Chapter 58 - Heading Off To Adventure And Glory

“You ready, kid?”

Eric forced himself to smile and nod at the look in Morlekai’s eyes. Because he was indeed ready.

Even if their smith had sighed and shaken his head, making it clear that even he had limits, and less than three days to design an arrow shaft that would stay intact when shot by a bow capable of breaking the sound barrier was definitely one of them.

Even if a girl who he had foolishly let touch his heart now wouldn’t even meet his gaze, because the fierce hatred he had for the orcs and the constant rush of getting stronger meant that he wouldn’t be retiring from the crucible of combat anytime soon.

Because sweet as Sue was, thinking that there was any shelter in this brave new world that promised the weak anything but hardship and misery was a fool's dream that depended on luck and the kindness of strangers who owed you nothing to keep one’s families and communities free of nightmare.

Eric would far rather depend on his own abilities, not on the lazy eyes of his foes, to secure his future.

Until he was strong enough, one day, to rip his enemy's yolk free of this world and end their tyranny entirely.

But until that day, nothing would serve him better than sweating and training all he could.

He smiled and showed Morlekai and the others a handful of his arrows of bone.

Now tinged the color of rubies and blood, bound to him, body and soul.

“Can I show you guys something?”

Morlekai gave a curious nod, after carefully scanning the area. “Sure. No one’s in sight. Show us what you got.”

And he did.

Flesh Sculptor skillcheck made!

Soul-forged Bone Arrow successfully compresses with second Soul-forged Bone Arrow!

He pulled out a spiraling arrow in the blink of an eye, made of a pair of arrows he could now effortlessly shape in his mind’s eye, far easier and quicker than even his now massive and nearly indestructible greater lizard wall, as he now thought of it, as these arrows were both much smaller and soul-linked to him. For all that it had taken, surprisingly, all four of his necromantic skills to shape, manipulate, and bind.

He took a deep breath and slowly drew the bow, surprised by what a difference it made to have four expectant pairs of eyes gazing at him as he carefully lined up his shot.

Eric grimaced, recalling that it had been much, much easier when no one was looking his way.

But now they most definitely were.

And when he finally released between the beats of his heart, after countless hours learning to balance the essences of Wrath and Dominion with the manipulation of Burst of Strength and Flesh Sculpting, he was just grateful it hadn’t exploded in fragments like it had the first dozen times he had tried to master his latest trick. At least this time it managed to hit, and blow right through, his massive greater lizard hide backstop. A bulwark of necromantically infused rawhide, bone, sinew, and absurdly dense muscle, now even stronger than the massive lizard it had come from, that not even orc-fired steel musket shot could pierce.

But his arrow had, he thought with a fierce smile, even the air cracked with the force of his arrow’s passage.

Even if it was a foot off the bullseye at 40 feet.

Which meant that against a charging enemy who didn’t have an orc’s crazy-wide shoulders, he would have missed.

Eric winced. Because despite all his effort and focus, he still clearly had a lot of work before it was anything like accurate. Not unless he tried combining skills of necromancy and Essence infusion with a certain weapon Perk that had only now gone from grayed-out to bold in the back of his mind. And he wasn’t so clueless that he didn’t understand that trying to use True Strike right now would take a hell of a lot more out of him than using it in anything like normal circumstances.

But at least he had juggled the application of his essences and skills enough that he could actually do it.

At least, in a controlled environment.

Which violent combat most definitely was not.

Hence, forcing himself to get used to firing under pressure, such as the formerly impatient stares of his friends, who now looked the farthest thing from impatient.

“Sweet shot, my man!” This from Drake, now soundly pounding him on the back. “Bone arrows from a bone bow, and you blasted a hole right in your undead lizard fort-thingy, right? Fucking epic, no question!”

Louie nodded. “Damn impressive, Eric.”

“Thanks,” Eric said. “I’ll be the first to admit that it still needs a lot of work. I’m totally tapping into my Soul Reserve pool with my essence Burst of Strength skill, and my necromantic Flesh Sculptor skill. And since I’m using the essences of both Dominion and Wrath, my Soul Reserves, let’s just call it a necromantic version of Alice’s Mana pool, dips down way too damn fast.”

Alice snorted. “Yeah, Eric, we know. And our deadliest abilities come with a cost that goes beyond temporarily draining that pool. If you’re not careful, you’ll be paying with your life, or at least your youth.” She flashed a hard smile. “Unless you’ve mastered the art of getting others to pay that price for you. And that’s a once-forbidden path that my brother and I know very well. A path no one belonging to the White or Grey factions would have countenanced, before the world changed. Now, with experience pools to draw from, and a world’s worth of invading baddies to feast upon, there’s no longer quite the moral dilemma there once was.”

She winked at Eric’s flummoxed expression after sharing far more about their crooked path with that single quip than Morlekai, presently sighing and shaking his head, had revealed in weeks. “Trust us, boy scout. As wonderfully clever and resourceful as you are, we’ve been walking our Crimson Paths a hell of a lot longer than you.”

“There is indeed a hidden multiplier to our Soul Reserves,” Morlekai clarified. “Because not everyone who walks our crooked path is equally gifted, regardless of what points they would dare put into that stat. And the System, for whatever reason, isn’t as concerned with quantifying that energy source as it is our Mana Pool.”

Alice shrugged. "Who cares? We know that every character point we put into Mana Pool gives us 3 mana, right? So, my guess is, whatever your Soul Reserves, you get three times that number as your ‘point pool’. Even if the System doesn’t give enough of a shit to point-quantify the cost of our blood magic, and it’s just a little blue bar of energy instead.”

Eric shrugged. Very deliberately mentioning absolutely nothing about the fact that his Mana Pool read as 168. He had never once tried to put points directly into it, seeing as he only had one recently claimed spell. But at least for him, it seemed to be derived from something called Arcane Potential, which had started at what his Interface had implied was a perfectly respectable 14.

“Yup, boss-man and Alice are pretty badass in their respective circles,” Drake enthused, clapping Eric on the shoulder. “But that was some mighty fine shooting. Might just pull our asses out of the fire, in the right situation. Question is, how many of those shots can you fire before you’ve fully shot your load?”

Eric shrugged. “I might be able to manage a double handful of these power shots, max, per hour, until I rank up my skills some more. And even if my shots are skewing left, because I need a deep hook with my 3-fingered draw, and my follow-through is shaky when I’m pouring that much power into my bow, at least I’m shooting in the right direction, and my arrows are finally hitting point first.”

Morlekai frowned. “I thought the smith was going to make steel arrows for you?”

Eric shook his head. “Not enough time. And his specialization is the Bardiche. Armor is fine, he deliberately didn’t specialize in that, but any other ‘creative endeavor’ in the weapon department has to be gifted. He’s not even allowed to make a profit on it. And there’s no way I’m going to shaft him to fill my orders for free when it’s damn clear that he’s pushing himself to exhaustion, trying to churn out dozens of bardiches both quickly and efficiently, for the sake of the entire town. So I had to make do with what I had."

Louie nodded. "Because if we weren't in the picture, he and his bardiches are the town's last defense against being overrun by all the shit down here. So let's clear out the damn incursion already, so Stibbs can stabilize the area and do his administrative voodoo. Then everyone's happy, and we finally get the fucking codes we've been promised."

“Damn right,” Alice said with a fierce smile that almost hid the tremble in her hands, before frowning at Eric. “So how come I never saw you practicing with these twisty arrows before?”

Eric shrugged. “Not gonna lie. Even if this bow might just be the sweetest weapon in my arsenal right now, just because it works so well with my Body Sculpting skill able to force so much glorious tension in the limbs with such a quick release, you know how close I came to being another one of the necromancer’s revenant puppets, like poor Velvet. So it took a little bit to get my courage up with the arrows.”

He grimaced in memory of the mind-numbing fear of necromantic backlash that had held him off from daring the arrows for far too long already. Yet he had found, to both his relief and surprise, that when he sought to form a blood-link, there was no issue at all.

Whatever had infected the artifact of a bow didn’t affect the arrows. And even if he had been almost positive that his Unorthodox Abjuration shattering the Necropolis gate used by King Olzgoth meant that he should be safe, he had been taking a gamble. He knew that.

And the way Morlekai was frowning and shaking his head, he knew it too.

Eric winced, turning his focus back to his arrows.

To his surprise, the bone ones had proven easier to soul-bind than even his wooden arrows. Much easier, in fact, which was kind of a scary thing in its own right.

Nonetheless, he had 13 arrows of bone that were now soul-linked to him which he had evolved into 6 double mass 40 inch long arrows and 1 normal one. A feat he could never have duplicated with steel or even wood in his ES space, which made it clear as day that he was definitely attuned to a bone-raiser’s arts, whether he wanted to admit it out loud or not.

Of the six he had enhanced, 3 now sported white-hot tips and all of them were capable of being shot at pretty much all speeds.

Of course, when it came to pinpoint accuracy, he was still best off with his wooden arrows, at least for now.

Alice whistled. “I gotta hand it to you, Eric. That is as impressive as hell. Almost as impressive as my lightning,” she said with a smile. “Even if you were a bit of an idiot, gambling with your soul a second time, binding those arrows. But don’t sweat it. Our little crew knows that results matter far more than methodology, and results you certainly got.”

Eric couldn't help but nod in agreement with all her points, his eyes drawn to the fine oak wand fastened securely to her hip, already knowing just how hard her lightning hit. Lightning that he suspected had had another upgrade since last he had seen her unleash it.

“Any other sweet tricks you care to share?”

Eric laughed. "You already saw me trying to machine-gun my crossbows before. Let's just say I'm getting a little bit better at that, even if I did almost tear off my finger, the other day."

Drake winced at that. “Slow and steady wins the race, my man.”

Eric smirked. “They only say that, so you won’t compete with fast and furious. Regardless, I have a few extra twists, but nothing you haven’t seen before.”

And it was true. They had all seen it before, but not in its present configuration. Now a full 20 of his crossbows were soul-bound, and six of them had oversized bodkin headed arrows tipped in white-hot flame. He flashed a hard smile in memory of how well bodkin heads could slip through mail links, even crack plate. The extra 4000 degrees all but assured they would pierce any defense they had run into so far, and in all likelihood, fry their foes from the inside before they could do anything but gasp and die. Or at least, he hoped it would work that way.

Of course, there had been a cost to soul-binding all those crossbows and the bronze-headed spear as well, which John had assured him was as razor-sharp and durable and as finally constructed as any steel-headed spear he had seen since the world's end. And that had been enough for Eric to bind it, pleased to find that Piercing Strike was more efficient with it than ever as a result.

Even if the number of times he could safely use his weapon perks in any pitched battle was still severely limited, it definitely helped to use weapons that were now literally a part of him. A part he could pull out and use in the blink of an eye.

Of course there had been a cost. Soul-Binding those weapons and a final item had depleted almost the entirety of the experience pool that would otherwise have him on the cusp of level 10, which he would have to earn back before infusing his core once more.

Perhaps most significantly, his permanent Soul Reserves were now back down to 25.6. He deemed that an acceptable cost, so long as he never brought his modified Soul Reserves below 20. Because even if his Mental Resistance bonus was based on the original score, both his Necromantic and Essence skills depended upon the 'magic soul pool' as he thought of it, that Soul Reserves granted him. If anything, he wanted it higher. Much higher.

Definitely a place to put future points.

But having twenty of his crossbows, both of his sabers, an absurdly sharp bronze spear, and two of his four bardiches linked to his soul, such that he could now switch between them all in the blink of an eye, even in the middle of combat, would give him a kick-ass advantage in any melee skirmish.

Or so he hoped.

Not that he had dared to train switching weapons while sparring with his friends, having taken John's warnings to heart. Because that was one ace up his sleeve he didn't want to risk revealing to anyone he might one day be fighting against in earnest.

Yet all he had to do was look at the bone bow in his hands he could now use to launch arrows cracking the sound barrier to consider the benefits of infusing all those weapons with his life-force well worth the cost.

Especially considering the payoff he had gotten in terms of his most recent interface messages, his skills increasing at a rate that a chuckling Drake had assured him was absolutely absurd and disgusting, just the other day.

Congratulations!

Risking serious soul-strain torturing your body and your soul-bound bow has definitely paid off!

You have achieved Rank 14 with the Bow skill!

Flesh Sculptor is now rank Rank 13!

He pushed away as best he could the mixed painful feelings he had about a beautiful girl only a few years older than he, who had totally wrecked his first few days of training, and it had been completely worth it. And he didn’t blame her a bit for needing someone far more stable than him or Drake. Clearly, she wanted a man who might actually live long enough to watch their future children grow up.

Assuming they weren’t all eaten by orcs as vulnerable zero level nothings. Because Eric refused to pretend that wasn’t a very real risk.

He shook his head and sighed with a painful mixture of longing and regret, and resolve most of all.

Because even at the cost of an aching heart, he was determined to embrace the massive, perhaps insurmountable, challenge before him: To do everything in his power to get as strong as he possibly could, as fast as he could, so that no monster or tyrant could ever threaten him, or the lives of those he loved, ever again. And if that meant his love life wouldn’t be worth shit right now, then so be it.

Because the greatest gift he could ever give a girl who won his heart was the knowledge that, in his arms, she never had to worry about inhuman monsters butchering her and their future children. At least, not so long as he was alive.

And he intended to be very, very difficult for anyone to kill.

Louie’s snort brought Eric back down to Earth. “Cute trick with your bone bow, kid. I won’t even ask how many times you sneaked past the gate guards who fucking hero-worship you to hole up in a side-corridor and practice those power shots. Because sure as shit, you’ve been practicing, and I haven’t heard the air cracking like gunfire even once, back in town. But you do know you’re probably going to be pole-arming it, right?”

Eric nodded. “Yes. We’re not sniping wandering zombie bosses, or orcs at range. Against close-fighting or swarming critters, we can’t go wrong with our war blades.”

Drake grinned and nodded in approval. “Got that right, kid.”

“But let’s avoid your inferno blade, if we can help it,” Morlekai cautioned. “And before you start, yes, it was perfect against the undead. But using it in close quarters in dim light risks blinding the rest of us, or covering us in burns, is not optimal tactics."

“Besides, we wouldn’t want all that delicious blood to go to waste,” Alice said with a throaty chuckle.

Eric nodded. “Makes sense to me,” he said, glad that he had decided at the last minute not to superheat the edge on his bardiche or spear, not that he even had the reserves for it, at the moment. “Nice clean cuts, all the way. It’s the only way I’m going to increase my iado skill at this point, anyway.”

Morlekai raised an eyebrow at this, but said only, “Supply check: Are we all ready to go?”

Eric was about to nod along with anyone else, but winced. “Shit.”

Drake frowned. “What’s wrong, boy scout?”

“Remember what happened to all my thousands of pounds of rations?”

Drake blinked, then chuckled softly. “That’s right! It got turned into your portable barricade, didn’t it? And we all know how strong that is against even a titan’s blows, believe me. Pretty fucking neat trick.”

Louie smirked. “Yeah, but it won’t seem nearly so neat if my stomach’s growling. Morlekai?”

Morlekai nodded. “Actually, Alice thought of a solution to that.”

Alice grinned. “You were asking what the kettle was for last night, Drake, remember?”

Drake chuckled softly. “Yeah, you kept saying it was a surprise.”

“Well, the only surprise is how well it turned out! Come on, Eric, one last thing to pack before we go.”

And a grinning Eric headed back inside with Alice, impressed at the sheer volume of spaghetti, sauce, and mystery meatballs in that regiment-sized kettle. “Wow.”

Alice grinned. “I know. Taste it! Who the fuck says powdered garlic isn’t just as good as the real thing? Anyway, pack it up, we’re on a schedule.”

Eric nodded, doing just that before waving to Lucy, who had offered to watch the house while her boyfriend and his crew were gone, as she put it. He pretended she wasn’t judging him with her hard smile for having broken Sue’s heart. But as much as he enjoyed the fantasy of living a bucolic life in a hidden little valley somewhere with a beautiful girl by his side, abandoning his friends, or this town, just wasn't an option for him.

Still, the weight of Lucy’s hard gaze weighed on him like a mental attack as he winced a smile and quickly headed back out the door.

Before being stopped cold by Alice’s hard grip. “Eric.”

Eric winced. “Yes?”

Alice stared at him for long moments, pinning him with her gaze. She no longer looked like the sweetest of forbidden fruit it was almost, but not quite, permissible to savor. Nor did she appear a haggard recovering addict, whose faded beauty and broken dreams highlighted the hazards of darkest vice. Now she looked like exactly who and what she was. A vibrant girl in her early twenties with a couple smile lines on otherwise flawless features, probably from smoking a bit too much, but was no less striking for it.

“You know that eventually we’re going to have to talk about Sue, Right?”

Eric winced. “Yeah...maybe. But sure as hell, not now.”

She nodded, furrowing her brow, crimson fingernails brushing his pristine lacquered scale mail. Then her eyes widened. “Eric. You didn’t!”

Eric smirked, realizing that she got it. “Actually… yeah, I did.”

She shook her head in disbelief. "Eric, it weighs at least fifty pounds, if you count the gambeson. Believe me, I know. I've been adjusting to the weight since we got it!”

Eric grinned, looking down at his armor. “Yup. But between my Journeyman Necromancy skills and the familiarity bonus you better believe I earned after that mad charge into a swarm of zombies and revenants… it only cost me an effective 5 pounds, or 500 experience, to forge the Blood-link, and only 1 point from my effective Soul Reserves to anchor it to my soul. And now..."

She flushed and gasped, lurching back, as did Lucy, still looking on, when Eric was suddenly wearing nothing but briefs, socks, and a white undershirt.

“I can summon scale armor and gambeson on or off, at will. Since it’s totally linked to my soul. Best of all, it will always repair itself to a pristine state after every fight, so long as I spend a single experience point to do so.”

And that didn’t even include what he thought he could do with it from a necromantic perspective. But that experimentation could wait for another time.

Eric caught himself before he blathered any further, exquisite hearing picking up both Lucy’s awed curse, and the hungry look in Alice’s eyes.

“But on the flip side, I’m now at the very bottom of Level 9 once more. So let’s get adventuring, shall we?” He said, resummoning his armor in the blink of an eye.

Alice snorted and shook her head. "Sometimes, I just want to eat you alive. You know that, boy scout?”

Eric winced. "Uh yeah… I'm going to take that as a compliment?"

She chuckled throatily, before handing him plates, utensils, and seven jugs of distilled lake water.

“Come on, time’s a-wasting!” She waved at an awed-looking Lucy. “See you around, beautiful. And here’s to the latest crop of fresh buds!”

Lucy grinned at that, showcasing a perfect pair of dimples with her smile. “Take care, you two. And tell your dark prince I’ll be thinking about him, okay?”

Alice chuckled at that, giving Eric a bemused look as they headed out the door. “You don’t think he looks like that actor from the TV show, do you?”

Eric smirked. “The snarky one with the nightclub? I was thinking more like Rice’s favorite midnight badboy, but sure. Either works, I guess.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that,” she teased.

“Please don’t,” he sighed, walking out the door, catching Morlekai’s bemused look.

“We ready to head out?”

Eric nodded.

“Good then, let’s go.”

And as much as Morlekai was playing the cool leader, Drake and Louie stepping in tandem by his side, Eric couldn’t help but feel the weight of everyone’s stares as they entered the town proper. Intellectually he knew their population was close to a thousand, but to see so many men, women, and children looking at them all with a strange mixture of wonder and hope… totally different than his experiences with having a celebrity mother and sister. This was more intense, more real, by orders of magnitude.

Eric found himself pinned by the gazes of men and women who weren't just admiring Eric and his crew playing heroes on the big screen for fun… No. These were the gazes of desperate people hoping that Eric and his friends would continue to take on the role of heroes in real life, protecting them all from dire threats that could manifest at any time.

Truly, it humbled him.

More than ever before, he felt a duty and obligation to this town and its people, so many of them refugees and families just looking for an end to the nightmare their lives had become.

A fresh start, and maybe a chance at safety and happiness.

And if this quest could help them achieve it?

He shook his head and shared a smile with Alice.

“Feels good to be the hero, huh?”

He chuckled softly. “You know what? It does. Awkward as hell, because I don’t really feel like I deserve all those smiles and handshakes… but good.”

“Three cheers for the defenders of Junk Town!” This from a handful of enthusiastic looking fresh-faced guards, several now sporting rather grizzly scars, but all were smiling and cheering as Eric’s group passed them, Eric recognizing at least a few of the kids from the desperate night they had all been fighting a seeming losing battle against the undead.

“Looking good, boys,” Eric said, thumping a few helmets. “And you’re keeping those bardiche’s sharp! Keep up the daily training, because with us gone..”

The largest of the boys gulped and actually saluted. “We know, sir. The town’s depending on us.”

One of the other kids sighed. “And how fucked up is that? We risked our lives the other night, and we’re not even getting levels, because the orcs force everyone to use those homicidal death-pods.”

"Don't worry, Billy. We'll get a fresh start, once we find safe pods in Freetown," their leader assured, all of them nodding in unison as Eric and the gang passed them with a final wave.

Eric turned to Alice as they headed through the ruins of the gate, a team of men hard at work pausing just long enough to honor them with salutes and cheers as they passed by.

“The hopes of our fair town ride on your shoulders, heroes!” said none other than Mayor Stibbs himself, beaming with his white hair and flushed cheeks, and Eric couldn't help but grin and wave at the crowd as they left the relative warmth of their tiny community to brave the cold, dark, and definitely vaster corridors once more.