Revenge of the Sorcerer King 3 - 18

Good Morning everyone! How is everyone enjoying the story. About halfway through and wanted to make sure everyone was enjoying it. 

Chapter 18

Alessa

Jade and I landed on the roof of a building in the town. With little effort, we directed attacks that caused entire structures to either collapse or explode into flames from our perch. We weren’t in it for the blood. We both knew that we needed levels.

Sending an arrow through a building, Jade caused it to explode with the single attack. I grinned and pointed at another building before creating an icicle that dropped from the sky and flatten the building. I heard a few screams as it came down.

Zombies and ghouls rushed through the streets slaughtering anything that got in their path that had a heartbeat. I hoped that some of the ghouls gained enough experience to evolve. They were a decent force when utilized properly.

“Your highness,” Jade said pointing. I followed her finger to see a glowing dome in the center of town. The priests had finally retaliated even if it was just keeping the lesser undead at bay.

“I’ll handle it.” I used the roofs and made my way over. Landing above them, I took in what I had to deal with. A few men and women in white and blue were channeling their mana to create a few different barriers each primed for different tolerance with holy being the main barrier.

Checking it over, I decided that few of my girls could get through it easily. I stood up and cracked my neck as I thought of my newest transformation. The roof I stood on, cracked as my body shifted to the new form, unable to handle the weight. With an explosion of wood and debris, I fell through the building.

Once I finished transforming, I used my senses to find the strongest member of the church group and coiled. Releasing the tension, I blasted through the wall of the building and slammed into the barrier. While the holy layer managed to hold me for a few seconds, it wasn’t strong enough to block me in the end. It shattered and the rest of the barriers did little to stop me, being geared toward other magic tolerances.

Using my size, I wrapped around the group of about a three hundred people. I was surprised that I was that long in my snake form. I really wouldn’t want to meet this monster in the wild. The people started to throw spells or run and slice at me with all manner of weapons. I hissed more from instinct than pain. In fact, I couldn’t feel a thing they were doing. The fire spells felt a little warm, perhaps.

I shifted and reduced the size of the encirclement slowly drawing closer. A few of the higher-level people tried to jump or climb over me, but I concentrated and was able to coat my scales with poison. They were soon falling to the ground screaming or groaning in pain. It was at that moment that an odd desire washed over me.

Again, more instinct than my own desire, I lunged forward and wrapped my jaws around a woman that was prone on the ground. With a single bite, I snapped her in half and swallowed her torso. Something in me screamed that it wasn’t enough.

Before I could stop myself, or rather because I didn’t want to stop myself, I started eating the people with abandon. Each time my jaws closed, one or two people were inside and sliding down my throat. Still, it wasn’t enough. I wanted more!

~~~

“Your highness!” More! Anything would do! I felt something moving nearby and struck at it. I was still hungry! I felt something fall on me, and vaguely realized that it was a building. Shaking the debris from my back, I looked around, but my sight was clouded in red and green. I just wanted to bite something!

“Your highness!” this time the sound wasn’t a sound. It was a voice directly in my mind. I shook my head looking around for the source but couldn’t find it. “Forgive me!” An arrow appeared and exploded just in front of my face, knocking me back. It didn’t hurt but I still screamed. Wait, that wasn’t my scream, it was the voice’s.

I shook my head again and looked into the sky. The rain was cooling the raging heat inside me. “Jade?” I asked trying to figure out what was going on. Looking around, the city was, well, it was gone. Most of the buildings had been reduced to rubble by some large creature. Wait. I was currently in the form of a large monster. I dismissed my transformation and landed lightly on the ground.

“Your… Highness…” I realized that Jade was injured. Did the battle shift? What was going on?! I followed my link to Jade and rushed outside the city. At the edge of the forest, I found my girls all with various injuries. Jade was the worst off with a large gash across her chest.

“What happened?!” I demanded kneeling in front of her. She was healing, but it was incredibly slow. It didn’t make sense. Glancing around, no one was willing to look me in the eye. I growled and bite my thumb. I let a single drop fall into Jade’s mouth. It would promote her to High Vampire, but I wasn’t worried about that. The process for a Familia member to be free was more complicated than that.

Jade healed rapidly, but coughed at the pain of the evolution. It took a minute, but she finally recovered enough to sit up. “Your highness! Thank god you’ve recovered. I feared we’d lost you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Were we attacked by someone?”

“I… I hate to say this, but all our wounds were caused by you.”

I stepped back in shock. Looking again at everyone, some of the wounds could have been quite serious even lethal had they been a few centimeters in a different direction. “What happened to me!?” I demanded.

“At first we didn’t think anything of it. You changed into the giant snake form then after you consumed all the mortals near the church you raged through the city eating anything breathing that came into your path. A few of us realized at that point that something was wrong and rounded up the others, but a few of the newborns were still frenzying. While we tried to help them, we sort of got in your way.”

“Tell me I didn’t eat anyone!” I said quickly trying to check if everyone was here.

“No. We managed to evade you while Sarius used captives from our supply train to distract you further. Most of my wounds were caused trying to get you back to your senses as well as feedback for hurting my mistress. We feared… I feared that you fell into gluttony.”

I dropped back on my haunches and quickly checked my status. My gluttony sin was sitting proudly at ninety seven percent. This was the phoenix all over again. That form was almost my way of personifying my wrath. While that raised some interesting questions for my next form, it was meaningless if I was going to turn that power on my own people.

I took a deep breath and stood up. “I apologize everyone! This won’t happen again.”

“Its okay, your highness. We understand that things are chaotic on the battlefield,” Jade said and while many of the girls nodded vigorously, some looked on worriedly. Before I changed them, most of them had been five or ten years my senior. They might be seeing the teenage girl instead of the royal vampire that my status said I was.

I sighed and turned back to look at the town. “Did we get them all then?”

“Yes. You ate all of them.” I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it. But, Jade and my status didn’t lie. I had a nice new curse to tell me the truth of the matter. If it wasn’t label a curse, it would almost be cool to have. Ruler of Gluttony.

Oberon

Looking around, I took in the mine as I dismounted. With Khaar’s command, it was going at full capacity to meet the needs of the ever-expanding city. Undead and goblins were working in and around it without pause. Everyone bowed to me as I passed.

“An elevator. That’s smart of Khaar.” I commented as I came to the end of the first floor of the mine. An undead stood next to a crank while a goblin stood inside waiting for passengers. “Take me to the temple.”

“Bottom floor. As you wish, master.” I blinked at the amazing articulate goblin.

“You speak well for a goblin. Why are you stuck doing a job like this?”

“Goblins respect strength. This one has no strength. This one has no mana. Nothing but speech to call my own.”

The elevator lurched as the undead started cranking, slowly lowering us down the roughly dug shaft. “I see. How learned are you?”

“I visit the library on my off time. Restored by the commanders. They claim knowledge is power, though my brothers do not agree. As for how learned that I am, I have no way of answering as even if I had several lifetimes, I feel that I would not have learned enough.”

I laughed. “Very well said.” I looked the goblin over. He was free of the sins, and he looked like a scholar young man. If I or the goblins cared, I would recommend him to be a teacher or something similar. Still, it seemed like a waste to have a mind like this wasting away in the mine. “What is your name?”

“GobTerka of the Lou clan.”

“GobTerka then. Would you like to leave this place?”

“Leave? Yes, I much desire that, but I also much desire to survive. I will continue to live if I work here.”

“Fair, fair. What if I offered you a job?”

“You master?! I wouldn’t even have the right to refuse!”

“That’s true, but I usually only force people if I really need it. This isn’t something I really need. So I’ll let you decide. Do you want it or not?”

“As a scholar once said, never blindly accept. I would very much like to hear the details though.”

I grinned again. “Good. I wanted you to ask. It won’t be long before I control a good deal of the continent again. When that happens the countries around us will switch to self-defense and survival hoping to outlast the storm. I haven’t quite decided whether to allow them to continue to exist, but I might plan the game for a little while. If I do, I will need an ambassador to go and wring the pockets of these men that call themselves kings. Sound like something you would enjoying doing?”

The elevator clanked as we reached the bottom floor. I stepped off and turned back to the goblin. “Ambassador of a dark nation has always been quite dangerous. I might not live long to enjoy it.”

“I’ll make sure that your life is decently protected. I take care of my own.”

“Then… then… This GobTerka accepts!”

“Excellent. You will leave here with me when I am done with my business. After that, you will move to the castle and learn everything you can from Arathorn and Zorq. They should be able to give you the basic round down on how being a diplomat works. Some things we’ll have to update as it has been a thousand years for most of us.”

“This one thanks master,” Gobterka bowed until his nose almost touched the ground.

I nodded then turned to the entrance of the temple. It had been refurbished since the last time I visited and was no longer a rough hole in the wall. Walking in, I spotted not only Sam, but a few other undead dressed in dark robes moving around the altar. Sam was one of the first undead that I created in my second life. It looked like he was getting plenty of nutrients from worshiping Siateth to grown in strength. He was almost level a hundred and twenty and from what I heard, he barely left the temple.

“Master Oberon. A pleasure to have you walking our halls.”

“Sam. Well, its nice.” The miasma here was some of the thickest I had felt and was honestly delicious. “I want to speak with Siateth.” Though Sam didn’t have a face, I could almost picture him narrowing his eyes at me for not using Lord. I ignored him and walked toward the back chamber that held a large statue of the god.

Sam walked pasted me then knelt in front of the god’s statue. I waited for a long time before the aura around Sam changed. With my higher level, I was able to tell right away that the god was present.

“My dear friend Oberon! It is a pleasure. You never give this old man a call.”

“I’m too busy to play your games. Why did you make Alessa a royal?” I demanded ignoring banter.

“You are suck a stick in the mud. Hard to believe you once managed to take the reigns of the world with that sort of attitude.”

“I was much nicer when I had an actual beating heart. Now, this time, I plan on pushing back when someone pushes me. Now tell me, are you pushing me?”

Siateth laughed with consider mirth. “Threatening a god. Only you can get away with that.” He sighed and shook his head. “No. I’m not pushing you. Those children of mine… I have directly, directly!” he repeated the second containing serious anger. “To help you and my newest daughter. They ignored me! What else should a father do when his children misbehave?” He spread his arms and laughed this time causing the darkness of the temple to almost take a physical pressure. “I will punish them! When you and my newest daughter march on their home and get to their doorstep and they call for me to forgive them, for me to send you away. This time I will ignore them.”

“I take it sloth is rough with the vampires.”

“My children feel everything to the more extreme. Sloth, gluttony, wrath, or whatever. You name it and they usually have one or two that are always on the brink of breaking. That daughter, Helena, she’s about the only one that has such low values.”

I sighed and then nodded. “Alright. I see why you did it, so I will take it as a boon this time.”

“That’s the spirit! I may be the god of death, but I still reward my followers. If you showed a bit of faith toward me then I could give you all sorts of goodies.”

“I know the catch, so I’d rather not,” I replied waving him off. “Ah. Do the gods have the sins?”

“Sorry, can’t answer.”

“Of course.” I really need to find this AIGO and find out how to get the world back to the way it was. Though Siateth probably didn’t want to tell me since it would be him admitting that I had once had the power to affect even him.

“Then that’s all I wanted so I’ll be taking my leave. Thank you for answering my question, Lord Siateth.” I made sure to say lord as sarcastically as possible.

“Tell my daughters that I’m proud of their achievements.”

“Sure, sure.”

The god’s link to the god vanished and he fell into a pile at the foot of the statue. I just shook my head then left the temple. Grabbing GobTerka, I made my way back to the castle. I had a country to finish off.

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