RD 2 Ch 3 (Patreon)

Chapter 3

The plane took off and I felt slightly uncomfortable flying in the flimsy aluminum can. Not that I was afraid of flying.

It was just so weak for something in the air. Thoughts of an F rank bird accidentally hitting it and tearing it apart ran through my mind. Flying was so much safer with the appropriate skills.

Then again, I could always pull out the sword and use B rank drop along with the D rank swim bracer to get out of about any situation.

That made me feel better.

“Alright.” My mother unbuckled herself as soon as we leveled out. “Let’s talk.” Her tone was sharp.

“Hmm?” I turned to see her draw a sword from her spatial ring. “Not with swords, right?”

“What? Do you not want to defend yourself? Oh, right. You use that brutish style that’s all about strength and no skill. I bet you’d have a really hard time fighting where you didn’t want to destroy everything around you.” She pointed her sword at me and rushed down the aisle.

“What the fuck mom.” I spun out of my seat and my blood pooled into my hand with the use of Blood Blade to block my mother. “Simone?”

My girlfriend took a sip of a drink and watched. “She already hates me. She’ll hate me more if I interfere with this. A woman can just tell. Besides, this seems like a famly thing.”

My mother smiled. “Not to mention her barrier might actually tear this plane in half.”

“That too.” Simone agreed. “I’m healing him through all of this though.”

My mother spun off my sword and thrust for me again.

I didn’t have much room to maneuver. I wanted to swing a broad slash to drive her back. “Damnit.” Instead I had to twist and do a poor block, blocking was a last resort when using the sword.

“Can’t fight in here?” My mother mocked me and made me backpedal as she kept the pressure up. “Why the ever living fuck would my son learn such a fighting style? Hmm? It’s something you’d use on a battlefield fighting alone.” She analyzed it as she fought.

“Well maybe that’s what I’m used to!” I grew angry, activating Blood Boil and snapped a kick at her midsection, forcing her to lay off for a second.

Ignoring the furniture of the plane, I barreled forward, holding my sword close to defend myself and add a sharp edge to the charge.

My mother tried to stab at me to get me to stop, but I was tough enough not to care. I flicked my sword and knock her thrusts aside.

She was running out of space and twisted, calling on a system ability and thrust with enough force that I couldn’t just block.

In fact, I was terrified of driving that strike to the side and destroying the plane.

So, I took it head on and was blown back with cuts riddling my body.

Simone waved her hand and I was healed instantly, my Regeneration not even having a moment to kick in.

The damage was fairly superficial.

“What the absolute fuck. Don’t use things like that on the plane.” I growled and jumped to my feet.

My mother swished her sword back and forth seemingly carefree. “If you knew a proper sword style you could have stopped that. I bet your style has a big flashy overhead strike to cut through an ability like that.”

“It does.” I grumbled at her being correct.

“Then use it?” She smiled.

“Can’t without stabbing through the ceiling of the plane and you damned well know it. This style is for fighting on a battlefield.” I admitted.

“Why?” She shot forward, continuing to use the damned plane to her advantage. “My son certainly hasn’t been fighting on any battlefields. So who the fuck are you?” It seemed while she didn’t want to confront me before, but now that she had me trapped in an aluminum can a mile in the sky, this was the time.

I stepped into her thrust, and she tilted it to the side enough that it only scored me. My arm clamped down on her blade and locked it against my side. “I am Bran Heros.” I answered with conviction and head butted her. “Though not the one you raised. No, I’m a version of Bran that watched you die in a hospital bed unwilling to do fuck all about it. You could have called Thorin or the Clan when you first got poisoned, but you didn’t. Instead, I’m a Bran that watched you die. The Bran that made bad debts in order to keep you in the hospital. Then I lived a rough life in service to a gang until demons invaded our world and crushed all semblance of normalcy. Only after years of fighting demons and nearly dying on the battlefield many times over did I learn that my last name had value. But it was too damn little too damn late.” I pinned her to the side of the plane. “You don’t get to yell at me. Not after you threw everything away for what? Pride?”

My mother’s face hardened. Her forehead was red from the headbutt and her expression was set in a scowl. “The prophecy?” She asked, ignoring the rest of my rather eloquently delivered reveal.

“A little less than 2 years. August first, twenty twenty three.” I would never forget the date.

“Time travel is impossible.” She studied me.

“Three SSS Loci of Power and a custom one made with my blood to focus on myself. I looked into the past using the journal the doctors made me write to accept your death.” Releasing my stance, I lowered my guard. “Then I used possession on myself. This soul is that of Bran from five hundred and a few odd years in the future.”

“Still impossible. The clans have tried. If their resources weren’t enough, I have doubts yours were even remotely acceptable.” She wasn’t quite refuting me, but she wasn’t agreeing with me either. “Give me my son back.”

“Can’t. I didn’t want two of us existing at the same time. His soul is gone, mine has replaced it. I’m here to fix shit.”

Elle Heros’ eyes flashed dangerously. “Your sword technique is still lacking. If you have all this experience, why go to the clan at all?” She started to thrust her sword at me again, slashing at my shoulders where I failed to block her completely.

“I might have experience, but I lack system acknowledgment and personal power. Besides, I always wondered what my bloodline would have been if I had access to the clan. In the previous life I forcefully awakened it into a B rank.” I shoved her back using my bulk and regeneration to overcome the damage she was dealing.

She shifted, her blade finding my legs and ankles, trying to take my support out from under me. “Your footwork is sloppy, not neat enough for the small space.”

“I didn’t fight in small spaces. I stood in front of the damned army and fought demons, then I fought clans and finally I fought more god damn demons until the world ended.” Angry, I snapped a kick that buckled her knee backwards.

My mother barely even grimaced. “Simone, heal me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Simone cast a spell and my mother’s knee reset itself as she pulled herself to a stand with one of the chairs.

Our fight had given the pretty tan and white upholstery a new red splashy design.

“You fought clans?” She asked.

“Shiva died fighting the demon lord in the first demon war.” I explained.

“Ah.” She nodded. “Then what happened?”

“They called it the war for supremacy. All the clans and sects started to expand rapidly, duking it out over borders and resources.” I explained.

My mother didn’t even seem remotely surprised, or maybe she still didn’t believe me. “The Heros Clan?” Her blade skipped off mine and took a few hairs off the side of my head.

“It lost a few of its legs to stand on and then Thorin ‘Clan Killer’ Aegir killed the final two elders. He grew fairly infamous from that event.” Tilting my head at her, I watched her as I shared the next information. “I now know he did it because of you. I didn’t know who the woman was then that caused it all back at the time.”

My mother was confused. “He never told you he was your father?”

“Did he even know? I didn’t meet him until dozens of years in the future. After the demon war, I was a fairly changed man. I joined up with The Heros Clan as an outsider because I awoke my bloodline with other means. They won’t accept someone who hasn’t done the rites.”

She frowned. “So when he came the other day…” She was starting to piece everything together. “That doesn’t explain the strike at the warehouse.”

“That one was strange.” I kicked one of the cushions that had fallen on the ground during our fight and destroyed it with a slash, exploding feathers everywhere.

My mother however wasn’t where I expected after I charged through.

She cut the back of my legs and I stumbled into a turn, bringing my sword up. “Explain.”

“I remembered when I leveled up my sword mastery to a particular style skill. It felt like the memory and this life was overlaid for a moment. The system acknowledged my soul’s skills for a moment and that was that cut.”

“All those years, and that was the best you could do?” She mocked me and moved through the plane cabin like water striking me from multiple angles in quick succession while my legs were healing. Apparently she had processed the information and decided to continue kicking my ass while I was at a serious handicap. “This is the best you have?”

She piled on wounds and I was damn tempted to use one of my many tricks.

But that wasn’t the point. She was, in her own way, trying to teach me.

I shifted, trying to block some and using my size against her, but she was actually very good with these twisting sword styles. I guess that’s why she had the ‘Sword Master’ class.

“Something is bothering me.” My mother opened back up the conversation not even panting as she cut me repeatedly. “If the clan fell, where was the Tartarus branch? You should know about them.”

I shook my head. “That bothers me too. Either they never kept the Heros name, they were destroyed, or they betrayed the clan.”

My mother narrowed her eyes. “So they betrayed the clan or were killed.” She lumped in my first option with betrayal.

“There were a lot of betrayals going around during the war for supremacy. I feel like I would have heard though if they had stepped aside…” There was another option. “They could have also been possessed by demons.”

“They would know to avoid that.” My mother instantly refuted the possibility.

I chuckled. “Maybe not. You’d be surprised how deep the demons are already seeded in this world. Heavenly Mountain sect?”

My mother shook her head, disbelief on her face as she backed off from the fight. “No.” She nearly shouted.

“Yep. The whole inner workings of the sect are demons. They take the best and the brightest and have them possessed. It wasn’t until the second demon war when everyone felt they were prepared for the demons and building up fortifications and containing them that the Heavenly Mountain betrayed everyone causing half the gates to be completely undefended. Demons poured out and took hold before anyone realized what was happening. By the time the remaining clans found out it became a large-scale war across many battlefields.” I remembered the betrayal bitterly. I had lost loved ones but had no time to grieve as I needed to fight.

My mother’s sword disappeared. “There’s a lot to unpack there.” She still hadn’t acknowledged the full situation. “I will have someone I trust to check on your claims of the Heavenly Mountain.”

“Do you have someone like that?” I frowned at her.

“The thing you need to focus on when joining the clan is making friends.” My mother opened one of the cabinets ignoring the flecks of blood on it and took out glass tumblers before pouring three glasses.

“I don’t know if I’m really in a state to make friends with a bunch of eighteen year olds.” I told her bluntly.

“Try. You sound like you never got to live this part of your life, so think of this as a do-over and live like a stupid carefree teenage boy.” She glanced at Simone. “In some ways I think you already are.”

“He’s far too mature for that.” Simone took her glass. “I think he can make friends with a few of the mature ones. In between trying to loot the clan of everything it has to offer.”

“Just don’t join Odyssey. Even if you think you can, it's too dangerous. They’ll chew you up and spit you out. I won’t have that, not for any benefits. As for checking Heavenly Mountain, I’ll handle that and I’ll make sure that no one tries anything with Simone.” She glanced at the woman with barely held distaste. “I do not like you though.”

“Why?” Simone asked.

“I wake up in the hospital and my son is no longer mine, but belongs to two other women and has matured well past what he should be.” She sipped her drink. “I don’t like it. A mother was supposed to have more years with her son.”

I didn’t get in between the middle of the two of them, quietly sipping my drink while the cuts on my body healed. Hopefully no one was going to charge me for the bloodstains on the plane. While I was amassing quite the fortune, buying or redoing the interior of a plane was going to make a dent.