Chapter 71

Author's Note: I have been saying this on Royal Road for about two weeks now, but forgot to ever mention it here. Now that the initial chapter push is done, and since I am still writing two projects at once, I am only committing to M-W-F updates for the God Machine. I may still do Tues/Thur updates, but they will be bonus chapters, not guaranteed. It will depend on how fast I write.

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The inquisitor reacted quicker than Luke would have believed possible. It had to be some sort of skill, his own version of [Twitch Reflexes]. By the time the mace came whistling down through the space where the inquisitor had been standing, he’d already stepped smoothly to the side and unleashed a one-two combo of punches that hit Luke just below the ribs.

For all his speed, the inquisitor didn’t have the strength to back it up, and Luke barely grunted at the impact. Instead of folding up in pain like his enemy no doubt expected, Luke lashed out and caught the man by the front of the leather jerkin he was wearing. He dragged the inquisitor down and threw him to the ground, then stomped down on the man’s back, deliberately going out of his way to grind his heel into a kidney at the same time.

The man cried out, ensuring that his companion was also aware of Luke’s attack, but that was a foregone conclusion anyway. The two had been careful not to get too far apart while they searched the woods. That just meant Luke had to deal with this one in the next two seconds, which he did with a pair of log-cutter style swings to the back of the inquisitor’s skull.

Ignoring the ding of the kill notification, Luke scanned the foliage for where the next one would come out and lined up his mace with his best guess. Despite how high his perception was, he couldn’t literally track every step the man took, but considering the density of the underbrush, unless he was packing an extremely high strength stat, Luke figured he had a pretty good shot of being right.

If he wasn’t… well, that’s what all his avoidance skills were for.

Seconds passed with no sign of the inquisitor, and Luke started to worry that he was going to be dealing with another assassin type, except one good enough to beat his perception. It wasn’t until he stopped to think about it that he realized what had happened. Aros wasn’t a video game world; they weren’t just going to rush in to die in waves. The last inquisitor either knew his friend was already dead or just didn’t give a fuck.

Chasing down a runner would likely be impossible, especially if his agility was anything close to the one Luke had just killed. Just letting him go wasn’t a good option either. There were plenty of reinforcements not that far away and they’d come out in force to catch him.

Luke was starting to suspect that the first three he’d encountered had been an accident, that they’d been looking for Zea after she’d given them the slip and had stumbled upon him first. Once they had proof that he was nearby, every inquisitor, templar, and whatever else the church could send would be out combing the woods to find him.

He could run, maybe even fast enough to get away if he went straight into the deep woods, but Zea would get left behind. She was only in this mess because of him, and he couldn’t abandon her. That meant killing every inquisitor coming after him until they either gave up or there were none left. It would be easier to do that one at a time, and he definitely didn’t want them coming anywhere near Zea.

The runner had a twenty second lead, but Luke had 40 agility and had spent a lot of time over the last few days moving through this forest. He took off down the trail he’d blazed towards Landston at top speed, planning to reach the fields outside the town first and cut the inquisitor off as soon as he wasn’t hidden in the forest.

It was a good plan, but he’d underestimated just how fast the man could move, and by the time Luke broke through the tree line, the inquisitor was already ahead of him. Heedless of any crops he might damage, Luke leaped forward with huge, bounding steps, accelerating to his top speed in moments. There wasn’t any semblance of strategy of style in his attack, just pure mass times acceleration.

He hit the fleeing inquisitor hard enough to send the man flying more than ten feet. Luke tumbled right after him, but he got to his feet first and raced over to find the inquisitor groaning in the dirt with a broken arm and leg from the impact.

Before he could finish the man off, he started screaming for help. That only lasted a second, but the screams cut through the late evening air and the reaction from the town was immediate. Luke only waited long enough to confirm the kill ding, then he sprinted back towards the woods. It was too bad he couldn’t take the time to loot the man, but the potential for a gold or two wasn’t worth getting jumped by four or five of his buddies.

Luke hightailed it back into the woods, but not fast enough to avoid being seen by some of the closest townsfolk. He left a lot of yelling behind him as he made his way back to his campsite. It was far enough away from where he’d left Zea and he was making no effort to disguise his trail, so with any luck, the remaining inquisitors would follow him there and he could use some of the remaining traps to even the odds.

He felt the XP rolling off something half a second before wood exploded and a massive humanoid body hurled itself at him. Easily eight feet tall with dark purple skin, the monster burst out of nowhere at high speed and smacked into Luke without hesitation. The full body slam launched him sideways to crash into a tree.

Luke fell to the ground with a groan and blinked up at his attacker. It was man-shaped, but with overly large eyes and no nose. Quills bristled up in place of hair and spread down its back and shoulders like a mane. It regarded him with a snort, then took two wide steps, cocked its leg back, and kicked Luke in the stomach.

He rolled with the blow, or at least he tried to, but the tree was right behind him and he ended up caught between the two. The creature leaned down to grab Luke under the arms and haul him to his feet, then hauled off and slugged him in the face. Unlike that inquisitor, it actually had the strength to back the hits up.

Luke’s nose broke on the first hit, and it wasn’t until the third that he had the presence of mind to defend himself. [Unarmed Martialist] took over and he snaked his arm around the monster’s to give himself a bit of leverage, then lifted his body up to kick it in the stomach and groin.

The monster accepted the blows without flinching, apparently unimpressed with Luke’s appropriation of Zammin’s favorite tactic, then slammed him into the tree again. He couldn’t break the damn thing’s grip on his arm, and it was flinging him around like a rag doll when it wasn’t pummeling him. As much as Luke wanted to save it, [Life Surge] seemed like the play to make. He triggered the skill and, flush with enhanced strength, slammed his elbow down into the arm holding him.

The creature still didn’t let go, but the bones in the arm itself fractured and Luke was able to pry the fingers off of him. He lashed out with a series of kicks, each one now much stronger than they were before, and quickly drove the monster back a step. That was all the room Luke needed to dart out of its range, scoop up his mace, and turn to pummeling the monster.

He broke it apart over the next twenty seconds, and then something weird happened. Instead of dying and giving him the kill notification, it started to dissolve into some sort of disgusting smelling sludge that rolled across the ground until there was nothing left but a big, thick, goopy puddle.

“System, what the fuck was that?”

“It appears to be an artificial monster,” System said, “It was likely created with a combination of spells for animating and controlling otherwise dead material such as clay or stone.”

[Life Surge] gave out soon after, and Luke wobbled a bit before catching his balance. The after effects of the skill weren’t so bad as long as he’d gotten a full meal in before, but he still didn’t feel up to fighting anyone else, especially not if one of the inquisitors had a skill like that. If they could just wave a hand and casually create a monster that required that much power to put down, he didn’t want to be anywhere near them.

It probably wasn’t that simple, but since Luke had no idea how something like that was created, he was going to assume the worst. Actually, it was better to know. “Can whoever made it make another one?” he asked.

“It’s possible, though time-consuming and expensive. If you look at its remains, you can see the core of the artificial monster. With that in hand, a new one could be made quickly and easily, provided you have the skills and spells to do so. Without it, it would take some time.”

Now that System mentioned it, Luke realized he could see something in the muck. It was some sort of ball, though he couldn’t make out any details without cleaning it off first. He leaned over, plucked the ball out of the puddle, and started to scrape off some of the gunk.

Once it was clean, he found it to be closer to a cube than a ball. It was a composite of a few different materials, all looped around each other like some sort of three-dimensional puzzle. “They can’t find me with this, can they?” he asked.

“Possibly.”

“Of course.” Luke sighed and tossed the ball into a bush. It was probably valuable, might even be enough to pay for that boat ride they were going to need soon. If it led the church to them though… “Not worth it.”

He knew he needed to get moving, but he was worn down. Not even including [Life Surge], he’d fought and killed five people already tonight. Adding the skill usage on top of that left him exhausted in a way he rarely felt anymore. At this point, it was all he could do to totter around between the trees, let alone walk in a straight line.

He felt four people with XP high enough to be noticed in a crowd, and all four quickly locked on him. “Shit,” Luke snapped, and he forced himself into a run. It was a sad, limping motion that was barely faster than a jog back before he got stats.

The now-familiar sting of something small entering his back spurred him to move faster, and the notification he received after confirmed his fears. Myla had caught up with him.

[You have been afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Sour Gut Blight (14M37S).]

It wasn’t immediately apparent what the poison did, but it was sure to be bad news with a name like that. Luke stumbled, not from the poison but just sheer exhaustion, and a second dart smacked into him.

[You have been afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Ramsridge Wyvern Venom (9M12S).]

That one he felt immediately. It was like his whole body was literally on fire from the inside, heat so strong that it would cook his bones and leave him a steaming corpse. He saw with some horror that there actually were little wisps of steam coming out of his pores. Then a third dart hit.

[You have been afflicted by the following condition: Poison- Essence of Manticore Blood (4H14M).]

“Oh come on,” Luke said. “Three darts is too much.”

Then he collapsed face down in the dirt.