July 7th 2016 Svalbard, Norway, 7:00 P.M EDT
I'd never been to Norway. Well, I'd never been to ACTUAL Norway. I'd been to weird alternate Disney Norway, at least according to Zee, since that was where Elsa's movie was set. My life was so fucking odd sometimes that I could have thoughts like that and not be crazy. Still, it seemed like an interesting place, and I spent the flight there wondering what it would be like.
Answer? Cold. Rather, fucking freezing. Svalbard, it turns out, IS in Norway, but it's also in the Arctic Ocean.
Not that cold itself was the worst thing in the world. I always preferred cold to hot. You could put on extra close or get under a blanket to warm up, but when it was hot your options were pretty much strip naked and then deal with it.
Still, this level of cold was fucking obnoxious, even to me. I flicked my fingers, weaving a quick spell. Fire attribute energy, but weak enough not to do more than gently warm, rolled over my body, and I smiled happily. The cold hadn't been bad enough to do any actual harm to a dragon, but it wasn't comfortable.
I was able to find and follow the leyline in question easily enough, and when I got to the confluence, I appraised the building.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure Detected. Livid Lodge- B ranked interdimensional anchor. A physical anchor that ties the plane of rage to the world of man. A gateway into the personal hell of a powerful avatar of anger.]
It didn't mention anything about the Rage system, which if anything proved that this was the right place. The systems had ways of hiding from each other, and this little anchor building reeked of rage.
In fact…I closed my eyes, then opened them, activating my karmic vision. I scanned the various threads and…jackpot. While the systems hid from each other, my karmic eye wasn't system based. The Greed System didn't half ass merges, when things were merged together they were permanently combined.
Most people would have thought it was counter intuitive that the Greed System didn't hold anything back or keep its claws in things that were merged, but it was actually against the Systems nature.
The Greed Host used the power of Greed, and Greed was a jealous and covetous bitch. The system couldn't have attuned to a host that would have been willing to surrender his property by allowing the system itself to own it and just use it by proxy. Every single person I Branded belonged to me completely.
Which wasn't to say those people couldn't be TAKEN by Ophidian later. Greed was about consumption, and as far as the big snake was concerned he was just lending me his toys until he took me and the girls all at once, hence my need to carefully plan my breakthrough.
Regardless, because I was a karmic dragon god for real, and it was a permanent thing, my abilities were outside the scope of the system itself, and as such were not privy to its restrictions. That USED to mean nothing, because I couldn't see anything as high level as the system in my karmic vision, but as a peak A ranker I was close enough to its weight class to view its connections.
A single chord of burning bloody red was easy enough to pick out of the forest of threads, and it led from me right into that fucking building.
I wanted to go charging inside, but I wasn't stupid. I stepped back, taking up a place across the street and keeping watch to see if anyone entered or exited. I had to admit, they did a great job of hiding this place. The building on top of the confluence was a tiny little brick building that looked like the rural branch of some southern bank in a small town.
Several people arrived, knocking in a strange pattern only to be let into the building nearly instantly. There didn't seem to be a pattern or anything, they just showed up whenever, but after the sun fully set the arrivals stopped.
Unfortunately, as soon as that happened, I saw a shift in the karmic weave around the place. Like some kind of floodgates had been thrown, the energy from the leylines flooded in and the anchor building went from reasonably secure building to fortress in ten seconds flat. I cursed, drawing a scale from my pouch and dropping it after weaving my perception deflection enchantment on it.
Moving unseen, I strolled up to the front door. I was expecting to do the same shit I did before, open a small hole in the wards and walk through, but unfortunately, I ran into an issue. The anchor wasn't an actual connection, it just held it down. Opening the wards wouldn't do shit because I'd still have to find a way to enter the bridge.
Deciding to take another approach, I wandered back to my scale. Reaching into the perception alteration enchantment, I started pulling and tying off threads. I wove a seeming over the scale, an image of one of the men I'd seen enter earlier, and then I walked across the street and knocked on the door. I used the secret knock I'd seen everyone else use, and when the door opened I did a quick appraisal and started gibbering.
"Klaus!" I spat in a panic. "There's something going on! Several people have mentioned seeing me around today and in places I couldn't have been." I looked around suspiciously. "Have you seen anyone who looks like me today?"
The man on the other side, a lanky german guy with thinning orange hair and a hooked nose, frowned at me. "Anders? How…" He froze. "Wait, you're saying the man who came through earlier wasn't you?" He looked panic, and I smiled internally. I'd been watching this place for hours, and I'd made sure to pick the quietest and most sullen entrant to mimic.
I'd appraised all of them in fact, and I knew why Anders had been morbid and unfriendly. Klaus was sleeping with his girlfriend Vera, and Anders had only found out about it today. However, Klaus didn't KNOW Anders had found out about it, so the behavior would seem suspicious.
My appraisal wasn't usually quite so topical, but I'd been learning to sort of steer the connection with my karmic weaving, finding certain parts of someone's thread to connect to. It was complicated and time consuming to prepare, but it wasn't like I had anything better to do staring a red brick building.
I saw his eyes narrow. I imagine earlier the possibility of Anders finding out about him and Vera had been percolating in his brain, but now he was reexamining the interaction. He would comb it for proof that I was being honest, and he would find it because he wanted to.
In Klaus's defense, there were obviously two Anders knocking on the door, that made it clear something was up. He would want to believe the one who didn't have a problem with him more than the one that did, and because of that he'd go out of his way to make my story plausible. Not only that, he'd act as a witness for me.
"I saw him." He said in a panic. "He came through earlier. He treated me so coldly, I knew something was wrong. Come, we must enter the gatehouse and descend after him. Who knows what nefarious forces he may be representing."
Turning, he gestured me inside, and I stepped over the threshold. I shuddered a bit at the wave of dimensional displacement that rolled over me. It wasn't as unpleasant as a portal exactly, but this pocket dimension bridge was still deeply unpleasant. We entered a red brick chamber, and Klaus led me over to a large elevator formed from crimson metal.
He opened the door, geturing me on, and then began to crank a small handle on the side of the elevator, lowering us down into…wherever we were going.
It was a fascinating ride, the red metal seemed to resonate with some kind of violent emotion. Not rage exactly, but something more like passion. It was interesting, because I felt it licking at my mind, inspiring me to give me all for the cause and to protect the plane of rage with my heart and soul.
I had to throttle a smile at the manipulation, this was a handy little trinket, I would have tried to take it with me if I could have, but I didn't want to fuck with any part of the anchor. Last thing I needed was to be trapped in a floating pocket dimension cut off from the world.
When we reached the bottom of the shaft (not that it really was one, just red rioting energy outside the elevator) Klaus threw open the door and sprinted out into…a hallway? I couldn't describe the place very well. The ground was a sort of hard stoneline substance with the appearance of raw flesh, the walls looked like lean muscle stretched between white curved spikes of bone that looked like a whale's ribs or something.
The ground didn't buckle or squelch thankfully, but it clearly wasn't regular stone, and it was kind of slippery. My draconic reflexes and balance made it child's play to stay up of course, but it was still pretty gross to experience running on what was basically frozen meat.
We bolted down the hallway, eventually emerging into a large hall set with tables, Klaus came to a hard stop, pointing directly at Anders, who sat at a nearby table. "Imposter!" He bellowed. "We have a deceiver among us! Rouse the wardens!" His voice was frantic and mad with fear and a small amount of exultation. He was clearly excited to get credit for catching a traitor.
I did a quick round of appraisals, failing to find anyone impressive. I was pretty sure this was some kind of low rank cafeteria or something, which wasn't the worst thing ever. I could work with that.
While everyone was focused on Klaus and Anders, who was standing to return fire, I spotted someone leaving through the back entrance and changed my seeming on the fly. In a blink, I was a new person (Lucas was his name, and I got a quick rundown from appraisal). With him gone I was the only Lucas in the room, so I settled in to wait, keeping an eye on the tether of karma now connecting us in case he came back.
"You despicable bastard!' Raged Anders. "Violating my sweet Vera wasn't enough? You seek my death so you can have her all to yourself?" He'd been stewing down here since he saw Klaus earlier, and judging by the flush on his cheeks he was quite a few sheets to the wind, having drowned his sorrows in some kind of red mead based on appraisal.
Klaus sneered. "You'd say anything to escape justice, imposter! I've brought the real Anders with me! See the man you so callously impersonate, beast." He gestured dramatically to his side…where I wasn't. His eyes widened in shock as he took in the empty space, and I had to choke back a bark of laughter to keep from giving away the game. For a plan I came up with on the fly, this was going pretty well.
In fact, I had never been there, I'd shifted perception off me as we'd entered, and no one had seen me before the switch to Lucas. Klaus had come in here alone screaming about imposters, having abandoned the entrance to do so. Anders was enraged, and he hurled himself at Klaus, a few of his friends trying to pry him off.
Watching in satisfaction as they devolved into a full on brawl, I slipped out, heading in the opposite direction from the real Lucas. There were several red armored guards running past me toward the commotion, and I figured I had enough time to poke around while they were distracted. I loved it when a plan came together.
July 7th 2016 Plane of Rage, the Void, 8:00 P.M EDT
I strolled through the plane of rage, taking time to stop and occasionally frantically plead with anyone I met for help. I informed them that Anders of Klaus (I alternated so the numbers would be even) had betrayed the lodge (which was what this group of people called themselves) and were trying to massacre everyone opposed to them.
Not that I had to repeat the process too much, the place was pretty much empty. I assumed Kyra Arg had some kind of world domination scheme or other going at all times, and her agents were out like…sowing wickedness or whatever.
I spent about twenty minutes wandering around, breaking into rooms and seeing if any of these assholes had anything worth stealing (they didn't) before finally coming to an especially weird room with what looked like a blood fountain. I appraised the thing, finding out it was actually blood WINE, not just blood, but I didn't really care to take a sip. Seeing it though…it gave me an idea.
The door beyond the room was huge and imposing, and I could tell from looking at it that it led to something important. An appraisal showed me nothing, but I didn't need it to. I could see the red thread leading into the room, connecting me to Kyra Arg. More than just the systems, her killing of my old man had created a karmic debt between us. Most people wouldn't have been able to see it, but I wasn't most people.
I could have charged in, attacked her head on, but I wasn't stupid. Arg was an ancient immortal, a system user who had lived for millennia, and A rank of not, I wasn't going to go into a fight with her without a plan.
Sitting down in a darkened alcove between two ribs, I slipped my scale simulacra behind one of them, then shifted my weave back to the normal perception redirection. I was getting smoother at that, changing weaves mid project, and it was helping my improve my skills with magic. Idly, I checked the connections I'd earmarked for my little scheme.
I smiled, seeing that Klaus, the only person who could confirm there was a second person with Anders face involved in that whole mess, was dead. Anders was ALSO dead, so I guessed Vera was going to be having a bad night tonight, sucked for her.
With that confirmed, I simply sat, waited, and watched. People came, though not many of them, and the door opened and closed. I was able to learn the purpose of the fountain, apparently Arg had a fondness for blood wine. I heard snippets of conversation, comments on ongoing plots, but despite my wait, I didn't see any other A rankers.
That was both a relief and a shame, without any others I wouldn't be able to get the points I needed, but it would make killing her easier.
I watched, and waited, and to cure my boredom, I started removing things from my pouch, useful things, though mostly low level. Things I'd picked up on my travels. Plants and materials and other ingredients.
As I watched, I began to weave. Merges were easy at lower levels, and harder at higher ones, but I'd seen from my interaction Dinah that familiarity and compatibility could drastically reduce the difficulty of manual merges, so I started a project.
My first few merges (read, about two hundred) were J rank. Absolute trash that was completely worthless to anyone. The weaves were simplistic as hell, and I could combine them in my sleep. I did so. A few nasty little flowers (Nightshade) a couple drops of blood I had on a piece of fabric. A lot of little insignificant things that would add up.
Once I completed my first round, I started to combine those. Two hundred turned into hundred. It took me longer to get up to I rank, but not too much longer. H rank saw me down to fifty, G to twenty five, F to twelve (I combined more than two items in several of them), E to six, D to three, and finally, C rank I was down to a single item.
I'd been right. Starting at the bottom and grinding my way up had given me an absurd level of familiarity and compatibility with my creations. I stared down at the result of combining over two hundred assorted objects with interes.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Distillation of the Night Lily - C tier poison. A refined extract of a plethora of poisoned plants, fed with the blood of innocents and watered under a New Moon. Each plant was picked at midnight, added one by one to the extract daily by a pure soul who met their death in the noxious mixing pit.]
It wasn't too bad. A bit morbid, but I'd made it out of nothing so that was to be expected. My wish for a deadly poison was clearly an influence on the substance, and I considered it a success.
Still watching the door I began again, two hundred objects, some of them stones or deadly weapons I'd collected in gemworld. It took me less time on this go through, I'd learned a lot from repetition. This was like the merging version of grinding iron daggers to reach master level, and I simply worked patiently. I was a dragon, we were known for our patience. Well, except when we weren't.
My second completed C rank item was a bit different, but still useful, and scanning it over made me smile.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Stone of Farewells- C ranked soul eroding stone. A deadly gemstone that has reflected the agonized faces of a million extinguished souls. To touch this gem without protection is to face the erosion of your very self.]
I was pleased with my second creation. Knowing these two objects so intimately I knew I could create a B ranked artifact if needed, and it wouldn't even be too hard, just a bit time consuming.
But I didn't. Be rank wouldn't be enough, even specially designed to destroy Arg, I needed something more potent. I resumed my work, creating a third, and then a fourth C ranked poison that I could use to reach the necessary heights.
Once that was done, I combined both of the pairs of items, creating two separate dangerous poisons at the B rank over the course of hours. The weaves were complex, nearly beyond me, but I took my time and worked steadily. Lessons with my mother, bypassing the defenses on the castle, seeing so many of my girls reach B rank, I dredged up every possible memory, and somehow, just BARELY, I managed to complete them.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Mortal Sin- B ranked soul poison. A deadly distillation of the failings of the heart, concentrated and refined over ten billion years through the bodies of an entire hell of suffering souls.]
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Peaceful Demise- B ranked tranquilizing neurotoxin. A deadly venom brewed in the venom sacs of the Serenity Viper, a powerful snake that consumes and integrates their venoms into its own. Drawn from the glands of an Elder Viper, after consuming over one trillion different deadly snakes.]
I was wheezing as I stared at them. They were beautiful, and extremely deadly. The Mortal Sin was a black inky sludge that seemed to flow against gravity, surprisingly shiny and attention grabbing. The Peaceful Demise was a glowing mixture of a thousand different colors, constantly shifting in the light to show me something new.
My main problem at the moment though, was that I'd pretty much hit my limit. B rank had been nightmarishly hard. I didn't understand A rank weaves well enough to make an A rank item, even from two items I'd constructed so thoroughly.
Which meant I had no chance of putting her down without a fight, but then…I didn't need to. I'd been planning to poison her to make sure she was weakened, and these two poisons WOULD do that, even if they wouldn't do it as thoroughly as I liked. If I mixed the two, they should produce enough of an effect to seriously lower her combat prowess.
Nodding to myself, I stood up, brushing myself off. I was completely unnoticed, of course. Arg wasn't the Specter, who was a host of Will. Rage didn't make you more observant, and my particular method of obfuscation would be even more effective against someone who had sewn negative karma with me. That said, staying here more than a few hours presented a stupid risk, and I was about ready to go.
It took another ten minutes for someone to come, and I stepped out of the shadows of the rib I was in and grabbed them as they went by. It was a thin young man with close cropped hair in a toga, carrying a silver chalice. I'd seen a few of them. A cupbearer, here to deliver Arg her drink. I choked him out and dropped him behind an outcropping (killing someone so close to a Rage host would be risky) and then I rewove my scale simulacra to look just like him.
Walking to the fountain, I scooped up a large goblet of the blood wine, and then I dumped the two vials of poison into it.
Given their spectacular appearances, you'd have expected them to change the color or something, but they hit the wine and melted in, completely vanishing into the redness of the wine.
Stepping up to the door, I performed the knock I'd seen all the other cupbearers make. The door creaked open of its own accord, and a bored voice called. "Enter." I stepped inside obsequiously, just like the real Micah (the cupbearers name) would have, and walked slowly up to the massive red wood desk.
I desperately wanted to appraise some of the shit in this room, but sadly I couldn't, I was pretty sure someone as old as Arg could tell. I walked to the desk, setting the drink down in front of her and bowing. "Your worship." I said, as I'd been able to suss out from conversation snippets how her people addressed her.
She nodded, not caring about me, and I stepped back behind her. She didn't seem concerned, this was what I was supposed to do. Stand out of sight and wait for her to finish her wine, then take the cup.
She took a long sip, making a slight sound of approval, and then set it down and returned to her work, poring over maps and papers. Her weird red headdress thing was the same as I remembered. Everything about her was. Her voice, her body language. I imagined immortals weren't quick to change.
Ignoring me for the duration, she sipped from the cup regularly, enjoying her wine, and I waited. As she reached for the goblet for the tenth time though, her hand trembled minutely. She looked down, seemingly confused, and I took the opportunity to withdraw the Spear of Destiny and jam it through the rear of her chair and into her back.
She coughed blood, head whipping around to glare at me in shock and disbelief, not understanding how one of of her own people could do this in the heart of her sanctum. I twisted the spear…hard. Hacking up more blood, she whirled, the spear ripping from her back (though thankfully not from my hands, as she roared in outrage.
I leapt over the desk in a roll, taking the spear with me, and avoided an avalanche of red power as she fucking EXPLODED with rage, her whole body glowing with primal, strength enhancing fury. "You DARE?" She howled.
As I came down and then popped to my feet, I let the seeming fall away and grinned at her nastily, feeling the reassuring power of the Spear reinforce my body as I shifted to my hybrid form to get ready for battle. "What's the matter? Betrayal and backstabbing not much fun when it happens to you? Sorry about that. Wait, no I'm not. Round two bitch."
July 7th 2016 Plane of Rage, the Void, 9:00 P.M EDT
"You…DARE?" She hissed at me incredulously, hands clamped over her wounds. I saw cascading red energy pumping into her body, but most of it flowed right back out, charging the sheets of blood in her body as they flowed from the terrible damage I'd inflicted.
I rolled my eyes. "On today's episode of 'Ancient anger bitch' Kyra Arg experiences the consequences of her own actions for the first time in millennia. How's that taste?"
She let out an incoherent scream of fury. "You STUPID little moron! Do you realize what you're doing? I can FEEL the power you're gathering. There's a reason none of us have reached S rank yet. I've been making preparations for tens of thousands of years, building my strength for this one goal. You've had the Greed System for what? A year? This is why we kill you insipid little leeches as soon as we find you."
"You tried that." I said with a shrug. "Didn't work. You DID kill my dad though. Still pissed about that. Or at least set it up to happen. By the way, how's the stalling going? Is it helping?"
She screamed again. "What have you DONE? Why isn't this closing?"
"Well for one thing, I used THIS." I held up the spear. "I also handcrafted a pair of poisons to stack on top of each other and on top of the spear's energy." I paused. "Oh, sorry, do you not know what this is? I don't think the other systems have appraisal functions."
Reaching out a hand, she grabbed her massive desk and hurled it at me, a flick of her wrist sending it blurring towards me like a bullet. "I know what the Spear of Destiny looks like, BOY. I was there when it was blooded! Poison…a coward's weapon. I'd have expected better from a dragon."
"That can't be true." I said sympathetically. "Because that would mean you're as stupid as you are old. But this little banter session is pointless, and I've got shit to do. Can we hurry this up? The longer you wait the weaker you'll get. No point stalling any longer."
She blurred forward at me with a screech of horrible loathing, and when her hands came up they'd shifted into claws. Claws that were on fire. I swept the spear up to deflect them, and almost got eviscerated as she twirled into a sinuous sort of whipping motion that dropped her under the swipe and rolled along her arm to send it whipping at my gut.
Luckily for me, I could see the threads of her karma, and in them, her intentions. I sucked in, bending my back away from her, and her claws skidded off my scales, leaving behind a couple long scratches that burned even as they closed.
Hand flicking down, I snagged a trio of scale constructs and whipped them to three corners of the room as I dove forward into a roll under her followup attack, sweeping my spear under her to take her off her feet.
As I came back up, I saw her spinning in circles, hands lashing out at the corners where the scales had landed. Corruscating waves of red flame smashed into each of them, destroying the simulacra, but she was distracted and I was in close, so I jammed the spear into the meat of her thigh until I hit bone, then pulled it out and retreated.
I was REALLY glad I'd prepared so much. Even delirious with poison (both soul and flesh) and bleeding to death from wounds dealt by a divine relic I'd engineered the damned poisons to collaborate with, she was STILL the scariest thing I'd ever fought.
Kyra Arg WAS A rank, but she was like the shattered godhood I'd pilfered from the warworld. She was only barely A rank. She'd been chipping away at that barrier slowly for millennia, just barely avoiding going over the edge. Even my top tier draconic god body wasn't up to snuff. Not to mention she was MUCH better at combat than I was.
Having a big chunk of her torso ripped out and a hole right through her thigh was slowing her down enough, in combination with the poison, that I could barely keep up, but this was going to be a tough fucking fight.
My tricks weren't exactly running dry either though. I'd know this would be tough, though maybe not how tough. I reached for that glowing red thread connecting us, then slipped under it to the more personal connection, and found the metric fuck ton of bad karma, rather than consume it though, I twisted it into a curse.
My mom had taught me her nasty little curse from Storybrooke, but more than that, she'd showed me how my power worked. Dark magic fed on negative karma, used it as a powersource, and after tens of thousands of years, Arg had so much of it I could barely process. Normal bad karma was shadowy dark purple, sometimes black to my eyes, but Arg's was like a black hole. It ate the light around it, an endless vantablack abyss.
She was so damaged and distracted, she didn't even seem to notice when I leveraged her bad karma into a curse (this one of bad luck) and then dropped it on her head like a fucking meteor.
There was a ripple in the karma around us, and she started to have problems. For such an experienced and powerful fighter, the slips were nearly unnoticeable. A slight shift of her foot, stealing the full weight from a punch, a bit of give in the ground shaking her balance. The problems were miniscule, but they built up.
Her form went to flawlessly implacable to a still strong patchwork, and I was pretty sure she was blaming it all on the pain and blood loss.
Even before I found out about the whole truth about the game with the systems, I'd been preparing for this fight. I'd picked my karmic leanings partially for Arg, for this ancient immortal bitch with so much darkness in her life and past. I'd done some sketchy shit, but I was less than twenty years old, she'd been ruining the world for whole fucking epochs.
And she didn't seem to have any counter to it, or even idea it was happening. This bitch had picked the wrong dragon to mess with. Despite the power though, and all the damage, she was starting to get frantic. Her moves were faster and more brutal, her tempo increasing, which while it did mean the mistakes were snowballing also meant it was harder to dodge her moves even with forewarning.
I wasn't sure exactly how the rage system worked, but whatever it did, it was effective. I got in a few blows without the spear, and even my A rank claws barely left a scratch. I was damned lucky I hadn't come in here bare handed, because trying to hurt her without the divine weapon was like trying scratch gouges in an oak tree with normal human strength nails.
As we fought, I felt her claws tear into me multiple times, power boiling off them. Lightning, fire, venom. She had a hundred different types of power at her fingertips and without the spear I'd have eventually succumbed to them. But the power that the spear gave its wielder was much like my karmic power, it was easy to deal with if you had a counterpoint, but if not it was like trying to punch a ghost. Her power was just power, and the spear's aura of victory cleansed it from me easily.
Meanwhile, she had no counter to the injuries I was leaving on her, and the rage attuned energy she was channeling wasn't like my karma, it couldn't do shit.
"No, no, no!" She screamed frantically. "I am the Infinite Woman! I have walked this earth since before Homo Sapiens evolved into what they are! I can't die like this! Can't lose my life to some upjumped little prick with daddy issues! I've been a host for longer than this CONTINENT has existed. You're a weak little child. A pale shadow of me! You're NOTHING!"
I grinned at her, blood coating my teeth. "To quote a particularly amusing song I enjoy. 'While it's true that my work is based on you, I'm a Supercomputer and you're a T-182'." As I spoke, the truth of her demise hit her like a brick. She hesitated for just a second, and I struck. I saw it before it happened. Saw the opening that formed through her guard.
I'd been waiting. I'd palmed a scale simulacra, and as I twisted to the side, I dropped it, spinning low and around to come up behind her as she attacked the thing all her perception told her was me. Straightening from behind her, I came up from beneath and drove my spear into her at the perfect angle.
Through the spine, continuing into the heart, and up to stop in the brain, each wound fatal on its own, but all three, delivered with the power of a divine instrument, put her out for good. He body slumped on the spear, and I didn't even bother removing it as I shoved the whole thing into my pouch, groaning with exultation as I felt another billion points flood in. Arg's corpse was heavily altered by the Rage system, and was firmly A rank even without being alive. I was looking forward to finding a use for it later.
Standing up, I groaned and stretched, letting the damage from the fight wash away as I poured good karma into the injuries, flavoring it with the healing energy I still had from my previous evolutions. I ignored the Greed System notifying me I'd consumed a fragment of another system and could now use ten different items to do a single merge. I didn't use the system for much anymore, and the enhanced versatility wasn't worth much to me.
I shifted back to a my human form, and was planning to look around and raid the place, when the ground beneath me started to shake. Looking around, I noticed several cracks in the space of the room itself. I cursed as I saw them start to widen, and I took off for the entrance.
Arg and I hadn't been careful, and A rank fights are destructive. We might have busted something, or the 'plane of rage' had been supported by the Rage Host herself and killing her had started the destruction, either way it didn't matter. I needed to get the fuck out of here. I cursed that selfish bitch for booby trapping her stupid demiplane as I tore through a few frantic guards, headed for the elevator.
I didn't kill everyone I saw, there was no reason, but if they tried to stop me they died, and it wasn't a challenge to do it.
Finally, I hit the elevator just in time to see the doors close as the thing vanished upward. I cursed as I came to a stop in front of the shaft. It wasn't a real elevator, I couldn't just climb up it. It didn't even have…a cable.
I opened my karmic eye and sure enough, it DID have a cable. Not a physical one, but a karmic link to the prime plane. I knew that it would snap when either side of the tether was lost though. I grabbed the chord in my hand, spread my wings, and stepped off the edge of the plane of rage. With a single herculean flap of my wings I shot upward, my hand skidding along the cable like I was ziplining upward.
The rumbling of the space collapsing shook my journey but I ignored it, flapping again and driving myself up even faster. I swung around as I went, passing the elevator itself, and my blurring form smashed into the anchor, bursting through it and out into the pitch black sky of Svalbard. As the explosion of red energy erupted into the sky behind me I howled with triumph as I looked at my eight billion points. Only two more to go. I was almost ready.
July 7th 2016 Svalbard, Norway, 10:00 P.M EDT (smut warning. Exhibitionism, rough sex, breeding, marking)
I was walking on air after my escape. Not literally, though also that, but just emotionally. Kyra Arg was dead. A millennia old monster whose CORPSE was considered an A rank artifact and who had killed more Greed System Hosts that there were stairs in my fucking house was DEAD. I'd killed her.
Grinning at the column of terrible red light erupting from the anchor I winced. I…had kind of left like a few hundred people to die. And more importantly, all their stuff went with them. Floating out into the void between worlds for eternity. I decided not to mention that part to the girls.
Setting down behind a small norwegian bar, I cackled in delight, feeling the power filling me. Eight billion, I was so close I could taste it.
"You know, you could try being more subtle." Said a toneless voice from behind me. "I mean, I know you like to be dramatic, but that volcano of rage attuned leyline energy is going to light up every magical being within a thousand miles of here. Or further if they have senses as good as mine."
I turned, finding a familiar violet haired bombshell in a gold and white cloak staring at me peacefully. Not placidly, like she would have back in the day, but peacefully. Raven had changed so much since she became mine. Not just the physical stuff, but her emotions. Not being linked to Trigon and belonging to me were both enough to turn her frown upside down. Or it would be if she had an expression. Now it was mostly just upside down blankness which was still blank but like…a bit more chipper.
I smirked at her. "You didn't come for the energy." I said smugly. "At least not completely. Maybe you were checking up, but you approached because you felt me."
She let out a shaky breath. "You're so happy." She shuddered. "So excited and triumphant and full of energy. And I can feel what you want. You're ready to fuck. You were planning to go find some fat tittied norwegian slut to sow your seed into."
"And you have a problem with that?" I asked teasingly. "Is my pretty little Deva feeling jealous?"
She glared at me, pushing the cloak back to fall on the ground, showing me her bare and gorgeously rounded body. "Yes!" She hissed. "You left for so long. I'm yours, yours to have and hold and take. I've been empty for such a long time."
I blurred forward, ending up behind her, and laid a mighty slap on her fat demon ass. She let out a keening wail as her eyelids fluttered and the stain of red my hand left against her milky cheek stood out like a signal flare against skin as pale as the snow around us.
I felt how much she loved it, from Eros and Psych, and what she needed next. I grabbed her hair forcing her down to her knees in the snow and then shoving her forward onto all fours as I dropped my pants and knelt behind her. I didn't bother to get her ready, I just stuffed me entire cock into her in a single shove and enjoyed the hiss between her teeth.
My hands curled into her thick hips as my own slammed into her abundant ass, crashing into her like the tide against the shore, enjoying the waves of pale wobbling flesh as I felt her molten cunt writhe around me. "Fuck I forgot how good this pussy is!" I hissed. "You still feeling empty Rae?"
"No." She grunted, trying to hold back her voice. My deva knew what to give me when I took her. She loved it as much as I did. Playing the emotionless fuck doll, trying to keep a straight face until I made her crack. Crack like my hand against the moonlight ass as I yanked back on her hair, trying to get her to give up how much she'd been needing this.
I could hear the steam as her red hot pussy dripped into the snow, the wet slap of me filling her creating a counterpoint to the drips and squirts of her cunt as I stuffed her up. "Fuck you were made for this." I groaned. "I forgot nobody fucks me like my little demon slut."
"Not even the angel?" She groaned, barely keeping her voice even. "I saw you picked one up. Sure you still need me?"
I reached down and groped one of her fat tits, twisting the nipple just hard enough to make her moan. Raven liked it rougher than most girls, and I knew when to stop. "You think angel pussy compares to this?" I snarled in her ear. "Or are you trying to get away from me?" I twisted just a bit harder. "You don't want to be mine anymore Rae?"
"No!" She snapped. "I want it. I need this. Need you. Nothing puts out the fire inside like you do."
I shoved her flat on the ground, face half in the snow as I fell on top of her, pounding into her prone body from above and behind. No one heard the claps of hips on fat ex-demon rump with the distraction of the pillar, and I didn't hold back.
Wham. Wham. Wham. Like a fucking jackhammer I pounded into her, snow jumping up off the ground as the impact rocked the clearing we were in like a fucking T-rex stomping toward us. "You're MINE." I hissed into her ear. "I'm always inside you, even when you're not stuffed full of my cock. Aren't I?"
She let out a low whine. "Yessss." She hissed. "Always inside. You're so deep. I missed it so much, missed you so much. Why did you leave me?" Her voice was a high whine by the end, desperate for answers.
I slapped that fat ass between strokes. "Did I give you permission to question me?" I snapped.
"No, never, I'm sorry." She pleaded. "I didn't mean it. Use me however you like. I love it so much! I never want anything else."
Leaning down, I bit into her shoulder, and I groaned as I felt her cunt contract like a fucking gravitational singularity. I ignored it. I knew she loved this. I could feel it in her desires. I bit harder, pushing some of my magic out through my teeth as I clamped down. She screamed, squirting her juices across the snowy ground and sending up a plume of steam.
I pulled back, admiring the perfect golden set of teeth marks in her shoulder, and my balls tightened in anticipation. The Brand was fine, and I wouldn't ever lose it, regardless of what happened with the system, but this…I'd made her mine. Marked her myself. It was glorious.
Speeding up, my hips smashed into her cushioned ass even faster, the sound barrier shattering with every thrust as I pounded her into the hard ground. She was howling now, squealing for more cock and I roared in triumph as I mated her. Sexy little bitch, waving this fat ass in front of me and expecting me to go easy.
She took it all. Every inch of me, every newton of force, every clap of her ass, she was in it, living it, exulting in it. Her hips smashed back to meet my, cunt grasping and sucking and working my dick as we fucked like animals on the ground.
Raven wasn't a princess, or a Queen, or any kind of royalty. I didn't expect her to trigger my draconic instincts. But I'd been wrong. Here on the ground in the snow next the exploding red grave of my greatest enemy I mated my woman and she screamed for more and I roared my triumph into the sky as I prepared to seed her womb.
My wings burst out, horns growing from my skull as I rutted into the tightest, wettest paradise I'd ever entered and I saw the bite start to glow with a brilliant golden light. I'd given her my good karma because it was what she deserved, and I was so gone I didn't even stop when golden flame leapt from the wound.
I could feel the heat draining into her power, her Deva abilities were of karma and light, and I had given of myself.
Not all of myself yet. Id slaughtered my enemy, sown the karma of a monster older than humanity, and I felt it all floating around us loose in the air. My karmic debt was the least of it, and all her terrible deeds were bleeding out through that vortex of power.
I inhaled, siphoning all that power from around us, and a massive black funnel no one but me could see formed over me as I consumed. Raven spasmed on my cock, screams blurring together into one continuous wail as the good karma from my bite bled into her and empowered her.
Thinking back to Kara, I remember the last woman I'd fucked. Remembered the triumph of breeding her. The victory.
The earth, the snow, the flames of lust, the vortex above us. Four elements and a sacrifice. A ritual I hadn't even meant to begin as I took what was mine here in the place of my triumph. The dark karma from Arg was sucked down into me and purified, I felt it condense down, refining into positive energy, dense positive energy. Liquid positive energy.
It built inside me as I drank more and more and I leaned down to growl in Raven's ear. "Will you accept my gift?" I rumbled.
"YES!" She screamed, barely managing to eke out the word through her wails. "ANYTHING!"
I smashed my hips into that fat child bearing ass and roared as I emptied my balls of millennia of accumulated karma, straight into her womb as I pushed Eros and Psych toward the action that would consecrate this ritual. I impregnated Raven.
She threw her head back and light exploded from her eyes and mouth along with a haunting wail of pleasure as the bite mark on her shoulder expanded, flowing over her skin in interlocking swirls and designs as the karma was funneled through the baby now taking root inside her and into her body, changing and reshaping her as she came around my cock again and again.
Finally I finished, and we slumped down on the ground together. I was breathing hard and she was letting out little whining huffs as she tried to get her brain rebooted. I reached over and grabbed her cloak, throwing it open next to her and rolling her onto it, wrapping her up before curling up next to her.
Around us, the snow had melted, and a circle of green grass and beautiful wildflowers had erupted from the ground, creating a patch of springtime around our bodies. Knowing what I'd see, I used appraisal.
[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Rachel "Raven" Roth- A ranked Daevic god of Karmic Retribution. Formerly a powerful Daeva in her own right, by virtue of her union and mating with the dragon god Nicholas Lord, Raven has ascended to the pinnacle of A rank, achieving parity with her mate even as she bears his young.]
I whistled. That might not seem like a big change because she was still A rank, but the peak of A was much different than just being IN A. If past Raven had been one of the top one hundred strongest beings under S rank, now she was top ten, up there with me. I hadn't ranked her up, at A rank that wasn't so easy to do without a merge and I couldn't do that yet.
Still, she'd grown immeasurably, I could feel the karmic power boiling inside her, inside our baby, which would, without a doubt, be the strongest of any of my children so far. Pulling up my pants, I grabbed a blanket from my pouch and threw it over us, dragging out a simulacra and shifting perception of us onto it before throwing it into a bush, then I snuggled up with her and fell asleep. That had really taken it out of me.
July 8th 2016 Hall of Nevers, Brightedge, 10:00 A.M EDT
Raven teleported us home. I felt kind of stupid for forgetting she could do that, but I'd been all serious and determined, so I gave myself a pass. Once we woke up she took us home, and I strolled into the house grinning from ear to ear. Killing an enemy, breeding one of my women, and ranking her up (even partially) without paying points was pretty much a trifecta for me.
Of course, once I got home, I had to explain my two new baby mamas to the girls, but luckily, they didn't hassle me. They were so cute drunk on my youngest that the idea of more babies sounded fantastic (and also I think they'd kind of given up and were just glad I hadn't knocked up every girl in the house).
Barbie, however, pulled me aside for a little update. "Alright." She said as she shut the door. "Tell me you have a plan for your last A rank points gain?"
"Last?" I said with a raised eyebrow. "I still have two more. I told you all that outside."
She shook her head. "That's where you're wrong. Because I may not know all sorts of crazy system stuff like you do, but I DO know what Jim Corrigan is like. I've researched almost every active hero extensively, especially the old guard. The Specter was a big deal back in the day. Based on what you told us there's no way he doesn't take a shot."
I paused. "Shit." I said in annoyance. "You're right. It'll take him some time to sort the mess in Svalbard, but past that, he'll be right on my ass."
"Oh really." Said a waspish voice. "And were you planning to tell us about this?" I winced, turning to find Dinah and Amy at the door looking murderous.
I rolled my eyes. "Sure, possibly after a full thirty seconds had passed since I'd heard it." Dinah squinted at me and I sighed. "Di, sweetie. I'm not a spare your feelings kind of guy. If I don't want you getting into trouble I'll just order you not to. I might decide not to tell you something because I think it'll be annoying, but mostly I tend to shoot straight."
"I know." She said after a minute, sighing as she leaned against the wall. "It's just one thing after another sometimes. I just had our baby, I was hoping you'd be around to spend time with us, not out killing ancient evils and impregnating our nanny."
I froze. "Holy shit." I said quietly. "She kind of is. I'm totally making her roleplay for me next time. Or maybe I could have Cassie do it. She's got that teeny bopper babysitter aesthetic. Little broad through the shoulders but we could make it work." I trailed off as I saw them staring at me flatly. "Right. Not the time for fantasizing. I see that now."
"Sure you do." Snorted my baby mama. "Anyway. I assume given the news about the Specter, who I know by the way, you're planning to bail for a while. You need to pick up another A ranked item right?"
Nodding, I ran a hand through my hair. "I do. And if he's coming I need to get gone fast. We have a few A ranks here, but there's A ranks and then there's A ranks. After fighting Arg I can clearly tell you that no one here except me and maybe Raven could survive a dust up with him."
"Was she really that strong?" She said in worry. "I mean, I knew Corrigan has a rep, and that she was his nemesis, though I'd never heard of her, but I didn't think it would be that rough."
I just shrugged. "It was the hardest fight of my life. I was buzzing off a divine weapon, had poisoned the living shit out of her, and impaled her with the Spear of fucking Destiny while she was distracted, and I still barely put her down. If Corrigan was keeping up with her for years, he's a monster."
"At least it'll just be him though." Barbie said optimistically. At my confused glance, she rolled her eyes. "Kyra Arg was like…a million year old boogeyman for system hosts right? She killed tons of you. The rest of them would have steered clear of her, especially after Lincoln March ended up getting the boot." She winked at me at that last part.
"Corrigan has the Will system." I said with a nod. "So he's basically obligated to nut up, but Aphrodite and the others aren't fighters. Probably. I still don't know who all the others ARE, but Hope and Compassion don't strike me as particularly fighty systems."
One on one was…doable. I'd have to set the stage like I had with Arg, but I had some ideas. Before that though, I needed to solve my one final problem. "That means I need one more A rank point source." I repeated. "Any ideas?"
A rankers didn't grow on trees. My only real options were to attack Olympus and kidnap Zeus, try to grab Odin or find an artifact powerful enough to contend with them. I needed something with divine juice. I wished I could have counted on my abilities, but tripping over the spear had probably been as much luck as I could expect.
Barbie grimaced. "I don't have any idea of what…but I might know who." I raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed. "Look. I love you idiot. I'm not going to let you get killed and orphan your kids and take you away from me. If that means some girl I might like gets a snake tattoo on her ass, so be it."
"I appreciate that." I said with a chuckle. "But how many A rankers could there be on the League. Kara I know, but I don't think Wonder Woman is quite there, and she's the strongest female League member aside from Supergirl."
Barbie sighed. "That…might not necessarily be true. There's at least one other. Or at least there was, back in twenty fourteen. She's retired now, and gave up her powers, but she's still connected to them. You should be able to reactivate her abilities."
Dinah's eyes widened. "I…I guess she is about your age." She said with a frown. "I don't know if that's a good idea though. She had so much trouble letting go last time."
"She won't NEED to let go." Said Barbie firmly. "Nicky can keep her in line if she loses it, and she'll be a hero again. It's been two years, she must be missing it. Or do you prefer the Specter rip out the father of your child's still beating heart."
I cleared my throat. "Hey, pull it back." I said in annoyance. "Ain't nobody getting heart ripped. Now can one of you tell me who the fuck we're talking about?"
"Mary Bromfield." Dinah said with a sigh. "And Barbara isn't wrong. She is almost definitely A rank. Her powers come from the same source as Black Adam, who is about Superman level. She retired a while ago because she became addicted to her powers. That happens when you start heroing at eleven. She quit at sixteen, two years ago, and has been clean ever since."
I made a hum of interest. "Is she hot? I mean, I'll dick down an ugo to save my family, but I'd prefer not to have to jump on that particular grenade if I don't have to." I figured I had good odds since she was a hero, but I had to ask.
Barbie rolled her eyes again, pulling out her phone and pulling up a picture of a dark haired bombshell with pouty lips, bedroom eyes, and an ass that could stop a tank shell. "This is mary Marvel. She did a few calenders when she was spiraling. Just bikini stuff."
"She looks like twenty five, not eighteen." I noted. Not that I minded, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to bang some random powerless chick by accident.
Shrugging, my redhead just waved it away. "Her powers give her kind of a battle form, it looks older. It was a thing, but she's eighteen in her mortal form and while she's not QUITE that sexy, she's still pretty cute. Plus you'll probably end up fucking her transformed anyway."
That was a good point. "So…how am I supposed to find and then fuck this girl? I can hide myself from Corrigan for a while, but I assume there's at least some sort of a clock on this?"
They all shrugged. But to my surprise, Amy smirked at me. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. Remember who your wife is?" I blinked, having forgotten about her red string of fate power. She pumped her fist triumphantly. "Which means I'm going with you."
Dinah snickered. "That's actually pretty fortuitous. You guys can finally have a proper honeymoon. Mary is currently working as a Maid at the Star City Ritz Carlton."
I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Are you telling me that I have to bring my wife to a resort with me to seduce a teenage maid. That's…" I trailed off. "Actually no, I'm kind of good with that." I raised an eyebrow at Amy. "You sure you won't get jealous? I know we've played around with other girls, but this is a little different."
"Yes." She said firmly. "This time our whole family is at stake. If you die we all fall apart and our baby grows up without a daddy. That isn't happening. If I have to help you fuck some super drug addict to keep everyone safe I'll hold that bitch down on your dick until she loses consciousness."
We all stared at her, and she blushed a bit. "Damn, Ames." Said Barbie. "That was kind of hardcore. But this isn't a time for force. With The Specter on your trail, your best bet is to go undercover. I can mock you up some fake identities. Take your time on your honeymoon, it might be the last downtime you get for a while."
She was more right than she knew. Zee's project should be finished soon, and I couldn't initiate the final phase of my plan until it was. Some downtime with the wife actually did sound good. Amy was a fun person to be around, and seducing a sex kitten like the one on that calender together sounded like fine.
"Fine." I said with a laugh. "But no stupid pun names. I'm not introducing myself as Mike Oxlarge or something."
Barbie winked at me. "Well it definitely is, but fair enough. Nothing eye catching or jokey. I promise." Her smile died. "What about Corrigan though? The fight with him is going to be just as tough as Arg. Maybe more."
Dinah let out a long sigh. "It won't be as tough as you think. The Specter is only vulnerable to powerful divine or mystical weapons, but you already have one of those. The killing blow will be doable, but we need something to actually hold him down. I might have an idea of where to get something too." She frowned, but nodded stubbornly. "I'll handle it. I can get it to Raven, just summon her when it's time. We can't keep it though."
I raised a brow at that, but shrugged. If whatever she was talking about was A rank she'd have mentioned it, which meant it was probably just a uniquely suited B rank item. I didn't need a B rank item anyway. I could double check, but the girl seemed like the safest bet just in case, and I'd be dealing with Corrigan either way.
With that plan out of the way, I went and let everyone know I'd be going on a trip, hugging the girls and saying goodbye to my kids. It was so weird to think that i had kids to say goodbye to, and would have more soon, but it wasn't bad.
Granted, not having to actually raise or look after them probably helped take the pressure off, but still, it was fun so far. Now though, I had other things to worry about. I was about to have a honeymoon with my wife. I almost would have preferred to fight The Specter. At least if I fucked that up I'd only die.
AN:/ as usual pat-reon has the advance chapters at that site /malcolmtent hope everyone enjoys.