Mason growled and extended his now natural Claws. He wanted to feel them die in his hands.

**

When only the ‘tall man’ demon was still alive and squirming to escape Mason’s grip, he lifted it up and met its eyes.

“Tell your master,” he snarled, “I’m…”

His Marilith arms plunged both daggers into the thing’s head. Another kill scrolled down his profile, and he dropped the corpse and scoffed.

“Couldn’t you see I was talking?” He stared at the ghostly arm and gestured. It wiped its ichor-covered blade off on his shoulder armour, using him as a rag.

He shook his head and noticed the hundreds of goblins still staring from their houses. He knew he was covered in wolf fur and demon blood, and there were floating arms and daggers over his head. But he tried to smile and wave.

Most goblins shrieked and vanished back into their houses. A little goblin waved back before its parents yanked it down. Mason took a few breaths, then ran back to his people.

He wasn’t sure if the attack was over. But his bats and rats weren’t reporting anything else. Instead they were waiting for his hastily promised food for life. On the plus side, they didn’t live all that long.

The goblins will feed you, he told them, flying past fort guards without slowing. The creatures leapt out of his path with a series of panicked yells, calling out warnings to the others.

He snaked through the crowded hall, finding Haley and his players, doing his best to ignore the stares. They’d never seen him so shifted into a wolf, and after the snake bites and demon assassin battle he was also now coated in Transformations.

“I killed some demons in the city,” he said, hearing the growl in his voice, and struggling a bit to talk around the fangs. “I don’t sense anything else. Any trouble here?”

“No, Patron,” said Phuong, the only one who kept off any expression. “The civilians have also received a message saying they’ve survived a player-inspired monstrous attack. Some kind of survivor title. I think it’s over. At least for now.”

Mason nodded, surprised he hadn’t seen anything similar. He was about to talk to Haley before the message flared.

[House attack: defeated. Casualties sustained: 1 player. 5 civilian. Prestige penalty accrued. House enmity points gained with: House of Jeong.]

One player. Five civilians. Not counting the emperor’s spymaster. Seven more people dead, and for what?

So few human beings were left alive from what was once billions. And here they were, still killing each other. Mason reminded himself to be careful. Not to kill Jeong’s people indiscriminately when the time came. And what the hell were ‘enmity points’?

Humanity needed all its damn warriors. He only had to kill one more man, and then it would be over. When he was the undisputed killer of this world, the violence could end. He’d let them live how they wanted, with just a few rules never to cross.

They’d stop the planar invasions. They’d win the game. And then what?

It was a question he tried not to think about. There was no going back to earth, he knew that now—had accepted it and moved on. And there was no ‘destroying roboGod’, no matter how he might wish it was otherwise.

There was just survival. There was a life with his girls. Peace, or at least some kind of stability, for what was left of humanity.

“Are you alright?” Haley whispered, her hands on his arm as the others spread out into their little groups. He blinked and met her eyes. She’d recovered, at least, from seeing him so changed.

“I’m alright. Get people settled, but protected. Get the corpses together. We’ll hold a funeral when I’m back. There’s still fighting, I have to leave. I’ll be back in a day with the others. But if you need me, get the scouts to message me.”

Haley nodded, and Mason did his best to ignore the many eyes crawling all over him. He saw the love and shame, the curiosity and awe, the envy and fear and anger and blame. It was just part of his life now and there was nothing he could do about it.

To be the man of the moment was to be a thing others invented in their minds. All Mason could do was everything in his power. To not fail himself. And maybe, if he did that, he wouldn’t fail most of the people he loved, and the people who needed him, either.

He squeezed Haley’s hand with the lightest touch he could manage, then turned and raced for the mountain wall. He could Feywalk anywhere here, so he turned his mind to yet another battle.

And the truth was, he could hardly wait.

The anger and violence simmering just below the surface needed an outlet. These creatures had attacked Chinua and his people just to distract him. They hadn’t been trying to kill him, that was clear. They’d tried that with greater forces and failed.

No. They’d given up on that. They’d tried to bribe him. To lure him to their side. Now that they’d failed to do that, too, they were trying to break him. To kill his friends and followers. To leave him with nothing to defend, hoping maybe he’d just give up.

They had the right idea. He gave them that.

It was true if they took everything he cared about, he’d have almost no reason to go on. But that ‘almost’ was important. Because Mason wasn’t the type to ‘lay down and die’. If they killed his family, he’d have just one purpose left—to spend the rest of his eternity hunting them down, in every plane of existence. Until every last one of them was dead.

He charged into the Fey with a growl, hands opening and closing as he dug his Claws into his palms. Even though their attack had failed, he could feel that tempting purpose growing in his heart.

To wipe hell and the abyss clean. Now that was a task worthy of his talents, as soon as he had the time. He’d start with Chinua’s attackers.

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