《The System Slaves》Chapter 3: The Hexwitch
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[Battle Prompts start:
[Congratulations! Skills Unlocked: Trollish Brawling, Trollish Wrestling, Trollish Clubs, Trollish Natural Weapons,
[Congratulations! Due to previous experiences and racial benefits you have unlocked evolved Skill (Racial, Unique): Trollish Martial Arts (TMA) Level 10. This skill covers the main areas of Trollish martial art, including but not limited to brawling, clubs, wrestling, maces, and Troll whips,
[Human x6 killed, experience gained,
[{Enslaved Troll killed, experience gained,
[Congratulations! Level Up x5. Status will be brought up, and you will be able to allocate your points,
[System Order fulfilled sub-optimally. Individual punishment to be enacted at a later date.]
[Battle prompts end, status opening.]
As soon as I leave the battlefield I am assaulted by lines upon lines of squiggles, so many that I almost fall down. Almost. I wave them away as fast as I can but more just seem to pop up! Just when I think that they are all gone even more come!
[Status]
Level: 5 Race: Pit Troll
Class: N/A Status Effects: None
Statistics:
[Hidden]
Strength: 80 => 88
Constitution: 80 => 90
Agility: 10=> 12
Intellect: 3 => 1 (Negated due to Troll Savant)
Points Available: 5
[Hidden]
Paths:
Physical: Enhanced Strength Meridian, Enhanced Endurance Meridian, [Hidden]
[Hidden]
[Hidden]
Skills:
Trollish Martial Arts- (Level 10)
Prospecting- (Level 5)
Subskill (Level 8)
Titles:
Human Bane: You have not only killed ten humans; you have eaten them as well! You can sense the blood of a human from two meters away. 5% increased damage against humans. Humans can see it in your eyes, you have done more than just kill them.
First To Kill (Human): You have killed the first Human, as such all attacks made by Trolls against humans double in affectiveness, and humans now see you and your kind as their mortal enemies. Attributes double when in conflict with humans.
First Human Eater: You have not only killed the first Human, but you have eaten it as well! Bite attacks from Trolls deal triple damage to humans. Your bite attacks do quadruple damage.
Traits:
Remorseless: You don’t give a damn.
Pain: Pain? What’s that?
Stone Hide: At this point the only thing that can hurt you are maces and enchanted weapons. (Evolved form of Leather Hide)
Sun Resistant: You can resist the rays of the evil sun. You can no longer see in complete darkness. (Renders Creature of the Night void.)
Troll Savant: You can understand spoken words and formulate some of your own! You can understand advanced concepts with difficulty and may even be able to learn to read and write. (Negates Most of Stupid Racial Trait.)
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Racial Traits:
Cannibals: Trolls eat their own kind. Be they a whelp, a Warlord, or a Brute, all go down the stomach. (+10 to constitution, resistant to poison, mental barriers removed.)
Leather Hide: All Trolls need a good, thick, tough hide. Otherwise, they die.
Tasting the Lash: Be they a whelp, a Brute, or a Warlord, all have been whipped since the day they were born. When a Troll is whipped and told do something, they find it very hard to resist.
Huge, Muscular, and Tough: Enhanced Strength & Endurance Meridians are automatically unlocked, Trolls are on average 8ft tall, and weigh in surplus of 700 pounds, there can never be a cap on their strength or constitution stats.
Earth Blooded: No matter how injured Trolls will always heal, healing minor wounds within minutes and major wounds in under a month. This stacks with constitution buffs, and healing magic.
Claws & Teeth: Trolls have savage claws meant to rend, and jaws meant to tear.
Creature of The Night (Void): You are nocturnal, have complete dark-vision, and have all stats increased by 5% in the night. The sun kills you, severely burns you, or turns you to stone.
Stupid: Trolls have a hard time understanding anything that isn’t simple, physical, or sex-related, have a cap of 100 on their intelligence, Trolls are also very susceptible to mind-altering effects.
[Status End]
Too much. Too much. I wave my hands and the squiggles disappear.
[Free Stat Points randomly assigned]
Leaving me with a splitting headache, and a whole ton of odd feelings as my muscles start to writhe under my skin, I watch in awe as they wriggle and jump looking quite a lot like the squiggles that I hate so much.
I don’t like it as much though when my leg muscles start to change, causing me to collapse in a heap and land heavily on the dirt.
I roar my discomfort to the world and just wait for the writhing of muscles to stop.
It takes a while but eventually my muscles settle, letting me sit and massage the tight muscles, something that the Bull taught us to do a while ago. Though it seemed like I was the only one to remember it.
I shrug, most Trolls are stupid, that’s just the way of things. Only the Warlord and a very small amount of others like me are actually intelligent, the rest are just muscle-bound brutes. Hmmm, that’s a pretty cynical view of things, after all, they are all related to me and me to them. I should stop demeaning them and treating them like they are not equals.
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Thing is most Trolls aren’t my equals, at least not mentally.
My already splitting headache starts to get even worse if that is possible, it reminds me of dagger plunging into and out of my side… Except in my head. My forehead.
I stumble, drop my club, and clutch at my head. What the hell is wrong with me? My head burns. I can almost feel pain, a feeling that I haven’t felt since I was a whelp sucking on the broodmother's teat.
I shake my head vigorously, pain has no place in the life of a Troll, neither does discomfort, I start to scout out the area, looking for any sign of the piddly creatures activity.
I find nothing, except for one pair of wolf tracks. My stomach grumbles and decides my next course of action.
Time to hunt.
Following the wolf trail, I find myself going deeper and deeper into the forest. The trees starting to crowd closer and closer together glaring down at me evilly, I go further and further into the forest with a single-minded determination, determination that I don’t usually feel.
The sun slowly starts to fade away, not because it is setting but because the trees are so thick at this point that the sun can’t find anywhere to shine through, another thing that I notice is that the there is absolutely no sound.
No sounds in a forest this large is just unnatural, there are always birds, rodents, or something that lives in the forest even this deep in.
I stop for a second. Standing still and looking slowly around, a bad feeling slowly coming over me. I look down for the wolf tracks that I was following…. I look down and find nothing, no footprints, no trail. I turn around and look behind me looking for tracks behind me.
Nothing, nothing is there, except for the path that I had carved.
I slowly look around at the trees and see them slowly disappearing one by one, crumbling down into dust. I hear laughing, and then giggling. My discomfort rises to all-new levels. The only creature that I know that could work magic like this is a Broodmother.
A Broodmother or a Hex.
The laughing intensifies, and a primal fear overcomes me. The Hex hunt Trolls, they are our only natural enemy the only thing can kill us with ease.
They specialise in Mind Magic, the bane of Trollkind.
Then she starts to sing and I know on an instinctual level, that I’m probably not getting out of this alive. Its voice is like that of a little elf girl, high, almost too high, and just a tiny bit strained, I hope to the gods that whatever she sings will give me a chance of living.
A Hex will always sing a song and depending on its mood that song will either damn you or kill you. There is no middle ground. Which is why I cringe back in fear as she starts to sing:
“Although you had to go, all those years ago,
Set sail, move on, move on
Although you had to go, all those years ago
My heart keeps beating and I'm still dreaming of me and you
Me and you, oh, my heart keeps beating
And I'm still dreaming of you
And all those things we did
Still, fill me up with butterflies
And I still flutter, I still shine
Whenever I remember your sweet smile.”
Then it starts to cry. The trees continue to dissolve, slowly revealing an idyllic glade, and sitting in the middle of it crying is one of the most horrific things I have ever seen.
It is…. Elvish. Or at least that's the form it is taking, but its eyes are completely removed, the only thing there…. is nothing. The pits look straight at me, I stare into them and see pieces of rotting eyeball that slowly release tears of dark red blood.
Blood that slowly trails its way down and drips down onto her breasts, the tears of blood solidify into red faces, locked in expressions of extreme pleasure, but then slowly degenerating into expressions of absolute horror, and then complete pain.
She opens her mouth and starts to sing once more.
I vomited what little was left of the humans I ate, I, a Troll vomited, I ignore the music and just stare in disgust at her open mouth.
Her gums are black and deep crevices adorn them, crevices that also take in some of the blood-red tears and turn them to fire. Her teeth are nubs, just as black as the rest of her mouth, but at the top of each tooth is the head of a screaming child. I see elven babies, troll whelps, orc pups, and many, many, more.
“…Me and you, oh, my heart keeps beating
And I’m still dreaming of you.”
It looks at me…. and smiles.
“And I’m still dreaming of you.”
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