Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 353

Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 353

Chapter 353
Chapter 353
Jasper had signed up as a vampire hunter nearly thirty years ago now. He was approaching the age of fifty three - which was what he’d have considered middle aged in the F-grade, but now that he was early E-grade he considered it young. He likely had another few hundred years to go before he felt the same kind of aches and pains his father, a leather worker, had experienced while remaining unaccustomed to battle and without a goal of progressing far enough in a crafter’s class to truly ascend.
He’d had quite a few close calls in his days of hunting down the vile monsters. Hidden covens always had the place booby trapped, and vampires were naturally stronger than people were at a one-to-one level disparity anyways. Without utilizing the Sun Sub-Pillar and the silver weapons he always had on him, he had no doubt he’d have died a dozen times over in his attempts at culling the evil creatures from the worlds he visited.
He even had a confirmed number of 78 kills too. He was rather proud of that, so when he’d been assigned to this task force he’d kind of rolled his eyes at the cleric assigning him the role. It was babysitting duty, or so he’d thought, sending him to an integration planet’s trial in order to bait and trap a single, lone vampire before torturing him throughout the remainder of the Elysium trial. Even the cleric giving him the job had laughed it off as a way for him to relax as the others signed up eagerly one by one, but these jobs needed some E-grade supervisors to tag along and he was one of the five that were assigned.
So he didn’t complain and just grumbled a bit about not having any real action lately before proceeding onwards to this ‘Panu’ place. Apparently the were undergoing an Apocalypse Beast type trial which in itself was unbelievably bad for the native population, and what was worse was that the ones who’d hired his company from the Skullborn Crosses were actually of the cultist faction in the conflict.
That… that hadn’t gone over too well at first. But upon presentation of the 8 billion Elysium Coins post system tax… who could say no to that?
What would capturing and confining a single, lone vampire do to sway the events on this Panu place anyways? Surely there’d be other non-cultists out there taking up the slack, and if these cultists wanted to blow BILLIONS on hiring their company from across the multiverse just to subjugate a single guy - then they were truly stupid. Why not let them do it? They could have spent that money on so many other things as opposed to this that would’ve helped them far more, so in the end it was a win-win.
Right?
The details had been fuzzy at first but upon arrival they’d found out that this guy was also a pureblood, a warlock that occasionally used powerful summons, and the cultists had been very adamant about not taking it lightly despite the massive numbers disparity. 298 of their company had been hired up to the last coin for this job, all professionals, and there was just no way that a single guy even with demonic minions could take on the whole company.
No way.
Right?
And yet, as Jasper ran for his life stifling sobs as he passed by the corpses of many comrades now laying split open and dead on the wreckage of a burning city, having tossed away his weapons to flee for his god damned life back to the hidden guild hall they’d been hired from, he couldn’t think about anything except for one key point.
This guy that was wiping the floor with all of them now… who’d already killed over half their company… he’d not even summoned a single one of those so called ‘powerful summons.’
Not.
A single.
One.
Instead the sick vampire fuck seemed to be having a blast as he slaughtered all of Jasper’s friends, and had even started toying with them before beginning to eat pieces off the dying one by one; leaving some of his friends crippled just to die more slowly as he made off towards another batch of the resistance which was still trying to fight back.
Not only that, but this ‘Riven’ fellow hadn’t even take any serious damage. Was he truly an E-grade? Jasper called bullshit.
The man’s mana capacity was leagues above what even his friends in the peak of E-grade had at their disposal, even the bombardment mages Jasper knew - which were known for their particularly high mana pools and high damage output. The vampire’s regeneration was slowed by silver, yes, but it didn’t outright stop it and landing a hit on the fast-as-fuck guy was nearly impossible with the way he boosted his body and ripped through space via shadow portals.
And why was his close combat ability so abnormally good for a warlock? Weren’t warlocks supposed to be focus on magical casting and were supposed to be weak to assassins? Every single assassin that’d tried to get close had been focused on before anyone else, and there weren’t even any assassins left at this point to try and kill the warlock by now. The few remaining clerics and priests were desperately trying to shield and ward the remaining members of the expedition and were being picked off one by one too, with the gunners, archers, and melee combatants in heavy supply at this point.
Jasper’s heart thudded in his chest, and he heard another explosion amidst the rattle of gunfire - before hearing an echoing laugh amidst the shrill screams of his men. Sweat beaded down his chest, his face, and his palms were sweaty as he hyperventilated - pumping his legs as hard as he could with what little stamina reserves were left after fighting off a swarm of those fist-sized beetles. One of his fingers was missing where an insect had chewed it off, and his armor was full of holes. In all his time having hunted vampires, this man - no, this monster - was by far the most dangerous opponent he’d ever seen below D-grade; and he could safely say they were vastly outmatched while being woefully unprepared.
All those questions about the cultists and the mocking tone his company had set before getting to the actual fight replayed in his mind over and over again. He should have known something was off about this job the moment it was requested and sent over. Those cultists weren’t crazy at all, if anything they were probably desperate.
“JASPER!” He heard a man’s raspy voice call out to him, though he couldn’t place who it was.
His head whipped around and he stumbled over a burnt cart in the middle of the road, blinking through the smoke as the city shook underfoot. It was one of the new recruits, Jasper realized, who’d been trapped halfway under a pile of rubble. The man was in obviously bad shape, having his legs pinned and a series of jagged gashes likely where the warlock’s storm had pelted the man with sharp projectiles.
“Help me Jasper!” The man rasped again, wincing in pain as he unsuccessfully tried to get out.
Jasper hesitated, and his eyes slid to where the hidden guild hall was located under a city bridge only a few miles off. He could probably make it while the vampire was distracted if he left now, but if he stayed to help…
No. He was E-grade now and carrying the man wouldn’t be all that much to slow him down, he was just being a coward.
He blinked, voice still heaving from exertion of the recent sprint, and he pushed down his fear before rushing over to the downed recruit. Pulling stones off and flinging them to the side, he lifted the other man and settled the guy on his back. “Hold on, I’ll be going full speed!”
The recruit merely grunted painfully in acknowledgement, and Jasper took off.
He needed to get off world to let the rest of the guild know. The others? They were dead already and just didn’t know it yet. The best he could do was let the higher ups hear about what’d happened so they could put out a proper hit on this Riven person whenever the system protections on the integrating planet went down.
Revenge was the only true course of action now. There was no salvation for those he was leaving behind, and he only hoped they were smart enough to run so that at least some of them survived.
***
Riven parried a sword thrust with his third makeshift ice spear and simultaneously blocked a sunlight torpedo with a retaliatory blast of black lightning. Skewering the woman in front of him and ripping the weapon out, he spun over the axe swung at his back and horizontally snapped his leg out to kick the next man in the face. He'd been doing a lot of kicking today and had made it something of a sport.
There was an audible crunch when the man’s neck broke, and he fell limp to the ground next to the woman clutching at the gaping hole in her stomach as she screamed.
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Riven blocked a kick with his knee from the next combatant, stomped onto his foot and tore open his lungs with a slash of his crimson claws created from blood mana. Blood sprayed out of the warrior’s chest and Riven did a spin kick to send him spiraling across the street into a nearby building with a loud thud.
A silver sword spear lashed out next and slammed into his own, sparking with the clash who Riven took three steps forward while exchanging rapid blows with the other E-grade combatant. Sending out a pulsewave of red and black storm energy that tore open two other combatants who tried to flank him, he pushed his advantage and lunged forward - smacking the inner arm of the E-grade spearman with his blade and blasting him in the face with a critical storm lance. The sin, blood, and shadow magic radiating off the long, sharp projectile tore his entire upper body off completely with a sonic boom and a trail of mana. Gore began splattering around Riven as he turned to face the others, red eyes gleaming under the dark hood he wore and fangs on full display in a wide smile.
Shaking and stumbling over a fallen comrade, a young woman and enemy paladin dressed in slightly heavier armor than her counterparts called out in an angry, fearful voice. “You’re fucking sick! Your kind is a plague on this-”
WHOOSH
Riven snapped forward in an instant, ripping her head off and smashing his leg down in the same spinning motion to eradicate an adjacent cleric who’d been about to set him ablaze with a brilliant ray of sunlight that’d been building up between the man’s hands.
Riven held the woman’s head in his free hand, seeing the surprised shock in her eyes as her pupils began to relax, and her body fell forward on armor-plated knees before collapsing to the ground.
Riven hung the decapitated head over his face and let the blood trickle down into his mouth for a solid ten seconds. Having had his fill over the course of the last hour, he swallowed and threw the head off to the left somewhere as the smoke continued to drift upwards amidst the ruined city.
“You fucking piece of shit! She was my friend!” Another contender, a young man, hissed from behind before lunging at Riven’s back.
What a fool. He should have taken a cue from the dozens of bodies ripped apart around Riven’s current position. Riven had already heard and sensed him, and easily spun to flick out his spear - smashing aside the broadsword and again smashing a leg up through the man’s torso and out his back.
Riven was honestly surprised his foot had gone all the way through the man’s upper body like that, and had to dislodge the corpse from his leg a second later by shaking it off. Kind of like how a wet dog would shake off water after a swim.
“Riven? Are you there?” Fay’s voice called out to him through his soul link.
Riven cleared his throat and bent down to loot the man’s belongings for any gold or other valuables he may have, then went on to some of the more intact corpses and threw him into his spatial sack to eat later. He sent back a telepathic message. “Yeah I’m here.”
“Where have you been all this time!? I’ve been trying to contact you for days!!!”
Fay sounded both very frustrated and simultaneously relieved, and she let out a very long sigh at the end of her mental message. It made Riven chuckle under his breath as that sigh didn’t need to be sent telepathically and she’d sent it intentionally to make her point.
“My bad.” Riven said. “I was trapped inside a dungeon by a cultist group who lured me and used a ritual containment field to keep me there. Why? Is something wrong?”
“Are you sure you weren’t just ignoring me?”
“I promise I wasn’t ignoring you babe.”
“Well you’re going to have to make it up to me then. You really hurt my feelings by not replying.”
Riven didn’t even bother pointing out again that he’d not been able to send messages, and just smiled softly while continuing to loot. “Sure thing.”
“Five massages and a dinner date as soon as we get back to Outpost #84. They have a nice pasta place we can try.”
“Pasta? Really?”
“Yeah it’s super cute and tiny too! A real hole in the wall as you’d probably call it.”
“Then it’s a deal.”
“Just me though? Not Athela or any of the others?”
Riven chuckled again. “Yeah, just you. I promise to do it next time we’re in the town.”
There was a long pause.
“Good. You have to come find us though, we’ve already made a deal with a rogue cultist to capture an altar free of charge so to speak, courtesy of my grandmother which is a story in itself. We’re marching the armies of our combined forces into what we believe to be Northwest, but it’s hard to tell in this realm which way is north or south honestly.”
“Your grandmother? Rogue cultist? You turned one of them to our side? And who is ‘we’ when you say that we have an army?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole thing with my grandmother and the cultist. That… you’ll have to just see for yourself when you get here. It’ll be far easier to explain and you really wouldn’t believe just how weird this guy, erm, the cultist is. The ‘we’ would be the armies he gave to us when surrendering the Chalgathi Altar he’d conquered without a fight, and Nora’s combined forces too. She’s conquered three pretty large factions, but as you requested we left all of the ones we conquered in your name back at their respective homes. So it’s just Narg, who’s been a real dick lately, Athela, and myself. Azmoth is still babysitting your daughter, Genua and Kara are there too.”
Riven scratched his head, catching sight of a band of four distant and obviously injured vampire hunters limping along to the left - they met his eyes. Instantly they all froze, and one of them pulled out a white flag being flown at the end of a pole. He resumed his talk with Fay after a moment of staring. “Alright. I’ll use our soul connection to track your general location and should be there within a few days if I rush.”
“Please rush. The next altar is heavily fortified by Athela’s own standards and those are some pretty high standards.”
Indeed, if Athela said the place was heavily guarded then Riven had to believe it wasn’t just a pushover position they’d need to take.
“Understood. I’ll be there, Fay. See you in the next few days.”
“Alright. Stay safe!”
“You too.”
The mental connection was cut, and Riven continued to stare at the frozen squad of four that’d been caught out in the open and somehow survived the battle. With a shake of his head and a dismissive wave of his hand, he signaled for them to go. One of the four men started outwardly sobbing in relief, another collapsed in exhaustion, and the other two tried to quickly shove or pull the rest of their group towards wherever it was they’d been heading to in the first place.
“Guess I’m getting soft.” Riven said, but then paused as he remembered what he’d been like back before the integration had even started. These last two years had been immeasurably changing for his psyche, his morals, and basically everything else about him too. Laughing at how he’d been so mentally stressed about killing people in the past and how he’d been so upset about murdering or enslaving Genua’s villager counterparts when they’d betrayed him all that time ago, he shook his head and began to jog through the ashen streets towards the city’s outer wall - and then, onwards to meet up with the others.
He could double check on that Altar of Despair false flag the cultists had left him in that journal along the way.
***
Iris liked cookies.
That’s what she’d decided, and she was sticking with it.
Pocketing some of the cookies Azmoth had left on the tabletop when he wasn’t looking after being caught up in conversation with her mommy, Iris giggled at Kara - who’d seen the little baby girl do so in what could only be described as ‘sneaky.’
Kara went slack-jawed and stared at Iris accusingly, but Iris gave her most adorable smile and giggled again while reaching out for the drow vampire - poking small chubby fingers at Kara’s single black horn. Smiling and giggling and acting cute always got the adults to forget her transgressions, and it worked this time too as Kara just laughed and took Iris up in her arms to give Azmoth a break.
“You’re a little thief, aren’t you!?” Kara whispered, nuzzling her ear as Genua and Azmoth continued chatting.
Iris stuck out her tongue at the vampire and made some baby noises, before winking and stuffing half a cookie into her mouth.
Kara once again went slack jawed, gasping only loud enough for Iris to hear. “You understand me, don’t you!?”
“Is everything alright with Iris?” Genua asked, smoothing out her formfitting priestess gown and smiling lovingly at the baby in Kara’s arms. “Is she eating something?”
Kara still gawked like a stupid person, but Iris wouldn’t blame her too much for being that way. Apparently most babies didn’t think or act like she did, or so they kept saying. Iris was special, yes she was, and she could tell by the reactions of her elders that she’d grow up to be someone that’d impress her daddy and mommy and even that sister she hadn’t met yet! Len, was it? Iris was excited to have an older sister!
But Kara kept gawking and didn’t reply to Genua’s question, which made Genua frown.
Iris didn’t like seeing mommy frown, so she used her special powers to interact with Kara’s mind. Pink eyes sparkling and making baby noises some more, she pressed on Kara’s mind even more.
And then more.
Until Kara snapped out of her trance and forgot all about the wink she’d given that silly drow vampire.
“No, it was nothing!” Kara said happily, going back to rocking Iris back and forth just like Iris enjoyed.
Hmph. Iris only wished she could pull that trick on the other adults too, that way she could get away with all the cookies being snatched with no one the wiser. Perhaps her older sister would like cookies too? Iris certainly hoped so. Cookies were the best. But she could only do that with Kara because Kara wasn’t very strong.
Suddenly the world froze around Iris, details turned fuzzy, and the color faded from the land as red strings shot out in numerous directions.
[Malignant Prophecy has-]
Iris rolled her tiny pink eyes and dismissed the silly stupid text box without bothering to read it. Stupid system bothering her like that all the time. She didn’t need that silly stupid system at all, why did it keep trying to talk to her? She just wanted to be left alone with her fun adult friends and mommy!
Still, one of the fate-laden strings pulsed, and Iris rapidly followed it out to a man just about to enter the town they resided in through a gate. He was… odd. The feeling Iris got from him was that of violence and malice directed towards… her?
And her mommy too.
Iris had only experienced that kind of sensation a few times so far, and it always made Iris get upset. Why did they want to hurt her and mommy like that? Didn’t they know uncle Azmoth would eat them if they tried? He’d already done it once since getting to this really big city people called Outpost #84. Shouldn’t the man just go away and do something else?
Iris rolled her eyes again one final time as the string of fate quivered, showing her a vision of what was to come, before she took action. It always gave her a headache but she just couldn’t let the silly man interrupt the fun she and her adult friends were having, so she flexed her eyeballs.
The man blew up into a bunch of tiny little body parts.
Iris went back to eating cookies as the world went back to the normal colors it should always be, not that silly gray with the red strings.
Today was a good day indeed, and she intended to keep it that way no matter how many of those silly men with bad intentions came.

Chapter 353