FMH ~ 41!

Luke had gotten bored simply walking when there was a fight that was clearly in progress. His sack of swords and armor had mostly been absorbed by Walking Arsenal by this point that time, and he needed another one hundred and fifty steel swords before he would be able to generate his own with his Mana. Sure, he was in the process of absorbing one right now, thanks to that sentry guy, but one sword was not going to cut it.

“Ha! Cut it! I'm still funny.” Luke laughed uproariously as he jogged at a fast pace toward the front. He could see trenches in the distance, places where men could hide from artillery spells or duck into during a cavalry charge. As he moved, the last of the equipment he had… salvaged from the guard post finished vanishing into motes of mana. Luke decided to throw away his ragged, damaged blanket. He grabbed an entire tent as he went through the area, a small one, and didn't even bother to fold it up. 

He got closer to the battle, and the ground under his feet became muddy and bloody; in a word: disgusting. Luke didn't mind. He moved faster, faster, and finally was in range. Words tore from his lips, and in his excitement, he bellowed them. “Bum Rush!”

Luke crossed the last one hundred meters in a flash, his legs pumping as fast as they could. He swung his fist, hitting a surprised soldier that had been planning on skewering one of his countrymen with a sword. His new sword.

Damage: 119 (Blunt)

The soldier that he hit collapsed; dead in an instant. Luke waited for the Potentia updates, but nothing appeared. He spat on the ground and furiously growled, “They aren't even worth Potentia? How weak are they?”

Grabbing the sword that the soldier had been planning to use as it fell, Luke pinned the tent that he had brought with him to the ground. Three more basic attacks, three more soldiers defeated and three swords added to the pile. Now that the tent had been pinned down in each of the four corners, Luke went on a rampage. There was simply nothing the standard soldiers could do to stop him. Their attacks hit him, arrows slammed into his body - most landing on his mana-made armor and falling off - but Luke continued moving. “Time to get geared up!”

The arrows stopped after barely penetrating his skin, and the swords created sparks as they skittered off of his glowing armor. Five, ten, thirty men dead on the ground in under two minutes. It would have been more, faster, but Luke was taking the time to carefully remove their armor and pile everything onto his pinned-down tent.

Even so, he was moving faster than any standard human could hope to match. There was one last push to try to defeat him; clearly, they were not thinking straight because of the rush of adrenaline in their minds. All the charge of full battalion of soldiers did… was make Luke grin.

“Bum Rush!” He didn't bother to control himself, Luke simply barreled directly into the group as it ran at him. Anyone in his way was crushed, and when he stopped, Luke was surrounded on all sides. His fists began to lash out; for most of the people Luke attacked, the last thing that they saw was a glowing afterimage of goat horns closing in on their face.

“Soldier! What in tarnation are you doing? Ascenders are not allowed to take the field!” The shout was coming from Luke's side of the encampments, but he ignored it in favor of stripping the weapons and armor from the fallen battalion of men. “You are going to force them to send out their Mages!”

That didn't make Luke pause, he turned to look at the man running toward him across no-man's-land. “Mages…! Will they have magic weapons or armor?”

“Does it matter if they have them? Can you survive getting hit by a meteor?” The Officer was shouting in his face at this point, and only Luke's Sigil kept him from reducing this man to a meat paste as well. “I am ordering you to get your rear behind our front lines! I’ll be taking you to the General immediately!”

“Who are you?” Something about this Officer was ringing a bell in Luke's mind. He looked down, “Nice boots.”

“I am Captain Baker, and you are in direct violation of the Ascender accords!” Captain Baker grabbed at Luke, but the Murderhobo simply continued doing what he was doing, and the Captain showed surprise as he was easily dragged along. “Are you trying to bring the full might of the Dynasty of Dogs down on us?”

“You can’t order me to do anything. We’re the same rank. One hundred ten… one twenty?” Luke shook his head and stopped counting. “I need ten more, be right back.”

With that statement, Luke left a flabbergasted Captain standing over the newly-acquired gear, and charged into enemy lines once more. Ten bodies and swords were rapidly thrown toward the Captain, and he dived out of the way to allow them to land on the spread-eagle tent. Luke returned to the Captain, pulled the swords that were holding the tent out of the ground, and finally rolled everything up into a makeshift sack. He tossed the blood-dripping sack over his back and looked at the man in front of him. “All right, where are we going now?”

“Abyssal crazy Ascenders!” Captain Baker started running back toward their encampment, with Luke easily keeping pace with him even though he was carrying over a hundred swords and a bulging sack full of armor. “There's something wrong with you, isn't there, boy?”

“Not anymore! Got the swords I need.” Luke replied directly as he hopped over a trench. “Armor too. Needed something for my head and legs, been trying to make goathide work, and it just never did.”

“Goathide? What?” Captain Baker looked at Luke askance, then turned to face him fully. “Hold a moment, I know you… you are the son of that leatherworker we got our boots from. What’s it been, two years? Three? What happened to you, lad?”

Luke didn't reply, though his eyes did wander to the tracks that Captain Baker was leaving in the mud. There was a symbol there, the same symbol that now appeared on his Sigil. Captain Baker seemed to have calmed down, and the realization that he knew the man he was running with had put him in a different frame of mind. “You don't even know it, but you made a huge mess of things here. I'll do what I can to put in a good word for you. I suppose no one has explained the rules, if you have just arrived?”

“That sounds correct.” Luke didn't actually care about the rules, but if it would keep him from having to do annoying things, he would agree every time.

“On the plus side, you wiped out a swath of our enemies, should be enough to give our men a day off. Unless you royally pissed off the enemy commander, of course. I guess we’ll see by tomorrow.” Captain Baker sighed, and they slowed down as they moved into the tented area and arrived at the tent that Luke had seen his group going toward earlier. “General, Captain Baker reporting in! I have a SitRep for you, a critical incident.”

The aide-de-camp came out, took a single look at Luke, and went back indoors. A few moments later, a man who was clearly a General and in charge of the area stepped out. There was something about him, an aura of power and authority, which made Luke realize that he was in the presence of another Ascender. That made sense to him; if the person with the most authority in the area was a standard human, the Ascenders would have run roughshod over him. “Report, Captain.”

“Sir! An Ascender fresh out of the Initiate ranks arrived today, this man here, and joined at the battlefield immediately. He killed nearly two hundred opponents before I was able to stop him, took only about… four and a half minutes.” Captain Baker explained as succinctly as possible, swallowing deeply as he realized how short that timeframe had actually been. “He had not been taught the rules, simply rushed in as soon as he got here. I don't think he was trying to destroy our battle rhythm; he was just over-enthusiastic.”

“I'll be the judge of that.” The General locked eyes with Luke, giving him a stare down that would have made a normal person cringe. “I got a report from the Archmage about a troublesome individual that would be joining us shortly. I can only assume that you are the… Murderhobo, is it?”

“That's what I'm told.” Luke was clearly uninterested, his entire focus on the weapons and armor that was contained in the rolled tent he was holding.

“I suppose you have not been informed as to exactly what that title means.” Power was gathering around the General, he was clearly displeased with the dismissive attitude Luke was displaying. “I was told that the Enchanter who decided that name didn't even understand exactly how apt the name was. A Murderhobo is a derogatory term for a criminal Ascender, a person who wanders the world, unattached to any community, indiscriminately killing and looting.”

Luke simply shrugged, it sounded like the name was fitting. The General narrowed his eyes further, practically squinting at Luke. “By the Enchanter's report, he named you that because you said that your portal leads you to a place called ‘Murder World’, your gear was all over the place, and you smelled terrible. In fact, he wanted your class name just to be ‘ hobo’, but you were too powerful to offend so directly. That clearly did not work out well for him, our healers are still working to stabilize his condition.”

“However, that was proof that your Sigil does not work as it should. You should not be able to attack members of our Ascender Corps, nor should you be able to be so disrespectful to the Military Officers around you.” At this point, the aide-de-camp stepped out of the tent and handed a file over to the General. The General opened it, read over a few lines and nodded, then handed it to Luke. “There is only one thing that we can do. You need to go further away from our area, where your tendencies will not impact people like they will here. Here are your new orders.”

An awkward silence stretched, with the General holding out the folder, and Luke ignoring him. Finally, the General barked, “Take the folder, and get out of my sight!”

Luke’s Sigil lit up, and his hand stretched out to take the folder. As soon as he did, information poured into his mind.

Quest failed: Assist the warfront! You lose two months’ worth of pay. A new Quest has been assigned.

Quest gained: Sending monsters after monsters (Repeatable). You have been deemed too dangerous to remain in the same area as other humans. You and your team will now be employed as a kingdom-sanctioned bounty hunters, gaining pay and resources only by completing dangerous and deadly tasks that others are deemed too valuable to be sent to complete.

Your first task is to reclaim a mountain pass in the Northeast section of the Kingdom; a map has been provided. The pass has fallen to the Dynasty of Dogs, but the method they used to capture the pass is unknown. There are reports that monsters are involved. Succeed, or die trying.

Reward: Pay and Merit commiserate with the danger and difficulty of the mission. This will be evaluated by your Sigil once the mission has been completed. All rewards must be received in person by your Commanding Officer. Failure: death.

“Any questions?” The General was hoping to see doubt, fear, uncertainty. All he got in reply from Luke was a smile.

“I'm not seeing a time limit.”