Chapter 63 (Patreon)

Chapter 63

The thoughts that had once repulsed him after killing that man in the dungeon now swept through his mind like a tidal wave of hunger.  It had satiated him then, and he didn’t feel crazed like he had in that moment of blood-starvation, but he could still feel the effects of wanting it.  It’d been a little over two days since he’d fed, and he was getting hungry.

His red eyes cast over the corpse of a nearby bird, and he frowned.  Animals did not satiate his hunger.  The words of the system spelled it out for him well enough though - he needed the blood or mortals.  Humanoids.

And yet… he did not feel disgust any longer.

Disgust had been replaced by cravings.

***

The trek to the town was much longer than they’d anticipated due to a steep drop off down the side of the mountain that they had to reroute around.  The sun was already starting to set, and they’d walked all day with a couple breaks here and there to explore the area.  They also crossed paths with a couple of very weak monsters that, despite the power discrepancy, attacked them like rabid animals.

There were horned rabbits and a couple of smaller wargs, the wargs usually coming in pairs or trios but none of them being nearly as large as the one that Riven had blasted earlier that day.  The wargs were usually about the size of wolves and bloodthirsty creatures, and would have given any normal human that hadn’t been subject to recent continuous combat a run for their money and lives… but they were all left very dead in the wake of Riven’s small group.  It was so easy for the mageling and his two summons that Riven, Athela and Azmoth often didn’t even pause in their trek towards the distant town other than to pick up the bags of Elysium Coins that were dropped by the system after kills.  The coins were deposited in his backpack, and the small sacks they started in disappeared soon after collection.

“Do you think these monsters are spawning all over the world like this?” Riven eventually asked as he stepped over one of the mutilated corpses of a warg that’d gotten a little too close for comfort.  “And why only wargs and horned rabbits?”

The demons both shrugged in unison and proceeded through the trees further down the mountain towards the valley.

“We don’t question the system.” Athlea eventually said as her extended arachnoid legs kept her more humanoid legs and body up in the air - gracefully guiding her across the forest floor at an elevated height.  “None of it ever made sense to me and half the things it does won’t ever have answers.  There are theories about why it does the things it does, but it wasn’t an area of interest or study for me.”

Azmoth just grunted in affirmation as a heavy, plated leg smashed through the wet undergrowth with indifference to what was in his way.  Toppling a small tree over with an irritated flick of his hand, the large demon plowed ahead to clear a path for the other two.

Riven’s stomach loudly growled, and the knot inside his gut began to churn.  Both Athela and Azmoth looked back at their master with curious glances, and Riven could only shrug helplessly and hold up his free hand in a gesture of helplessness.

“Sorry.”

“Didn’t you already eat part of that warg you killed?  That wasn’t enough?”

“Eh… No.  I think I’ll need what the system considers ‘mortal blood’ to fill me up all the way.  Other food seems to help just a little bit, but I can’t get the edge off.”

“Oh!  Right.  “You need the blood of mortals otherwise you’ll go insane like you did a couple days ago!”  Athela gave him a wicked grin that earned her a scowl, but she brushed it off with a flick of her long, black hair.  “I thought you were rather dashing, the way you ate him.  It made me want to join in as well!”

He paused their trek, turning around fully to gaze at his minion.  True anger towards her, something he hadn’t experienced much since meeting the demoness, surged forward and he jabbed a finger into her chest.  “Athela, shut up.”

The tone he used was obviously not playful, and for the first time ever - Athela was taken aback.  Her eyes went wide, she opened her mouth to speak, and then she shamefully glanced at the floor.  “Did I go too far?”

“Yes and it’s fucking pissing me off.”  Riven pushed his finger off of her chest with a little bit of force, but it wasn’t enough to shove her.  He took a step back, calmed himself, and  met her eyes as she stared back at him like a kicked puppy dog.  “Honestly I’m tired of the disrespect.  I told you that was a touchy subject, and I’ve been lenient in how I’ve handled you because you’ve been a great help.  But you need to fucking know when you’ve crossed the line, and you just crossed it.  I fucking MURDERED someone that didn't deserve it Athela, someone I didn’t want to and had no control over.  It's not like the others, he was innocent and it isn’t fucking funny.  Got it?”

She clasped her hands in front of her, and gave a sheepish nod.  “Yes master.”

“Good.  Don’t fucking forget it.”

He was about to turn around, when she hesitantly reached out to grab his sleeve.  Turning back around, he was surprised to see her tearing up.

“I… Uhm…” Athela’s gaze shifted across the forest floor from a stick, to a rock, to a stump - anywhere but looking directly at him.  “Are you really mad at me?”

“YES I’m fucking mad at you!  Are you being serious?”  Riven whirled on her, disbelief etched into his features.

She stuttered.  “I-I’m sorry if I came across as disrespectful.  I just…”

“You do it all the time.” Riven cut her off with a frown, completely pissed about her jabs and jokes on murdering that man in the dungeon.  “I’ve been half tempted to just use the contract commands but that’d feel like slavery to me.  So I don’t.  Frankly it’s not even just about that guy.  The jokes can be funny sometimes but lean back on that shit, it gets really fucking irritating when there’s this superiority complex you’ve got going on all the time.  I thought we were friends, but you obviously don’t want to respect me as a friend because you trot all over the requests I give you like ‘don’t fucking tease me about the guy I killed and ate.’  It’s pretty fucking simple I’d think.  Just give me some space, ok?”

She withdrew her fingers from his sleeve, nodded silently, and quickly blinked to get the water out of her eyes.  “Sorry, master.”

Birds chirped overhead, the wind rustled the treetops nearby, and an awkward silence followed while Riven glared at Athela from a few feet away.  That was when a high pitched scream echoed from further down the mountain, and a series of more screams or shouts quickly followed it with other sounds akin to metal clashing on metal.

He turned his head.  Was he hearing that right?

Riven shared a look with Athela who clearly had heard it too, but Azmoth was none the wiser as he trudged through the forest in a mindless, rambling way until he noticed the other two hadn’t continued to follow.  The larger demon’s hearing just wasn’t on par with the others, and he had no idea why they’d stopped.

The demon’s armored head turned as well to look at them despite having no eyes, and he curiously cocked his head to one side.  “You not coming?  Why?”

The sounds were faint, but Riven’s boots began to shift in the mud as he turned right to adjust their trajectory.  His amplified senses now allowed him to pick up sounds at a far greater distance.  Athela had likely gained some sort of stat bonuses to perception as well after her evolution, which was likely why only he and Allie heard the commotion while Azmoth had remained ignorant.

Riven motioned for the larger demon to follow before taking off.  “Come.”

The two nimbler members of their party melted through the underbrush like shadows on the wind of the early morning breeze, and despite Athela always having been much quicker than Riven previously - Riven found himself able to keep up with her rather easily with a body far more agile than he’d ever thought himself possible.  He’d had little to no experience utilizing his body to its true extent, so he was far more surprised than he should have been.  Foliage flew by as their enhanced bodies drove them ahead at speed and grace far beyond what they could have achieved in their past life in Negrada just a few days ago, and Riven felt himself beginning to eagerly wonder what it was he had the pleasure of taking out his pent-up anger on; while also wondering just how far he could go speed-wise if he really pushed himself.

He didn’t know what to expect.  He  didn’t know who was fighting or why, but at the same time he knew that he needed to find out.  There was a good chance that they’d be able to help someone, or at the very least they’d be able to watch from a distance to glean some information about the locals.

Coming up the large hill and rounding around a large outcropping of rock, they continued onwards as the sounds of Azmoth barreling through the underbrush far behind them echoed out along with the crashing of trees.  Meanwhile the sounds of fighting ahead of them were growing louder and the words that people were screaming were growing more tangible.  Riven was able to hear swearing, threats and begging – along with some garbled hissing, as none other than a medieval war horn sounded out just over the next ridge.

His breathing picked up and his heartbeat began to spike - simultaneously picking up the heartbeats of many of the combatants just over the hill.  Making sure Athela was still with him after a single backwards glance, he firmly gripped his staff and reached the next hilltop to discover a rather unusual sight far down at the bottom of the slope.

Numbers of bodies lay dead along a beaten dirt path running through the oak trees of the forest.  These bodies, however, were not human.  Rather: they were the bodies of little green men with long snouts and ugly faces… likely goblins if he had to guess at first glance.  The bodies of blonde or silver-haired elves as designated by the sharp pointed ears and fair features were also present, and despite everything he’d seen so far Riven was still surprised.

Both the goblins and the elves wore very little.  The bald goblins had a mix-and-match of various shoddy spears, daggers, bucklers and blow darts.  They wore loincloths and sometimes thicker furs around their shoulders.  The fair-skinned elves on the other hand usually had some form of designs drawn onto their bodies at random with blue paint or paste, probably tribal markings, with a couple of them bearing blue handprints along their thighs, chests or even foreheads.  Many of the elves were barefoot with furs or stretched blue-green material that looked like interwoven palm leaves, leaving little to the imagination for both men and women as they brandished long curved knives or bows and arrows.

Of the survivors, there were only a handful left for either side.  The battle that’d been fought was drawing to a close.  There were two men and two women, all elves, all of them obviously injured in some way or another with cuts and bruises evident.  One of the men even had a long deep gash across his front where a spear was still sticking out of his chest – though despite his screams of pain and horror, his allies were too busy fighting to help.

Meanwhile, there were still eight goblins left.  They snarled and screeched, stepping over the bodies of the fallen as they tried to overwhelm the remaining elves with numbers as the last arrow in the quiver of the woman on the left sang through the air – clipping one of the goblins to leave a deep gash along its skull.

But it kept coming along with the rest of its green-skinned kin, quickly pushing the two women and man who remained standing up into an enraged, snarling ball of knife fighting.  The ensuing flailing along the ground bloodied resulted with desperate screaming and tearing of teeth, and it quickly became a one-sided battle.