Chapter 72 (Patreon)

Chapter 72

Riven had heard enough, and was about to start walking towards the two talking men when he heard Athela whisper.  “Don’t.”

Riven shot the demoness a look of anger.  “What do you mean, don’t?”

“That’s what I mean.” Athela stated flatly.  “Whatever that creature is upstairs, I can sense its aura from here… and there are more of them coming.  It feels like… like a hive mind creature of some sort.  We can expect a swarm soon.”

Yet again the building rocked, and there was a crashing sound as another shuddered caused dust to filter down from the ceiling.

“I can summon Azmoth.”

“Sure.  Summon him, but it may not be enough.  You are not a coward, Riven.  I know that, but please trust me on this.  Swarm creatures are very dangerous and can be composed of multiple bodies with one entity controlling all of them.”

Riven stared blankly back at the demoness, desire to go up and save those people battling with how certain Athela was of their failure.  He couldn’t sense the heartbeat of the creature, which was disturbing in itself since he’d gained his newfound abilities - but he could certainly hear and sense everyone else upstairs as their own heartbeats were rapidly snuffed out one by one.  He also couldn’t sense any ‘aura’ that Athela was talking about.  He’d certainly need to talk to her about her new demonic capabilities after this since the evolution.

Riven snarled, clutching his fist as he thought about Jerald, Linda, and their little girl Sara.  “What about all the people upstairs?”

“They’re dead.” Athela stated confidently as her arachnoid limbs began ripping out of her back, producing bladed tips on all four of them that gleamed ebony in the candle light to the gasps or further screams of the already terrified people nearby.  “Or they will be.  If you go up there, whatever those creatures are will likely kill you.  It has the ability to seek out living auras a lot like I do, a form of magic that can track down creatures based on their life force.  It’s probably some kind of high tier undead variant, and I’m absolutely certain that it has already identified our presence and will likely make its way down here even if we continue to hide.  We need to seal off the stairway.  You may be a vampire, even a pureblooded vampire, but you are still not anywhere close to the top of the food chain.  You have a long, long way to go and now is not the time to play hero.”

A ball in his gut started to form.  He wanted to go up there and save all those people.  All those families, the children, all those people who had the last remnants of hope being stripped from them now in this new world that Elysium had created.

It was so fucked up, and Riven felt his face flushing as he realized what he needed to do – yet still didn’t want to do.

Then he realized that everyone in the room was looking at him.

“God damn it, AZMOTH!  Get out here!”

Riven pulled down his shirt and touched the pentagram sigil on his chest, lighting it up as a swirling portal of hellfire erupted in the middle of the room that sent many of the others scrambling.  The armored, muscular tank of a demon stepped out of the netherscape portal and it winked out a moment later to reveal the colossus, his newly acquired spiked tail whipping back and forth in anticipation of the fight to come and all four of his clawed hands visibly itching to start the violence.  “You called, master?”

Athela scowled but responded to Riven’s choice as well, her bladed six arachnoid legs whipping out of her body on full display amd claws extending from her fingers in the blink of an eye.

In total, there were probably three dozen people down here.  The nurses that’d run down from upstairs, Dr. Brass, a couple people operating on some guy in one of the rooms they’d passed earlier – who now were sticking their heads out to see what was going on, and three small families with children.  All of them had heard what Athela had said and all of them were staring wide-eyed at the two demons with mixed emotions.

Dr. Brass flinched as another scream echoed further up the stairs, and he hesitantly approached Riven to look up at where Azmoth had burst into flames a few feet away.  “I’m not sure what that is boy, or how you’ve made friends with these creatures, but if you have a way to save us then please do it.”

The man completely ignored the fact that Riven had been called a vampire or how Athela had called herself a demon, something that Riven appreciated.  Maybe the reality of their situation had set in on the old doctor, but regardless – Dr. Brass had put his public support for Riven on display.

They all shifted their gazes to the stairs as another individual pushed through the door – sobbing and clutching at her throat.  It was another nurse, her usually pretty features contorted with fear as she tried to stop a gushing wound the size of Riven’s fist from pouring out to no avail.  Blood sprayed all over the door, the floor, and she gurgled something to the rest of them before passing out and dropping to the floor.

“GET HER INTO A ROOM NOW!” Dr. Brass screeched as her coworkers rushed to the downed woman, lifting her up in a mad scramble as the families began to try and calm their screaming, terrified children.

Without another word, the warlock grasped his black staff and headed for the stairs.

Coming into the stairwell, steps leading up were already slick with blood and a recently deceased body was sprawled unceremoniously along their path.  Screams got louder as Riven vaulted upwards, quickly coming to the door of the first floor and pushing it open to reveal a madhouse of death and carnage.

Bodies were everywhere, the floor was thick with rubble and blood as people tried to scramble while slipping or tripping over one another as five large and faceless humanoid monsters killed indiscriminately in the dim glow of lanterns and starlight seeping in through a large hole in the wall where one of them had barreled through.

Though they were humanoid in shape, these five monsters looked like fleshy, gray-skinned gorillas devoid of any hair or genitalia.  They stood six feet to seven feet tall and were twice two times thicker than an average man concerning their muscular, clawed limbs.  They had no eyes, no facial structures, but did have circular maws where thick tongues whipped out to pierce people - dragging them alive into their mouths while screeching and ripping people apart.  Their mouths could extend to massive proportions, enabling them to feed on people whole before they dragged their prey into some kind of abyssal core that seemed to suck the terrified, dying men and women into an internal black hole after being shredded to smaller pieces with long razor teeth.

And even more horrible was that right outside the hospital was even worse.  There were dozens of these monsters, all of them slaughtering with wild abandon amidst the refugee camp that’d been set up outside.  A bloody gun in a hand missing a body to Riven’s right on the ground spelled out what’d happened to the security forces.

The nearest of them was just about to slam a clawed hand on a screaming, crying little boy’s head when Riven blurred across the room and slammed his black staff into the gray creature.  Black shadow magic pulsed and exploded from the magical weapon, rocketing the large brute across the room and over bodies to slam into one of the other monstrosities as yet another, sixth creature ran in through the outside.

“Die.”

Riven stepped in front of the child and launched a flurry of blood razors, pushing his new body and heights of power to the limits to create even more of them.  His blood pillar quivered and his body pulsed with red light.  The fluids of the numerous dead began to rise up off the ground and from the walls amidst swarming people - the environmental resources heeding his call.  A dozen razors became two dozen in an instant and the spray of blades left red ribbons in a crimson tide after their passing.

*ZIP-ZIP-ZIP-ZIP-ZIP*
*CRASH*

The room turned into a blur of red for just an instant - blasting into the gray skinned creatures and tearing off limbs, heads and eviscerating the beasts in a multi-pronged attack that left them looking like a gatling gun had just mowed them down.  Some people stared in wide eyed shock, while others just continued to run for their lives or hide while doing their best to collect loved ones.

The light left Riven’s body and he felt the environmental pool of available blood around him diminish as the magic dissipated.  Ignoring the notifications about XP and the small system-made bags of money, he turned to the entrance where screeches and howls of anger roared in unison.  His eyebrows rose when he realized that not one, not two, but every single one of the odd, grotesque creatures was now glaring his way with those eyeless faces and gaping round maws.

And then they charged, their large gray bodies pounding over pavement, grass and flesh in a simultaneous howl of anger that echoed across the city blocks.

“Come on you cock suckers, let’s see what you’ve got!”  Black lightning ripped out of Riven’s weapon while he simultaneously threw out a wave of red ice that covered the floor through the large hole in the wall.  Bodies melted into sizzling piles of ash and their comrades slipped over the debris or on the ice itself while piling up over one another.

Riven quickly charged two blood lances and shot them directly into the choke point where dozens of creatures were pouring in to attack.

The lances of solid crimson mana split open eight of the creatures in a single devastating strike, leaving their bodies as corpses for more of the swarm to stumble over.

And just as the mass of bodies finally made it to the entrance, Azmoth’s roar bellowed out and a flaming giant demon shot forward into the wave of beasts - tearing them apart one by one in a tidal wave of violence.

Blessing of the crow activated and lightning crackled along Riven’s skin.  His eyes glowed red, and his staff flickered with shadow.  Many of the heartbeats of nearby civilians had disappeared, either having run off through other entrances or having been snuffed out by death.  However there were still many of them left, watching from their hiding places in rooms nearby or remaining as hidden as possible while the sounds of battle raged in the entrance hall of the health care center.

Athela blurred left, tearing open another of the monsters Riven hadn’t seen coming due to a lack of heartbeat - and he gave her an appreciative nod before she disappeared noiselessly behind a pillar and clambered up to the ceiling to view the action from thirty feet above.  He didn’t have to ask what she was doing, he knew she was prioritizing his own life over the immediate battle because she was worried.  The expression she wore was that of obvious anxiety, and she quickly darted her eyes around to different avenues of entry while perched there.

“AAAZZMOOTTHHH SMASSSSHHH!!!!”  The brutalisk roared and picked up two of the slightly smaller and significantly weaker humanoid beasts in front of him, burning them alive and smashing their skulls together while whipping his spiked tail around and around to slash and maim.

Athela provided a hail of red needles in the form of solidified webbing from up above, showering the choke point in carnage while continuing to glance around anxiously.

Riven lowered his hand, smiling underneath his runic mask with a content hum.  He hadn’t been the only one to become stronger since his evolution.  That, and compared to the denizens of hell these monsters were significantly weaker.  There was very little chance that their level difference was that far off from the negrada undead or demons, considering Negrada’s surface level had contained even creatures as low as level 2, but the quality of race and base stats was just miles apart.  It had to be, considering Azmoth was beating these things senseless like a violent child with squishy pinatas.

[Nightmare Fledgling, Hive Mind Dream Creature]

[Nightmare Fledgling, Hive Mind Dream Creature]

[Nightmare Fledgling, Hive Mind Dream Creature]

Feeling a bit more secure and wondering just why Athela had been so alarmed about these relatively weak creatures, Riven turned around and knelt in front of the quivering little boy who stood covered in dirt and someone else’s body fluids.  The child’s lower lip trembled, and tears streamed down the kid’s face.  He had to be only 5 or 6 years old, and seeing the boy shake even more violently when Riven reached out to him only made the vampire’s heart drop.

“You’ll be ok.” Riven said, withdrawing his hand and motioning to a room’s doorway where other people were staring wide-eyed at the battle in a hushed cluster of bodies.  “Go over to them, they’ll keep you safe.”

The boy was frozen in fight and shock while looking up at him, but a young mother already holding a young child of her own raced forward and grabbed the boy by his hand; yanking him back and sparing Riven a wary glance before running back to the relative safety of the room.

*CRUNCH*

Athela smashed into the floor behind Riven a dozen feet away, impaling one of the dream creatures in six different spots before using lightning-fast strikes to rip open its head.  She glanced his way - muscles tensed.  “Riven, I can feel more coming!”

The vampire rolled his eyes.

“Well there are lots of them out there!” Riven said with a nonchalant wave of his hands towards the piles of monster bodies gathering in the choke point - the swarm of beasts still having failed to bring Azmoth down or even slow the cackling, flaming demon.

“No!  I mean the aura is drastically increasing!  I think-”

Athela’s voice was cut off as a deafening howl reverberated all around the hospital.  Dozens, then hundreds of voices rose as feral screeches towards the night sky that shook the building to its foundations - and Riven’s glowing eyes went wide.

Glass windows shattered and doors were thrown off hinges all around the hospital’s first floor when hundreds of the beasts came surging in from hallways to his left, right, back and front.

It looked like things had just gotten a whole lot more interesting.