The air rang with the sounds of musket fire, monstrous roars, panicked shouts, and the groans of dying orcs.

Eric turned around to note that even the most disorganized and dispirited musketeer patrols were now rapidly closing in.

Eric frowned as the ground continued to shake with the pounding stride of his tuskers, doing laps within the inner courtyard, so as to draw the attention and fire of all those along the eastern battlement.

He quickly flowed into the shadows and gloom once more, avoiding the bright light that was only now beginning to fade with the chieftain’s death, the air whirling with his newest prize as he caught sight of a good twenty or so orcs either firing, priming, or loading their muskets.

Before they abruptly began exploding, one by one.

You have critically struck Orc Musketeer with cannon ball!

Fatality!

You have critically struck Orc Musketeer with crafter-enhanced sling bullet!

Fatality!

You have successfully struck 5 Orc Musketeers with soul-bound super-heated grapeshot!

3 Orcs Fatally wounded!

2 Orcs have suffered Serious Wounds!

Sling is now Rank 6!

The air rang with the shrieks of orcs writhing around superheated balls of cast iron blazing right through their intestines, and the panicked squeals of other musketeers looking around in a panic for the bringer of death among them, though their eyes kept being pulled back to the trumpeting milling Tuskers, tusks flashing in the fading white light, not realizing that the true purpose of Eric’s cavalry wasn’t just to trample the dozen odd classers that had been ground to bone slivers and paste, but to distract the remaining battlement survivors from the whirling cry of their master’s sling, Strength and Quickness synergizing in perfect harmony as Eric reached velocities that would do even a crossbowman proud, with Finesse enough to make each shot count. Or at least, as the numbers soon showed, 9 times out of 10.

“Storlick! Storlick get up!” The desperate howls of a wide-eyed orc rang through the now much quieter keep, the Tuskers having left moments ago to harry the scores of orcs only now giving hew and cry as the sent potshots at targets they couldn’t even see. Eric noted that the panicked orc was frantically trying to move what must have been his friend, no matter that Storlick’s eyes were already opaque with death’s mysteries, his chest having erupted in a crater so vast any child could have easily climbed right through it, so devastating was the damage wrought by cannon balls with the same velocity that would do even a crossbowman proud.

The final living orc atop the battlements slumped to his knees, leaning back his head to cry to the starry night sky as the last embers of the former chieftain’s light spell faded to nights sovereignity once more.

Eric would be lying if he didn’t admit that he felt the slightest twinge in his heart for the creature’s clear distress, but all his attention was on the silver cords of twilight and shadow he only saw clearly under a single shaft of moonlight, his heart racing as he forced himself to perfect stillness, eyes slowly making their way along the silver cords, no matter that his gut clenched with dread at the thought of death drawing a bead on him once more, and just when worry became dread certainty…

MOVE!

Eric was already leaping to the side as the air hissed with the sound of multiple javelins vibrating in the air where he had crouched in the darkness so quietly, just seconds before.

Yet Eric was smiling, for all that he knew a second’s more delay would have earned him shattered ribs. Because he finally, after hours of anxious flinching, fearing death from every shadow… he finally had a sense of how to spot his greatest foe.

It wasn’t by the color of their attire, the stink of their musk, or the glare of hate in their eyes.

It was the twisted magics of twilight and shadow that allowed even a spear chucker to hide in the darkness as well as any thief, a final trump card perhaps thinking itself clever to wait until everyone else had shot their load before firing his.

So he alone might claim the prize of Eric’s capture… or outright execution.

Or such was the sense Eric got from the hungry look in a certain Javelineer’s eyes when the velvety cloak of midnight that had hid it so well now drew Eric’s eyes to the one void in the scene of horror, death, and devastation that the keep had become. A heartbeat later and Eric could hear the beast cursing softly under its breath as Eric did his best to fade into the gloom.

“Did that fucker actually make me?” he heard the orc mutter aloud.

This of course necessitated him answering in the best way he knew how.

Piercing Strike!

You have critically struck Level 25 Javelineer!

Experience Earned!

The Classer’s open mouth widening all the more when its own javelins tore right through the back of its throat, eyes bulging with the horror of its own death as it collapsed, flipping end over end as it crashed to the courtyard in a broken heap, showered by its own lifeblood spurting in the air.

Eric couldn’t deny the delightful shiver caressing his soul from the roaring swirl of potential that was the summation of all the foes he had bested in the arena of survival since first stepping onto this land.

Many, of course, had been killed with exothermic assistance, Mark I blasters he was the farthest thing from soul-bound to, as well as explosive surprises. But many others had been taken out by his own leveraged efforts, most especially by weapons soul-bound to him, that he could now summon forth in the blink of an eye.

He didn’t bother trying to analyze that swirling potential with scores of patrolling musketeers at his back and the central hall of the keep now demanding his attention, with the muffled shrieks and cries from voices that were obviously human, and clearly in dire peril.

No. He would pay his experience point total no mind at all. Tonight he would allow the crucible of battle to shape how his body and soul evolved to meet the demands of survival, somehow certain it would help ground him, orient him, so that it was the communion between him and the newly integrated world that had given him breath and life that would shape his soul.

He would have plenty of time to handle the horror and glory of leveling up, just as soon as he had finished facing down the source of the thunderous roars sending shivers through the flagstones of the completely sealed off central hall taking up a good third of the courtyard around which the battlements had been built.

He grit his teeth and swallowed, fist squeezing tight the mithril blade at his hip as he approached the massive pair of double doors.

“Tusker company, take them out!”

A silent command given, and instantly understood. Because as much as he’d rather be pushing certain skills to threshold points, taking out the scavengers at his back, it was within the brownstone building before him that the desperate shrieks of the damned could be heard.

The cries of doomed people who had no chance in hell of even surviving the night without his help.

“There he is! The Contender! Strike him dead! Do it now!”

Eric lowered himself into a predatory crouch, the air still ringing with the sound of chains spooling on the ground as the formerly barricaded doors were yanked open to reveal five massive nine foot specimens covered in armor comprised of overlapping steel tiles, each wielding wicked looking halberds just as tall and beefy as they were, whipping them about in graceful moulinets before glaring Eric’s way with a snarl.

The closest one slammed the heal of his foot, cracking the finely polished marble tiles thatm save for their current occupants, worked well the vaulted ceiling, crystal chandeliers and the exquisitely detailed tapestries of majestic castles and mystic glades to give the entire hall a regal air.

Or at least it would have, if the floor wasn’t sticky with blood and the dining tables hadn’t been shattered to kindling, and the dozen or so Sylvans and humans present weren’t all wearing rags and collars, or worse, howling like tormented animals, hands and wrists spiked to the pentagram as the wild-eyed shaman covered in blood runes and human skin slowly bled them dry.

Eric froze.

No matter all the horrors he had seen, the trials he had endured, to see once noble Sylvan personages and innocent children reduced to wild-eyed panicked victims, crying out in terror at the sight of him just as much as they did their abusers, reduced to the state of broken animals who knew only pain… Eric wanted to howl his fury to the heavens above. Instead he gripped the hilt of his blade so tight that if the tank were of baser metal, it would have worn the mark of his hand for all time.

The five Berserkers gazed at Eric for one endless moment before bursting out in laughter.

“This little fey bitch is what you fear, Master Zilgoth? Cute little elven boy? Ha! Look how fucking small he is! Not even the size of a six-foot runt!” The largest berserker snorted and shook his head turning to face the shaman who, far from looking incensed, was gazing the berserker’s way with abject fear.

“He is why you would compel us to wind the clock of our lives like the idiots in Ashland, killed by their own warped magics?”

The massive orc snorted at the hotly glaring shaman, completely unfazed by the warm gust of air at his back. “I think you’re head’s too big for your robes, Zilgoth! I swore to serve my master. Not throw my life away for a coward’s—“

Time juttered to a sudden halt, at least for the orc, his train of thought abruptly cut off by the three feet of blood-slicked mithril that had just blossomed from its chest, slicing as cleanly through the steel plates of his armor as scissors cutting through a scholar’s scroll.

The air was suddenly alive with fresh screams, shouts and howls as a pair of berserkers ran straight for Eric, and the other pair sprinted away, all of them ignoring the shrieking imprecations of the shaman, gazing at Eric with wide-eyed dismay.

Eric lost himself in a killing haze, reveling in the feel of his white-hot blade cleaving through the air, slicing as he cut, howling like the madman he ducked under furious windmiling slices and overhand cuts like choreographed moves in a dance where it was him twisting past his opponent’s blows, forcing massive nine-foot long halberds off line or cleaving through their hafts like kindling as the furious expressions of the pair of howling berserkers became looks of confusion, dismay and the wonder of death as mithril cleaved through flesh and steel, the ballroom now awash in crimson patinas somewhat darker than the victims who had fallen before.

Yet no matter that Eric found himself standing above the dismembered corpse of two nine-foot giants, he felt no triumph, no sense of joy with a dozen terrified girls staring his way. All he felt was the cold, disapproving gaze of Sensei Pavel himself, all too aware of what Eric had tried to push away.

Yet he couldn’t deny the lance of shame he felt in his chest when techniques that had come so easily to him when in a state of perfect serenity, cultivating in a world so rich in Spiritual Energy, feeling the sun’s kiss with every movement, now wouldn’t come to him at all.

“Focus, Eric. You must learn to focus your potential and never let emotions say your resolve. Just like I taught you.” Eric blinked as the memory of Master Pavel's solemn voice washed over him. “You dare to walk a path more perilous than most. Let not the Wrath that pushes you forward knock you off balance while doing so.”

Eric froze, even as the shaman Zogroth regained his composure, the twisted orc’s look of sublime fear quickly turning into sallow pock-marked cheeks puffing with rage.

“You will pay for what you did human. You will pay dearly, in tears and blood!”

A heartbeat later the chamber lit up with eldritch green light as the pentagram blazed to life, the handful of girls trapped beside Zilgoth crying out in fear.

Eric could hear distant chanting from withing the pentagram, as if his enemy was howling out the words to a the vilest of ritual spells half a kilometer away.

But Eric refused to berate himself, for self-condemnation, even worse, self-hatred, was just another form of anger that had no virtue to it at all. What he needed to do was focus.

It was all he could do to calm his frustration and growing anxiety for so many fragile lives in peril.

One breath at a time, all his focus now on the oscillating pattern of arcane energy protecting the shaman as Eric slowly turned his wild fury into disciplined strands of deliberation.

Until pristine calm was finally achieved.

Focus. Control. Ignore the sudden stench of desecrated crypts being unearthed, or the ground trembling as massive scales ground against marble tiles. Because he refused to let any blood ritual sacrificing excuse for a shaman dictate the terms of the fight, no matter that he sensed the gates of oblivion themselves opening just feet behind him… otherworldly howls shivering through his soul.

Eric’s existence at that moment was comprised of a single decisive sweep of his blade that, though not perfect, would have at least spared him scrubbing the floors of his formal sanctuary with a cold-eyed Pavel looking on.

Find Weakness skill check made! Familiarity bonuses in effect!

You have successfully pierced Orsinian Ward!

You have successfully focused and channeled your Qi in a low spiritual energy area while under the influence of multiple Essences!

Windfire strike has disemboweled your foe!

Windfire Strike has decapitated your foe!

Dark Summoning Circle has been ruptured!

Eric paid no mind to the messages streaming across his inner mind’s eye, all his focus on spinning around and LEAPING, blade weaving a desperate series of defensive moulinets against the horror he damn well had sensed forming behind him…

But there was nothing.

Nothing save a once grand Sylvan hall now covered in shattered furniture, terrified looking captives, and sigils radiating twisted black magics Eric rapidly consigned to flame.