Chapter 67

This time when they headed down, their numbers had increased. Carly had dropped out, but three archers and another warrior had joined. Daniel hesitated, wanting to go get Zac or Zara, but decided that so soon after Janice’s scare it would rile everyone up too much.

He handed out generic bows to the other archers and then grabbed Ingrid’s bow. She needed something better.

“What?”

“I want to see if I can improve . . .” Daniel paused. “Death Bringer,” he finished.

“I am not calling it that.”

Daniel threw her a smile and placed the bow on the ground with his club on top of it. It was just a hunch and probably pointless, but if his club was truly alive, then maybe it could help, and boosting other people’s weapons, to give them power similar to what his own weapon had developed would help them prosper. Not against the zombies, because he figured they had them covered, but against the other monsters out there.

The way his club survived blows that should have broken it was the smallest of its contribution. Its real power lay in its active participation in the battles. It was easy to pretend otherwise, but it had directed his attacks on occasions, adjusted his aim to let him land the perfect blow, not to mention how it would change and alter its shape to get the kill.

Then there was the speed zombie that he had hit. That the club had hit, he mentally corrected. Daniel had examined that body, and it looked like it had been diced open by a sword, but the only thing that had hit it was the club, and Daniel remembered the massive amount of energy it had demanded. Its blow had killed the zombie. Tamara and Carly were not alive because of Janice; they had lived because of what the club had done. Changing and altering in order to kill the monster. If he could give the same life to other weapons, he would.

Given how devastating her arrows had been, Ingrid was the logical person to benefit next.

With the weapons touching, he engaged his plant energy, sending his power simultaneously into both weapons. Asking for help from the club and focusing on the bow. Letting his magic soak down into the weapon and adjusting the wood. Using the extra knowledge he had gained to increase its flexibility.

“How do you want it to change?”

“A bit more draw, a little smaller.”

The changes happened at her direction. Looking up, Daniel saw her eyes were wide as she watched her bow altering.

“More curved here,” she suggested, pointing.

He altered the shape, and the three Hulk elite cores shifted into the wood. Her hand slipped into position. He handed the enhanced weapon to her.

Ingrid practiced drawing the string back to her shoulder. “Where my hand is needs to be slimmer.”

Another touch and the area she was holding thinned.

“Yeah, that is good. Can I test it?”

“One thing.”

The words “Death Bringer” bubbled onto the surface. It was hardly the most elegant writing he had ever seen, but it was done.

Ingrid looked at him in irritation, but he just smiled innocently. She pulled the bow back and nodded in appreciation.

“The draw is loose still.”

This time he channelled his growth through the club, increasing the tensile strength of the wood and making it harder to bend.

She drew it again. Testing it. “Perfect.”

“Are you done?” Ivey asked abruptly.

“Not yet.”

He tipped out a lot of teeth from the elite zombies upstairs. These were all ones that tingled when he touched them. He was sure that meant something, and he had seen what his club could do with a couple of teeth, so he was excited to see what a host of them could do. In his mind, he could imagine the weapon being covered with the spikes or using the teeth to create a serrated blade or an even longer spike.

There were no molars in the collection he had grabbed, and that was not deliberate, as it had all been done by touch. It was not that surprising that they were all canines, as for some zombies, that was all that they had and for the others it made an intuitive style of sense that the magic he needed, primarily to cut and rend, would be focused into teeth designed for the same purposes.

As his magic flooded through the club, the cores he had offered earlier had already vanished. They had been consumed fully into it. Good. That meant it was growing and getting more powerful.

This batch of teeth that he had gathered were only a couple of centimetres long or half a little finger. Daniel frowned a little at that. They would not be puncturing all the way through to perforate a heart. These were smaller than the other teeth, but he imagined they would cover the club in nasty spikes. It would let him cut and puncture with every strike no matter what angle he swung at and remove the dependency on the club reshaping itself for each battle. They were an addition to help in the fights of attrition.

Daniel could feel the weapon assessing his intention. It was not opposed to the idea. Then like the wood was play-dough, he started pushing the teeth into the wood. They sank in without complaint till only the pointy ends were exposed. Shiny wood grains and swirls trailed up and around the new sharp points. He went quickly, pressing them and then marvelling at how effortlessly they sank in.

Just for fun, he ran his hand over a tooth that had been set into the club. There was no give and there was a sharp pain. Cursing his stupidity, he pulled the thumb away and looked. Big drops of blood were welling from the tip, and it hurt far more than a wound that size should have. Heavy and permanent and deep.

“Ivey?”

He held up the thumb, feeling ridiculous. She arched an eyebrow, but was examining the cut with sympathy.

“Poisoned,” she confirmed after a moment. “Interesting.” Magic flashed across, and the tiny cut closed. But he could still feel the poison in the thumb. He rotated it and he could see an angry black line despite the healing. “That should fade in a few minutes.”

Daniel looked down at the weapon that he was creating with significantly more interest. So the teeth did more than just cut. Another one slid in. The whole time, growth energy flowed from him into the club. It accepted and prepared the area where each tooth sank in, sucking them up one by one. Alive and content to be getting stronger. The entire room was watching as the last of the teeth were incorporated into the surface of the weapon.

The club wanted more energy and the core that he still had in his pocket from the poison zombie. It hungered for it. There was a base desire to get more powerful, to grow till nothing could stop it, to absorb so much power that the gods themselves would quail when Daniel wielded the club against them.

It hungered.

Daniel did not hesitate; he felt the same. First, the poison core was absorbed, and then he granted its wish for power, letting it flood out of him. It would take ten minutes to recover, but it was worth it.

The club howled in pleasure, and it rippled with the energy. The wood sucked the teeth into its centre, and then they bubbled out. He now held a barbed weapon, and he knew without asking that it would deliver multiple different poisons depending on which tooth hit. Those sharp points that would shred anything struck, the actual wounds, they were just a bonus.

“Does your club have a name?” Ingrid asked curiously.

“Blood Drinker,” he answered before he even thought about it. The club shuddered in response. Accepting the name—or maybe it had chosen it. “It is called Blood Drinker.”

He had a mana headache already, but the tiny bit of mana that he had recovered was sucked out of him. When he looked at the club, there was a script just above the handle that spelled out the name. The script was red and part of the wood, and unlike when he had written Death Bringer, it was perfectly engraved.

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