Chapter 9:
A day's march from the wall of Roble:
Captain Mala-"Where have you been?"
"Making these"-Kane said, holding up a dozen or so dull and somewhat rusty swords.
"What...did you bash them on.."-Mala started complaining
"No, they were like this when i started"-Kane defends
"Started what?"-Mala
"Let me finish and i'll tell you, jeesh"-Kane
Captain Mala looked at the ground then back to him after a few moments..
"In short, i imbued a weak version of LIGHTNING into the swords"-Kane said with a smile, before frowning.
In truth he had tried something...bigger, but it proved a bit difficult on a large scale production so he went with this. It may not be, um, flashy but it should help against the fodder.
"It's not quite as damaging as the spell itself, but it'll deal a fair amount of the spell's damage when they strike something. They can be touched but when they're swung with applied force, they'll emit a quick burst of electrical energy"-Kane explained.
"I recommend handing them out to some of your quickest soldiers"-Kane said further to an eye-brow raising Captain.
To prove it, Kane grabbed one and swung it. The blade produced arcing energy around the top half of the blade.
"As you can see, it only applies to the top half of the blade to minimize the risk to the handlers"-Kane said then continued, "There was one draw-back from making these however..."
Kane looked back from the direction he came from, Mala followed his gaze to the thunderstorm in the distance...
"So...we're gonna get drenched tonight?"-Mala says, only a bit irritated.
"Cheer-up, i just upgraded some of your weapons!"-Kane said and then followed up with "you should hand these out to those you deem worthy".
Walking past her after giving her the bundle of weapons, Kane says "hop to it" and gives her a light slap on the a$$...she hopped.
That night they were all assaulted by a deluge of rain, lightning, and thunder to the assembled army's dismay. Those who got the new weapons and told of their ability were the only one's that didn't complain. And of course, Captain Tom coerced one of them from a disgruntled Captain Mala for inspection.
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Near the wall:
The 'Arc-swords', as they came to be called, worked well enough Kane supposed. The weapons worked well for scouting parties that were often ambushed. But with more surviving, they had more info and a better grasp on the deployment of the enemy.
The beastmen and their allies were spread along a swath of land extending for at least a couple hundred kilometers in either direction from where he was. The unfortunate thing with the arc-swords was that they were like battery-powered tools. Eventually they'd lose power and those depending on them would often die when their weapons ability did.
(Your, um, light-saber suddenly dies during a fight-you could use the hilt part but...ya. That to a lesser extent)
The arc-swords were a rather time-consuming, as well as mana-draining, experience on Kane. Especially since he wouldn't allow anyone in on how they were made(Rigrit is the only one who knows).
The past few days, since the arc-swords became depleted, were a slow progression. Kane thought of making more then decided against it. It was more cost-effective for him to use his mana by casting a spell on the enemy forces anyway.
Although he didn't actually need mana to kill them, it did tend to get boring rather quickly. It was like swinging a sword at enemies frozen in time...that actually happened once before.
Too many questioning looks, too many demands to know what happened:
The army crested a hill and faced a larger beastmen army. The scouts had given the all clear a few hours before so this came as a total shock. Kane being Kane, opted to use the weapon that would save as many human lives...Goujian.
Extending, boosting, and maximizing, he used TIME-STOP and flew into them like a hurricane. After a few, well timed castings, Kane had virtually sliced and diced the enemy to shreds.
The result was his human allies raising their weapons to suddenly see everything suddenly fly into pieces. Gore and viscera instantly littered the 'battlefield' and instead of fighting for their lives, fought to not empty their stomachs.
In a single eye blink the sudden appearance of the enemy became a large field of death. After the initial shock of it, everyone looked to Kane. Who was assailed with questions and demands to know what happened.
He couldn't have been like; "I stopped time and then killed them all". If he did, then he likely would never be trusted...
(If someone could control the flow of time, would you trust them?)
So all he'd tell them, much to their dismay, was that;"It's complicated, forget about it and be glad your all alive".
Even now people would glance at him, shiver, then smile at him...it was fake, they were truly afraid of him now.
*Oh, well, it was probably bound to be like this sooner or later...*-Kane thought to himself.
*Well, puny humans are afraid of everything, so who cares!*-Drezrath
*It's your own fault, using time manipulation to slaughter all those hapless beasts...*-Azriel continues off in in-coherent mutters.
*Ill advised action, dangerous*-Vogue said, momentarily surprising him.
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Captain Mala glanced at Gaidon Kane again. He seemed like he was in deep thought over something again. *How did he kill that army a couple days back?!*.
One moment they were about to be swarmed, the next they were surrounded by a field of corpses. It was too unreal...
Captain Tom observed Mala glancing at Kane off and on. Likely wondering the same as he, though perhaps not.
*Did Kane freeze time?*
*Is he a god of some kind?*
Tom felt that could very well be in the presence of a godly being. None were paying him the homeage that they humans should towards Kane if he was indeed one of their gods in disguise. Gaidon Kane seemed to be in deep thought at the time too...
*Have we displeased him somehow or-*-Tom was thinking
"Captain Tom of the Slane Theocracy!"-Kane shouted over to him
"Y-yes!", *crap i stuttered!*-Tom answered and then thought in shame.
"I've been wondering for a while now...how many magic casters do you have?"-Kane
"Huh? Oh, uh, i honestly dont know...hundreds, perhaps a thousand, why?"-Tom
"Oh never mind, i just had a thought that might help wrap this war up if we could get a few thousand magic casters to spread out along the lines of battle i could try wiping out the invaders in one fell swoop."-Kane replied calmly
"H-how is that possible?-Tom asked
*I did it again! Am i afraid of him or something?*-Tom asked in his mind as he finally realized that the man before him terrified him.
"Ah, never-mind it, forget i said anything"-Kane dismissed offhandedly.
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A few days later they arrived within sight of the wall, the invaders nearly pushed back to their borders.
"Looks like today is shaping up to be the last day of the war..."-Kane observed and almost regrettably declared.
Everyone just looked at him, no one would say otherwise. They all knew by now that he could, and very likely would, kill all their enemies-as well as them-and still have time to spare before it was sun-down(it's mid-day).
"You gonna clear a path and spot on the wall for us?"-Captain Mala asked, or requested, depending on your view of it.
"Sure, when ya want me to start?"-Kane
"Now w-"-Mala began saying as Kane was instantly gone, kicking up a dust-cloud with the sudden movement and a clapping noise from the air displacement.
She saw a few bodies fly into the air if those black specks were enemies...
At the word 'Now' Kane launched himself at the beastmen, bored and having nothing better to do. No one approached him any more like they once had.
He'd showed a little too much of his real power. Not like they knew what true power was...yet at least. Hopefully never, they'd probably lose their will or sanity...freak-out or just give-up.
Kane was using SHOCKWAVE with his earth sword, Tessaiga. Launching enemies every which way.
Sometimes he'd used MAGNETIC AURA to pull the ones that were the most heavily armored before using MAGNETIC SURGE to send them suddenly flying outwards from him after pulling them through the air towards him.
Their insides were likely destroyed from the sheer g-forces that were exerted on them. While their outside appearance remained...mostly intact, their armor dented or cracked. Another SHOCKWAVE to disperse the corpses and allow better sight towards those that could still move...
The bodies were piling up in heaps...like a force of nature, no, like a wrathful god Kane moved through the enemy lines. They launched themselves at him at blurring speeds, only to be repelled and forever lay still. It was a horrible sight till she remembered what they'd been doing to Roble not that long ago. Then, Captain Mala smiled.
Captain Tom just watched in awe, his scripture not sure what to do as Kane moved through enemy ranks nearly too fast to follow, flinging bodies went every which way. If Kane ever became their enemy...they were doomed unless the six would come save them.
Kane would need only a second or two to wipe out an entire scripture. But, at least, he was apparently championing humanity...that was a good sign at the very least, right?
Tom had received a message from the cardinals, and later, some stranger he didn't know. They'd mentioned something about investigating Gaidon Kane's new home. Some kind of former devil lair of a daemon god or some such thing. He was ordered to stall Kane from going back there at all costs.
*Damn that Mala, couldn't she have come up with some semblance of a plan for Kane to follow so we could help in the fight?*-Tom thought angrily as he began calculating, in his head, roughly how long the enemy could last under that barrage of death's assault.
"Sir Kane! Gaidon Kane!"-Tom started yelling at the virtual tonado of destruction...
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*well, this is getting old...and stinky*-Kane thought to himself...
*I know!*
"FISSURE!"
A large plit in the earth gave way, bodies falling in.
"CHURNING EARTH!"
Kane filled it back in with surrounding land, causing the area to become like a depressed bowl-shaped area.
(reversed hill)
*That's better!*-Kane said happily within his head as he continued his humming and swinging.
The last two spells he'd used were hardly even noticed, taking only a few seconds within a swirling cloud of dust around him, caused by the very swings and thrusts of his large sword.
Lore-wise, Tessaiga was a tainted weapon. An Earth-god's sword used by a half-daemon. Till Kane stole it from said half-daemon(though in actuality he created the weapon but it was good for kicks he thought).
*Bah, time for a change...*-Kane
"Suizahni!"-Kane said, switching from earth-based to water-based.
~"Kane!"~ -Kane hears his name being called in the distance as he hasn't even missed a step in his continued attacks.
*What's with the interruption?*-Kane thought
*Maybe its the corruption*-Azriel said before giggling
*Was...was that a joke?*-Kane
*Kill, keep killing, ignore the human!-Drezrath seemed...
*Inappropriate Drezrath!*-Kane yelled at the daemon for, well, at least sounding like she was...doing things.
"What is it!"-Kane yelled back.
"CLONE"-Kane said, making a weaker water-based version of himself to carry-on while he went to speak with Tom...
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Kane's property, formerly daemon god's abode:
"Whoooaa" -A stranger said, bringing the horse to a stop, the others doing the same.
"This the place?"-another person said riding up.
"Tis be what the map shows..."-The stranger replied.
The...villa, mansion whatever it was, was half black and ruined. A battle of some kind had definately taken place here. (Rigrit with one of the 'Artifacts of Kane')
"Begin the search, but be careful, there's supposed to be lethal traps set in place!"-Stranger warned.
"Ya ya, same as ruins of any other place"-Still another person said, moving into the main building.
Upon entering the sub-level or basement of the building; "Stop! stop moving you fools!"-the Stranger instantly yells in panic.
Everyone stops and looks back toward their leader for the reason of his sudden outburst.
"What's wrong, what is it?"-a person asks
"There are enchanted wards here...powerful one's...on the scale of fifth tier magics"-Stranger said
"Can they be dealt with?"-another person asks
"Should we turn back then?"-yet another persons wonders.
"You're one of the greatest magic casters in the world, dispel it and lets move on"-first person says.
"It will take time...but, please don't-"-that's as far as the Stranger got before the second person mentioned moved to look into a doorway.
A bolt of lightning from the ceiling fried the poor, unfortunate person to ash.
"I said don't move for your lives!"-Stranger yelled.
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Back near the wall:
"If you want people to die, then go ahead, make a plan to help me!"-Kane said irritated.
"We can't just sit back and watch while you do our jobs for us..."-Mala
"Your job is to hold the wall once i take it back"-Kane said to her with a pointed look.
They'd been arguing for the past few minutes while Kane's CLONE kept the enemy forces busy. Tom smiled at the former and grimaced over the latter.
*He doesn't even need to go and fight, himself, a spell does it for him?!*-Tom thought
*Those fools better hurry up and finish their mission because this 'battle' will probably be over within a few hours...*-Tom continued thinking to himself.
Kane grumbled to himself, he was essentially getting bitched-out for keeping casualties to a zero, as he saw it.
"Why don't you all take on the flanks and i'll simply plow through them where their clustered up the most?"-Kane suggested.
"Seems reasonable to me"-Captain Mala agreed.
Kane suddenly had a strange feeling but passed it off as anxiety and/or frustration...
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Kane's property, formerly daemon god's abode:
The Stranger had to use an artifact from the Slane Theocracy to break through the spells guarding the lower reaches of the place.
They were now in some sort of horrible dungeon, and going further down they found great, majestic even, halls and corridors. Some of which were covered with old, blackish, blood.
Here, and there, decayed corpses of what was presumably daemons, littered the passageways. They continued their investigations further down and into the strange place.
It was enormous, larger than any palace or castle; possibly the size of a large town or small city. They followed the corpses as a guide however.
"I'm starting to think every thing they told us about that Kane fellow fighting a daemon army is true..."-a person said.
No one said anything to that, they all had similar ideas.
What they found next only amplified and made that statement into truth. They had come to a large doorway that seemed to have exploded inward, towards them. A pile of monstrous, decaying bodies littered the floor. But that wasn't alarming, not really...it was beyond the doorway that was alarming.
Beyond, in a ruined hellscape, laid thousands upon thousands of dead forms. Veritable mountains of corpses, body parts, and dark liquids in congealing rivers were seen. They all puked until there was nothing left and continued dry-heaving for a few minutes.
None of them doubted now. None would leave here without suffering from nightmares for the remainder of their lives. It was a foul, corrupt, and terrifying sight.
A few of the rotting daemon corpses were around the size of dragons, most of which were mangled into unnatural positions...
"By the gods..."-basically everyone said to one degree or another.
They walked or waded through the nightmare, evaluating the aftermath of some great battle. A battle that, if not had happened, would likely have meant the end to the world.
There's a doorway at the far end over there!"-a person yelled.
They had spread out, hopeful for treasure or artifacts left behind in the aftermath. The place was large, likely a few kilometers in size. The oddest thing, was the hellish looking sky above them. They knew they were underground, and yet...
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On the Wall:
Captain Mala was surveying the aftermath and the retreat of the remaining beastmen into the hills beyond Roble's borders. Perhaps Kane was right, as useless as it made them feel, her soldiers would all be alive and there would be no casualties. But they had their pride to uphold after all!
Captain Tom finished his orders to his scripture while thinking about the investigation, wondering what they may have found. His mission here was complete, they'd be heading home soon, those still alive anyway. He hoped they'd get some R&R after fighting in this war...he saw the battlefield sickness in some of the scripture members and wondered if it would be better to let them go and find different work from now on.
Kane was ready to go, the fighting largely over. He still had that guild base to clean up after all. He started feeling nauseous thinking about what it would likely be like now, after weeks of thousands of rotting corpses laying around down there in stale air...he put a hand to his mouth as his gag reflex tried to kick in.
Growling about the mess he had to cleanup, though glad he had no obligation for the beastmen cleanup, made his way towards Captain Mala to inform her that he'd be taking his leave to fix up his property towards the south of their current location...
Since coming to this world, Kane figured he'd basically resolved 2 wars. He wondered if he could put that on his resume`...
*Do these people even have such a thing?*-Kane thought to himself.
*Doubtful*-Azriel said.
*Who cares about that crap?!*-Drezrath said.
Tuning out the voices of the other souls inhabiting his body, Kane simply enjoyed the feeling of flying and enjoying the fresh air. Especially after he reminded himself of the 'mess' he would have to clean up soon...
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"By the gods!"
"What is this thing!"
"Hmmmm..."-Stanger
"Stay back a ways from it, keep your distance everyone."-Stranger said while contemplating it.
The room they were all currently in was used for Asag's rituals and sacrifices. Technically speaking, it was the HellsGate Alliance's 'workshop' where they could craft all manners of things, back in Yggdrasil. So it naturally stored many different materials and strange tools used for crafting a variety of things.
Currently, the 'home-invaders' were standing around a prismatic pool, levitating roughly 1 meter above the floor.
(sigh)
"As much as i'd love to stick around and figure out what all this stuff is exactly, we're short on time and need to leave soon. Grab the most valuable weapons and artifacts and let's go before the one responsible for that slaughter back there gets here"-Stranger said, frustrated at the time constraints.
1 hour later:
"Ugh, i forgot how long it took us to get to that slaughter-field below!"
"Shutup and keep moving!"-Stranger
"Ya, why not help us carry stuff! We're short on hands here!"
"Just proves that you lot are the smartest of the group that came here"-Stranger said with a smile as they kept jogging through the corridors and hallways with their 'loot'.
"How many more flights of stairs are left?!"
"Just 2 more if i remember correctly! We're almost back to the surface!"-Stranger encouraged the others.
Turning around the nearest bend they see on such set of stairs.
"See? Just one more set after this!"-Stranger said as they began picking up the pace...
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"Home sweet home! Or...it will be by next week i suppose!"-Kane said landing in the oval-shaped courtyard in the middle of the villa's complex.
"I wish i could just call in some kind of clean-up crew or something...it's bound to smell absolutely horrid down there..."-Kane said aloud, complaining to himself.
"Hmmm, i wonder..."
"Suizahni"
"CLONE"
Kane gave his 'clone' the mental command to go below and get rid of all the bodies inside the base.
Meanwhile, as Kane waits for the 'clone's' time to expire, he simply lounges about on the grass, thinking of all the neat stuff he might craft once the place is cleaned up.
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As the 'home-invaders' ran up the steps, Gaidon Kane came running down towards them...
"Ahh Sshhhheeeeet!"
"He's Baaaack!"
"We are soo fu$%&&!"
Giving a grunt of annoyance, Stranger casts LIGHTNING at the oncoming 'man'.
It didn't seem to faze it in the slightest...
"Attack him for your lives!"-Stranger yelled
"We're doo-hu-ack" -the closest person to this 'Kane' was the first to be hit by a giant wave that appeared out of nowhere.
The clone had used WAVE of TEMPEST to 'wash' their bodies away, into a corner for later gathering and disposal. It's order was clear; "Get rid of all the bodies", and the best way to do that would be to gather all those bodies into one spot...
"Ahhh, Da-m-t-blblblubblub"-Stranger said as the torrent reached him, last in line, less than a second after the first got hit.
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"Hmmm, that was odd. Was there really some demons down there still?"-Kane remarked as he felt that his CLONE had taken damage.
"Huh, nothin' to worry about i suppose..."
"Wait...oh, ahahahaha!"
"I forgot about the traps i left! That must've been it!"-Kane nods to himself.
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Stranger opened his eyes, surprised that he was even alive still.
"What the?"
Everything smelled horrible, nauseating...and he was unable to move! It felt as though he was being crushed, everything was dark and wet...
*I must be in one of those piles of daemon corpses!*-He realized.
*But how did i end up all the back here? Damn! I need to escape!*
A/N
Ok, so i'm releasing a couple chapters today because i'v noticed i have been neglecting my other, crossover fic, for about a month now so...taking a break from this for a while?
