Chapter

  “Command, I’ve reached the target sight. No trace of the wolves or their master is to be found anywhere!”

  “Scout 7, please confirm. Did you say Mord has fled the area?”

  “I… shit, Command, all I see are perforated corpses… both human and lupine. I see no survivors… belay that. Survivor found… data base pings target as one Eric Silver, mortally wounded. Shit. This is the asshole that Stephan and the others reported before they… Sir, I think maybe he took out the Lupine faction!”

  Eric forced gummy eyes open, taken a ragged breath, feeling an absolutely dizzying mixture of shocking weakness and profound Strength. The abbreviated character sheet flashing across his mind’s eye as fast as Battletime-enhanced thought made it clear that he had grown in ways that were nothing short of profound… yet the agony of his perforated bowels, his near disembowelment, was so sharp and hideous that it was clear that not even Rank 16 Unified Restoration boosted by Potency Surge... not even the absolutely absurd 428 Strength and Vitality points he had earned after tearing free the spiritual essence of Mord’s heart and soul had been enough to neutralize the bitter hate behind a Silver Tier bane of a fallen Contender.

  Eric hissed through his agony, finally forced to accept that it wasn’t just points that made the difference between tiers. He had been damn lucky until now, and if the wild glee he heard in the nearby scout’s voice was anything to go by—no matter him communicating via comms Eric could now decipher perfectly well—his luck was quickly running out.

  “Eric Silver’s here? And he took out that damned wolf and his mangy pack?” The ether rang with a Silver’s furious laughter. “Wonderful. Wonderful! It is fitting that those fools daring to reach so far beyond their rank would stumble and fall before us. Daring to reach for prizes that are mine alone to savor!”

  “Yes, Lord Song,” quavered the voice of a scout who obviously hadn’t expected his master to be listening in.

  “You said the Arcadian prince was injured?”

  “Gravely so, Your Grace.”

  “Excellent! Listen well, scout. Your orders are to make sure that he does not leave the field until I myself have arrived to pass judgment upon him. Is that clear? Should he so much as twitch, blast apart his legs and arms. Should he show any more resistance other than begging for his miserable life, you are to shoot him dead! Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” The scout declared in a fervent voice that Eric could track quite well, spotting his observer from the corners of his eyes, before his eyes helplessly fastened upon the sight of his agony. A gaping wound in his belly that for some reason wasn’t healing at all.

  He squinted, Unified Perception making sense of a dizzying weave of blessings and banes that snapped into the depiction of a furious howling specter of a wolf desperately savaging his flesh and entrails as the flickering flames of a phoenix slowly burnt its taint away.

  Too slowly.

  For though Eric’s heart had been fully recovered after devouring his foe—his prey—his lungs were still filling with fluid. And his abdomen… he had to choke back a whimper even tensing up what should be muscles able to tear open the most secure bank vaults in New York.

  Fuck!

  Of course that was the moment the wild-eyed scout made an appearance. Kitted up with Sniper rifle, anti grave pack, and what looked to be light, form fitting polymerized armor that was nowhere near as durable as the power-armored shells Eric was used to taking down. But he supposed it make sense. Comparing this scout to those ground-pounders was like comparing fighter jets to tanks.

  The air flashed with brilliant arcing flares of hyperion disintegration, obliterating Eric’s once pristine cavalry uniform. The pants portion, anyway.

  “Don’t you dare move… criminal scum! You so much as twitch, and the next shot will be through your… what the hell?”

  Eric, realizing there was no point in hiding his awareness, opened his eyes fully to meet the gaze of an exceedingly Perceptive Scout, feeling the gentle lock of multiple kill perks zeroing in on him.

  Yet somehow, despite wheezing for breath, he couldn’t help but smile as the scout’s eyes widened, when the blast of Hyperion radiation the flinching asshole released, a shot that should have seared right through him as a massive cauterize hole before burning 5 feet into the ground... felt about the same as Elonia teasing him with the hot air blower a half inch from his skin, once upon a time. A warm, tingly heat that might have been painful if pressed against his skin for any length of time... for a hell of a lot longer than a split-second’s blaster fire.

  “I hit you dead on. Your pants disintegrated! You should be screaming and dying of bloodloss, you Contender freak!”

  Eric smirked at the scout’s furious countenance, violet eyes glaring down at him from near a hundred feet in the air as another galactic truth came to life.

  “Ah. So I see that the average classer holds Contenders shooting for the heavens in the same jealous contempt that so many bitter mortals feel about classers. That losers always feel for elites, no matter the era or world.”

  The man’s eyes lit up with fury. “Shut the hell up, native-born trash! One more word out of you and I’ll—”

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  “Die?”

  “No, I’ll—”

  “The correct answer was yes. Fragor!”

  The low-ranked Bronze’s core resisted for a heartbeat, long enough for the man’s eyes to bulge in panic… before bulging right out of his head as his skull exploded like a shrapnel bomb.

  Your foe’s defenses have been utterly pierced! You foe lack’s a titan’s vitality or any higher order concepts with which to cling to existence!

  Psionic Rupture infused with 2 Ranks of Wrath has OBLITERATED the skull of your prey!

  Congratulations! Psionic Rupture is now Rank 13!

  Experience earned!

  Eric allowed himself only a single heartbeat’s satisfaction before exhilaration turned to agonized wheezes and mounting dread.

  Even a freshly killed Bronze’s potency wasn’t enough to heal the still awful wound. Though his breathing was a tiny bit easier… that was all. He didn’t dare move his abdomen, lest he rupture wounds that would burst open with fresh blood and the promise of death—the wolf only temporarily subdued by fourteen essences of a Phoenix’s fury as he battled a Silver’s dying hate—and he lacking even a Bronze core.

  “Where is he? The fool’s off the grid. Scout! Report your triangulates at once!”

  Eric’s heart rate spiked, somehow sensing that Silver bastard Song’s words roaring upon etheriel currents, knowing he was rapidly running out of time.

  “The Contender must have taken out our scout. All knights to the scout’s last known location! Now! That’s an order!”

  And all Eric had to do was look at his Dominion Interface map to sense the swarm of deep red dots that had been waiting at an ambush sight that Mord had refused to be goaded into, the wolf instead devouring Song’s elites, both Silvers attempting to goad the other, and now all the remaining mercenaries were heading Eric’s way, eager to mop up the final wounded survivor and claim the board.

  “Yeah, fuck that,” Eric cursed, thoughts cycling frantically as he realized that he might just be forced to accept bitter fruits anyway.

  But fuck it. He had claimed over 1600 points after all his absurd boons so FUCK New York and the ability the catalyze the ascension of an ENTIRE STATE—enjoying boons that might influence an entire continent. A once in a lifetime opportunity—because of course his enemies would make it all but impossible for him to claim the most glorious of prizes.

  Well, the hell with all of them. Because if they thought they could ruin his day, he had three million ways he could ruin theirs.

  “And that would crush all four shadow realms underneath this one. Morlekai, Alice, Grim, Natasha… fuck!”

  Eric’s jaw clenched. Eyes desperately looking for the trace of what he thought he had sensed for just a heartbeat... not having the heart to risk crushing the friends he had fought so hard to save. The blushing beauty who had sheathed his sword so hungrily, with nothing but joy for frenzied appetites he was now so terrified would break any other potential lover that any act of desire he embraced was fraught with with worry and tender caution more than the exhilaration of ultimate release.

  Not with Natasha. A centuries-old succubus who welcomed his passion and wouldn’t suffer, should he give in to his hunger and kiss those soft, inviting lips too fervently while holding her so tightly in his embrace.

  A woman whose winsome smile and clever charm he could so easily fall for. A woman who’s life was now, in an odd twist of fate, utterly in his hands as desperate eyes locked onto the vine-covered root cellar between a pair of nearby cottages that somehow hadn’t been flattened by the furious exchange between himself and Mord.

  Gardens still intact, ivory trellises rustling in breezes alien to the winter gusts blowing through the devastated field of slaughter.

  “Command, I’ve spotted the target!” Screamed an excited voice a hundred feet in the air. “He’s right over—”

  “Fragor!”

  Eric wasted no time as another body hurtled to the ground in a spray of blood and gore, all his desperate focus on a root cellar all but covered in foliage, vines, and leaves as he grit his teeth against fear of awful pain, instead using a single hand to plunge into the dirt like a spade and drag himself a few feet forward… exertion that was actually beyond effortless, when he blinked, realizing he was being an idiot.

  “I’ve raced up to the heavens on planes of ascent and gravitational points of view that no one else is going to master anytime soon. So why the fuck am I not sliding my body against a perfectly smooth plane of slippery ice as my arm paddles me down stream? Because now that I think about it, that root cellar is on a fifteen degree slope… awesome!”

  Eric dared flash an exhausted smile when, with a single tilt of his head, things were exactly as he knew them to be, now sliding down the sloped hill and gaining momentum for the root cellar rapidly approaching, needing only the gentlest shifts of his hand against the loamy soil to nudge himself within feet of his target.

  “Halt, fool! Did you really think you could so easily escape the wrath of King Song?”

  That’s when Eric felt it.

  The crushing weight of Dominion as possessed by a Silver-Tier Lord.

  Your foe has unleashed his Crushing Aura!

  Rank 15 Aura of Command enhanced by the essence of Dominion compels your Obedience!

  Eric smirked. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing as he slid the final few feet to the root cellar that wasn’t sealed shut at all… its entrance merely covered by rose vines blossoming with eternal Summer.

  542 Mental Resistance enhanced by 4 Tiers of Dominion’s essence effortlessly resists all compulsion!

  And the look on the arrogant aquiline features of the tyrant covered in gaudy power armor sparkling with mithril, gold, and jewels was priceless. The would-be king of New York’s eyes bulged with outrage, his thin mustache quivering with incensed fury.

  “How dare you defy me, Sylvan trash. I’ll take the heads of both you and your sister and claim Arcadia as my own. This I swear, mongrel! But first, you will burn with the taint that will put even that fool Mord in his place!” Song’s eyes blazed with twisted glee as he aimed a massive blaster cannon Eric’s way that looked nothing like any other instrument of high tech death Eric had seen so far. It was an inky black tube covered in pulsating purple veins clearly infused with something hideous and tainted, that Eric most definitely didn’t want to get hit by.

  He caught a momentary flash of liquid darkness spewing forth as opposed to blazing brilliance… but he was already through the root cellar entrance, tumbling into the chamber below.

  Already a world away.