YoTS January ~ 37!

CHAPTER 37

“No.” Grant puffed out his chest in defiance, even still resembling a child in front of the immense form of Count Tuesday.

“Have it your way. The law… is on my side.” Without wasting a single second, Count Tuesday flowed forward and swung his multicolored club into Grant’s stomach. The colors on this Wielded Weapon, the source of his Vassal’s weapons, was so much more potent than Grant expected. His speed and form were impeccable, and Grant had become complacent due to dealing with the weak subordinantes.

Damage taken: 10 blunt damage. (11 mitigated)

Grant gasped and toppled backward, winded from the hit, but also shocked at how much damage had just been blocked. He managed to refocus in time to dodge the second attack; the green glow had made him very nervous as it passed a whisker from his face. Green - from Grant’s experience - meant poison. He’d rather be burned or frozen that have his health bar deplete over time; although the other options weren’t particularly appealing. As he scrambled back on all fours, Count Tuesday lunged forward and clipped Grant on the chin.

Damage taken: 12 blunt damage. (9 mitigated) Debuff added: Paralyzed (2 seconds remain).

“You have a tough chin! That would have broken a bone for most people!” Count Tuesday laughed at the sight of Grant’s body convulsing as if struck by lightning. “Do you focus on armor cultivation, then? I hit you directly, after all, and that weak gear you wear can’t be doing much to help.”

The young man couldn’t answer. He felt the lightning was coursing through him, and he just didn’t have the speed required to dodge the club. He knew it, and obviously so did Count Tuesday. The man left him there, shaking in agony. Grant growled and forced his body to still. The Count could have put Grant out of his misery at any point, but decided to toy with him instead.

Grant needed to figure out why he was able to take such a pounding, he glanced to the side and looked at the changes to himself.

Name: Grant Monday

Rank: Wielder

Class: Foundation Cultivator

Cultivation Achievement Level: 8 -> 9

Cultivation Stage: Early Summer

Inherent Abilities: Swirling Seasons Cultivation

Health: 184/184

Mana: 6/6

Characteristics

Physical: 89 (Cultivation Stage Maximized. Gains will be retroactively applied when all stages are aligned.)

Mental: 23 (+1)

Armor Proficiency: 29 (+1)

Weapon Proficiency: 46 (+2)

His jaw was clenched too hard to say any words out loud, which was a good thing. He would have gasped the information aloud if he had been able to. This was the most shocking thing he had experienced today, including the lightning. The two hits had only taken twenty-two points of his total health. When he had first gained his Wielded Weapon, that would have been nearly half of his total. Now it was only a small fraction.

Apart from the blunt damage, the yellow lightning effect didn’t leave any damage over time. Count Tuesday stepped closer. “Have you had enough yet? I don’t have time for your games. You have a little skill, I give you that, but you are no match for the might of House Tuesday.”

“N… never.” Grant sucked in a ragged breath and got up unsteadily. What other choice did he have? If he didn’t get the opportunity to confront and defeat Lord January, then he would surely die. At least if he died now, no one else would see his humiliation. He wouldn’t need to put his friends through the fear of watching him die in the fighting pit in front of all the Lords and Ladies.

Grant rolled away and to his feet. He ducked and dodged, but try as he might, he couldn’t get a hit in against his opponent. It took everything he had just to stay out of the way of the spectrum shifting shaft, and yet Count Friday yawned - actually yawned - in boredom. Grant was breathing heavily, and wasn’t getting anywhere. His stamina was dropping fast. As Grant dodged once more, the Count lunged forward and the club connected with the exposed flesh of Grant’s ankle.

“Ahh!” The club must have been blue at the time of the hit, because a deadly cold quickly spread up his leg and began sapping his life.

“It’s over.” Count Tuesday stopped and took a step away.

Although Grant hadn’t taken any damage, the debuff stated that his body would be completely frozen within two minutes, and would remain so for a further one minute. Within moments his foot was numb from the cold. He dragged his freezing body away from the oncoming wrath of Count Tuesday. With no other options, he swung February Twenty Nine at one of the huge piles of randomly stacked gear in the storeroom, hoping to create a distraction.

For a long second, it didn’t seem as if it would move. Then the pile suddenly dropped and toppled onto the bulk of Count Tuesday… who was taken to the ground with a shout of alarm, and buried. The falling items started a chain reaction, and more and more of the poorly stacked goods and crates began falling, until almost nothing was left to fall.

“Is he… dead?” There was only silence. Grant knew that he should get up and attempt to run, but he stood transfixed by the sea of crates, and within thirty seconds now his body would be frozen rigid.

The silence was broken by a deafening roar. Count Tuesday had slammed his weapon upward. He exploded out of the mass of crates, his multi-hued eyes glowing. Grant wasn’t in the mood to fight any more, and he knew that he wasn't going to get another chance if he let this man break free.

Acting on instinct, relying on his many hours of focused training, the dull blade of February Twenty Nine shot forward and sunk into the massive chest of Count Tuesday…  who hadn’t even bothered wearing armor when he faced off against the annoyance that was Grant Monday.

Count Tuesday looked in wonder at the length of steel poking out of his chest, then down at Grant, before his eyes closed… for the last time.

Grant's body froze, literally, as the debuff went into full effect. For an agonising minute, he held onto February Twenty Nine as it remained penetrated in Count Tuesday’s body. He wanted to look away, but he was physically unable to do so.

He did this. For the first time, he had thought it over and made the conscious choice to take another person’s life. He had killed the leader of the Peacekeepers of the entire district of January. Was his quest worth taking someone else’s life to save his own? Maybe he could have found another way to confront Lord January?

After an endless minute, his body thawed, and a single tear rolled down his cheek. He forced himself to move; If he broke down now, he’d never get back up. “If I follow this path, I’ll have a mountain of corpses to climb. I could leave here now, find a town and blend in with the locals. I’ll get fat and have fun as a Monday, enjoying the remainder of my days. At least this way, no one else would get hurt. No one but… me.”

“No. No!” Grant yanked his sword back and wiped it clean on the corpse before him. “If I give up now, everything I have done will be in vain. Count Tuesday’s death? Meaningless. How could I go off and have fun, knowing that I killed him for a task I then abandoned?”

He burst out of a rear exit in the workhouse and into a quiet alleyway. The immediate danger was gone, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Grant felt like he was trapped in a maze. Windowless walls soared up, shrouding the alleyway in darkness. “If only I had a set of stealth armor!”

Not ten minutes later, trumpets blared. Not in the familiar call for breakfast, lunch or dinner; no, this din was loud and persistent. He knew what it meant, even if those he passed didn’t. “They’ve discovered Count Tuesday’s body.”

He picked up his pace, not sure where to go, but wanting to get as far away from the poorhouse as possible. Someone down an alley called out, “I think he went this way!”

Marching footsteps were muffled by the mossy cobbles, but somehow the Peacekeepers were on his trail. Grant broke into a run, slipping immediately and almost losing his footing as he tried to take a shortcut. “There! I think I see him!”

Grant didn’t risk looking back. He picked up his pace and came out in a bustling market; knocking over two shoppers. All three of them went sprawling to the ground. Angry fists and shouts ensued as he mumbled an apology before descending into the throng of bodies milling around.

“Hey. Watch it!” A servant carrying a basket wasn’t amused when Grant bumped into him. A moment later the servant went flying as a House Tuesday Peacekeeper barrelled into him, spilling the contents of his basket across the cobbles. Yellow vests approached from all sides. Grant stayed low, not having time to sift through his pack to find the scarf.

There, a door that was slightly ajar! Grant squeezed through the opening and found himself in a stable, surrounded by stable hands that were too engrossed with their tasks to pay him any mind. There was no obvious way out that he could see; apart from a wooden ladder to the upper level of the stables. He took the rungs of the ladder two at a time, and for a moment could have been back home at the farm. Hay bales stacked neatly, fodder for the horses… he took a moment to catch his breath and sat heavily on one of the bales.

“Did you see him? I’ll check in here.” A noise came from below. Grant didn’t even dare to breathe. Any noise would give away his position. “Not down here.”

“Well, you better check up top, just to be sure! Can’t let a murderer get away!” Grant was frozen in indecision. He tried to squeeze between two bales. Sandwiched there, a piece of hay tickled his nostrils. He only had to remain hidden for a couple of minutes till they moved on to search another building- “Achoo!”

Celestial feces.

“Up here! I think he’s here!” Footsteps clomped up the ladder, which groaned from the unaccustomed weight. Grant darted out, his hiding place compromised. He made a dash for a window and leapt out headfirst; not knowing what was waiting on the other side.

He landed in a heap on the castle ramparts, shocked that someone had been allowed to build such a tall building right next to the defensive wall of the keep. It worked to his benefit, but… he took his mind off it. Not his problem. To his right lay the castle keep, buildings, and a whole lot of angry House Tuesday Vassals. They were ransacking shops and pushing peasants aside as they searched… for him. On his left, on the other side of the crenellated walls, lay a sheer drop.

Footsteps smacked off wooden boards as someone approached the window of the hay loft. He considered jumping amongst the mass of bodies below, but half of them were out for his blood. He’d have to put the House Tuesday hounds off his scent. A plan forming, Grant jumped up on the wall and lowered himself over the other side, dangling into the abyss; his fingers straining to hold his weight. Two voices he didn’t recognize came until they were right above him.

“I’m sure he was here…” The first voice was very confused.

“Well if he was, he would have jumped back down into the market. He wouldn’t be daft enough to jump over the castle wall now, would he?” Person number two growled at the first.

“I suppose not?”

“C’mon.”  The second person stated in exasperation. “That‘s how Lord January deals with the criminals, you know?”

Person number one had clearly not been in this position for very long. “What do you mean?”

“He forces them to jump from a platform. Right over the wall they go. Listen here… quiet like. THis goes to no one else. He’s got a sick sense of humor, left over from the war a thousand years ago. He promises the convicts that if they flap their arms hard enough, they’ll fly.”

“They believe him?”  Person one sounded doubtful.

“He’s the Lord January.” Person two -  who Grant was really starting to dislike - chuckled, “You can sometimes see their little arms waving as they disappear.”

Grant watched as a glob of spit flew over the wall and into the darkness below. When he was sure they were gone, he tried to pull himself back up. However, the  trifecta of gravity, his size, and his fatigued fingers weren’t having any of it. One by one, he felt his fingers give up. He scrambled fruitlessly, trying to grip on to something as his body slid down the steep wall. “This wasn’t how I-!”

Then he, like the criminals before him, flew.

His flight was short lived, as his body connected painfully with a tree branch that creaked alarmingly. It had grown out of the wall, which had clearly not been cared for in a long time. He clung on for dear life, and gulped as he stared into the depths. Vertigo overwhelmed him. “How long can I last like this? There’s no way to climb back up. I can either stay here and die of starvation, or drop into the darkness. Who knows… maybe I’ll learn to fly on the way down?”

“I just had to pick up the sword, didn’t I?” He lay there, limbs wrapped around the tree limb, feeling strangely at peace. Grant closed his eyes and loosened his grip. He was calm. All he could hear was the wind, distant cries and shouts from the castle, the trickle of water nearby, and smell of the people of the city. That was not a happy smell.

“Wait… the trickle of water?” Grant didn’t notice it before. He looked around, and found a rusty iron grate near the tree branch. The smell came from the foul brown liquid oozing out of the sewer grate and into the darkness.

“A sewer!” He’d never been so happy to smell sewage as he was right now. Grant pulled himself along the branch and used February Twenty Nine to lever open the grate, which swung open with a screech. Rather than try to jump directly into the opening - impossible from this angle - he pulled himself onto the rusty metal grate directly. His hands dug into the rust coated metal, and his legs flailed around until he managed to pull himself through and into the welcoming, if smelly, opening.

As he lay in the waste from peasant and Noble alike, his laughter echoed along the sewer pipe. Not wanting to stew in the stench for longer than he needed, Grant got up and made his first tentative steps into the darkness.