Epic 218 chapter only (Patreon)

Numb always knew he was the least intelligent of all goblins in the Dungeon but that was okay because he had the biggest heart! Numb knew he was the most honest and straightforward of all goblins, including Sir Fran, but that was okay because Numb knew he saw the world as a good place.

Numb knew he was also one of the strongest goblins, excluding Sir Fran, but that was also okay because he found it better to make people smile.

Deo was smiling as their fists smashed into each other’s shoulders, creating a small wave of force that sent the mud underfoot flying outwards over the other goblins and humans. 

“You’re as strong as ever!” he praised and Deo’s eyes lit up at the praise.

“You’re even stronger! Not as strong as Mr Maestro, but that’s a big challenge!” he called over the sounds of their feet stomping into the ground at high speeds, propelling them along the hill in a blur. The movement shook the goblin fort and sent the others stumbling back as they clashed. Deo seemed to loosen more of his monstrous strength as he saw Numb could easily take it and more as the goblin barely recoiled when hit. 

Numb had evolved and even gotten the title of a hero and still... Deo was slightly faster than him, his footsteps forcing Numb on the defensive as he raised his arms to block a powerful kick to his ribs.

They grew them differently in the village of Durence, that was for sure. Numb narrowed his eyes and his hands caught Deo by the arm and following the instincts formed by his evolution, he tossed Deo over his shoulder into the thick mud, the boy hitting the soil like a wet mat.

“Elbow drop him!” Cois cried, the pyromancer more invested in violence than Numb was. At the other end, Grim was also yelling in ‘support’.

“Leg sweep! Bury his face in mud!” the boy cried. Numb couldn’t quite bring himself to drop his full weight into Deo. The boy could likely take the damage but it was more the idea of striking Deo while he was on the ground.

Deo, as if on the same wavelength, didn’t kick out but flipped back onto his feet. Mud dripped from his face, but the smile he wore was wider than ever.

“I’m going to do to you what Mr Jones does to my exam papers!” he said and Numb tried not to show a reaction to words as a shiver danced down his spine. It was such a strange threat but it carried weight it shouldn’t be able to.

“What does he do to them?” he asked as he raised his guard warily.

It was Grim who answered, sounding a little haunted.

“He demands them to explain how Deo uses a picture of a cat in his math equations and still get the right answer. When they can’t reveal the secret, he banishes them to the void,” Grim said and Numb twitched a little in concern.

“The cat gives me extra fingers to carry the constants and stuff,” Deo added, as if he had explained this a dozen times. 

It made sense, to Numb at least. More fingers meant more numbers, more numbers meant the chance of forming the right answer increased.

That, too, was math.

Deo suddenly charged and Numb exhaled once, a slight aura of golden energy surrounding him as he had the sudden ‘will’ to fight against all odds and win. He also had the strong urge to think back to his growth as a goblin and how Delta was important to him.

It gave him motivation and determination... for some reason.

Heroes were weird.

“For Math Cat!” Deo shouted and Numb met him head on once more.

“For Delta!”

---

Quiss was done.

He was done with megalomaniacs, he was done with brainwashed people, he was done with Echoes, and he was seriously done with Ruli.

“Stop throwing thralls at me,” he warned Ruli who had turned red, growing black horns as her demonic side emerged to give her some strange form of protection against the Echo, Thomas Darkblade. In response, Ruli tossed four more Calcs at him and they instantly sagged, passing out from the sheer heat that Quiss was producing.

Quiss was growing thirsty, the fighting making his tongue dry and his temper short as he smacked more than a few of the soldiers with his staff. The longer he was in a fight, the stronger his urge for a drink was. Fire magic was great for many things, but in a warm spring-like afternoon, it radiated off him in waves of shimmering airwaves.

“I would, but why punch them when your hot ass makes them faint?” Ruli questioned, her voice several octaves lower than before with the scent of ash falling off every word.

Quiss looked around him as the minions literally tried to crawl away to shade or for cover and he was reminded of his sixteenth birthday party where he tried to put the charm on Herri Cloudshimmer, a wizard with some control over clouds or mist or something stupid, and he got so flustered he set the dance floor on fire.

It was a lot like this event, with people passing out and Quiss in the middle of it. The major difference was that sixteen year old Quiss found booze as a last resort and the Quiss of today was going to drink soda as a last resort.

Before he could call back to Ruli, perhaps with some remark that would have wowed the half-demon and made her see how clearly Quiss was her intellectual superior, Thomas Darkblade interrupted him.

“Jarnished! I’ve blasted you with my death ray of extreme evil! How doth you respond?!” the monster demanded of Vas who stood in a perfect circle, untouched as the minions just avoided him as if propelled by some invisible force not to stand between Vas and Thomas Darkblade.

“I thought you were ‘the good guy’?” Vas asked, confused as the pot on his head slid to a slanted position. Thomas Darkblade hummed, seeming to appreciate the attention to his backstory.

“I had a villainous arc where I was nearly seduced to the darkside by an eldritch woman who looked young but was actually thousands of years old. I redeemed the evil in her heart and she perished as a good eldritch monster, an important figure to my character development,” Thomas Darkblade explained patiently as his aura swirled with something that tore apart nearby stalls and crushed the goods within.

“Why did she have to die? Couldn’t she have also developed and become more prominent?” Vas asked and Thomas Darkblade huffed.

“Women dying in my backstory shows people how tormented and tortured I am!” he explained as if they were all stupid.

“But... they died?” Vas said, sounding audibly bothered now.

“If it's important, she’ll come back to give me a useful powerup down the line,” Thomas Darkblade said and leaned back as Ruli tossed a wagon at him, the contents exploding out in scraps of fabric.

“Everything you say just makes me more mad that you exist... and I don’t even know what the hell you want!” Ruli said with a flare of her nostrils, her body burning just as hot as Quiss’ flames.

“Oh? I am on the noble goal of vanquishing the nearby Dungeon, smashing its core into pieces,” Thomas Darkblade said with a shrug, “it’s a low-rank quest-” he was cut off as Ruli appeared before him and Quiss stared as she buried her arm right through his torso.

“Touch Delta and I’ll take whatever you count as a soul straight to the deepest parts of the abyss myself,” Ruli growled and Thomas Darkblade stared down at the arm in his torso with annoyance, the wound beginning to leak black threads that were burned as they neared Ruli.

“I take some health point damage,” he admitted and Quiss watched as the wound glowed, throwing Ruli back with the snap of something like an inverted sound, a crawling silence that was like a sucking wound in space.

Ruli’s hand looked badly injured in response but she flexed, making noises Quiss could have lived without hearing, and healed flesh rapidly replaced the damaged skin.

“Worry not, Demon Queen and thralls,” Thomas Darkblade said with a strange flat tone, “I won’t play for long,” he said and stepped back as his minions rushed in, appearing by the dozen as if called by some insatiable song Thomas Darkblade produced.

“Where is he going?” Quiss called as the brainwashed idiots collapsed before him, creating a wall of annoying flesh he couldn’t just burn away, despite his own wishes.

---

Thomas Darkblade was most annoyed. He was in the greatest battle of his career and he was being pulled away! Called away.

Forced away. The mage and demon likely had amazing items he could loot from their corpses, as well as that forsaken Jarnished...

‘It was a child in a pot, you dullard’ the voice of his elder sister Echo said, her essence slithering into him like a parasite he had no choice but to allow in.

“They were threats! Challenges!” Thomas Darkblade yelled out as from around him his inspired followers appeared using rare or expensive one time use teleportation items, his call for similar voices, similar ‘Echoes’ able to reach many who had used his tools.

They were the best tools of course, so why wouldn’t they discard old dirty heirlooms or sentimental crap for the superior options? He moved down an alley, his stomach wound churning with black writhing threads, like silky roots. That demonic woman was the real issue, she was partially off the Abyss where no Echoes could resonate and to make it worse, they could not Echo into demons either.

Still, perhaps she would be broken down? Beaten and when he showed mercy? Her romance route would be exposed. It was only natural that when defeated, male demon lords became weaker versions of themselves to join the party and female versions were more likely to-

A pair of scissors buried themselves into his shoulder and Thomas Darkblade admired them, they were well-made and covered in a dozen enchantments. He went to claim it for himself but a nearly invisible string yanked it back to the hands of a slender man preventing Thomas Darkblade from running into the forest towards the Dungeon beyond.

“More interesting folks. You know, I usually attack merchants to get back the gold I spend on their items,” Thomas Darkblade admitted as the slender man held the scissors downward like they might drop at any moment from his light curled fingers, his hair perhaps once auburn or such had gone silver with age.

“And I usually turned little parasites of the soul like you into scraps for the rats to nest in,” the man said before bowing elegantly, “I am Ruberoi Smalls, tailor, tinker, hairdresser, seamster, and hunter of fabulous beasts,” he introduced and Thomas Darkblade frowned.

Could merchants multi-class like that?

“And that is Crams, my partner in many things,” he added and Thomas Darkblade felt a danger to his life appear from above and he moved, only losing his left arm instead of being split down the middle by the giant barbarian that seemed to fly.

“Flying is a rare skill,” Thomas Darkb..b...blade said as his missing stump wriggled with more of his true form. The mask was slipping and his adventurer was fading. It was ghastly.

The giant man turned to him, a simple woodcutter’s axe in hand.

“Not fly, jump good,” he grunted.

‘Release the facade, your chances are slipping’ Lare hissed, her essence almost breaking him down to a gibbering mess. She was so strong, so well-fed on their own kind, an Echo so close to a song it almost drowned Thom Blade out. 

Thom..Thomas...

Yes, Thomas.

“What business do we have with each other?” Thomas asked the two men. Crams shrugged.

“I’m here to support,” he admitted but it was the slender man, Smalls, that stepped forward with a glint in his eyes.

“I’ve been chasing one like you, an Echo,” he declared and Thomas' stomach knitted over as more and more of his tools became useless, the energy returning to him as he healed.

“There’s none like I, Thomas Dark...blade!” he insisted and it was becoming easier again. To be something.

“So, I see. While your attitude towards attire and clothing is offensive, it is nothing compared to the one I search for. Tell me, Echo who pretends to be, where is the one known as ‘Disfraces’?” Smalls asked and Lare went still in Thomas Darkblade’s mind.

‘Do not answer that question’ she warned.

“I don’t know who that is,” Thomas Darkblade said as the sounds of fighting behind him grew louder, indicating his old friends were rapidly coming closer.

“It’s an Echo much like yourself. Echoes know each other, no?” Smalls asked with a smile suited for overcharging a customer.

“There’s a lot of Echoes, and I am a standout one, but not the only one,” Thomas Darkblade said as bone and false flesh began to regrow out his oozing stump.

“Maybe some hints might refresh your memory? She who bargained for the voice of Isanella Brawndo, He who instigated the God War of the Left Arm, she who uses clothes like cheap toys and makes a mockery of culture and styles while claiming to be the highest of artists in the craft?” Smalls said, voice becoming hard like the edge of a blade.

“Eh...” Thomas Darkblade scratching his chin with his skeleton arm. None of that sounded familiar.

‘Thank anyone but the siblings you’re an idiot’ Lare sighed in relief.

“Laughs like a hyena dressed like an opera singer,” the brutish man, Crams, added casually. Instantly, Thomas Darkblade’s face lit up in recognition.

“I know them! Man, it’s been a while, but last time I heard,” Thomas Darkblade mused aloud as Lare yelled something but he was busy thinking.

“Right, they were going to be the Golden Queen’s handmaiden and drive her bonkers or something. She was laughing like she had a horn in her throat about some weapon they had to make lost and the queen basically was good for some cult stuff,” he said, nodding to himself as he passed his intelligence roll to remember the facts.

“That’s a lead but it's been a long time since the Golden Queen sat on the throne, anything more recent?” Smalls asked and Thomas Darkblade grinned.

“I’ve been trapped in a sewer level ever since!” he bragged.

“To use gown and dress to cause strife and pain... I won’t ever forgive them,” Smalls said, gripping his scissors closely.

“I need to go now. I need to get to the Dungeon-” Thomas Darkblade said before a dozen razor thin wires snapped into place around him, connected to Smalls’ fingers. When did they ... how did he have time to set those up?!

Thomas Darkblade called cheating!

“Your crimes against fashion still require payment. To discard garment and suit simply for another because of a sigil or button also disgusts me,” Smalls said as his scissors took on an eerie bronze glow.

“What are you? The fashion police?” Thomas Darkblade asked, wondering what this town’s deal was with holding onto history and useless things.

“No, I’m the fashion assassin,” Smalls corrected before the scissors took Thomas Darkblade’s human head clean off.

What was left was the Echo of Ignorance and Instant Desire, a being of writhing tentacles that discard what was left and hummed a discordant note as it tore the wires holding it in place with ease.

It would likely never be Thomas Darkblade again but that was fine. A new game, a new character sheet, a new purpose... to hunt and loot the people of Durance. That sounded... focused.

“There you are, parasite. No more costumes, no more suits... this is you at the seams,” Smalls declared and the Echo would use the man as a sockpuppet. The man’s organs and bones would need to be removed first but it would put points into craftsmanship and performance.

Slowly, the exposed Echo took a step forward, forming into a black mannequin, its arms morphing into undefined blades and shields then a bow then a spear as if trying options out.

‘If they get to your Seed, it's over. Your Echo ends, not to feed the greater but to vanish with a whimper’ the Echo of Deceit and Destruction warned. For the first time, he could simply shrug her off. He was without limits, without a body, without influence for her to use.

An echo with a music hall to perform in.

‘Then I better find some friends to let me whisper a word of want to... an echo of me,’ it agreed and lunged, destroying buildings and sending any nearby away with unrestrained strength as all those with his wavelength collapsed, all their energy belonging to him.

The brute? The merchant? Perhaps the mage?

Not the demon.

He couldn’t live in her, couldn’t respec her stats...

Choices upon choices.