Chapter 46: His Entrance

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: His Entrance

The white-haired man’s aura hit like a heavy weight. Stone cracked under his feet. Thin webs of fractures spread out as dust rose in thin streams.

The last assassins were already gone or dead. Their bodies lay where they fell in the ruined hall of Oakwood’s front gate. No one was left to fight him except the three women who were still standing.

"Come then..." he said, his finger gesturing them to walk forward.

"Damn you!"

Seris charged, Amelia throwing her frozen blood and Lira covering the man in a cursed spell.

The man walked through Seris’s attacks without hurry. Her remaining strength bounced off him.

Lira’s cursed shadows tore themselves apart against his presence.

Amelia’s arrows punched into the air around him and simply dissolved.

And as he did it, he was not even watching their technique. He was watching what each attack had cost them, how much of each woman was willing to sacrifice.

"All of you, still in the midst of growing," he said as he crouched slightly, studying Amelia’s shaking hands. "Still not well developed. I guess he spent his time making money rather than growing his women." He straightened. "The reports were indeed right. He is slow. Most players would already have been kings or queens by now."

"How dare you? Allan is the lord of Oakwood. He brought up this house from ash." Seris muttered.

Was it mockery? Or just facts he was trying to state? Whatever it was, Seris felt the words land past the pain. It was already clear they were not opponents to him. They were like items, proof of someone else’s rushed work, tallied and found short.

"Indeed." the man said. "You are right. This house, this nobility should have been in the rubble, and he should have focused on himself rather than you all."

He moved.

One open hand shattered what was left of Seris’s sword arm. Bone gave with a wet crack.

"Aaaaaa!" she screeched in utter agony.

The blade clattered across the stone as he left her conscious on purpose so she could watch and feel it. Pain flooded up her shoulder and into her chest.

"Seris!"

Lira quickly came to her side, using the healing potions made from Bela.

"You...you will die for that." Lira said, as she helped Seris stay upright. She stood up slowly, through pure refusal, teeth locked, eyes fixed on him. Dying was not the part that scared her. Failing to protect them would be worse.

"Just die!" Lira said, using more of her curses, as her aura gradually turned darker and darker.

"Oh, I want to see you try." He said, taking out a scroll.

The scroll crushed the air around Lira and drove her hovering form into the floor. Stone splintered under the impact. She choked on the darkness rising in her own throat. The sealed power thrashed inside her like something alive, uncontrolled.

Veins blackened further across her cheeks. She clawed at the pressure, fingers scraping uselessly against nothing.

"Leave her alone!" Amelia cried out, throwing another batch of solid blood, now shaped into arrows.

He did not even look at her. He simply chanted words as his pendant started to glow.

Amelia’s blood arrows turned right before they hit their target and punched through her own thighs. She too fell back in agony.

The constructs she had spun for defense reversed under his will and buried themselves in her flesh. That was the part that actually frightened her, as she realized how easily her own magic had bent to his whim. She stayed on her feet anyway as blood poured down her legs. Her knees threatened to buckle, but she forced them straight and laughed once under her breath, short and broken, blood coating her teeth.

"Pathetic, utterly pathetic. You lot look like you were stitched together instead of tempered. I built my own people the honest way. Broke each of them down a dozen times before they were fit to call servants. Every one of them thanked me for it once they understood what they’d become. Sentiment is just a word people use for skipping the parts of the process that hurt."

Seris crawled. One arm useless, leg dragging, she put herself between the man and the other two. For some reason, the healing potion did not work.

Her good hand found the dropped blade by the grip. She could not lift it properly. She still dragged it forward, metal scraping stone, until she was in front of them again. Her vision swam. She blinked blood and dust out of her eyes and held the line.

Lira saw it and something inside her flipped. Her voice was now half human, half something else.

"You dare hurt Seris, destroy our home. Shame my Allan. I will burn you. Even if I have to burn with you."

The black aura around her surged, then collapsed inward. Silence fell. The seal held, or it looked like it barely did. Pain twisted her face into something almost feral.

Amelia could feel it; something dangerous was happening with Lira. Her blood magic flowed from her presence. She could not help but laugh once, short and broken. Blood coated her teeth.

"Let us make him pay." she said, dragging her body up.

They stood. Broken. Critically so, but still together.

Seris on one knee with a ruined arm and a dragging leg.

Lira rising again despite the pressure that wanted to pin her to the floor.

Amelia upright on bleeding thighs, the last of her blood magic flickering around her fingers like dying embers.

"Oh..." the man actually paused. Almost impressed. Then he raised one hand. "You all seem to think this is some kind of fairy tale, where you hold hands with your loved ones and defeat the villain."

The air compressed around their throats and hearts.

Pressure spiked. Seris’s vision tunneled. The world narrowed to a gray circle with the white-haired man at its center. Her lungs refused to fill. Her heart hammered against the invisible weight. Lira’s witch power ruptured outward in a black wave that still was not enough. The shadows shredded against the force and scattered.

Amelia’s last constructs shattered mid-air and fell as harmless drops of blood. All three went to their knees, then lower. Seris’s free hand scraped stone. Lira’s aura flickered and died back to a thin black film over her skin. Amelia’s head bowed under the strain, blood dripping steadily from her nose onto the floor.

The man stepped in close. His expression was almost regretful.

"I think this should be a lesson for the player who arrives too late," he said quietly. "This will be a great lesson for him."

He closed his hand.

The killing pressure peaked.

Seris’s eyes started to close, out of pain and exhaustion. The gray circle shrank. Lira’s black aura collapsed inward until nothing remained but the sealed core thrashing uselessly inside her. It was only a matter of time before her own magic would eat her from the inside as Amelia’s blood magic guttered out completely. A side effect of abusing her untrained powers, leaving her legs weak and ready to fall.

"Sleep." he said, ready to finish it all.

Doom!

The front gates of Oakwood exploded inward.

Stone and timber blew apart in a single violent burst. Dust and debris flooded the hall.

Allan came through the wreckage at a full charge. Shirt soaked black with his own blood. Residual Berserker heat still smoking off his skin in thin white curls. He jumped, crossing the distance in an instant.

His eyes full of pure murder. So much so, the residual rage from whatever fight had delayed him still burned through his veins, but it was focused now, locked on the single figure standing over the three women.

He landed right between the white-haired man and the others without a word. Sword already rising. The blade caught the light through the dust, edge dark with drying blood that was not his own.

The white-haired man looked at him. For the first time the calm cracked into something almost delighted. He lowered his hand. The pressure vanished at once. Air rushed back into the hall as Seris gasped and collapsed onto her side, still conscious, still trying to rise. Lira floated an inch off the ground and then dropped hard, coughing black-tinged spit. Amelia caught herself on one hand and stayed there, breathing in short, sharp pulls.

"There you are," the white-haired man said, voice clear across the ruined hall. "The real scoundrel. I was starting to think the rumors were exaggerated. All those stories written on that scribbled up stone."

Allan froze for half a heartbeat as recognition hit hard. The face. The pale blue eyes. The way the man stood as if the entire hall already belonged to him. His memory surfaced through the Berserker haze.

The white-haired man smiled wider. Pale blue eyes bright with something old and personal.

"You..."

"You know me. All players did."

Allan’s grip tightened on the sword. The heat around him flared once, then settled with more precision.

"As it is me, the main character, the hero of this world you call Yggdrasil."