RD 2 Ch 37-38

Chapter 37

Simone lay naked in the bed next to me, barely covered up. “Ah. Feeling better?”

“Much,” I grunted.

She had helped me burn off all the extra energy I was feeling in a more productive way. It might be more apt to call it a reproductive way.

I chuckled to myself.

“Glad your humor is back at least. You should laugh more.” Simone took my arm and kissed it lovingly. “Are you upset that I’m not going to come with you to torture yourself?”

“It’s training.”

Simone hummed noncommittally. We had already discussed her distaste for sitting around in a boat knowing I was going to be in a lot of pain that she couldn’t do anything about. “Still upset about Tartarus?”

“I mean, Persephone has a dangerous amount of freedom,” I grumbled. “She gets to hide away a huge portion of the clan with absolutely zero accountability. How can she look anything but problematic?”

“Of course. And she didn’t show up in your last timeline.” Simone snuggled into me. “If she’s not a demon, could she be working for demons?”

“Certainly humans can work for demons. However, with her strength and her still being human, I find it unlikely.” Not to mention her disposition. She was prickly at best.

Simone frowned at me.

“Demons explicitly don’t work for humans. We’re nothing more than flesh bags for them to inhabit. To them, we’re cattle to be raised for some basic strength and then possessed into bodies that they can use. It would be like… working for a cow that was destined to become your boots.” I tried to explain it in a way she would understand.

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m better than a pair of boots.”

“Yes, you are. So much better. Demons are just too stupid to see that.” I teased her with a kiss that turned as heated as my own personal temptress. “Alright, I need to go before you drag me back to bed.”

She pawed at me playfully. “So, you don’t think Persephone is working for demons?”

“No. She’s selfish, reckless, and on an ego trip. However, I don’t think she’s working for demons. Question is, who or what is she working towards? Because it isn’t the clan.” I put on my clothes and tapped my thigh as I left.

This mystery was driving me nuts. I wanted to slip into her soul and find out, maybe do a little damage along the way.

Yet, the leaders were willing to let me out of the clan, almost eager to get me out and away from Persephone.

“Ready to go?” A woman was waiting for me in the hall. “We’ve got a boat ready, and I’m to bring you there.”

“Almost seems like they want me off the island.” I joked.

She just grunted and kept moving.

Not a talker apparently.

Quickly, she wound out of the palace and through the crisscrossing bridges to a dock aside one of the residential islands.

“Which boat?” I asked.

She pointed rather than spoke.

The boat was a towering yacht that stretched between two piers.

I was dumbfounded. Not long after the rapture, everything was reduced to sailing. I was actually a pretty good sailor.

I hadn’t considered that we would use a boat other than a sailboat.

Instead, I was going on this monstrosity, it seemed.

“Get on,” the woman said as we walked down the docks.

I didn’t begrudge her and just used my enhanced strength to spring up onto the boat that was big enough not to be bothered by my landing.

“Oh. The golden boy is here.” Another woman, as thin as a whip, laughed. “They scared the hell out of us before swearing us to secrecy to take you on a little trip.”

At least this one was talking.

“Bran.” I held out my hand.

“You can call me ‘love’.” She took my hand and pulled herself in against my chest. “If you have that kind of pull with the elders, then you must have good blood. Fill me up with that baby batter, and I’ll pop a few good ones out for you.”

“Tia, stop that.” Another Heros stepped out, running his hands through his rich black hair. “We have a job to keep him safe.”

“He’ll be perfectly safe in my bed.” Tia laughed and ground her rear against me.

While she was being over the top and flirting, I had the feeling it wasn’t really an offer, just the way she was.

“It’s a kind offer, and any man would be lucky. Sadly, they didn’t tell you what I was going to do in the ocean, did they?” I chuckled.

“Nope. Everyone rests, though.” She winked.

The boat eased forward, apparently ready to take off the second I got on.

“Why don’t we talk about the uproar of the clan with demons,” the man said and glanced at me. “I hear you were in the middle of that.”

“A demon slayer, too? He must need a release.” Tia laughed, and because of how she was pressed against me, that movement did spark a few feelings in my body.

If Simone hadn’t just fully sated me, I might have had a more physical reaction to her teasing.

“Greg.” The man reached around Tia. “You’ve met Tia, and the silent one is Betts. There are three more aboard. If we are going to be together for a week, it would be good to get to know each other.”

I smiled as I took his hand.

Each of them had about eight thousand stats. Not bad for a small guard detail. If they could work together, they’d be a force to be reckoned with.

As guard details went, it wasn’t the worst.

“Alright, Tia.” I peeled her off me. “The sad truth is I won’t be able to accept. I’m going to end up plunging myself to the bottom of the Ionian Sea.”

The woman stared at me for a long moment before she broke out laughing. “You’re fucking crazy. Even if you are tough, you won’t survive that.” She tried to inspect me, and I flicked the inspect away.

“I have what I need to survive it. Your job is to get me out there and keep me safe on the way back,” I told her.

She laughed and turned around to yell at the others as we pulled out of the barrier around the islands. “Listen to this! We’re taking this guy out so he can commit suicide.”

I rolled my eyes and sat down on the deck to rest while I could.

***

A full two days of travel got us where we needed to be.

Most of the guard detail kept to themselves, but Tia badgered and flirted with me non-stop. The woman just could not turn it off. But her chatter at least made for a good distraction from the endless waves.

“I can’t believe you’re really doing it,” she said as I fished out one of the breathing masks I’d made.

Given I was going to be underwater, I had to engrave the inscription in the plastic and then seal it over by melting some plastic wrap over the surface.

Thankfully, this boat had a fully stocked kitchen and had several diving set ups.

I could have done this task with more than a few things, but the breathing mask made a fairly convenient base to put a weak inscription to produce oxygen.

“Well, it’s for my bloodline. Titan Bloodline needs a physique or I’m going to get huge,” I said.

“How does that work exactly?” Tia asked, leaning over me, seeming more interested in the inscription than me for once.

“Basically, it gives my titan bloodline something to grow that isn’t my actual body. I’ll just grow more durable over time.” It wasn’t exactly a secret of the Borrson Clan, but it was one of their strongest weapons. “It's like getting the size advantage but staying a smaller package.” I shrugged.

“We’re here!” One shouted.

“Overboard you go.” Tia pushed me, giggling.

I rocked but didn’t go splashing. “Funny. I’m going to remind you of this when I get back.” Shaking my head, I went over the side in a far more graceful dive.

As soon as I was deep enough not to worry about those on the boat, I stripped off my clothes into my spatial ring and pulled out several large balls of lead to weigh me down.

The only clothes I was wearing were my boxers and the bracer with Swim on it. While I could have swam down, chances were I was going to struggle with maintaining that swim all the way to the bottom.

Strapping the breathing apparatus to my face, I let the lead pull me slowly down into the dark, inky depths of the sea.

Darkness slowly ate away at the edges of my vision until the last thing I could see was the bottom of the yacht outlined in blue.

Darkness, my old friend. It greeted me with a crushing grip that made everything hurt.

Memories bled past me. Of demon wars, of betrayals that led to more wars. Faces flit by in the thousands. Some I wanted to hold onto, those of my past lovers, and others flit by with the barest of recognition.

So many young faces, scared of the war they were about to dive headfirst into. They stared back at me by the millions, hoping that I’d wade out there and fix it all. Give humanity a fighting chance.

I felt the weight, the pressure.

It bore down on me worse than any demon.

I knew by now my body was starting to compress under the weight of the ocean. This wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last that I trained under intense pain.

With the darkness, it was easy for my mind to slip away and reexamine my past rather than focus on the present.

Those faces, terrified but filled with hope, continued to beg for me. Beg for me to find a way.

Young soldiers looking up to The Wandering King who had come to save them.

My mind went to a dark place.

How many of those faces did I see again? Having such high spirit meant my mind was like an S-ranked trap, and that simple thought sent it racing through my memories.

I’d seen many of them again, hollow-eyed and alive or simply dead. So much war; so much pain.

It had bothered me. Perhaps that was part of why I became so embittered at the end, and why I made the plan that had pulled me back to before the Rapture.

A part of me had always wanted to save them. The only way to do that was to go back in time.

The gloom in my mind was shattered, Simone and Gloria reached through.

I saved them both from terrible fates.

It may only be two, but it brought a giant smile to my face.

I was making a difference. The Mul Branova ladies, too. In saving Simone, in changing her life, she led me to help save them. They appeared behind Simone and Gloria.

All of them would save more in turn. Together, they pulled up more and more. The change I had started was spreading.

The shattered gloom slowly filled with lively light and thousands upon thousands of lives changed.

“You got this,” Simone encouraged me. “You're brutal to yourself but not without reason. You do it to save all of us.” She pinched her smile so hard that her eyes turned into two crescents. It was the kind of smile she gave me when she knew she couldn’t discourage me but loved me regardless. It was the one she had given me before I left.

I loved my Simone. When I got back, I would tell her and show her again.

The image in my mind wavered, and I realized I was wavering not just on my consciousness but on my very life. The depths of the ocean were a brutal place indeed.

I was delirious. The pain and almost dying repeatedly were wearing on my body, only for Regeneration to heal me, making me feel as if Gloria and Simone were grabbing my arms to haul me out of the depths.

At one point, I could have sworn Nyx appeared and dropped her powerful tail through, shattering the gloom. Coiling her tail around my waist, I was pulled out of that gloom until I was free.

Chapter 38

[Pressure Resistance E]

With the prompt, I opened my eyes amid the gloom, the pain quickly fading as Regeneration worked to heal all the mundane world damage. It was a testimony to how much pressure I was under that I had actually gone beyond F just training against the world itself.

Sucking the lead weights into my spatial ring, I kicked off the ground, swimming as fast as the D rank ability would let me.

I was going to get back to what was important: saving people and using them to create an army against the demons.

The water practically parted for me and launched me higher until a large shadow appeared overhead. I broke the water, squinting my eyes. The light was blinding. Apparently, it was day.

I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust before shooting straight for the boat, launching myself out of the water to land on the deck.

Immediately, I was on alert as no one rushed out to see who had just landed on the deck. It was too quiet.

“Tia?” I shouted as I walked into the boat proper. There were four decks to the behemoth. I hoped that they were all just sleeping, although I was not sure I wanted them at my back when the war came if they all slept at the same time.

As I moved, it became clear there was a struggle. The door and the interior of the boat were ripped up, and every nook and cranny had been torn apart like they were looking for something… or someone.

I realized a moment later that someone had come for me.

Shit.

Rushing through the ship, I couldn’t find anyone, not that bodies were exactly hard to dispose of in the middle of the sea.

Realizing I was alone on the yacht, I rushed up to the controls and stared at them.

When we’d been traveling, I asked questions out of curiosity. It had some fancy digital anchor that used the GPS along with automated motor controls to stay in roughly the same place and heading.

First, I’d have to turn that off because, as much as I was now a good swimmer, swimming all the way back was going to be a pain.

I tried a button and it didn’t work, but another flashed angrily red at me. Thank the system that people in this day and age were as inept at technology as me, so they had to make everything idiot-proof.

Tapping the one that flashed angrily, the screen told me that it had disengaged.

Glancing at the compass to make sure I had north, I then checked the sun to get my heading and turned the unwieldy and giant ship back towards the islands.

I needed to get out of the middle of the ocean.

As soon as I had my heading and everything seemed stable with the boat, I pulled out my phone to check the date.

Seven days.

I had deliriously remembered the dead for seven days, only for my more recent memories to reach out and save me.

Working through a checklist I had quickly formed in my head, I went back down below deck to where everything was torn up and checked the strewn-about contents of the mini fridge.

Warm. The attack wasn’t recent. Judging by the mold already taking hold on several of the sandwiches, it had been days, at least, since the boat was attacked.

I pulled out my phone and called Simone. It rang until it hit her messages. That was… odd. Simone was normally attached to her phone when I wasn’t around, but she’d get back to me.

Shooting her a message that I was on my way back, I went back up to the top deck in case I needed to adjust course.

***

Nyx had a cone of ice cream as she slithered through the market with Simone and Circe. “I don’t know. I just thought it would be… busier?” Nyx shrugged. She had gotten used to the staring and kept her serpent hair out to keep watch.

A lot of aspects of her life had changed, but this normalcy going through a market was nice. Her tail wound back and forth behind her, parting the crowd slightly and making itself even more obvious.

Most of the looks went from odd to impressed, though. Bran hadn’t told her that with the levels she now had many people who inspected her suddenly had a bit of respect in their gaze.

Walking with Circe helped, too.

“The number of S-ranked instances we’ve found in the last hundred years can be counted on a single hand. Only one triple S.” Circle shook her head. “High-level instances are quite rare. The reason the clans can’t really go open nor can we convert large numbers of people is largely a matter of resources.”

“Bran’s said something like that for the demons, too. That’s why they and the clans are so focused on bloodlines. It’s actually a resource they can actively work on.” Nyx eyed Simone’s ice cream. Somehow, the woman’s waist was tiny, but her ice cream was piled bigger than her head.

Nyx was a little jealous.

The woman was gorgeous and quite lovey with Bran. No doubt the two went back to their room every night and made love.

“You know we burn more calories now, right? The system is strange. Like that you can keep your ideal body even if you eat a ton. Besides, all that tail has to be burning tons of calories.” Simone poked Nyx’s breasts. “If you don’t eat enough you might lose those.”

Nyx gasped at both Simone’s forwardness and the idea of losing her lovely new breasts. “Well, if I have to eat more ice cream, that’s a good reason.” She wasn’t bent out of shape about that concept at all.

Circe laughed. “Yes, don’t worry too much about dieting anymore. Instead, worry about snapping another bow.”

Nyx blushed. The whole reason they were out was to go shopping for a stronger bow. The E-ranked one she’d gotten from Zane had snapped during some practice earlier that day. Nyx didn’t want to rely entirely on the garland’s ability to hit her mark and took it upon herself to practice.

“No, it’s good you practice so much,” Simone said. “Bow Proficiency upgrades if you get it to the S rank and keep working on it. To what, I don’t know. Ask Bran.”

“He seems to know quite a bit.” Circe pursed her lips, still not liking being out of the loop on everything.

“Right. We were talking about resources being rare.” Nyx hurried to change the topic. Circe knew that Bran wasn’t being fully honest and got a little testy when reminded. “So, what about S-ranked items then?”

“Expensive,” Simone said. “If I know Bran, he gave you a fair shake of the loot. Want to let us see how much you have in that S-ranked ring?”

Circe glanced down at Nyx’s ring, inspecting it with wide eyes. “Oh my.”

“Gift from the ancestor. Well, he gave them to Bran.” Nyx was terrible at lying. Yet, she hated the idea of letting Bran down because she couldn’t hold back information.

Circe hummed. “Well, if you and Bran cleared the rest of the instance, that means you two are quite wealthy. More so if the gold drops increased with the level.”

“They did,” Nyx answered quickly. That she felt comfortable being honest about.

“Well then. We should find you something nice. You could probably trade two or three S-ranked swords for a bow,” Circe said.

“That seems a tad unfair.” Nyx thought it would be more one-to-one.

“When a merchant has something you want, they will take a profit.” Circe shrugged. “Besides, it isn’t as if you’re hurting for S-ranked swords, are you?”

“Uh… no,” Nyx admitted.

“Then think of it as strengthening the clan,” Circe said.

“I’m going to pull it back to the bloodlines being easier to produce than S-ranked items.” Nyx was honestly curious. “Are the other clans full of these many bloodlines?”

“Nope. We are very fortunate through our agreement with the Blood Dragon. Every Heros Clan member has a bloodline. That’s not true with the other clans. Some of them have as low as fifty percent of their clan still with bloodlines. The number of S and higher-grade bloodlines has gotten rarer, even though they are trying to keep the core of their clan pure.

“Yet that’s the easiest way to produce stats at large right now. Think about it this way. If there’s essentially a soft cap around level one hundred for many, the most important strategy is one that forms a very strong level one hundred player,” Circe continued.

“Because there aren’t enough instances to get the general members of the clan over one hundred.” Simone nodded along. “Demons have to have the same pressure. No wonder Bran talked about ways of upgrading bloodlines as dangerous. He said the clans would slaughter everyone for one.”

Circe nodded. “Because usually, the upgraded bloodline breeds true. So, bringing someone in a main branch’s bloodline up to SSS could give the clan a large advantage—over time, of course. We’ve all been doing what we can to grow, but unless you are the elite of the clan, one hundred is about the limit.”

“What about fighting demons or other clans for levels?” Nyx had learned the rules.

“Inefficient.” Circe dismissed the idea, but she wasn’t unkind. “Unless there’s a high-level instance we are fighting over, you get a fraction of the experience you might lose in the people. That, and we’ve each carved distinct territories over time.”

“So… I’m not going to get any stronger?” Nyx asked. Bran was already so strong; how was she going to keep up?

“Well…” Circe glanced at Simone.

“Don’t ask me how, but Bran will probably find what he needs.” Simone shrugged. “He’s growing too quickly to stop now. However, some of his attention might be split with helping his organization rather than himself in the near future. If he said the demons are coming, then they are.”

Nyx admired how much Simone trusted and believed in Bran. She was a really strong woman in her own right, but to Bran, she was also so faithful.

Circe nodded. “The activity here at the clan leads me to believe they are going to become increasingly active behind the scenes.” Circe stopped and gestured for Nyx to enter a shop.

Nyx slithered in, her tail making it a little hard to maneuver in the smaller space. All along the walls were weapons. Many she recognized, but there were even more she had never seen before.

“That’s a bardiche.” Circe pointed.

“Looks like a guillotine on a stick.” Simone raised an eyebrow.

“Guillotine blades are much bigger.” Circe ignored the weapons on the wall and went straight to the proprietor, who looked angrily at Nyx eating ice cream in her store.

Nyx hurried up, finishing it and making sure her hands weren’t sticky for when she touched her new bow. Her clothes had undergone quite a change. Gone were all her pants. They didn’t serve a purpose anymore.

Instead, she now had a number of nice wrap dresses. Those had been the best she had found for getting on. Her hair was difficult to pull dresses on over her head, but she could manage in a pinch.

Of course, she had also gotten new bras. As for underwear, she tried several bands because she felt like she needed something down there, but all of them rode up or down and barely stayed in place.

Her lower half just moved too much.

Eventually, she had just stuck to longer wrap dresses so it didn’t seem inappropriate. But it wasn’t as if anything was hanging out. She looked like there was nothing down there… until she was thinking of Bran.

Then it became obvious.

She was caught up in her thoughts as Circe handed her a bow. It was big and weighed more than it looked.

“S rank should be good, but she needs to test its draw weight. Also, I’m sure she goes lower when she moves fast with her tail. Make sure it isn’t too tall,” the shopkeeper said, rubbing her hands together.

Nyx took the bow and pulled back the string. It wasn’t difficult with that attempt, but after firing all day, it might be harder.

“Not bad. Don’t think I could draw it a hundred times in succession,” Nyx answered as she played through all of it.

“You could put some gold in strength and probably solve that easily,” Simone said from the side. “How low do you go when you sprint?”

Nyx lowered her torso and drew to the side like she was rushing through the trees.

The bow still had a good half a foot of clearance.

“Not bad,” the shopkeeper said. “I know how to match a weapon to its wielder. Two S-ranked swords you said, Circe?”

The Branch leader nodded to Nyx.

Nyx liked the bow, but it would be a shame to not see all the options available.

But before she could say anything, there was a bright flash through the shop windows that blinded her.

Shouts rose in the street, and Nyx spun with the bow, drawing an arrow from her spatial ring and pointing it at the door on instinct.

One word rose above the shouting.

“Demons! Demons have attacked!”

The door burst open and out.

Beyond that, like a wave of ants, Demons marched onto the shores while the barrier above the clan crumbled like broken glass.

“She’s going to take it for a test run,” Circe told the shopkeeper.

Nyx hadn’t realized it, but she was already rushing out and drawing back the bow to aim. She locked on a target and fired.

Her arrow split into five that rained down on the oncoming demons.