Chapter 73 (Patreon)

Chapter 73

Doors from nearby rooms slammed shut and people started barricading themselves inside immediately upon hearing the rushing wave of oncoming monsters, and soon Riven stood alone with his demons as enemies flooded into the main entrance hall from four different directions.  Rippling muscles and rounded abyssal maws full of teeth and writhing tongues bore down on him with clawed limbs, racing ahead like hairless great apes.

But he remained calm.  He’d survived far worse enemies than this.  To his surprise the sacrificial dagger he’d acquired from Negrada seemed to agree and began to quiver with primal rage - reminding Riven that it was still there and wanted to be used.  It’d been a while since he’d even attempted to use the item, or at least it felt that way.  In reality he’d only just got it back after trading with Negrada.

He took a brief moment to glance down at the exquisite weapon.  The intricate patterns on the blade resonated with his soul, and the flesh bond between his weapon and his body began to connect again with wisps of muscle that crept across his lower leg.

Athela to his left began to shriek in rage and yelled at him to run before vaulting ahead into the oncoming swarm of enemies at his right - claws outstretched, black hair whirling out behind her, and six scythe-like arachnid legs flashing forward.  Azmoth was already busy mowing them down by the dozens in his own little choke point and couldn’t be concerned with the other three pathways leading to the main hall where Riven stood.

Yet despite the oncoming swarm of roaring monsters that made the hospital shake with their simultaneous charge, Riven was not concerned.  He found himself oddly at peace, a content sigh of resignation parting his lips to escape the runic mask in a small cloud of bloody mist.

Smiling at the dagger and feeling it continually resonating with his body, the totem weapon crept up his free arm and placed itself through stretching fleshy connections into his palm opposite of the staff he carried in the opposite hand.

It wanted to be used.

And you know what?  Riven wouldn’t deny its request.

In a flash of inspiration, Riven slammed the hilt of the Sanguis Foedus down into the top of the shadow-imbued staff.  The flesh of the dagger roiled and writhed, rapidly encircling and intertwining with the black wood of Black redemption and their screens simultaneously displayed.

[Sanguis Foedus (Totem, Sacrificial Dagger): 12 average damage on strike, High chance to apply “Amplified Bleeding” debuff on biological enemies when struck. Requires a 20% or higher Blood Pillar Affinity to wield. This item has an abnormally high endurance and is hard to destroy.

• Totem Soul: Low Grade Primal, Incomplete Fragment, 6 Willpower Requirement
• Flesh Bond: This totem binds to the wielder in a unique way, allowing you to manipulate it at a limited distance through a flesh bond. If the flesh bond is severed, it must be restored before undertaking further distal manipulation
• Sacrifice: Use this dagger to sacrifice an enemy and mentally activate this ritual ability to create a portal back to Negrada at any distance. Creating a portal will take up to 24 hours.]

[Black Redemption (Tier 1 Awakened Staff): 74 average shadow damage on strike, with each hit drawing a small amount of mana from you to apply a knockback effect with a minor explosion of shadow magic.  All cost of Shadow spells is decreased by 7%, Mana Regeneration is increased by 68%.  Shadow magics all have damage modifiers applied by +27% while channeling through this staff.

• Black Lightning: This staff can passively build up charges of black lightning.  Power of black lightning depends on the amount of charge emitted.]

His thoughts raced up while Riven instinctively internally drew on a fragment of his soul, chiseling off a tiny part of it and incorporating it into the blood magic now running down his fingers and across the shaft of his black wooden staff.  Crimson ice ripped through the weapon from where his hand held it mid-shaft, intermixing with black shadows that radiated out from Black Redemption and fusing with the strings of flesh that were rapidly digging into the wood from the top end.  The staff hissed and the dagger screeched, but their sounds were not of agony - rather they were of bliss.  To them, this was the truest form of trust.  To this awakened weapon that had no soul at all, yet lived in physical form, and to the fragmented totem soul that was incomplete, Riven was making them whole.  He was generously reforming them into something new, something unique, by giving them a piece of his very being through pure will and inspiration.

And his inspiration was not off the mark.

The flesh of the dagger, shadow-imbued wood of the staff, and crimson blood with Riven’s soul fragment all collided with one another and intermingled to form an explosion of power that was directed straight upwards - ripping a large hole through three ceilings and sending a shockwave outwards from Riven’s position.  Enemies were blown back and even his two demons were knocked down, while the barricaded rooms around him all shuddered and jolted furiously until the aftermath of power died down.

And there, standing under the light of the stars after all of the candle-lit lanterns had been blown out or utterly destroyed by the blast of power, was Riven.  He held an entirely new weapon now, one created from the concepts of shadow and blood.

It looked very similar to the previous weapons he’d put together.  They weren’t necessarily changed in terms of looks when one studied their individual pieces that’d been fused in both spirit and the material world, but rather they were changed by identity.  The system now considered it one single item, with the other pieces having been absorbed into the weapon.

The gnarled staff now had fleshy strings of muscle weaving around the black wood that continued to ripple and flare with shadow.  A smooth stream of actively flowing crimson blood washed along the staff’s insides and on top of the wood in various pathways.  It had once been Riven’s soul-infused blood magic, but now laced in interweaving patterns beside the fleshy strings.  Beyond that, spikes of the crystalized crimson-ice form now decorated the top of the gnarled staff: reaching up-and-out that grew more numerous in all encircling directions until reaching the top.  There, at the very top of the staff, the dagger that’d once been a sacrificial dagger was now planted like a spear’s tip - the hilt having fused entirely into the black wood with red crystals further reinforcing the connection at the base of the blade.  Even more enticing was the fact that Riven could literally feel the weapon.  He could feel its thoughts, its wants, its inherent abilities, and could control its functions by sheer willpower.

[You have created a unique soul-fused sorcerer’s staff.  Congratulations!]

[Vampire’s Escort (Vampiric)(Unique Soul-Fused Weapon, Sorcerer’s Staff): 104 average damage on strike with each physical strike dealing minor shadow-explosion knockback.  Mana regeneration is increased by 102%.  All Shadow and Blood spells cost 9% less mana while dealing 22% additional damage.  This item has an abnormally high endurance and is hard to destroy.  Requires Vampiric Heritage to wield.

• Sacrificial Kill:  Killing strong opponents has a chance to imbue this weapon with additional attributes, stats, or bonuses.
• Scorpion’s Sting: The blade at the tip of this staff can extend through flesh molding to cut down enemies.  Enemies hit with the blade portion of this weapon do not experience shadow-explosion knockback like the rest of this staff, rather the blade portion of this weapon will imbue stacking bleeding damage to all biological enemies.
• Black Lightning: This staff can passively build up charges of black lightning.  Power of black lightning depends on the amount of charge emitted.
• Portal Master: This weapon can sync to any stabilized portal you have permission to use by the portal maker and master.  Current locations available for access:  Dungeon Negrada.]

Riven had never read anything about soul-fused weapons before, and it certainly piqued his curiosity.  However he was brought back to reality when a shrill and simultaneous scream broke the silence from hundreds of throats around him.

His crimson eyes lifted from the marvelous weapons in his hands, and he slowly began to grin.

***

Moving the carnage out from the hospital interior and into the parking lot had definitely been a wise decision, as it kept accidental civilian deaths to a minimum while Riven fought like a man possessed over a growing mountain of corpses - monster and human alike.  It also brought the dream creatures an obvious target, drawing the vast majority of them out of the hospital and onto a waiting open battlefield.

Bladed fleshy tongues lashed out at him and claws ripped through the air trying to pin Riven down, but torpedoing blood lances blood lances and waves of spinning bloody blades tore through the masses in a blitz while he dodged and swerved to avoid close combat.

He may be a vampire with enhanced health, speed, and strength now - but there was still no way he’d have ever been able to take on this many enemies in melee.  He was, however, able to deal with them at a reasonable pace while kiting them at range.

“EEEEEEEEHHHHHHH!!!”  A monstrous and faceless dream creature rocketed over a smashed pickup truck, jumping at Riven only to receive a spike of crimson ice directly into its face that’d launched itself from the crimson-colored ice that was creeping along the pavement at a rapid pace.

*SQUELCH*

The large monster felt limp and lifeless slid lifelessly down the solidified blood magic it was impaled on, its position quickly being overtaken by more of the zealous creatures that chased the vampire in droves around the medical campus grounds.

Black lightning crackled along the black, fleshy wood of his staff before ripping through the forest of gray monster with a resounding *BOOM* and an explosion of body parts.  Riven wasted no time and opened a rift in space behind him, quickly vanishing through the shadow portal and closing it to appear along the top of a storage shed on the opposite end of the campus.  His portals, he was quickly learning, actually left an afterimage of his traveling route.  It was something he hadn’t realized in the short time of experimenting with ‘Riftwalk’ upon first obtaining the skill, but was thankful to know now.  Each time he entered the rift, a very brief flash of black wisps flickered along the path he took in a direct line - leading the hive-mind monsters to catch on and quickly redirect their course with every attempt to outpace them.

[Riftwalk (Shadow): Channel mana into your Shadow Pillar and focus on the place you wish to travel to. Then rip open a portal in space and pass through it, allowing you and other people or objects nearby to pass through until you close the rift. Mana cost is dependent upon length of space traveled and time maintaining rift.]

Thankfully though, Azmoth and Athela were making their own waves in the horde.

“RRRHHAAAAAA!!!!”  The titanic flaming demon stampeded through the ape-like dream creatures with wild abandon, seemingly untouchable even despite their numbers piling on top of him.  They were just slightly smaller than he was but the strength difference was massive, and those that did manage to tie him down with numbers soon found themselves simply being burned away into ash over time before he was freed again.

Meanwhile, Athela was zipping in and out of their forces - following Riven like a silent shadow on the wind that he only saw in brief glimpses when a spray of viscera or flying, decapitated head was noticed.  She was doing quite a good job at keeping the pressure off of him too, as there’d been more than one incidence where he’d been hard pressed to maintain his barrage only for her to take the brunt of the frightening - allowing his mana to recharge.

And now, standing on the storage shed, he used her intervention to yet again prepare a devastating attack.  Arcs of red ribbons raced along his staff and the bladed tip of ‘Vampire’s Escort’ launched skywards.  The arcs of red followed it, crimson ice flowing down the fleshy string that attached the blade to the rest of his weapon, before expanding in full bloom when he swung the weapon horizontally.

The skywards blade came down and around like a whip, lashing out with blurring speed that left a trail of mana-infused ice and red ribbons in its strike-path and over two dozen through-and-through lacerated bodies that toppled over like dominoes.

“YOU ALMOST HIT ME!”  Athela screeched over the torrent of roars and charging bodies while ducking and glaring back at him from the ground.

“Don’t give me that much credit!”  Riven laughed, reeling in the blade of his newly created toy and summoning the environmental blood of the most recently fallen enemies to do his bidding.

The bodies of the two dozen he’d just killed coagulated and ripped from their corpses, filling the air with fluid before they condensed into spinning blades that then rocketed out into the oncoming mass of enemies in a storm of carnage.

He turned to glance at his minion, who stood shaking her head in bewilderment at the absolute destruction he was wreaking.  Then he looked back to the massive amount of enemies who now lay dead or dying on hospital grounds.  He smiled to himself, his heart pounded with excitement, and he felt truly alive.  How ironic, seeing that he was actually undead now, but regardless he was having a lot more fun than he should be.

Not only that, but Riven was quickly beginning to realize the true extent of his powers.  When environmental resource pools like hundreds of dead bodies and the now-available blood in them presented themselves for a blood-mage like him to use, Riven could quite quickly become a fully-blown harbinger of destruction.