MM - Chapter 245 - REAP WHAT YOU SOW

Raine’s blood avatar continued to deteriorate. It took all of his remaining will to hold the last vestiges together. The promise of safety beckoned from what appeared to be only meters away. Just beyond the dome protecting his inner realm was the lake of blood: salvation. Yet, it was not to be. Raine had the thought to send another sliver of his consciousness into his inner realm the usual way. Suddenly, his connection with the blood avatar waned, nearly collapsing. Clearly, being in three places at once was against the rules.

Likewise, any attempt to break in from the outside would instantly unravel his avatar. Raine’s wistful gaze scanned the interior and was drawn to the monstrous tiger. It still rested leisurely upon its stone perch in the center of the drained lake. A desperate glimmer of hope flashed. His avatar’s remaining fist hammered against the translucent wall in a frantic plea for entry.

The tiger didn’t even twitch. It was unclear if the damnable creature couldn’t hear or was ignoring him. The blood construct began to convulse as though caught in a seizure. Raine glanced down at a shaking arm and legs that no longer felt like they belonged to him. His time was up. Just as the last of his hope guttered out, the tiger’s eyes opened. It gazed out at him, and that hope flared anew.

He shouted, voice laced with frantic emotion. “Quick! Break the barrier! Let me in!” He futilely banged a sloughing fist against the wall. The beast stared back, its expression one of utter disinterest at his predicament. “Come on, you bastard! Help me out! Aren’t you a part of my psyche or something?”

Just when Raine thought it would turn away and go back to sleep, its slitted golden eyes glanced down at the phoenix feathers still clutched to his avatar’s chest. It blinked languidly, and a bestial, fanged grin split its face.

“What? You want these? Sure! You can have half, just let me in!”

The tiger snorted at his offer, and Raine’s jaw dropped, realizing he’d been played.

“So you could hear me the whole time! I knew it! Whatever. Fine. Sixty-forty. Now let me in!”

Bulging muscles in the tiger’s neck turned its great head away. With a leisurely yawn, it dropped its chin to its paws as if settling in for another nap.

“What?! Why are you so greedy?! Eighty percent! Last offer. If you’re going to be that big a jackass, I’d rather die than share!”

A bloated second passed without the beast making a move. When Raine was about to go back on his word and offer ninety percent, the tiger opened one eye, and a burst of power shot across the inner realm. A hairline crack spiderwebbed across the dome’s surface. Without wasting another instant, what was left of Raine’s avatar dissolved into a stream of blood and swarmed inside.

The feathers fell in a soft pile on the shore as Raine’s consciousness collapsed into the lake as though coming home after a ten-year deployment. He tried hard not to lament at the staggering loss of twenty percent of his lake’s mass. It could have been much worse, and a sliver of hope remained that with the feathers, he could recover some of what was lost. His awareness was pulled to a disturbance above the crimson waters.

The tiger breathed in through pursed lips, causing a great gale to sweep up all but ten of the discarded feathers. They were drawn into its mouth and promptly chewed. A few errant plumes stuck from its teeth as it greedily chomped away. Its overly satisfied posture gave the impression that the beast had just caught a bird in a graceful, mid-air leap. With a slow lick of its lips and a contented burp, it finished the meal, then lay down to fall fast asleep.

A glutton and a greedy pig? What a terrible personality.

Raine’s measly spoils were pulled into the depths of the lake for safekeeping. Then, he retreated from the inner realm, stepping fully back into the battlefield raging around him.

The dregs of CronGate, those unfortunate enough to be burned alive at Shadow Springs Town, were trembling in their boots at the bonfire raging around Alaric. The sight of those very flames swirling around him as he stalked toward their ranks reopened the horrific mental scars etched deep into their hearts. Instead of immediately setting into them, Raine jumped high to scan the battlefield.

Varak’s soldiers had finished their extermination of the experts and were now cutting bloody trails through CronGate and DyingNight’s people. It normally wouldn’t be possible to contain and kill such a large army, but Raine had come prepared. On the outskirts, the majority of his forces were spread incredibly thin, gliding over the numerous ranks of guilders and dropping one Glacial Snap Grenade after another. Escape was possible, but fleetingly rare. 

Since the drifters could only glide, Mel, Celeste, Fizgore, and Rhino were tasked with Lunging them higher into the air whenever one dropped too low, a constant, coordinated effort to maintain the aerial blockade. In all other directions was naught but a symphony of chaos. Fear was a thick, cloying miasma in the air. Screams blended with the crunch of metal and the sizzle of released elemental skills. Explosions of fire, ash, and lightning painted the highlands in hues of destruction. This was precisely what Raine craved. His inner realm had lost so much, and the battlefield offered a bountiful harvest to replenish it.

Raine dove into the fray. The Soul Flame of Amanesh did the dirty work for him. Many of the gathered sacrifices lacked full sets of gear after their previous deaths, leaving their health pools abysmally low for their levels. A single lash from one of his dual whips of fire was often enough to send an unfortunate to their graves. 

In the process, he discovered the soul flame counted as a part of his body, allowing him to recover the dropped loot with ease. A flexing of his mental faculties caused the fire to split further, forming four whips that harvested blood and gear wherever he passed. He flew through the air, moving too fast for them to hit with their basic Blasts and ranged attacks. Anyone who tried to confront him in melee had to jump to do it and was effortlessly plucked from the air in a rope of fire and burned to death.

Not for one second did he stop searching for the rat in their midst. It did not take long to find Torune, who was, unsurprisingly, hiding in Stealth again. Raine alighted with his back to his old master as though unaware of his presence. Monstrously long tongues of fire whipped out to cleave through Torune’s people. After fifteen seconds, the man still had not attacked. Raine turned to face his crouched form, shaking his head sadly.

“Fuck, you are the biggest damn coward I’ve ever seen. Can’t even attack your sworn enemy in the back? Unbelievable.” Raine cracked a whip against the ground next to him, unable to cope with how long he’d let this worm rule his existence.

Torune stumbled out of Stealth, sliding backward on his rear while releasing a torrent of Blasts, and two Bone Spears. “Stay away! Don’t come near me!”

The peak master’s attempts were pointless. Raine didn’t even bother to evade or block. The disparity between their attributes, not to mention all the defensive raid buffs he’d received, was simply too vast.

“Sure.” Raine shrugged. In the next blink, one of his whips snaked around Torune’s ankle and dragged him bodily across the ground. 

The man screamed like a stuck pig as his leg blackened and his face was pulled through mud and across scraggly rocks. He was released quickly, lest he die too easily. A heavy boot planted on Torune’s back, and his hair was roughly grabbed, his head jerked back to reveal his throat. The man was forced to watch as two lashes of soul flame swarmed down the open mouths of the nearby Vaneese and Marco. The two died without being able to fight back, burned from the inside out until only ash remained.

Torune’s scream was one of pure desperation. His domain flared, and a wave of pure pain became Raine’s entire existence. Yet, instead of dissuading him from what he planned to do, it distilled his purpose. How many times in the past had he been subject to this very torment? How many times had he been forced to writhe in the dirt while his universe became naught but agony? 

Never again.

Raine released the Soul Flame of Amanesh, and the demonic flames of his armor gushed forth, bathing Torune in a matching agony. Poetically, they suffered together. The difference was that Torune’s domain could not actually hurt him. A Healing Burst returned his hated enemy to half health, only for his life to plummet back into the crimson with the next tick of purple flames. Torune’s skin blackened, and his eyes popped. Burned to sizzling pulp, he was plunged into a darkness that could not possibly be as bleak as the life he’d given so many others, the life he’d taken from Raine.

[Healing Burst: (Completion - 52% Expert)]

Waiting for the full cooldown was both frustrating and vindicating. Thankfully, the option to suicide couldn’t be used under a wardec’s Lockdown. Even if it could be, a pompous type like Torune would not have taken the time to learn something that was only useful to a loser. 

When soothing, restorative energy swept through Torune again, they got to start the burning all over. With the third use, the heal-over-time was fully stacked, allowing the real fun to begin. Raine kept at it for a dozen rotations, until the gruesome soundtrack of screams faded into whimpering moans.

The once proud master’s voice was a hollow rasp, his torment supreme. “Please… no more… Whatever you want. Just say it. I’ll do anything.”

Through gritted teeth, Raine bent low. “Did you spare any of the countless innocents you’ve tortured, raped, and killed? No. You didn’t. There is no pity in your heart, and so, you deserve none from your enemies. When you wake up, I hope you remember that this was only the beginning. I'm coming for you, Torune. No matter what territory or continent you flee to, even if you go to space, I’ll find you. Keep your neck washed for me.”

And so, Raine began anew, until the fires that had raged in his heart for thirty long years of suffering finally ran out of fuel. Only then did he reclaim the demonic fires and send the soul flame swarming down the man’s throat for the last time. When it was done, his chin lifted to the sky, breathing a bone-deep sigh. His moment of tranquility was interrupted by a strong, feminine voice calling from the side. He’d seen her watching, waiting, holding her forces back until he finished.

“Alaric. We need to talk.” Lavigne Monroe, the peak master of DyingNight, stood outside the range of his flames. Her jaw was clamped tight, her eyes flickering down to the ashes at his feet. “We surrender. We were wrong to be bullied into this by Damian. We never should have come.”

Raine snorted. “Not a chance. You chose to be here. Your corpses can rest here until they respawn.”

She planted hands on her hips, eyes narrowing. She knew how the game was played. “Obviously, we don’t expect you to simply allow us to walk away.” Lavigne’s expression hardened further. “Every one of my guilders will hand over a piece of equipment, and I will give you five thousand gold.”

Raine roared with laughter. “I spent more on Lockdown than you're offering, and I’ll get a piece of gear from killing each of you anyway. Why would I accept such a one-sided offer?”

She huffed but didn’t back down. “We both know CronGate is through. Already, other guilds are swarming into the power vacuum you’ve created.” She took a bold step forward into his range. “After what you’ve done here, they’re going to band together to suppress you lest you do the same to them. Besides, the Silvergate Kingdom is too large for you to rule in isolation. With so few guilders, you’ll need allies.”

“No.” Raine’s straightforward refusal, spoken with a tone of iron, made her blanch. “Astra doesn’t need allies who came to crush us in our supposed moment of weakness. I will end you here just as thoroughly as I will end CronGate. Whoever comes to replace you, if they dare to stand against us, I will crush them as well.”

Lavigne ground her teeth. “Fine! Two pieces each.”

“Are you not listening?” Raine took a menacing step toward her, his soul flames flaring behind like the writhing tails of a mystical beast. “When I said whoever comes to replace you, I meant after each of your people has been killed to zero. How much gear will you have left then? Why would I throw away such a priceless opportunity to show my enemies what happens to those who stand against Astra Infernum? No. You chose to come here, you chose to stand against me. This is merely the end result of your own actions.”

“Fuck! You’re a god-damned psychopath!” Lavigne’s composure finally broke. “Three pieces! And I swear, if you don’t take it, I will do whatever it takes to find you on Earth and end your miserable existence for good!”

Raine shrugged, the flames receding. “I accept.”

“What? You do?” Her expression whiplashed from shocked to suspicious.

“Sure.” His interface flashed open ever so briefly as he flicked her a document. “Soon as you sign this.”

She read the contract, which banned her guild from siding with Astra’s enemies for the next five years. She did not have to help him; she just could not stand in his way. Raine knew full well that leaving a cat no escape route would only make it fight all the harder. Except, of course, the contract was a trap. It looked like a good deal on the surface, a way to stay out of the conflict. She failed to realize that her people would never again be able to contest one of Astra’s farming locations. As his guild grew and took more land, she would be left with no choice but to either leave Silvergate or become a subsidiary of Astra Infernum.

Lavigne did not take long to make her choice.