Chapter Fifteen.

Bitterness is a slow, insidious poison. I've watched it infect relationships, twist memories, and generally ruin good things. It works quietly, highlighting faults and injecting negative emotions into formerly pleasant experiences. I always thought that I'd see it for the trap it was but I didn't count on how feeling hurt affects judgment.

I felt betrayed when Veris left the way he did. He was supposed to be my friend and my teacher, but he left without even a token of resistance. Just a pat on the back 'good luck' and he was gone.

So I spent the next couple weeks moping around the renovated cavern. [Manavore] was a mixed blessing for my mood; on the one hand, it provided everything I needed for basic sustenance, eliminating my hunger. On the other hand, it contributed heavily to my idleness without even the pleasure of food to break up my thoughts.

The one who did the most to bring me back around (kinda ironically, given their relationship) was Skritter.

“Boss, can we talk?”

I nodded once and silently gestured for him to go ahead. He sat down in front of me, collecting his thoughts for a minute before he started speaking.

“I didn’t like the bubble-man. He treated us like we are stupid and he was stronger than me. But I know you did, so I will speak for him. He was strong; if those ‘soldiers’ came alone he could have won, I think. I wanted to challenge him one day. The lady? She was scary. I do not want to challenge her ever. She came for him, and he would be leaving with her or else. If anything got in her way she would get rid of it, and the bubble-man did not want her to see us as in the way.”

Then he got up and left. It was the most my oldest minion had ever said in one sitting. Despite the somewhat stilted way he spoke, everything he said made sense to me. I wasn’t suddenly feeling all better, but I felt like I at least understood what had happened more thanks to my minion’s intuition.

So I knuckled down and got back to work.

Veris had managed to give me that last couple of tips right before he left, and I did my best to follow what he’d said about shaping my magic. Maybe it was all the time I’d spent in the sanctuary with the old man, but for once in my magical career, the results were actually promising. What had also helped was (oddly enough) my body shape— or more accurately my distinct lack of a defined body shape.

Magic was a projection of my soul through the medium of my body, and the connection worked almost like a unique organ. Most people would probably have trouble thinking of their bodies as malleable objects, but not me! My puddle-nature coming to my rescue once again.

Starting with simple shapes I quickly progressed in molding my aura to whatever shape I needed. What I eventually settled on was fairly similar to my old soul-body from when I first woke up in the afterlife. A central sphere spread out a couple of meters from my body with varying lengths of tendrils reaching out from it.

The boost in efficiency was huge thanks to the square-cube law; I was covering so much less area that I could maintain [Law] in passive mode almost indefinitely. My cosmic 'tentacles' could reach out well over a hundred meters and barely affect my mana usage at all. I lost a bit of sensory feedback from this since my aura was no longer completely filling the space, but the boost in utility and efficiency was totally worth it.

I’d been practicing in the old Bane cavern while I waited on the next wave of ‘dinner’ to show up for extermination. I’d just dismissed the [Blightlings]—without Veris present, they couldn’t handle the Bane’s raw numbers—when I felt a weird ‘ping’ of magic hit my aura. Immediately on guard, I hovered up into the air and stretched my aura out trying to identify the source. This turned out to be a mistake.

A sharp *crack* echoed through the cavern and a wave of familiar pulled-muscle pain told me something had been separated from my body. I lost concentration on my aura and fell down to the cavern floor in shock, my stunned mind finally catching up and informing me there was now a fist-sized hole clear through my chest.

What—

Another *crack* and I abruptly had a hole through my head as well.

I’m embarrassed to say it took me a second to realize I wasn’t actually hurt that badly by this, the pain was already fading as the bits of me blown off quickly rejoined the whole. Hearing a ‘whoop!’ from somewhere nearby I did the first thing I could think of and played dead. Deliberately stopping the ‘wounds’ from closing I even let some of my black fluid leak out in imitation of blood. Hopefully, I could figure out why the hell someone was shooting at me, and what they were doing here in the first place.

Footsteps approached and a group of five appeared in my senses. Chatting animatedly, they were kitted out similarly to the soldiers I’d seen before but… rougher. Their clothes and armor were well maintained but patchwork, with pieces clearly belonging to different sets and various personal touches that the soldiers had lacked. They each carried rifles almost identical to Lady Adelaine’s escorts. The man in front had a white skull painted over the faceplate of his helmet and was bragging loudly as he came close.

“Did you see that shot?? Damn, I’m good.”

“We all have the same rifles, Norton, we know it did half the work,” came a gruff voice from behind him.

The man spun on one heel and pointed at the voice’s origin— a man wearing a rust-brown coat with faded coat-of-arms painted on his helmet.

“Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Mr. Caldwell? I saw the shot, and I took it. Now I, Thomas Norton, shall be known as the man who saved the world!”

The gruff man—Mr. Caldwell apparently— only snorted. “I highly doubt you’d’ve killed the Archdemon with just two shots, even from a Spectre rifle.”

Archdemon? I held still as I tried to puzzle out what they were talking about. Caldwell came close and leaned over me, kicking my side and grunting in surprise at how heavy I was.

“Nah, this looks like a frogboy. Damned if I know what’s wrong with it though. Probably mutated and got kicked out from the tribe, there’s a big one a few ‘k off.”

Norton scoffed. “I’ll let the Oracle be the judge of that back at camp. Cut off what’s left of the head and take it with us. Burn the rest.”

And that's my que!

Dropping my shapeshifting I flooded the area with [Law] in a basic sphere, fifteen meters easily encompassing my would-be killers. I’ll give them credit, there was no panic or hesitation. Swearing loudly they all tried to scramble backward and attempted to get their rifles back up, Caldwell snarled and tried to slash at me with the long bayonet.

Not today, fellas!

I activated my secret weapon, using my aura to copy the Sanctuary’s anti-violence field for just an instant. They stumbled and froze for a brief moment as my aggressive use of pacifism (oh the irony) scattered their thoughts, several even dropping their fancy rifles as I surged forward.

I reformed my human-ish body right in the middle of their group before lashing out towards them with tendrils of aura mixed in with my own oily black flesh. When I touched them I quickly jacked gravity in my domain as high as it could go without killing them, forcing them to their knees and disarming the last two still holding weapons.

“Now,” I said, reforming my vocal cords. My voice was deep and mangled; I’d hated it talking to Veris, but for intimidation, it worked wonders. I turned to Norton, the guy who’d shot me.

“It isn’t very polite to ambush a guy like that, and I take offense to anybody putting holes in my head. So you’re gonna tell me why you’re here, and what the hell this ‘Archdemon’ thing is. Or I’m going to be… angry.”

The man was trembling, just barely able to keep from going prone from the weight, and his strained response was completely inaudible. I eased up a little for him to breathe and leaned in, confident of my aura pinning them down.

“Well?”

He took deep, gasping breaths. “I said, get back to the Void, Demon!”

With a perfectly timed pulse of magic from each of them, my domain was pushed back away from their bodies and they snatched for their weapons. Norton’s hand went to his hip in a flash and came back with an enchanted long dagger thrusting straight at my face.

“[Edge of Annihilation]!”

My eyes barely had time to widen before the blade—covered in the angry black of pure destruction—stabbed into my head. I had a brief flash of confidence from my immunity to destruction magic that dissipated as fast as it came.

The dagger screamed as Norton’s magic fought with my [Inviolate Existence]... and lost. Everything flashed white. My senses were completely blinded except for the pain that wracked every cell in my body. I came-to slowly as my body pieced itself back together, my eyes reforming to give me a horror show of the aftermath of the dagger’s explosion.

Norton was dead. His body had been blasted apart into chunks smaller than my hands. The rest of his team was only in marginally better shape; two were dead, their bodies twisted unnaturally and still. Caldwell had been thrown back against one of the massive stone columns and was groaning on the ground, his arm had a new bend in it above the elbow.

A scream came from the last survivor, startling me with its raw pain. She’d torn her helmet off and her tear-streaked features locked on me with rage and anguish. Her legs were shattered, but it didn’t seem to matter as she clawed her way slowly towards me.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!! I’ll kill you!!”

I slid back in shock as she howled brokenly. But… I didn’t… Stepping forward I wanted to help, to try and fix this somehow. Shock was completely clouding my mind and I jerked back again when the woman snarled and swung a knife at my outstretched hands.

She wouldn’t stop screaming, and I stumbled back slowly as I realized I’d just killed three people. Had I just killed her husband? Her brother? Worse, a creeping horror approached my mind as I looked at the remains of the man who’d tried to stab me.

There weren’t enough pieces of Norton.

I wanted to be sick.

A flash of red light and an artificial screech came from where Caldwell was lying. My startled gaze jumped over to him and saw he was holding a metallic cylinder above his head in his one good hand.

“You see that, monster!? Whole camp knows you’re here! You might have killed us, but you should’ve done it faster because you’re gonna have every hunter in a thousand ‘k after you now!” He collapsed on his back, laughing and coughing sporadically.

I spun around at a rumble behind me only to see my [Blightlings] arriving in the worm. Skritter shot out ahead and sprinted up to me.

“Boss! What happened?? We thought you were just trying out magic, but then—”

“No time!” I snapped out. “We have to leave, now!”

We both entered the worm and got it turned around, thundering off into the tunnels as fast as I could push us. The woman’s screams hounded me long after we’d left the caverns that had become our home for the last time.