Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 8

Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: 8

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Shaderic.

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Right and wrong both exist. Anyone who says otherwise just refuse to acknowledge that they’re anything less than what they want to be. Everyone wants to believe that they’re they hero of their own story, but they don’t want to believe that they’re villains in another’s. If you succeed, then someone else fails. If someone wins, another person loses. 

That doesn’t mean anything stupid like every ounce of happiness creates an ounce of misery. Inflicting pain and misery on other people, so that your people can be happy? Making other people miserable doesn’t magically create happiness that wafts over to people. Being happy doesn’t expel misery and cast it other people. 

Therefore, justifying something that’s wrong is exactly what it says on the tin.

It’s making yourself feel better, pretending the you’re right, after you’ve done something inherently, undoubtably wrong.

I know for a fact that I’m utterly wrong.

If I wanted to be right, the moment I had a chance to be free, I’d have taken it. I’d have done what was necessary to leave behind a life that involved me getting other people killed. Even if I lived in a different world, with different rules, I was raised in a world that was better. If I’m a good person, what I would be doing after my release from the Empire would be trying to make this shitty world a good as mine, even if only bit-by-bit. 

But I’m not doing that.

I’m out here attacking someone, destroying her home, and capturing her against her will to work for me, so that I can have a better chance at hurting the Empire. Destroying the Empire is going to involve thousands and thousands of people dying. Some people would say it’s necessary to stop people from being kidnapped from other worlds, or that they had to be punished for what they did, but I wasn’t going to use either of those justifications.

They hurt me and took me from my home.

They enslaved me and took me from the life I was supposed to live. 

They turned me into who I am today. 

I wasn’t doing this for the soldiers that died under my command, nor for the people I’d save by not letting them get kidnapped, and I sure as fuck wasn’t doing it to be a hero. 

So, I didn’t hesitate to lead the Mindflayer into the nearest, human village.

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The answer to dealing with Eldritch horrors is numbers. Their presence causes some to go mad, to go insensate, and to go crazy. Enough of the first means that the Eldrtich horror in question dies. There’s other, more resource-intensive ways to go about it. Train a warrior to be able to keep their marbles, instead of becoming a bloodthirsty lunatic, or maybe have a wizard invest into some wisdom alongside all their knowledge. However, I’d only use those tactics if I had the time and money to get them.

Otherwise, using the masses to attack was the most straightforward, simple solution. 

The little caveat of losing a lot of soldiers and people in the attack didn’t matter in the case anyway. The Empire controlled the region. The human town was filled with people who were my enemies. Therefore, without question, having them go mad and destroying another enemy of mine was the absolute, finest solution to the issue I had at hand.

So, me and my companions rode through the ramshackle town meant to watch and defend against the Lich. 

It was filled with men and women who expected to fight against Undead creatures with the help of a sturdy wall, some enchanted weapons, perseverance and armor. Their timber gate, which would’ve stopped Zombies, Skeletons, and Ghouls broke beneath the weapons carried by the Amazons, since on our escape my soldiers managed to mount their horses once again. Thick, hardened lumber reinforced with stone broke apart beneath the martial skill and ludicrous strength of five Amazons on speeding mounts and all the stability they needed coming from stirrups.

Pieces of the gate were bashed aside to prevent the horses from panicking, but that was the end the Amazon’s concerns regarding the town.

All Ur and her fellows intended to do was ride through it, as I instructed.

I was aware of the town as we rode through it like an arrow piercing a heart. 

The town only looked dilapidated from the distance. The ramshackle houses and tents within it were muddied and ruined to make it look like the camp was in a poor state. It was camouflage in order to ensure that someone looking from up high wouldn’t think about it for another second. The Empire wanted it too look like a waste of time, so that the Lich that could see it from over the horizon on her tower wouldn’t lay waste to it. 

How’d I know this?

The alarms had gone off before the gate fell apart beneath the combined swings of all the Amazons. People were already mobilizing, fully armed and armored, the moment that the fact they were under attack came to be known. It wasn’t slaves in hiding away in the shitty tents too, but Empire Heavy Foot. They were clad in plate, carried kite shields, and swords at their hips. Archers came forth with tall, large bows and quivers filled with properly-fletched arrows. The ground opened in several areas, so that those beneath could come to help… or so that those above could seek shelter from arcane attacks. 

As I’d expected, this was one of the Empire’s fake, settlements that slaves acted as ablative armor for, until the monster girls slaughtered us and found their attack ambushed and destroyed, after they already took casualties. 

It was a carefully prepared trap for the Lich, to see her counterattack destroyed after slaves were sent in to destroy her tower and fail, but it wasn’t meant to handle mounted, trained Amazons.

Those that got in our way were bifurcated or splattered with mechanical, precise swings. Ur led at the five-woman wedge, while I rode in the center with my head down. Her companions sometimes, only sent people flying or broke armor, but my bodyguard destroyed everything that came in her path with her massive, twin-blade staff, which see seamlessly used with either one of her hands. When arrows started to come after us, she gave a shout, and the bracelets she wore radiated a soft light. Magic guided the arrows away from us all, while we continued to cleave a path through the town. Men and women of the Empire, who spent their entire were broken or destroyed outright, turned into nothing more than bodies in broken armor. In our wake, we left behind, mud, metal, and blood amidst the false town.

If it were just us, then the Empire could have hoped to reinforce the position after licking their wounds.

It wasn’t just us.

The moment we burst through the back gate; the screaming started from behind us.

We rode on until we were past bow range and beneath the cover of trees and shadow, so magic couldn’t simply wipe us out. 

It was quite the sight.

Even in a world filled with Monstergirls, Mindflayers and other Eldritch creatures inspire terror. Hell, whenever I fought against them, it’s because some Monstergirl spellcaster wanted others to suffer, just before she died. It didn’t take much magic to get them to come. They wanted to enter the real world, answer a call for help, and be kind and compassionate to anyone and anything that they came across. That kindness and compassion happened to turn brains into much, make bodies go into lustful shock, and/or become masses of squid and tentacle that congregated towards the Mindflayer until there was no room within and without her. 

The trick to fighting them is not being open to a single atom of pure kindness and compassion from another, living creature. Doubt, contempt, and hate are things that they didn’t understand. Though they wreak havoc, killing people through climax or by turning them into Doujin bait, they gave it with good intentions at heart. People with strong wills can resist the offer, keep their minds, and shove a sword into them… but it’s really just safer to be filled with doubt, contempt, and hate and let those three things taint every form of social interaction completely, until you can look at a Mindflayer in the eyes and confuse them long enough for someone else to spill their tentacle-filled guts. 

Source: Me.

Thankfully, the town we broke through like a bullet didn’t have anyone who could do the same, as the Mindflayer did exactly as advertised within it’s broken walls. It didn’t take long for the village to become a mass of chaos. Naturally, there were a few couples that decided to just fuck and turn into masses of flesh that would never separate forever, but I was more focused on how the alone-for-lifer’s were doing. There were a few bursts of magic, signaling a few turning into stuffing/clothing for the Mindflayer, but for the most part the shouting was growing louder and louder. 

There were more people going crazy than turning into living sextoys and things that lived only for sex. 

Unfortunately, most of the screaming was in ecstasy and there were very few screams of rage and hate.  One bestial, rage-filled roar for every three wails of ecstasy by my reckoning. Seriously, just a 25% percent chance to get a shitty 2 Star junk mob? They’re supposed to be trash, and I don’t expect anything from them, so that should mean their rate should at least be fifty percent, right?! This drop rate is atrocious! What kind of event has such shitty rates, especially when I went through all the trouble of making it happen? Couldn’t I at least have ten guys go crazy guaranteed, then get the rest of the pool fucked over by RNG? I know this is Gacha, but give me damn break!

“Ur, set up siege operations.” I got off my horse the moment I realized that the plan was going to end with the Mindflayer handily winning over the Empire. The battle had just begun, and a miracle might occur, but I haven’t survived as long as I have by betting on miracles to pan out. No, as per usual, a backup plan was necessary for every occasion and I had more than a few at my disposal. “The archers and mages are fucked, so just use what we have now.”

Ur barked orders and her personal guard went to work. 

The five worked together swiftly to bring down the short, stout trees that made up the region’s forest. They weren’t pine trees, like in Ylstu, but that just made it quicker for the Amazons to break them down. Swift chops felled them, then branches were cleared off with simple swings of the hand, and then one Amazon hefted the trunk and sent them flying. They were only eight or ten inches in diameter and cut short, so each log probably weighing just a thousand pounds, so one Amazon was enough to throw two or three at the town, before switching back to the ammunition team. 

The Empire had never given me the resources necessary to make bows or catapults, so this was what I’d used before. Logs and raw, primal power courtesy of bullshit superhumans from other dimensions further empowered by the current world. It was a simple, roughshod affair that wasn’t nearly as accurate or lethal as trained Archers from the Empire, who practically carried around ballistae, but I didn’t have many of those while I had many Amazons. If I’d brought the whole brigade and left my fief to burn down unprotected, I could probably have the whole forest piled up on the town, since there were no counterattacks coming. 

However, in the end, even if I had many trees going the speed of cars at the enemy, I wasn’t going to kill the Mindflayer with that alone. They were tough, brutal psychic monsters that killed things by walking around and being tough to destroy quickly. If I had time to harden the logs, make spear tips, and maybe stud some sanctified silver on the ends of the logs, then I’d be able to sit down, relax, and watch it die. 

Instead, I had to work with what I currently had with what I’d learned from the Empire and past experience. 

When in doubt, burn everything in sight, and deal with the consequences later. 

When it was Ur’s turn to start chucking, I poured our small group’s reserve of oil for cooking on it and then set the log alight. A low, small, and measly flame hung upon it that was utterly worthless, but that was all I needed. Generally speaking, I didn’t know how or from where Mana came from in Monstergirl societies. I didn’t want to know why they got lusty after drinking it and how men were involved in making it and I never intended to drink one, ever. But I knew for a fact that it was rich in magic, disgustingly thick in terms of substance, and exploded the moment an ember it.

I put a bandoleer’s worth of them on the log, with each bottle already having a simple, shitty flint and iron primer wrapped around them. I’d tried to make a few grenades, because what was a man with my goals to do in his spare time, besides try to weaponize magic? Anyway, the contents were already bubbling at the low, simmering flame on the log Ur was hefting, so my bodyguard wasted no time sending it downrange. Her aim was true and it collided with the biggest ruin in the town, surrounded by logs that broke and impact, and the largest gathering of shards and dust in the town. 

The explosion that followed was disappointing. It was little more than a puff of a Dragon. However, that wasn’t what I was going for. What mattered to me was the at the plume of flame that erupted sent out globs of burning mana potion across the town filled with purposefully-decrepit structures, shards of logs, and a population that was practically too insane to fight. Dragon’s breath burned hot and fast, tearing through people quickly and easily, and that was great for battles and personal combat. 

When you wanted an army and a larger, lumbering threat to your armor to die an expanding, sticky firestorm was the way to go. 

The flames might not get everyone in the city, and probably not even the logs that kept flying in to feed the fire and block exits, but the smoke and lack of air?

The fire grew exponentially thanks to the breeze, the constant supply of fuel, and the town’s state of insane ecstasy. They ignored the flame, just like the Mindflayer did, as they fucked and fought. It didn’t take long for black smoke to begin flowing through the town. The breeze was just right, so the whole, hidden base was soon a seething, smoldering mass of smoke roiling over a steady, unceasing blaze. Within the black cloud, I saw shapes running around, some holding swords over their heads or doing something else impossible, despite lack of air. However, soon enough, the impossible overtook them one by one and only the flames and clouds kept moving.

For a while the Mindflayer’s figure moved in the smoke, trying to find a way out of the town, but it steadily became lost in the corporeal world without it’s eyes or senses to aid it. It soon returned to its own dimension, it’s passage ripping through the blue sky, as it took with it those who now worshipped it from within and without. The base burned, bereft of life, for an hour after she retreated. 

Yeah. 

I needed to make more of those bombs yesterday.