Chapter 7

Before his brother had a chance to respond, his system's bestiary took the opportunity to answer his question.

Dullahan

A decapitated undead warrior created by using black magic. A Dullahan retains all fighting prowess and battle skills it gathered during the time it lived prior to it's conversion. The vast amounts of black magic used to create a Dullahan rendered it almost completely immune direct magical attacks and greatly resistant to being targeted by any magic in general. This resulted in these creatures being a favorite of witches seeking to kill other witches.

Side Note: Horses were often bound to these creatures during the conversion process, leading to the tales of headless horsemen.

Weakness: The focal point of the curse is their decapitated head, which they carry with them. Damage the head to kill the horseman.

He really needed to take the time and give his bestiary a more in depth look. He quickly closed the screen and saw that he had several other notices waiting for his attention. With an effort of will he pushed them to the back of his mind. He could deal with those after he assured his brother that he wasn't losing his mind.

"Nevermind, I know what it is. Looks like dad is sending some reinforcements." He told Clarke.

"Was the glowing artefact not enough of a clue?" His brother replied with yet another smirk. He really needed to get another facial expression. "I'm more curious about how you know what he's sending."

Landon looked up, meeting his brother's gaze and said, "Remember how I told you that dad left me a message that I could only read after I became a phoenix?"

"I recall." Clarke said.

"Well, that's not the only gift he left me, and one of those presents just sent me the supernatural equivalent of an instant message that he's sending a headless horseman to find us. Well…. After it's done slaughtering all of Triad, but I'm trying really really hard not to think about that right now."

He stood stock still as he let implications of his most recent actions wash over him. His actions had directly led to the deaths of approximately 450 people. People who had all wanted to kill him, sure, but a rather large and oddly even amount of people, regardless. He had difficulty conceptualizing it, it didn't feel real, until he felt the XP rush into him. That… felt very real.

"Any word on how soon dad's monster is going to take to arrive? You're looking a little green around the gills, little brother." Clarke said more and more concern leaking into his tone. Apparently, he wasn't doing nearly as well as he thought he was at keeping his composure.

"Sorry." He replied sarcastically. "I've never been responsible for the deaths of almost 500 people before, and no, there's no ETA. It's not a GPS."

"I see, I'm going to go get us some chairs then. You look like you need to sit down. You know they keep the seat Lincoln was killed in here?" Clarke replied with jovial playfulness.

"Seriously?!" Landon let out in an exasperated sigh.


After Clark returned with the chairs, they sat down and engaged into rather awkward and stilted attempts at brotherly bonding. It went about as well as could be expected, meaning not at all. My unspoken mutual agreement they decided to sit in awkward silence, awaiting the arrival of the Dullahan.

With nothing else to do, Landon decided to take a closure look at his system and the notifications that were waiting for him at the back of his mind. He had recently found himself regretting not having taken a more in depth look at the system earlier and being presented with a perfect opportunity to correct his mistake was not something he was going to pass up.

Before anything else he wanted to know what XP was. He played enough games to know it was the metric for a level up, but he could feel it when he absorbed it, so it had to be something tangible. He remembered his introduction to the system mentioning that it was essence, or something by that name but he needed to know more, to know why it felt so good.

He focused on his XP bar in his menu and a prompt appeared.

XP is a numerical quantification of the animating energy or life force a creature contains. By killing creatures with life force, either alone or in a party, you absorb the animating energy that they no longer need to continue functioning and use it to strengthen yourself. Other uses for XP may exist but are currently unavailable

Ok, I guess that makes sense, I'm literally being filled up with lifeforce. He thought to himself. With that being resolved he brought up the prompts he had been ignoring till now.

You have reached level 5 - Please choose one of the three following Bloodline Quests to unlock

DULLAHAN | ARACHNE | DRAGON

So it looked like it would only give him three options every five levels. He immediately ruled out the Arachne option. He still had nightmares about that thing wearing the human skinsuit of his former bully. He shuddered at the mere memory of it. After thinking about it for a bit he realized that to the best of his knowledge the dragon bloodline did not give him any abilities his phoenix didn't already provide him.

Making his selection immediately replaced the prompt with another.

Bloodline Quest

DULLAHAN – In order to activity the dormant abilities of the Dullahan, you must be decapitated. (Note: Ressurective Immortality will re-attach your head following your successful rebirth without any ill effects)

Because, of course it would. In retrospect, that unlock condition was somewhat obvious. Maybe they were all like that? Symbolic representations of the creature's origins or actions in their legends. Something to keep in mind once he had a bigger data pool to draw from.

"Number, next one." He mumbled under his breath as he will the following prompt to appear.

To his surprise the final three prompts combined into one and it displayed it's content in list format.

You have reached level 9 – You have 54 unspent Attribute Points to distribute

You have reached level 9 – You have 27 unspent Ability Points to distribute

You have reached level 9 – You have 36 unspent Skill Points to distribute

He barely managed to stop himself from immediately dumping all his Attribute Points into his mind stats. He desperately wanted to regain the memories of his mother that had been taken from him, but he wasn't sure if it was a specific sub-stat that would allow for their return or just an overall increase in Mind. He needed to be careful with that, so he put it aside for now.

Next he checked the Ability section of his system to see what he could spend the points on, only to find that it was empty. His confusion was short-lived after yet another prompt sprung to life before his eyes.

Purchasable Abilities are generated from the interaction of multiple active bloodlines. Due to having only a single active supernatural bloodline no abilities can currently be purchased

You have got to be fucking kidding me! He steamed internally. He had seen it was empty during his prior explorations of the system but he had assumed that it was because he hadn't generated any ability points yet and would therefore obviously not have any options. He took a few moments to calm himself down while he debated the merits and detriments of asking his brother to cut his head off while they were waiting for the monster to arrive.

In the end he decided it wasn't worth the risk that he might take too long to revive. It was yet another thing that would have to wait till later. He took a moment to reflect on the irony that every time he swore he would cease putting things to the side to deal with at a more convenient time, more things ended being placed in front of him that he would be forced to put aside.

If he didn't know better, he would assume that the universe itself was playing some sort of enormous cosmic joke on him, and he was finding it less and less funny by the day.

Which left him with skill points. Unfortunately, none of the skills he currently possessed seemed like they would be of any significant use in the near future. Regarding Deception, he had already promised himself that at the next available opportunity he would tell Hope and Dr. Saltzman everything he had discovered about Malivore and the system. This entire adventure had served to demonstrate just how tired he was of lying, and every other skill he had was music related.

Possibly, very cool. Currently? Next to useless.

As he sat there contemplating whether to risk using his skill points, considering his other two point totals were currently a bust, he heard galloping and neighing nearing the warehouse.

"I think our ride is here, brother." Clarke said standing up from his chair just before the warehouse doors burst open. Sitting atop a jet black stallion was the Dullahan.

"I don't think there's room for two up there." Landon replied.

"You go," Clarke responded, "I'll take the car back."

"Are you su….woah!" Landon was interrupted by the horseman lifting him up single-handed, and basically tossing him over the horse.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Clark retorted, barely managing to contain his laughter. "Enjoy the ride, little brother."

"You're a dick!" Landon shouted before the Dullahan pulled on the reigns, turning the horse around and almost immediately starting to gallop back towards the Triad Industries building.


You know, if it ends up giving me super strength, it might be worth getting my head cut off. Landon thought semi-seriously, right as the horse leapt over a ridiculously high fence, the landing knocking the wind out of him and causing him to almost loose consciousness. At the very least it'll keep people from throwing me everywhere whenever they want.

The horseman and Landon made their way through the now empty and gore covered offices of Triad Industries. It looked like a post-apocalyptic scene out of a zombie horror film. Flickering lights, overturned furniture, dismembered corpses everywhere and not a single living person anywhere in sight.

As much as he appreciated the XP he received from the Dullahan's rampage, and the knowledge that the people who had been keeping his father prisoner for centuries had been punished, he couldn't help but feel responsible for all this death. Even more so now that he was seeing the bodies instead of just lines and numbers on a screen prompt.

"So…. Not much of a conversationalist, are you?" He asked, more to fill the silence than anything. "Right, that's pretty much what I thought. Strong, silent type."

The Dullahan ignored him and continued forward to the basement of the building. Upon reaching their destination, the horseman pulled out the spearhead he had taken from Landon on the ride over. Reaching back he threw the artefact into the pit without ceremony.

Approximate 3 feet before reaching the pit, the spearhead began to levitate, leaving both Landon and the Dullahan confused about the course of events. That is until the spearhead flew up and into towards the railing, landing in the palm of a very pleased looking Tribrid.

As their eyes met each other's Landon couldn't help but smile as he spoke her name aloud, "Hope."