The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 135-137

Ch. 135 - The Way Forward

While the Iron City wasn’t quite a burning crater when the blade left, it was a close thing. The demonic denizens of the place were apparently as fearful of leaving it as they were of it, and it torched the place until there were no hiding places left, killing demons by the score. In the opening rounds of that conflict, they would occasionally get brave enough to fight it in mass, but by the end, they just fled, no matter how many it found wedged into the ruins of some building that still stood. 

-840 Life Force.
+3455 Life Force.
+656 Least Demon Souls.
+109 Lesser Demon Souls.

Those kills weren’t very satisfying, but they did keep it well fed, which was good, because now that it was moving in this body, its Life Force reserves were fueling not only its own soul, but the engines at the heart of the strange clockwork knight. Every five minutes, the blade lost a point of energy, and every few hundred feet, it lost another. That second category of energy bled out much faster in a fight, though, and when it moved quickly, it could burn through life force in seconds.

So, as it finally walked beyond it, to the seventh circle of the pit, the blade took a leisurely pace with its body, striving for efficiency over speed as it took in the area. It was strange, because the gate that it had come in, which had led from the ninth circle, there was only endless barren wasteland, but out of this one, there was only mud, and pools of stagnant water that were all covered by a mist. 

Its ugly yellow sky and black mud were no uglier than the city of rust and ashes it had just left, but the blade cared very little for aesthetics. In fact, the only detail it paid any attention to was the pools of water, so that it could avoid the deeper ones. At least that was the case until it started to sink at one point, several miles into its journey, when it wasn’t even close to the water. 

It leaped free of the quicksand without too much effort. However, after that, it paid more attention to the weave of the terrarian and navigated along the firmer parts to avoid sinking deep into the muddy depths. 

That wouldn’t harm me, the Ebon Blade reminded itself, but it would be a pointless waste of energy to escape from. 

The blade had plenty of Life Force. It even had enough to consider paying for its last available upgrade, but for now, it decided against it. It didn’t need to repair its soul, and frankly, it wasn’t sure it wanted to until it was free of this poisonous place. Even if it did opt to make such a large purchase, it would do so when it had a clearer path forward.  

It had left the city with just under twenty thousand, and over two under expendable demon souls as well. Still, it was burning twelve to fifteen an hour at its current pace. That was enough to continue for a long time, but not forever, and it had no idea how far it was supposed to go. 

I’d be less concerned if I could just find something to kill, the weapon thought. 

Unfortunately, the place was as desolate as the eighth circle had been crowded. There were no roads or signposts to guide it on where to go, either. There wasn’t even a slope to follow, but the blade could read the strands that made up even this hellish place, and though it could not see the center of the loom that held this world together, the weapon could see what direction it was in, and it moved toward it. 

There was some vegetation here and there, in the form of ugly mangrove trees, and after a few hours of walking, it sighted occasional geysers and fumeroles, but on the whole, the place seemed barren. At least, that was the case until the first time the blade wandered too near one of the larger trees with the strangely shaped roots. Then, those roots came out of the ground like worms or serpents seeking to drag it below and devour it. 

For a mortal, or even a weak demon, that might have been a danger, but there was nothing that its weak limbs or giant thorns could do to it, or the automaton that carried it. Still, it sheared those limbs off with a single deadly motion, then it walked over to the tree that issued a keeping wail from a man-sized maw that had been closed until a moment before and thrust itself deep into the thing’s heartwood. 

+44 Life Force. 

The blade did not use Vorpal Strike to cut through the thing, or even try to fell it. Instead, it embedded its sharp tip almost all the way through the torso, thick trunk, and let it bleed out over the course of several seconds while it withered and died, and its sap turned to ice.

Well, I suppose there’s no danger of being stranded here if most, or even all of the trees are demons, it mused. 

+38 Life Force. 

There wasn’t too much foliage, of course, but there was enough, dotting the horizon, and as the blade drank deep and claimed the tree demon’s soul, it pondered how far this thing’s scream had actually carried. 

+81 Life Force.
+1 Demon Soul. 

While it finished draining its first victim, the one nearby started to uproot itself like a strange wooden crab in an attempt to escape, but it moved with arthritic speeds, and it had only managed to uproot itself and move a dozen feet before the blade reached it and gave it the same treatment. The only reason the strange plant even got that far was because, on the way, the blade hacked away experimentally at the reeds and smaller trees that hadn’t moved, but got no similar reaction or influx of souls. 

+206 Life Force.
+1 Demon Soul. 

“What lazy predators,” the blade rumbled in its metallic voice as it slaughtered and drained the second. “They sit and wait for something to eat and then drag it to its death without anything like fair combat.” The idea was cowardly, and it repulsed the weapon, but not so much that it didn’t put its demonic soul to use once it had obtained the second one. 

To the first one, it commanded, Tell me everything you know about the seventh ring, and to the second demon tree it had slain, it commanded Tell me all you can about the Demon Prince that rules this place. What armies does he wield? What weapons and magics does he favor?

The blade was bombarded then by begging and pleading for mercy and escape more than anything, but it still got many of the answers it sought. 

The first demon soul told it about the ring, which it referred to as the Swamps of Sorrow. Though it knew nothing of anywhere beyond the ring's borders, as it described it, the Ebon blade got the sense that the place was nearly as desolate as the barren ninth ring it had left so recently. Monsters were few and far between, but settlements were even rarer. 

The souls of the lazy and feeble come here, the tree creaked in pained explanation. Some might find the motivation to build a place of safety by letting clay blocks bake in the sun until they have enough to build a wall, but safety will only ever be an illusion here. Even those rare sanctuaries sink into the muck, and those that do not are leveled by the ring’s princess whenever she finds them. 

The weapon didn’t have to wonder who that was for very long. The Hag rules the swamp, the second soul shrieked. She has many magics, but prefers to use her teeth and claws to bite and rend!

The image that came to mind was hardly of a hag, or even a woman, for that matter. If she were a she, then she was a female ogre, covered in hair and moss. What she could do, though, apparently, was transform into other beasts of the swamp, which meant that becoming a giant wolf, a troll, or even a bog kraken was not beyond her.

She had no armies, though, and beyond her shape-shifting, her mastery of the mud seemed to be her most potent powers, neither of which intimidated the blade. Anybody can be hacked to pieces, no matter what skin she chooses to wear, it told itself as it continued on through the much toward the next copse of trees in the distance. 

No place is truly endless, it reminded itself as it went. Even if some of these levels seemed to go on forever, it knew that eventually it would find the gate to the next realm. There were only six more after this one, so it wasn’t concerned. It might have lingered in the darkness for a decade, but in a week it would be back in creation, waging war on its real enemies. 

Half a day later, the only thing that it had found which had caught its eye beyond the trees that it slaughtered as it found them, were a large set of lizard tracks. It knew they didn’t belong to a dragon, but that was all it could say. Still, the blade followed them in the hopes they might belong to the Hag herself, but it was disappointed in that regard. 

In every other way, though, it was happy for the detour. The tracks led it to a shallow lake, and in that lake it found not one, but three giant crocodile demons. Each was at least twenty feet long, and although they’d been fighting with each other, as soon as the Ebon Blade set foot in their domain, they quickly shifted to fight him. 

What happened next didn’t rise to the level of a fight. It was a slaughter, but a diverting one, and though the flesh was foul tasting, it enjoyed cleaving through bone far more than wood. It hacked the first one to charge it in half, using its momentum as much as its strength. Then, it switched gears and charged through the cloud of black blood while the other two thrashed about searching for it. The blade was knocked off its feet once by a tail, though the creature lost that ten-foot whip in the very next exchange, and its life a few seconds, and a few slashes later. 

+391 Life Force.
+2 Demon Soul. 

The final creature managed to swallow it with its massive, toothy jaws, but that did it no favors either; the weapon just killed it from the inside out. 

+156 Life Force.
+1 Demon Soul. 

By the time the bloodbath was done, piranha-type fish had come out of the woodwork to feast. There were hundreds of them devouring the halved and quartered demon carcasses. All it took was a single bolt, though, and hundreds of them died instantly, bobbing to the surface as it walked ashore, leaving nothing but death in its wake. 

-25 Life Force.
+805 Life Force.
+607 Least Demon Souls. 

Perhaps if I’d used poison to pollute the water at the beginning, that could have been done faster, and with less energy, it mused as it left the scene. It didn’t really matter, of course, but next time in might, and it had grown far too comfortable using only a couple of its powers when it had half a hundred to choose from at this point. 

If you become predictable, then someone will learn how to defeat you, the Ebon Blade chastised itself. It didn’t really believe that, of course; it was undefeatable, but it would pay dividends if it strategized like it wasn’t. After all, it had already come close to losing everything twice in hell, and it had no wish to make a habit of it. 

Ch. 136 - The Hanging Tree

The Ebon Blade had not expected to find this circle's Princess much before the gate to the next circle. It also didn’t expect that gate to move, but it was wrong on both counts. 

The second part it only discovered by accident, while walking in straight lines for hours. It saw animals, or sometimes even shapes that might have been people, but they were almost always far away, and those that got closer fled at the sight of it. The blade could have chased them down, of course, but that would have cost more energy than such a hunt would have granted it. Instead, it focused on moving ever forward.

-217 Life Force.

As it got closer to its destination, it would look around only to realize it was diverting ever so slightly to the left of the ideal course, obstacles notwithstanding. The Princess, though, was heralded by the giant tree that it saw in the distance. At least the weapon was pretty sure that was where it would find her.

At first, the sword thought that it was just like the other trees it had killed so far on its long walk through the muck. That became less likely as the blade walked toward it, but it got no closer. No, not no closer, it realized. I’m just still very far away, which means it has to be huge. 

It was huge. It might have been as tall as any of the mage towers in had brought down to date. It might have been taller, but it was only when it saw the bodies hanging from it that it really understood the sense of scale.

When the weapon first saw the huge drooping bows, it had assumed that they were foliage, but in reality, the limbs were full of corpses that had been strung up there by the neck. There were hundreds of them, which were enough to make one wonder what the point was. 

It’s a message, for sure, the blade said to itself, but who is the intended audience?

-61 Life Force.

It didn’t know, so it asked a couple of the demon spirits from this level. They didn’t know why it existed either, but they knew of it at least, which was how the weapon learned it had a name, the Hanging Tree. It is a place that is sacred to the Princess, one whispered. It exists for the Hag to hang her trophies, another one claimed. 

That second answer proved to be more interesting, because when the blade looked closely, it discovered one final answer. The bodies that hung from the tree weren’t corpses, but still squirming souls. It really was a trophy of sorts, though perhaps it was the strangest one it had ever seen. 

Still, that did not deter the blade. On the contrary, it enticed it, and as it approached, it marched ever faster. The weave of the layer said that its destination was somewhere beyond this point, and to the left of it, but right now the blade didn’t care about that. What it cared about was that there were hundreds of squirming souls, many of whom still shone with the light of creation rather than the pits of hell. That represented the first real meal it had tasted in a long time, and it craved it. 

By the time it reached the base of the tree, the thing soared hundreds of feet above the knight that held it. It was a vast, giant of a plant that had died long ago. It looked like it should have been the king of an entire forest, but there were no other trees nearby. 

-54 Life Force.

As the blade approached, it was on guard for surprise attacks from its roots or anything else. If it had attacked the blade in the same way as the other trees it had slain, then the thing would have been a leviathan, but not much more dangerous. Still, there were no attacks. The closest there were were the weak struggles of the men and women hung from its branches by their necks. Some were demons, but the vast majority of them seemed to be human souls. 

The blade reached out with its mind almost at random, plucking one of the men closest to it, and devouring his soul like a ripe fruit. It didn’t try to ask him a question, though his crazed, blank eyes made it appear that he was far too likely to answer even questions as simple as his own name. Rather than worry about any of that, the Ebon Blade simply enjoyed the taste of a human soul once more. 

+1 Tainted Human Soul.

It wasn’t quite a ripe fruit, as its previous metaphor had made it out to be. It was an overripe, slightly spoiled fruit that had been permeated with the tastes and smells of hell, but it still tasted a hundred times better than anything it could remember eating since it had arrived. 

The blade ripped another dozen souls off the same branch, not because it needed the Life Force, but because it wanted to bask in sensations that didn’t feel like rubber and taste like poison. That might have been too much, because even as it was enjoying the flavors, something moved in the shadow of the tree. 

+13 Tainted Human Souls.

The blade feared that the tree itself was finally attacking it, but instead, a giant serpent that had coiled among the roots rose up to regard the blade, or at least the clockwork knight that carried it. “Foolisssh demonssspawn,” it whispered. “You rob from the sssomething that isss not yoursss to take.”

“Are you the Hag then?” the blade asked through the mouth of its metal wielder as it moved into a combat stance. 

“The Hag? The Hag you call or dear Princesssss Rizzeldah?” the snake asked, obviously offended on its mistress’s behalf. “For the theft, ssshe will kill you, but for the name? For that, ssshe will make you sssuffer as you have never dreamed! Ssshe is a patient and beautiful woman, but hasss no patience for sssuch ugly wordsss…”

The blade looked around, but saw no one else coming for it, beautiful or otherwise. It didn’t bother to apologize, not would it, had even death herself been bearing down on it. Instead, it said, “If she values her life, she’s welcome to stay far away. I’m only passing through.”

As it stood there at the ready, the snake slithered out from the tree and began to coil around it, creating a ring that was nearly fifty feet across. It was the height of a tall brick wall, which was impressive, but that only became more so as the second and third course grew, trapping it in a tiny area. 

Well, trapped was a bit too generous. It had several ways it could escape, but for the moment, the blade chose not to tip its hand. It merely regarded the titanic beast and said, “I thought your mistress was going to be the one to kill me. Will you do her dirty work?"

“I would never think of denying Princesssss Rizzeldah the pleasssure of sssuch a moment,” it hissed. “Ssshe, and ssshe alone will ssstrike you down. I will merely keep you from essscaping…”

The blade waited until the statement was almost done, then it charged forward to show the beast how wrong it was. It did this not with spells or abilities, but with simple speed, revving up the metal knight’s internal engine as fast as it would go for a brief period as it surged ahead. 

The giant snake had intended to bar the Ebon Blade’s way, but all it had done was ensure that it would be impossible to miss. Still, it was surprised when the thing didn’t even try to move. Instead, it lay there quiescent, as the Ebonblade brought itself down on its scaled flesh, but surprisingly, nothing happened. It had struck with triple the force that Var'Gar had used to force city gates open, and there was barely a mark on the serpent!

There was an impact of a sort, though it felt strange. There was a storm of sparks too, as its edge dragged along the metallic scales, but they were nearly as hard as dragon skin, and its edge skittered off, shocking the sword. 

“Do you sssee?” the serpent gloated, tightening its coils, reducing the small arena that the weapon seemed to be trapped inside from fifty feet to forty feet, and then from forty to thirty feet. “My ssscales are imperviousss, even to—”

As it spoke, the blade struck again, cursing itself for relying on brute force. It had once cursed its shepherd wielder for the same foolish strike so long ago; the difference was that it knew better. Scaled enemies might be powerful, but even its vorpal strike couldn’t simply cleave right through its armored enemy; there were weaknesses between every scale. 

This time, it didn’t try to stop the giant, slithering form in half. Instead, it ran along the body, sliding itself in a seam between two scale layers, and penetrating into the flesh beneath. First, it sliced only the first few inches of the polluted flesh, but after a moment, it embedded itself completely, cutting several feet into the monster. 

+41 Life Force.

The snake screamed then. That scream was an unholy sound that nothing should have been able to make. It tightened its coils, too, but it was too late for that. The blade was already running along the walls of its prison, cutting as it went. 

+38 Life Force.
+43 Life Force.

The knight that it was puppeting was a heavy thing that weighed as much as any five wielders put together, but it was moving so quickly that it moved up with every stride. The dying animal, giant though it might be, was dying. It had a wound as long as deep as an irrigation ditch, and as it shifted in an effort to squeeze the blade’s metal wielder to death, that terrible wound vomited out gouts of black blood. 

+36 Life Force.
+40 Life Force.

That rising tide of death reached the top of the coils as the blade did, creating a small volcano of black blood. The Ebon Blade leaped out ahead of the spray, which was so toxic it sizzled and hissed as it reached the ground. 

That wasn’t the reason it wanted altitude, though. It moved up this high and fast so that it could descend like a thunderbolt on the serpent. It used Vorpal Strike then, severing the top coil, and the middle coil before hammering down on the serpent’s neck and severing it from the rest of its flayed body for good measure. 

+41 Life Force.
-50 Life Force.

When it was done, the giant serpent that had thought itself utterly invulnerable only a few minutes before lay on the ground in flayed pieces. It was a gruesome scene. 

That was pretty typical for its gory combats. What was strange was that it didn’t give the blade a soul when it died. It had been expecting a greater demon soul at least, but instead, all it received was an eerie silence. Something was amiss.

Then, slowly, dead flesh began to crawl and shift as the pieces of the giant, hacked-apart snake started to twitch, one at a time, then they slowly melded into the earth. No, the mud is melding into them and becoming flesh, the blade realized. 

Still, it did nothing but back away from the closest piece until the dead-eyed head of the serpent came to life and began to speak. This time, its strange sibilant voice had vanished. It was replaced by a barely human growl, and even though there wasn’t a trace of femininity to speak of, the weapon was sure this was the Hag. 

“Why would one of Voltrim’s wind-up toys come all the way here to pluck my trophies and kill their guardian?” it asked. 

“I am here at the orders of no one,” the blade responded, watching for treachery in every direction, including below. “I merely seek the first ring.”

“Even if your death were not imminent, you would never make it there,” the dead-eyed monster answered, still mutating and changing as the ground beneath its wielder’s feet started to bubble and swell. 

“I have defeated your minion and two demon princes. I can defeat you as well,” the blade countered, tightening its grip on its hilt as it tried to figure out where the inevitable strike would come from. 

The laughter the severed head made was a low tectonic rumble more than anything. It had melted so badly that it no longer looked like a snake. It was the decaying head of some long-dead giant, and according to the threads, it was connected to a neck that disappeared into the earth. 

“How can you defeat the earth, or the sky?” it demanded. “This realm is mine, and so is everything in it.”

“Why should the souls in the tree matter then?” the blade asked, stalling for time with its metallic voice as it studied this strange transformation.

“The people who come here did nothing with their lives, so I will do whatever I like with their deaths. Most of them sink into the mud, too pitiful to matter, but a few… a precious few are beautiful enough for me to display for all of eternity,” the monster growled. “They are mine, and you can’t have them.”

To show how false that was, the blade reached out and simply devoured another branch full of corpses, drawing them into its soul gem, and even tasted a few of them, though it had vowed to savor them. 

That made the rapidly reforming monster scream in frustration. This time it surged forward, not as a monster, but as an avalanche of mud and loosely connected body parts bent on revenge. 

Ch. 137 - Why Won’t You Die

As limbs erupted all around the blade, it held its own, at least for a few seconds. Tentacles made of snake organs and claws made of its bones parted almost as easily as the weeds and roots that reached up from the dark mud to try to capture it. Some of those last ones, the blade didn’t even have to cut. They were so thin that they simply ripped as the weapon's wielder moved. 

That stalemate didn’t last for long, though, for it would seem the Hag’s words were not a simple figure of speech. Almost as soon as it switched stances so it could drive more power through its wielder’s hips, a sinkhole developed beneath its feet. It didn’t even have the chance to leap free because there was nothing solid to push off of. 

Instead, it grabbed on to one of the snake’s giant bones as it fell and threw itself skyward with its knight’s offhand, bathing the onrushing wall of muddy flesh in hellfire that set the strange mouth to screaming again. It could have just as easily used bolt, but it was trying to save its more powerful abilities for later in the fight, should the need arise. Mud didn’t burn well, but it did burn, as the wave of angry mud buried the ground that might have been its grave, the blade analyzed the situation while it hung in the air for a brief moment. 

-20 Life Force. 

Visually, its enemy barely existed anymore. There were only a few scattered body parts and a field of lumpy mud. It might have been the picked-over scene of slaughter that was days or weeks old. Etherically, though, things were far different. 

The mud hid many things. It hid the bones of other older deaths that were slowly forming into something larger. More interestingly, though, it hid the reach of Princess Rizzeldah. She seemed unimpressive so far, but her powers seemed to have a reach that was at least as large as its Aura of Hunger. She was drawing power from all directions to this focal point, and while she might not have any minions, it wasn’t entirely clear that she needed any. 

They would only get in the way, the Ebon Blade decided as it fell to earth. 

If she had minions she cared about, then she wouldn’t be able to use as wide a reach, nor as heavy a hand. That hadn’t saved the snake, but then it was possible that she planned to reconstitute it once this fight was done. 

She might have been the snake for all I know, the blade said to itself as it landed and the semisolid earth erupted around it in all directions, leaving a creator behind. 

The Hag hadn’t had the chance to undermine that particular spot yet, but the blade could see the threads change as soon as it landed as she started to. She was reversing course, too, coming up and out of the depths with a massive new form. 

This might have been the troll that the previous soul had spoken of. The Ebon Blade wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like any troll it had ever heard of. The thing was twenty-five feet tall and made of more earth than flesh. Worse, it got larger with every step as it sucked in more power from the swamp around it. 

At such a height, it only needed the stride twice to reach the blade, but the weapon was ready for the monster. The earthen giant sought to kick its wielder into the distance like a ball with its first attack. The blade deftly side-stepped that, moving impossibly fast for a single instant, and removing the thing’s foot with a single Amplified Blow.

-10 Life Force. 

+84 Life Force. 

Against a mortal creature that would have been the end of the fight as it fell onto its back, but even as its stump was making contact with the ground, it was already reforming into a new foot. Additionally, spines launched from the leg quite unnaturally, showering it with sharp projectiles that did nothing to its armor. 

-2 Life Force. 

The giant sought to pounce on the blade next, putting its entire bulk to work, but that fared little better. It was simply too fast for such a large foe and danced circles around the Hag’s strikes, repeated punches, and kicks. 

If not for the sucking mud working against it, the fight would have been won handily. As it was, though, the blade only barely stayed ahead of the faster attacks. Still, it whittled her down slowly but surely. Still, it didn’t make real progress until it started lighting her gigantic form ablaze with ugly green hellfire. That didn’t make the Hag any prettier, but it did make the muddy giant fall apart in minutes as she sought to escape the burning. 

-20 Life Force. 

Even that was not enough to kill her, apparently. After that gigantic form dissolved into the mud again, the fight took on a different character. The Hag knew what damage it could do, so she fought defensively, holding back her vitals at a depth that was well beyond the blade’s reach unless it used lightning, but even that was largely ineffective. 

-40 Life Force. 

+134 Life Force. 

Still, even fighting defensively, she moved with the grace of an avalanche, with great sweeping walls of earth and stone. Only once in dozens of attacks did she manage to drag the blade and its wielder below, but when she did, it very nearly lost. 

It wasn’t the crushing strength she exhibited, either, or the titanic strength that made its metal wielder groan and creak as Life Force poured from it. It was all the little pieces of plant that had become attached to it in the previous fighting. Up until now, the weapon had shrugged off those light blows. 

-1348 Life Force.

Now it could see that was a mistake. All at once, a thousand tiny weeds took root in the soil that surrounded it, sporting and blossoming as they started to wrap it up like a leafy cocoon. While those tiny bonds wrapped themselves around it tighter and tighter, the blade could hear its captor taunting or gloating, but it couldn’t make out many of the guttural subsonic words. 

-778 Life Force. 

The blade had only one option, and that was to light itself ablaze with hellfire. That worked well enough, though the flames were hot enough to eat at the soulsteel itself when used in this way. It was a small price to pay to burn away the plants. Even then, it might not have gotten free had its captor not withdrawn from the painful blaze. 

-510 Life Force. 

That was when it used bolt to soar free of her trap and begin the fight anew. Since it was unable to dodge or parry all of her titanic blows, it used Eye for an Eye on several occasions, but this was largely counterproductive. 

-922 Life Force. 

While it did terrific damage and ripped whatever construct she was using apart, as it leveraged her own strength against her. However, every blow that landed still cost it hundreds of Life Force, and even that wasn’t so much in the grand scheme of things; eventually, it would add up. In a tit for tat battle against someone who was the very earth upon which it stood, it knew that eventually it would come up short. 

What would affect her, though, it wondered. Fire? Lighting? Ice? I’ve tried all of those, but even fire’s impact seems limited, much as she hates it. 

Hellfire was impossible to extinguish. So, it still burned here and there in pockets beneath the mud as she tried and failed to smother the blaze, but those smoldering wounds weren’t slowing the Hag down too much. 

With its options waning, the weapon flipped through its list of abilities, looking for something novel. None of its bleeding powers would do anything, so it skipped all of those.

After that, it tried to disrupt her, but that accomplished nothing. Then its eyes landed upon another option, and it tried an ability it had eschewed up until now, Poison Blade. Not only was poison dishonorable, but it was counterproductive for it in most cases. The blade didn’t want to burn or poison Life Energy away whenever it could. It wanted to drink every last drop.

This time, though, it made an exception, and that exception produced almost immediate results. The Demon Princess muted her scream in an attempt to hide the damage, but the blade could see the way the muddy earth and the threads that composed that earth trampled at the touch of its toxic venom, and felt certain it had found a real weakness. 

-140 Life Force. 

+282 Life Force.

The Hag battered it with several waves of violent earth, but the difference this time was that she was not trying to drag it under to crush it. She was trying to push the knight that wielded it away from her. All she wanted was to be rid of it, but it was too late for that. She’d started this fight, and it would not end until she was dead.

The Ebon Blade didn’t run. Instead, it met each attack with a poison slash of its own. Eventually, she retreated, but there was no point. Up until now, for this fight, the fact that she was everywhere and everything had been a huge advantage, but now that the blade knew how to leverage that against her, it was a millstone around her neck. Just like the snake had found out at the start of this, being unable to escape it was a serious disadvantage. 

The blade plunged itself into the soil as deep as it would go, injecting more points again and again. It was using itself as a farmer might use a tool, but the only thing that it was seeding was death. Poison and acid poured out of it and into the mud, killing the woman who wielded it for several feet. 

+331 Life Force

Each would was a stake pinning her to the earth, but slowly each wound became a bar in her cage. It wasn’t clear what vital organs she had, but from the way she twisted and writhed, she was seeking to protect some core. Sometimes these defensive efforts would be trying to move suddenly in some unexpected way, but other times she would lash out weekly with an attack. 

After a time, it didn’t even attempt to dodge these. She lacked the strength to deliver it any serious blow at this point, and limbs of wood or bone that dared to rise to the surface were quickly pruned away. At that point, it became an endurance match, but it was impossible for it to lose an endurance match when you were feasting on your opponent’s strength, and even without Red Haze, every blow returned more energy to it than it used.

Eventually, the wailing, the fighting, and even the squirming stopped. Still, the Ebon Blade didn’t let up until it saw the notification that it had taken her soul. The battle had taken half a day, and the last hour felt like it was stabbing a long-dead corpse, but that final notification made it all worth it, and the weapon took a moment to study the soul. It was an ugly, amorphous thing that was so dark it couldn’t make out any details. Unsure of what to do with it for now, though he let it rest in its soul stone with everyone else, it did take the opportunity to devour a few more succulent human souls of no importance. 

+698 Life Force. 

+1 Demon Princess Soul.

Part of it expected the world to vanish since, in a very real sense, Princess Rizzeldah was the earth, but even in death, the mud hadn’t vanished. As it stood on the remains of the trunk, it watched the soil around it harden as the water drained toward the nearby lake that was its next destination. If it had a name, the weapon didn’t know it, but distantly it could see an island through the fog, and on that island was its next goal.

It looked at the log of the giant toppled tree and tried to decide if it was possible to make a boat out of it. While it was theoretically possible to do so, it had no idea how, so reluctantly, it started walking to the water’s edge.