Chapter 201 - A Difficult Matchup (Patreon)

Zeke’s pounding feet left cracks in the roof’s surface as he bounded toward the archer. His shoulder and a good portion of his left side had been shredded from the inside out by the archer’s exploding arrow, an issue that was exacerbated when the shards couldn’t penetrate through his armor. With nowhere else to go, their momentum sent them back into his flesh, where they had continued to rip him apart.

It hurt, but with the pain resistance that had come with his racial transformation into a Cambion, it wasn’t so bad. The real problem was that those shards had ripped through enough muscles and tendons that it made the prospect of moving that arm nearly impossible. When Zeke tried, the whole appendage only gave an impotent quiver.

So, down one arm, Zeke couldn’t help but feel grateful for one, simple truth: at least he had another arm to balance out the equation. Not only that, but he had plenty of experience using his mace one-handed from his stint using a shield. So, while his combat effectiveness had been damaged, it wasn’t a devastating loss. He could push forward, which was precisely what he was built to do.

He reached the group of Spiders and aimed a short, jabbing strike at the archer. Mykaela used a skill to disengage, moving backwards so quickly that it looked almost like she’d teleported. Zeke’s attack caught only air. What’s worse, the shards of the arrow twisted inside of him, further tearing his muscles apart. Finally, the pain started to overcome his resistance, and he let out a scream that was equal parts frustration, anger, and agony.

Beside him, Pudge crashed into the group’s left flank, but he was met with the familiar glow of a shield. Not to be dissuaded, the infernal bear reared up onto his hind legs and swiped out with his claws. Once. Twice. Three times, all in quick succession. The shield around the group quivered, but it remained intact. Frustration seeped through the bond, echoing Zeke’s own feelings.

Another arrow thudded into Zeke’s shoulder, but it only managed to penetrate his armor. His flesh beneath that metal skin remained unbroken – until the arrow broke apart, just like the last had, shredding his pectoral muscle. These wounds were only superficial, though. His endurance was high enough that they couldn’t penetrate more than half an inch. But it pushed him closer to the threshold where, if he passed it, the pain would completely overcome his resistance.

Zeke had no intentions of letting that happen.

Summoning a metal orb from his spatial storage, Zeke’s arm whipped forward in a side-armed throw. The orb flew through the air faster than a bullet, hitting the surprised archer in the chest. Predictably, a blue, protective shield of energy flared, but it was soon blocked out by a healthy explosion that sent her flying toward the edge of the building.

It was the latest of Zeke’s runic creations, and something he’d been working on ever since he’d begun his recovery. If there was one thing he’d lacked, it was a ranged attack. Sure, he’d always been capable of flinging rocks and other projectiles at his enemies, but most of the time, those options just weren’t worth it. With how quickly he could cover ground, and with how hard he could hit, it didn’t make a lot of sense to throw a rock at someone. Even the runic versions were largely ineffective when compared to his mace strikes.

During his convalescence, he had endeavored to remedy that. First, he’d commissioned a series of metal orbs the size of baseballs. Made from a combination of blood mithril and iron, mixed with powdered raptor feathers, they were made to hold Zeke’s runes. Once he’d received them, it had taken him almost a week to find the appropriate combination of symbols, glyphs, and mana to make them do what he wanted them to do, but once he did, it had been a simple task to enchant the orbs with the effects he wanted.

And he wanted power. Force. Explosions.

That was precisely what he’d gotten, too, and he couldn’t help but grin as the archer slipped over the edge of the building. He hoped that the fall would be fatal, but he knew better than to think it would be. Rather, she would like survive with minimal injuries; after all, she was level twenty-five, and not an average one at that. No – she would rejoin the fight at some point.

Before she did, he and Pudge needed to take out the shield caster, though. Once that happened, it would be easy to kill her, provided they could pin her down. So, Zeke turned his attention to the other people atop the roof, and before the wave of concussive force even faded from the air, he was moving.

As expected, when he swung his mace at the first person he reached – a robed woman – his weapon was met by a barrier of blue energy. The woman flinched backwards, stumbling as she collided with one of her fellows.

And well she should have, because even that one attack had sent a spiderweb of cracks across the blue shield. Zeke hammered into it again. And again. All the while, ineffective attacks descended upon his armored form. He’d had [Heart of the Berserker] up for some time, and so, his armor had only grown stronger as his assault on the tenement went on. However, there was one problem with that – the [Armor of the Crimson Juggernaut] was a powerful set of equipment, and it went a long way to shoring up the weaknesses of [Heart of the Berserker]. But it didn’t remove the skill’s demerits altogether. Instead, it was more like a bandaid that covered up the problem. The result was that, even though the protection provided by the armor had skyrocketed with the extended use of the skill, so too did his endurance plummet. And given that the arrow had already punched through, and he had been exposed by the ripping fragments of the projectile, they were still a very big problem – especially considering that, judging by the fact that they hadn’t stopped moving, the archer hadn’t been the one casting the skill that made them move.

No - it was someone else on the roof. And unless Zeke found them, they would eventually overtake his endurance and kill him.

Briefly, Zeke considered deactivating the skill, but that strategy would come with problems of its own. Chiefly, he would experience a period of exhaustion, and a lengthy one at that, given how long he’d had the skill active. No – that wasn’t a viable strategy. He needed to push through, kill everyone atop the roof, and then save Abby and Talia.

He kicked out, taking another one of the Spiders in the chest; the shield held, but the momentum of the kick sent the man sprawling. Zeke raised his mace and, with a roar, pummeled the shield into submission. It took four more strikes, but, with a sound like shattering glass, the skill finally broke.

The remaining spiders didn’t last long after that. Between Zeke and his soulbound companion, they took out their mingled frustration on the group. When they’d finished, little more than blood, viscera, and flesh pounded into an unrecognizable form remained. If Zeke had learned one thing since being reborn into his new life, it was that killing someone – especially somebody with superhuman durability – with a blunt object was a messy prospect. It wasn’t like fighting with a sword or a spear, which were relatively clean by comparison.

But he had grown used to it.

Just as Zeke finished the last Spider – a bald, middle-aged man with dark skin – the archer rejoined the fight, her return announced by another arrow slamming into Zeke’s back. However, in the time that had passed since her initial attack, Zeke’s armor had grown far stronger, and the arrow lacked the penetrating power to do more than plink off the blood mithril surface.

Zeke turned, his mace dripping with the blood of his enemies. Pudge growled, his own muzzle stained with more of the same. The archer fled.

For a moment, Zeke stood there, surprised by the sudden turn. He watched as the woman leapt from one rooftop to an adjacent one, flipping in the air to fire another ineffective arrow at him. Zeke ignored it. Instead, he sprinted after her, and with a mighty leap, covered the distance in the space of a second. She continued her own retreat, narrowly avoiding his descending mace. It cracked against the surface of the flat roof, turning the sandstone into so much dust. Even as the roof collapsed under him, Zeke followed the archer.

So began a tense chase across Jariq’s rooftops. With every step, Zeke gained on the increasingly frantic woman, and after only a couple of minutes, he dismissed his mace and reached out, grabbed her slim neck, and brought the charade to an end.

She fought back, dropping her bow and drawing a pair of stiletto-bladed daggers, which she thrust out in a rapid series of strikes that must have been a skill. The blades skittered across his armor, incapable of penetrating the magically enhanced blood mithril.

Zeke lifted her into the air, squeezing her throat, and demanded, “Why?”

She tried to choke out a reply, but it only came out as a strangled cough. But then again, whatever answer she’d given didn’t really matter. The Spiders had made their bed. Now, they would have to sleep in it. With a flex of his fingers, Zeke crushed the woman’s windpipe. Then, he slammed her into the roof. The sound of breaking bones filled the air.

But she didn’t die, so he did it again. And again. Over and over, he smashed the archer into the surface. Even well after her body had gone limp and she was clearly dead, he went on, venting his frustration on the corpse. It wasn’t until he realized that his grip had torn through her neck and he was gripping her naked spine did he stop. In his past life, he’d have never even considered committing a violent act against a woman. However, in the new world, enemies were enemies; gender wasn’t even a consideration.

“Y-you can stop now…”

Zeke’s head whipped around to see Carlos standing nearby, partially cloaked in one of the shadows. As a response, Zeke dropped the mangled corpse and looked around. The rooftop chase had taken him further afield than he’d expected. What’s more, he was a little turned around, so he asked, “Which way to the headquarters?”

Despite overcoming the trap, Zeke still had a lot of work to do. The rest of the guild’s elite were still alive and kicking, after all. In addition, he also needed to rescue Talia and Abby.

“You’re going to kill everyone in there, aren’t you?” Carlos asked.

Zeke shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Please…”

“I won’t kill anybody who doesn’t deserve it,” Zeke said. Suddenly, he realized how he must have looked to Carlos. It would’ve been easy to think that he’d lost control. And maybe he had. The effects of [Heart of the Berserker] weren’t confined to simply increasing his stats. He often forgot about it, but there was a mental component that increased his aggression as well. It was possible that the stress of the situation, coupled with that particular effect, had steered him toward excessive brutality.

Carlos’s shoulders slumped, but he said, “I understand.”

Zeke disagreed, but he wasn’t there to get into a philosophical argument. Before, Zeke had been willing to let the enmity the assassin’s guild had earned fall away, but then, they’d gone and kidnapped and imprisoned his companions in an effort to trap – and probably kill – him. He couldn’t let that stand. He had no choice but to cripple the entire organization.

“What about diplomacy?” Carlos asked. “If I could get them to meet with you, would you –”

“The time for that is long past,” Zeke stated. “I was here for a while. They could have gone that route back then. But they didn’t. Instead, they chose to do what an assassins guild does and tried to kill me. They even wanted you to do it. Can you honestly say that, even if we came to some sort of truce, that they would honor it? No. Of course not, because you know good and well they won’t let this go. If I don’t cut the head off the snake – or the spider, I guess – I’ll be looking over my shoulder until I leave this plane behind.”

Carlos shook his head and looked as if he wanted to argue. However, he was smart enough to know that he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. So, he just said, “Okay. I obviously can’t convince you. And I can’t say you’re wrong. So, I’ll just ask again that you don’t go out of your way to kill the rank and file. They’re not the ones you’re after.”

“If they don’t attack me or mine, I’ll leave them alone,” Zeke agreed. “I’ve already said as much.”

Of course, that was before he’d gone berserk on the archer, so it was probably understandable that Carlos would want some sort of reassurance.

“Where are the higher-ups?” Zeke asked. “The ones who make the decisions.”

“They’ll be in the Sultanate’s Seat,” Carlos said. “For protection.”

“The Sultanate?” Zeke asked. “Are they in on it, too?”

The Sultanate, Zeke knew, was the ruling body of the city, but their authority was only nominal. Once, they had been the ones who’d built the city, but now, they just sat back and enjoyed the good life while the guilds ran Jariq. Every now and then, something would rouse them from their hedonistic lethargy, but it was a rarity.

Carlos shook his head. “No,” he stated. “Probably not. I don’t know. Maybe? I’ve been out of the loop for a while. But if I had to guess, I’d say that they’re only there to take advantage of the Sultanate’s guards.”

“Are they strong?” Zeke asked.

“They’re stronger than the guilds,” Carlos said. “But they’re less experienced. Most of them haven’t had to fight in years. They still train, though.”

Zeke nodded. None of that changed what he had to do. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go get Abby and Talia, then we’ll go do what we came here to do. If the Sultanate’s guards stand in the way, we’ll go through them.”

Without waiting for a response, Zeke ran to the edge of the roof and leapt down to the street below. There, Pudge joined him, and they set off toward the Nest. Zeke wanted to stop and plan, but his skill, [Heart of the Berserker] had already passed the point of no return. If he deactivated it now, he’d have to deal with a period of overwhelming weakness. So, he kept it active and hoped he could take care of the Spiders – and the Sultanate, if it came to that – as quickly as possible.