Vandalvagabond

The Bargainer 1

Added 2021-08-04 21:55:36 +0000 UTC

Commissioned by Kejmur

The Bargainer
Chapter 1

-VB-

Everywhere I went, trouble followed.

It didn’t matter where I went, too. Actually, where I went mattered. If I traveled to somewhere that was simply more aware of themselves, then I quickly became a target for them to remove or capture.

“OH FUCK-!”

Tumbling out of the air, I quickly chanted a quick series of forgotten words into the necklace around my neck. Air formed around me like a spherical cushion and prevented me from face planting into the muddy ground. I bounced away from where I fell, which was good because a giant elephant leg stomped where I would have remained.

I dispelled the effect, which put the necklace on a 24 hour cooldown, and landed on my two feet to face my enemy.

Shaped generally like an elephant, the Intruder possessed the head of a goat with an elephant trunk nose, and tusks of a wolf. It stood at least fifteen meters tall and ten meters wide.

“You opened the gate! Why do you seek to shut it!” it trumpeted angrily at me.

“It was not for you to use!” I roared right back as I invoked my second artifact, a golden wisdom tooth that I replaced with my old one. I bit down on it and demanded my magic change me. It happened instantaneously. One moment, I was a human standing on two legs. In the next moment, a plume of thick white smoke erupted from where I stood and obscured me as I changed.

I shot out of the smoke with my shapeshifted body. My burst of action dispelled the smoke, and revealed my new form, a Battle Wolf from the Toriko-verse. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the necessary magical power to turn into an adult, which was a hundred meters tall and nearly a kilometer long beast. Instead, I ended up as a forty meter tall and one hundred meters long adolescent.

The Intruder looked up at me, his fifteen meters now small compared to my forty. “Oh. You became big.”

I grinned down at the Intruder before swiping with my paws.

Now, unlike a regular animal, a Battle Wolf was a creature of the Gourmet World. They and all other creatures like them were … ridiculous. Never mind the size of the wolf, a Battle Wolf could do ridiculous things.

That little swipe I just did?

It just sliced the Intruder into four slices.

It couldn’t even screech in pain when it got sliced open, but it wasn’t called “Intruder” with a capital i for no reason. It glared at me hatefully before it pulled itself back together and trumpeted back to me hatefully and defiantly. Both of us knew that with my transformation, I up-ended the balance of power from his favor to mine.

It swiped at me, and I bit down twice within the same moment at two different spaces, and those limbs tore away, leaving only stumps where they used to be on the Intruder.

It shrieked as it backpedaled. Well, backpedaling would be an understatement because it took two steps to cross more than a kilometer.

I darted forward, crossing the same distance in a single hop, and chomped down on the Intruder’s elephant nose. With a single jerk of my head, I tore it out of its face and ate it.

It roared.

I barked with laughter.

It grew in size, and I knew things just got serious. Instead of retreating back to its original realm, the Intruder was pulling all of itself into this realm, which meant that it intended to make this realm its new home.

And I couldn’t allow that.

I snarled and jumped.

It shrieked and struck back with its clawed hands.

---

Back to my human form, I sat while huffing in exhaustion. Behind me, the Intruder’s body laid, already becoming massless dust as its body dissolved without a powerful mind to keep it stable in this foreign dimension.

“... Well, well, well.”

I looked up.

“Ah, goddamnit, why are you lot here?” I groused as a group of two dozen armored and armed exorcists walked towards me. The man leading them was a powerful individual himself, and I didn’t think I could win a fight against him if he went all out.

“Well, well, well!” he grinned as he repeated himself.

“... What do you want, clown?” I asked Mephistopheles, the headmaster of the True Cross Academy. Despite dressing himself with a top hat, a Victorian coat, and other archaic fashion which were all painted in white with literal sprinkles and sparkles, he was not a man to be trifled with.

“Aw, why do you have to insult me so~?” the demon asked me while his exorcists looked at me warily. He dropped his creepy grin. “Well, if you want to know what I really want, then what I want is for you to leave this realm and go elsewhere.”

I clicked my tongue in irritation. “Am I fucking up your plans that badly?” I asked sarcastically.

“Well, yes!” he snapped angrily as he pointed with his cane at the disappearing Intruder behind me. “That thing alone would have devastated a medium-sized country by itself. I can tell that your continued stay here would only bring more of those ilks into this place, and I can’t have that.”

I got up shakily. “Fine, fine,” I grumbled as I got up, ignoring the blood that ran down the front of my face from my forehead. I unclasped a tiny thick leather bound book from my waist chain. It immediately returned to its normal size in my hands, taking up more space than both of my arms combined would. “I might come back, though.” I opened the book and its pages flickered as they turned on their own.

“Please don’t,” he forced a smile. “I do not want to fight you.”

“Funny. I don’t either,” I replied as the pages of the books flickered before I slammed it shut. A black portal not too dissimilar to a black hole’s event horizon. “Well. See ya.”

“No. Goodbye.”

I ignored his words and glanced at the ruined city behind him.

The Intruder did that before I stopped it.

Sighing, I stepped through the portal.

-VB-

The other side of the portal was … a filthy alley?

Huh.

I dropped down on my ass and leaned against one of the two brick walls that lined either side of the wide alley and rested my head on it as well.

It was going to take a while for me to get this all patched up, but I was feeling too happy about actually having defeated my first Intruder to care.

I ran from them for so long that it was … It was an accomplishment to finally defeat one of the monsters that have been hounding after me like a wolf on a prey’s trail.

BOOM!

‘...Huh?’ I thought as I opened my eyes.

Up there on the rooftops, people were … flying?

‘Well, shit. Trouble really does come after me,’ I thought as I remained still.

I saw a trio of fliers zoom across the gap. A black and two green blurs.

‘Maybe I’ll meet them soon.’

-VB-

Magic Powers CYOA v1.3

https://imgur.com/r/makeyourchoice/eSngF

Known Choices

Choice 1: Witchcraft

Complications 1: Artifacts
Complications 2: Nightmares
Complications 3: Darkspawn