Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 347

Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 347

Chapter 347
Chapter 347
Queen Nephridi’s eye fluttered open upon a knock at the door to her bath house. Nobody would be stupid enough to disturb her during this time with the exception of only a handful of people, and none of them were good exceptions to have come to visit her at this late hour. Her servants had already been sent home as it was, while her thralls were all chained to her bedroom wall, and that narrowed the list down even further.
“Enter, if you dare.” She said, leaning her head back against the ridge of the blood pool to stare at the door that slid silently open.
She barely suppressed an exhausted sigh, avoided rolling her eyes, and internally groaned when she was correct in her assumption on who it would be. Instead, she put on a fake and practiced smile - but did not go as far as to sit up from where she now lounged. Respect for the clergy only went so far, and she would only bend so much before she snapped one of their necks even with the heretical act not looking good for her public face. “Dear me… And had I known you’d be showing up tonight, I’d have actually put on something nice for the occasion.”
Her voice was flat and without meaning behind it.
The man who entered though, his voice contrasted. It was full of a raw power lacking control and full of confidence in his authority given to him by divine right. He was shirtless, bearing the crimson tattoos of his order, while wearing a pair of long flowing skirt-pants and large flat-brim, circular hat that had red drapes covering most of his face. He bowed low, before he lifted himself into a normal and relaxed stance.
“If I didn’t know better…” The man said from underneath the red drapes, only his smile showing underneath the hat’s shadow. “I’d think you’d grown tired of my presence here, High Queen Nephridi.”
“Bishops of the Blood God are always welcome.” Nephridi said without skipping a beat. She did, however, raise a hand and made a twirling gesture in the air to emphasize her impatience. “But please, if we are to talk then let us talk during the normal hours of the day. Since you are already here, please be on with your business so that I can get back to my very important duties.”
The man raised an eyebrow, looking around the highly decorated bathroom that was three times the size of a normal bedroom - and then settled his gaze on the dead mortal who was half stripped of flesh on a large round plate to the side of where Nephridi sat. “Indeed. I’m sure your duties as of right now are quite important, but heresy is a far more important matter - and we’ve just received word from our god.”
Nephridi’s eyes widened slightly and a fanged smile spread across her lips. She sat up so that she was only submerged below her waist, and eagerly leaned forward with a malicious glint in her eyes. “You’ve found Elder Thune, I presume?”
The bishop scoffed. “That heretic’s crucifixion will doubtless come. No, it is not him.”
Nephridi immediately showed the disappointment on her face. “Why are you here then? Did you find another cell of heretical nobles I need to execute? A cabal of terrorists working against the Blood God? Perhaps a nation that has angered our great lord? How may I be of assistance?”
The stiff man folded his arms behind his back and stared at the floor. “I’m afraid it’s none of those things.”
“Then spit it out and get on with it!” Nephridi said rather angrily this time, splashing one of her hands down into the pool in frustration.
The man’s head slowly lifted, and he remained quiet for some time. “There have been traces of the corrupt touch found around one of your royals. We are not sure quite yet of the crime, but we would like you to look into this with us. The Blood Moon Requiem is one of the beating hearts of our universal society, and we want to keep it pure of the villainy that would otherwise muddy the waters of the true Blood Subpillar.”
Nephridi nearly sneezed, and then froze. She’d been expecting anything but that. “A royal?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
“I just said I was not certain. It would be an investigation to prove innocence or guilt, nothing more. Nothing less.”
Nephridi bit her lip and internally cursed. The other royals were all key assets to her empire as they carried the bloodline of Malignant Prophecy, and if one of them turned - that could not be allowed. Nor could she let it tarnish the standing of her empire in the Blood God’s court when it came to the ranks of vampiric states amongst the multiverse. This was not a request, and if she denied the bishop the right to look into this… then a religious crusade could be called against the requiem itself.
She nodded. “I will help in any way I can. Who is it, and what resources do you require?”
The bishop seemed pleased with her seemingly sincere response, and bowed low in turn. “Your majesty has always seen to the proper way of doing things, and the Blood God takes note. The one in question is called Kathrine Vonsilla Crushada the 9th, eldest daughter to the Duke and Dutchess of House of Crushada, 107th in line for the vampiric throne. She is currently on the planet of Panu where she is to be wed to your great grandson, Riven. We first heard about it through s of our devout and faithful F-grade priests who were allowed by Elysium to go to Panu for the upcoming war.”
Nephridi frowned deeply. She liked the girl quite a bit.
“As for what we need, it is merely your permission to confine and interrogate certain individuals amongst her noble house without retribution.” The bishop said as the air grew tense between them. “We were hoping that you’d let us… interrogate… her parents first.”
***
The next day they all got up bright and early, and proceeded to the first warlord’s fortress.
Though Riven would call it more of a hideout rather than a fortress. The only indication it was even a fortress at all were the scattered window holes along the cliff nearby the entrance.
Jerico, being not only Riven’s guide but also a guide to the lower leveled adventurers delving the dungeon, led him and the rest of the team out to a long cliff face with an overhang halfway up. Just underneath it, there was a large opening - a large cave mouth - with a single spear-wielding bird man perched at the cave’s lip.
Maybe… Three hundred feet up? Riven was terrible with measurements, or at least that’s what Athela regularly told him.
“You’re squinting.” The redhead stated, and she hoisted her bow up over her shoulder to look up the cliff face with him. “I’d always thought the tales about vampires and sunlight were lies.”
She was one of only a few that would even talk to him at all outside of the card games they’d played last night. Most of the rest of the group was either very wary, disgusted, or terrified of him.
Riven grumbled under his breath and waved dismissively in her direction. “Well it’s true. Now, Jerico, you said we can’t just barge in there? We actually have to assassinate the guy?”
“Well first of all, the warlord for the bird people is a female. It’s always the same one and she never remembers her previous deaths, always goes on with the same monologuing too. So get ready!.” Jerico corrected with an upraised finger, other hand on his hip after he adjusted his leathers and modified plate armor over the top. “And yes. If you don’t kill her discreetly, and you alert the rest of the fortress, the dungeon will literally reset itself and teleport you back to the village proper. If you fail three times in a row on a single warlord, you’re kicked out of the dungeon entirely.”
Another man, the healer with a small wooden staff akin to a walking stick, raised it in the air to pose a question. “Does it matter how we kill them as long as we’re not caught? For the vampire who doesn’t know already, Jorgim is an explosives expert. We could blow it up all at once.”
The healer swatted at a bearded man to his left, who grinned savagely and produced a handful of small metal spheres in one hand.
“No it doesn’t matter.” Jerico said with a frown and a shake of his head. He folded his arms. “That’s not going to work though. The fortress is called a fortress for a reason, if you could just toss some bombs at it and it would kill everyone then this wouldn’t be much of a challenge - and you probably wouldn’t need a guide. Plus you’d need the bombs to kill everyone at once, otherwise it’d wake up the ones it didn’t kill and you’d fail the quest anyways.”
Riven snorted his agreement. It was a god damned cliff. What, did they expect their explosives expert to just toss a couple handheld bombs at it and the problem would go away?
Riven hoped the two teammates were just joking and not actually that stupid. That, or he was seriously underestimating what the explosives dude could do.
“Didn’t you guys even read up on this dungeon run before signing up?” The archer scoffed with a raised eyebrow. She glanced at Riven last.
“I can’t read.” Riven said flatly. “Not since my mom dropped me on my head. It’s called dysphasia, I believe.”
There was a long pause where the woman considered whether Riven was being serious or not.
She eventually shrugged with indifference. “There’ve been plenty of manuals already out there with tried and tested methods. The dungeon only has slight variations each time on this floor so you should know that explosives are the exact opposite of what we should do.”
“Why don’t we let the mythic vampire tattooed guy have a go at it?” One of the warriors wielding a shortsword quipped from the back. “The bloodsucker is probably quite a sneaky stabby type after robbing us blind last night with those cheap card tricks! Bet he has a class of thief to boot!”
Some of the others muttered their agreement.
“I won the gambling pot fair and square.” Riven held out both hands. “I make no apologies.”
“You’re a damn liar, pretty boy! You had cards up your sleeve, I saw them!”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, the incident.
Riven just mock gasped. “Slanderous!”
Funny thing was, Riven had definitely cheated. He was terrible at gambling and always lost if he didn’t. He’d just not cheated in the way he was being accused of.
Jerico cut in with his hand. “Quiet! And Borfin, if you have a problem losing your money at cards then simply don’t play anymore! It’s not the first time you’ve gone all in on a bluff! If I recall you seemed mighty fine trying to take his money when you thought you had a good hand!”
Snickers from the back caused the man to angrily growl under his breath, but he didn’t press the issue as Jerico turned around to look Riven once over.
“Two silver coins says you can’t though.” Jerico said, pulling out two Elysium coins and waving it in Riven’s face. “Betchya can’t do it.”
Riven’s brows furrowed, then raised, and his face went through a slew of different emotions before settling on flabbergasted. “Are you seriously trying to bribe me with two silver coins? How poor do you think I am?”
“Eh? Eh?” The other man waved them in front of Riven again with a smile. “You know you want to show us all up! The men have been talking shit about you since getting here!”
“Well that’s just rude.” Riven internally laughed, knowing full well not one of them had landed even an inkling of an identify beyond the very most basic information. He kind of like being treated as semi-normal, even if he did have the MYTHIC and vampire tags that he was dealing with. Or had the bar just become so low that people shit talking him was a welcome thing, instead of groveling or trying to kill him outright?
The man tossed both coins to Riven, who caught them with a flash of movement. He studied the coins, smirked, and pocketed them with a shake of his head. “Are you guys just using me to run the dungeon for you? Because if that’s what you want-”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try.” The archer girl stated with a hopeful and somewhat sheepish smile, widening her stance and nodding to the others of their party. “No one wants to be here with you. Not trying to offend, but being paired with a bloodsucker, likely a very strong one, is not something any of us signed up for.”
“Monster.” Spat one of the gruffer men in the back.
The archer shot the man a glare, but nodded in affirmation at Riven with a helpless shrug. “And the more you’re away from us while we’re here, the better. We usually just kill your kind on sight, so this is a bit odd for us. And dangerous. If you beat it for us, we’ll be out of harm’s way and not in your vicinity. If you happen to die in there, we also won’t feel any particular way about it. It’s a win-win situation for us if you go ahead.”
Now Riven had experienced some discrimination in the past. He’d had a particularly hard time with it when he’d first gotten to Brightsville and the humans there had called him a monster. Prophet’s forces had even waged a holy war against Allie and her undead for being different. But it’d been a while, and Riven had been with his own kind in the negative charisma category for some time in the Abyssal Descent. Having it re-emerge here was a stark reminder that, to many people, he would always just be a monster no matter what he did. No matter that he saved their city, albeit they didn’t know about how he’d given the governor all that gold, he was still just a freak to them. He could see it in their eyes, and even now - when he thought Jerico and this archer girl in particular had seemed willing to talk, he could see the wary hope in both their expressions that he’d go ahead and do it for them. Not that they probably couldn’t do it themselves, but because they wanted to be as far away from him as possible.
The dungeon wasn’t the threat, and it wasn’t full of the monsters they feared. He was that threat, and he was that monster. He was a predator to be steered away from, or to be stabbed in the back.
Just like in Greenstalk Village.
The realization hit him like a brick wall, and the playful smile he had on slowly faded until only a stoic expression remained. These people, and the people like them, would never want to be friends with someone or something like him. Even if he hadn’t intended for such an outcome in the long run, the feeling of rejection still hurt… even now. Even after all he’d been through. He wasn’t human any longer, and the more he tried to cling to it - the more he’d just hurt himself. Quietly reconsidering just why he’d even come down here instead of making straight for the cultists’ Altar of Despair, he mumbled the affirmative under his breath before vanishing through a rift towards the cliff face.
It was time to get to work.
***
Despite being a mage, Riven had been trained both in melee combat and in various assassination techniques under Lillith’s prodding during his time in the depths of the abyss. He was certainly no pro, and wouldn’t stack up compared to some of the better assassins out there, but he’d trained with some of the very best in existence - and had received many key tips and tricks. When compared to them, the opponents here were subpar at best.
He waited for darkness to fall, seeing two changes of the guard before making his move. During that time he considered recalling Athela to assassinate everything for him, but she was getting him a regular amount of event points - slightly more than any of the other minions he had at that. They were all performing admirably and he was approaching the 5000 points marker given the efforts of his contracted followers, which was an incredible testament to their growth in strength considering the amount of time spent back, and they were making it a race to see who could get the most points and complete the most missions on Riven’s behalf by the end. He’d not received any contact or point accumulations from Gluttony since the original sin had split off a body and made to hunt that naga, but Riven could still feel the connection as strong as ever. He was sure that if need arose, Gluttony would reach out to speak to him and vice versa.
Plus, word had already been sent to Nora to meet up with Riven, and she was bringing some of the other non-cultists in a move to try and spawn-kill the cultists as they came. They’d be ready within a week or two, and it’d be the first time most of them had worked together since arriving here - but he’d received excited letters of acceptance from five of them already. And that’d been before he left for this dungeon run and to scout out the Altar of Despair to see if it really was what the booklet named it to be.
He blinked, coming back to reality and moved along the cliff face. Using wretched snares on his hands to silently pull him along the rock wall instead of flying with his rudimentary mana control absent of Messenger’s grace, Riven approached the cave mouth. He’d already tried portaling through the small slits of the fortress windows, but they were all protected by enchantments that rebuffed his efforts every time.
He intentionally shrouded his red glowing eyes with small clouds of shadow, which he could produce through utilization of his aura. Yet, he could still see through them without much issue either, and it made his approach all the easier as he glided towards the unsuspecting, spear-wielding bird-man with fluid grace.
The… monster? Person? Was sitting underneath a torch and was far more attentive than the previous two had been during the daytime. The fact that Riven couldn’t just blast him without failing the mission was a bit irksome, but Riven was pretty confident even despite both these facts.
Coming in closer, he could hear the heartbeat of not only the guard - but also another three creatures inside and further down the cave’s entrance.
Coming up over the birdman’s perch and underneath the overhang, Riven stuck to the ceiling and sent out a few pulses of mana. The touch was light, not enough to be more than a faint whisper of ambient mana to the senses of these bird people, but enough that it would given Riven a faint outline of any potential hidden enemies beyond his line of sight.
Just as his vampiric senses had confirmed earlier, there were indeed three other guards inside - but further down than he’d originally thought. They were sitting beside a large solid object that was either a boulder, or a large crate, before the cave tunnel turn right further down. He also noted that they were sitting on the opposite side of a set of iron bars, with a latch on the inner side.
Crawling down further to peer inside the cave with very slow and controlled movements, Riven could begin to hear the birdman underneath him breathing. The creature had a large yellow beak that curved to a pointed tip like an eagle, and had brilliant blue feathers down his rather than arms and body. Long taloned hooks for claws were at the end of stork-like legs, and the spear was shoddily crafted but looked efficient enough.
Otherwise the bird man wore only a belt and a pouch.
Riven eventually managed to peer into the cave from his perch on the outer cliff wall and did a once-over of the interior. It was a regular cave with the exception of a large gridiron gate about fifty feet in, and the three bird people on the opposite side were all eating off the corpse of what looked to be a giant rat. Next to them was a large crate just as Riven had guessed, but further mana pulses acting as sonar did little to nothing to pierce further into the fortress.
The nasally voice of the bird man below him echoed out as the creature scratched his neck with one thin, feathered hand. “Why me always have to watch at night? I never watch during day. Warlord Vira so mean, she not see how fierce I am! I deserve better!”
The grumpy bird man began mumbling to himself at a lower pitch, something about rats and flying, and he glared back at the others who were stripping flesh off the giant rodent further back.
The head-turn was all Riven needed, and he dropped from his overhanging perch above to sink like a boulder through the air and past the cave’s edge. Utilizing wretched snare like a rope, he hooked the bird man’s neck and yanked the creature off the cliff to plummet with him - fading into the darkness below with only a rush of air to signal his passing.
Snapping the creature’s neck halfway through his fall, he riftwalked back up the cliff face and latched onto the rock wall again with his hands coated in black, spiny snare material - and climbed back up. He could already hear the confused squawks of the others as they bickered about where or when the foremost sentry had left his post, and he patiently waited until he heard the iron gates creak open.
Smiling to himself and opening his mouth, Riven quietly belched three large beetles from his mouth. Giving the fist-sized sin insects each a command, he sent them skittering across the cliff and into the cave within seconds.
Meanwhile, the heartbeats were approaching.
“Where that idiot go!?” One of the bird men squawked, coming over to the cave’s lip into the torchlight and staring down into the forest far below. The creature scratched his head and turned around. “I not see! I not see!”
Another surprised squawk from inside signaled to Riven that the beetles had been seen, and just as he suspected - he heard another of the creatures say: “Oh, snack! Snack!”
Not that he’d expected those exact words, but he had expected these bird things to try and eat the beetles upon sight. That rat didn’t look too appetizing, and these beetles were a natural source of food for regular avian creatures anyways.
He heard a crunch, a happy squawk, and then a surprised gurgling sound as the first of the beetles let itself be devoured only to promptly snap down on the inside of the target bird man’s throat.
“What wrong!?” Riven heard another of the bird men say, and without another moment to spare he slipped around and into the cave mouth to see one of the bird men thrashing around on the floor while clutching his bleeding throat. Two pincers pierced the inside of his wind pipe and were sticking out through his flesh, while the other two bird men were gawking and beginning to run his way.
Riven covered his hands and forearms in crimson ice, creating sharp claws out of his limbs as he blurred forward and beheaded the closest creature. The second one was unusually fast for what Riven had been expecting and somehow managed to barely dodge the majority of his strike, only taking a single grazing slash across its face before a snare smashed directly into its head - covering it completely. The cries that would have come were muffled by the sticky black needles, and the creature fell backwards trying to desperately claw it off. It also tried to activate some kind of ability, but Riven’s aura pressed down and smashed the attempt at skill usage like an elephant stepping on a fly. He felt the rebound effect impact the creature’s very soul before he slashed open the second bird man’s neck and severed the spine.
Hearing a loud gurgle and a scrabbling sound, Riven whipped about to see the creature with the beetle in its neck racing for the latch. It was wide eyed, desperate, and vaulted forward with a dash ability that cleared the distance almost instantaneously even despite the blood spurting from the beetle lodged in its neck.
Riven’s fingers curled.
SNAP
A blood lance, one of his original version with less destructive power as to not create a mess, flashed through the back of the creature and out the front of its chest. Riven utilized his control on the crimson ice and caused it to freeze further and stick to the internals of the monster, before forcing more mana into it and reversing the trajectory. The blood lance raced backwards, out of the cave with a
WHOOSH
that sent the bird man flying through the air and out into the darkness.
Riven watched silently through the shadow veils over his eyes, lifted his hand, and when the bird man was a few hundred yards away and perhaps a hundred feet above the treeline - Riven clenched that hand.
The bird man popped in a spray of feathers and gore, but it made no noticeable sound given the distance.
Turning back around and making for the latch, Riven started out his systematic cleansing of the fortress. He was about to reach for it when he paused in his step, nearly having put his weight down on a tripwire.
Thinning his lips, he traced the wire with his eyes to a compartment where darts were lodged further up the wall.
Traps.
This place was booby trapped.
It was going to be a long night.

.
!
Chapter 347