Path of the Slayer B3 53. Genocidal & Abyssal

Xavier realized too late that striking down Doomie by himself wasn’t possible. Not with the limited time he had. She was beyond the Dragon Princess Doom Brand. She was beyond my Slayer Intent.

Doomie was probably beyond the parameters, a power that wasn’t strictly regulated by the Realm Verse System. There was no knowing how far the doom avatar could grow, but she simply shrugged off the strikes from the Legendary Veteran until he realized his attention should be back on me.

Before he fully turned around, I let loose a Tyrannosaurus Roar and struck Xavier in the face with the pommel of my greatsword.

The speed of my advance was faster than the sound I could produce, going Mach 2 almost instantly. Xavier’s face shattered under the heavy blow. His head whiplashed so hard his vertebrate snapped without his neck ripping. His body followed where his head went, taking him off the broken plateau floor, and in the direction I rocketed.

Granting him no room to separate, my left hand snatched him by his remaining dreadlocks, close to the scalp. Our flight slowed down to a speed between Mach 2 and Mach 1 before we crashed into the mob of Young Pathwalkers hounding my juniors.

Together, we splattered so many of them I shunted away the sensation of notifications landing in my System Logs and focused on what I held in my hands. In my left hand, I kept holding the roots of Xavier’s dreadlocks. In my metallic right, I clenched the hilt of the greatsword so hard I would’ve broken a lesser weapon.

I drove the pommel forward and backward and forward again, flattening Xavier’s face, eliciting crunchy sounds and splatters of defiled blood. I battered him with an anger that was more than me, anger that was generational and transcendent. Anger that came straight from the roots.

Young Pathwalkers attacked me from all sides. The ones who rushed in close died with flicks of my greatsword either to my right or to my left. Their measly Path Energy wasn’t as satisfying anymore compared to consuming Veterans, but they kept me away from bottoming out.

With that, I kept beating the last nomadic traits out of Xavier as the Legendary Veteran spasmed and thrashed under me. Then he finally landed a hit that knocked me away, the dreadlocks in my grasp ripping out of his skull.

I let them go and faced him in a circle of his own Defiled Covenant, the blood and gore of over thirty dead Pathwalkers on the surrounding floor. He was covered in the viscera of his own kin and from the blood I beat out of him.

I didn’t bother wiping the gunk off me, conserving every ounce of Path Energy I had for what was necessary.

For a split second, the defiled nomad stood woozily as he watched me with the sort of fear in his heart that only incentivized me further. More lightning, thunderclaps, and howling winds came down from the hellish storms above as Slaughter laughed and laughed behind me.

Then the next moment came and went with the Genocide Greatsword shattering in a deadly explosion. Shards riding on waves of autosaw green, hellish red, magnetic purple, and dooming gray ripped through the nearest Pathwalkers gathered around us as well as Xavier himself.

Dominator and Hellion took some damage, but nothing crazy. My right leg held on by a few strings of flesh, forcing me to stand on my left.

I ignored the notifications in my System Logs as Xavier roared in frustration. “Even if you were to win, you’ll just be like every nomad, a dog lapping at the feet of his masters! The Dragon Princess is no different!”

There was a joke there.

But I wasn’t in the mood for it. I wanted more blood and mayhem. I wanted more carnage. I gave in to the monstrous nature of my Path and switched to a different tactic.

Slaughter went away with my dismissal, catching Xavier and his remaining Pathwalkers off guard. Then I fell to a knee, my right leg still healing, as both hands touched the gory, broken plateau top.

“There will be no mercy even if you submit now,” Xavier growled as he and his Pathwalkers converged upon me.

“Submit? Whose submitting?” I muttered.

Path Magic activated: Slaughterhouse Avatar (Version [3])!

Slaughter made a glorious return as a bigger and more demented area-effect power. The reason I was touching the ground became apparent as massive butcher blades and hooks as big as half-giants shot up from the ground in a few hundred feet in all directions.

Each one had large, thick chains, each link the size of limbs, that rattled to the beat of Slaughter’s demented laughter as her voice roared across the entire area.

But that wasn’t the only roaring that came about as I channeled Hellion’s magic through Slaughter’s area-effect magic. We covered all of Slaughter’s massive butchery and chain links in toxic green teeth that churned like autosaws.

Pathwalkers of the Defiled Covenant screamed as Slaughterhouse Avatar (Version 3) ensnared them, hooked them, chopped them up, and fed their Path Energy into Hellion, refilling me.

“KILL THEM SOME MORE, MY LIEGE!” Hellion roared, laughing along with Slaughter. “KILL THEM SOME MORE!”

The spirit in my bonded armor hummed even louder, and the storm clouds above became even more violent. The largest thunderbolts I’d ever seen came down and struck with a blasting power that damaged the Pathwalkers even further.

Xavier appeared above me, avoiding each lashing chain, his bone sword raised high before chopping for an executing swing. He nearly had me, but Doomie slipped in at the last split-second, blocking the killing stroke with her wings.

My doom avatar covered me entirely, allowing me to work as I exceeded far past the objective and kept killing and consuming, ripping and tearing, with no regard to the sanctity of life.

Eventually, other Veterans appeared, slashing, smashing, blasting at Doomie’s barrier, and my doom avatar’s power waned considerably.

Everything that was keeping her solid and indomitable had come from Nemesis Rory when we’d absorbed his overflow of power weeks ago. But that had a limit against true Veterans as four of them kept attacking the barrier she formed over me with her body.

A part of my mind recognized how bad things had gotten for my squad for four Veterans to attack me freely. And even with so many Young Pathwalkers of the Defiled Covenant dying, that didn’t seem like enough if it meant my entire squad would end up wiped out.

Slaughter tried to help by swinging in the nearest chains, cleavers, and hooks at the Veterans. But two of them swatted away her attempts while Xavier and another kept smashing down at Doomie’s defense.

A crack appeared on Doomie’s face.

More cracks spread through her solidified form, her wings most of all.

“Stop,” I told her. “Come back inside and rest.”

For the first time since she came to be, Doomie shook her head, disobeying my order. More cracks appeared all over her, yet she remained in place to protect me.

I sighed. “So be it. I’ll do the next best thing.” I prayed to the System for help. It was a silly thing. I expected little help after leading my squad into overreaching, but the prayer helped calm me down before preparing to fight some more.

Yet, help did arrive. But not from the System.

A ghastly, echoing voice that was vaguely familiar resounded across the entire battlefield on the plateau and beyond. It heralded the true end of it all.

“Spirit Blaze ignited: Abyssal Assassin.”

The fighting slowed to a halt suddenly. Xavier stopped striking down on Doomie’s body, and the other Veterans with him followed suit.

The nearest Young Pathwalkers of the Defiled Covenant stopped all offensive actions as well. Sensing the change, Doomie peeled off me, and I stood up, dismissing Slaughter once again.

Hellion kept churning and grunting from my right, but in a subdued state between active and inactive, slowing the burn rate on my Path Energy.

His grumbling engine sounded loud with the fighting dying until V’s limping stomps reverberated from the collapsed section of the plateau. The Veteran Rex was covered in countless wounds and had a broken leg that he dragged behind him.

The mindless wrath in his eyes settled on the next victims of his killer instincts, but that too slowed to a halt in the presence of the Abyssal Assassin. The Veteran Rex paused, and the burning, smoky magic fuming from his maw settled down.

I found my voice ahead of everyone else. “Kill our enemies, Thumper. Except for the nomad.”

“What?” Xavier spun toward me, sputtering. “What the hell is a Spirit Blaze? What is that?”

“A reckoning,” I answered, as Thumper swiftly killed them all except for Xavier.

It happened too fast for me to track Thumper himself.

Before he acted, I saw the Abyssal Assassin was a hollow, blacker than black stain in reality that was vaguely shaped as the willowy half-giant I knew. Then it/he was gone from sight while hundreds of Pathwalkers and the last dozen of Veterans had their necks cut in the next instance.

I watched them all die on their feet. Almost peacefully. They didn’t have enough time to even feel true horror. Their eyes went vacant the moment the dark cut appeared on their necks.

Their Path Energy, regardless of them being Epic or Legendary, all winked away.

When I looked at the nearest dead Veterans, I noticed how the neck wound was like the hell rift I’d conjured earlier. But it went further than that. As if the Abyssal Assassin killed them with the space between Realms sharpened to a fine point.

That was why they died so fast. All of their Path Energy, maybe even their souls, was shunted into the void the moment Thumper got to them. The following silence couldn’t begin to explain the absolute horror that Thumper’s Spirit Blaze could produce.

Then someone broke the silence with their laughter.

There were too many dead to be confused about who it was laughing. The way Xavier’s brutalized face gaped in my direction told me.

I was the one laughing.

“Thumper truly is like a brother to me,” I said in between a few more chuckles. “I owed him two encounters with Assassins, and even when he has all of this power, he’s still willing to listen to me. I can’t ask for better loyalty.”

“That’s no brother. That’s a monster,” Xavier blurted.

I grinned. “The pot calling the kettle black.”