The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 20-21

All right. This story is launching publicly today. If you see it on your preferred webnovel site, feel free to give it some support. in the form of a rating or review It will be picking up the place a little soon. Also, I did a complete rewrite last week. I didn't change much mechanically, and nothing changed as far as the story is concerned. I just tightened a few scenes up in the early part of the story.

 I will go back and update the earlier Patreon chapters as well, but the only real difference, is that increasing connection allows the blade the see its wielder's stats now.At level 2 it can see the physical stats, and at level 3 the mental stats. For those of you that don't feel like going back and seeing what I mean, you will see the next character sheet on chapter 23.

Ch. 20 - The Edge of Nowhere

Over the next few weeks, the battles came every three or four days. They followed a predictable pattern. First would be the bloodletting of war. Increasingly, as the numbers grew this would take on an almost ceremonial form, with one chief and his warband against the opponents. After that, the culling of those that would not serve would happen when they were struck down. This was followed by an orgy of conquered does and fermented milk. 

It was those latter stages that showed off the true monsterousness of the beastmen. The battles were the least of the ugliness that these frenzied goatmen were capable of. 

Still, with each fight, the tribe grew. First, the Fleet Hooves were dozens, but by the time a second moon had passed, they were hundreds. By then, other tribes were joining them voluntarily rather than fighting, and Gar-lok was not an old goat with a magic sword; he was chief of chiefs. 

He had several war bands under his command. That was real power. It was also when they descended the rugged hills to the Kaladian plains and began to devour humans wherever they found them,

By this point, the Ebon Blade was already looking for a new wielder, though not from the humans. The goatman it had chosen was growing lazy, and with so many warriors under its command, the mangy beast was eager to get out of combat whenever possible. Only the blade’s urging kept him running at the vanguard with the rest of his younger kin in most fights. 

You have to fight! It lectured its wielder silently. I receive no Life Force, and you receive no strength when you sit all of it out and let others do the killing. 

The fact that it fought only reluctantly as its forces grew grated on the Ebon Blade in a way that could not be solved with blood. Still, even with Gar-lok’s support, the beastman hoard swept through the unsuspecting valleys like a cloud of locusts. Every farm they found was stripped bare, and enemies were roasted on the pyres of their homes.

+84 Life Force
+3 Human Souls

None of those early fights could be called battles. They were slaughters but even slaughters gave it Life Force and souls. 

It was one night around the fire of what had once been a barn, while its wielder was feasting on human flesh that it decided to use one of the human souls to do something besides give it energy. The Ebon Blade was back over 1500, life force. In a few more days, when it topped 2000, it would gain the next level of Increase Reserves.

For now, though, what it needed was not energy but information, and for that it finally turned to the other way to use a soul for the first time. It devoured an old farmer it had killed by the name of Ruthers, with a simple demand. The weapon wanted to know where it was and where the nearby towns were, the man gave it every last scrap of information it knew on the subject before he faded into oblivion. 

He told the weapon not just where the nearby farm holds were, which were only of middling importance. His ghost also told him how far it was to other nearby villages like Olden-va as well as larger towns and cities like Trodden, Tollin’s Cross, and Kalraka. Those were further away, of course; anything of any size was. The man had only the vaguest idea of where Severon was, near the heart of the Three Kingdoms, far to the southwest. 

It was not a place he’d ever been, and it wasn’t just a few leagues away. It was hundreds of miles from where they stood at least. 

It turned out that the plains were a desolate place, but even here at the edge of nowhere, there were lives to be taken and carnage to be caused, and over the next week, the blade used its hoard of beastman to carve a blazing swath across the plains. They tore right through Olden-va and its villagers as if it wasn’t there. 

+191 Life Force
+6 Human Souls

The Ebon Blade didn’t see the shepherd boy that had led him to the temple die or the girl that its first wielder had fawned over so much. However, it didn’t really seek her out, either, and it doubted either of them survived. 

After that, they rampaged through an abandoned Tollin’s Cross but found no one there to kill. They had obviously been warned and fled before the monsterous horde. The place they’d left behind was still in ruins. They’d only just started to rebuild in the wake of the dragon attacks half a year ago. In one night, half a year of progress was put to the torch, and the braying goatmen turned toward the distant city of Kalraka, which was at least a week away for this filthy, undisciplined lot. 

The beastmen didn’t seem too concerned by distances, though. Their leader never even tried to explain how far they would go to the rest of his war chiefs. He just pointed in a direction, and they obeyed. Gar-lok, for all of his laziness, was practically a god to them by this point. He was the only one who had participated in every major battle and survived to tell the tale without so much as a scratch. 

The beasts were killing humans at every turn, but the goat men were hardly immortal, and every fight that wasn’t a complete rout maimed a few of them bad enough that they were killed and eaten by their companions. 

The blade didn’t care. Every last one of these creatures was entirely expendable. It was sure they’d find that out as soon as they met their first cavalry patrol. 

Those words proved to be prophetic. The first men they fought that were ready for them fought on light horses, with lance and bow. If they’d stuck to bow, they might have won. The beasts had no counter for that. If they stayed where they were, then they were punctured, and if they ran toward the enemy, the enemy fled from them.

It was frustrating for them, and even as the Ebon Blade tried to explain the proper strategies to deal with such a foe to Gar-lok, there was no way that he could, in turn, relay those words to scores of drooling imbeciles. 

Still, eventually, they got lucky. Eventually, the horsemen decided that the beasts were spread out enough for a charge. That was their downfall because even as most of the beastmen fled before the iron-shod steeds, Gar-lok ran toward them. Specifically, he ran right for their leader. He didn’t want to, but he wasn’t given a choice. The blade was not about to see its small army whittled away to nothing because beastmen hadn’t figured out weapons that were more complicated than throwing spears. 

Gar-lok’s suicide attack took the horses out from under two men in a single furious swing, even though he was pierced by both lances and born to the ground with them. He didn’t let go of the blade, though, so even as his opponents died, he lived to fight another day. 

The death of the squad’s captain made the surviving members of the patrol try to battle their way to his corpse. That was their second mistake. 

It was that sentimentality that the blade had been counting on. If they’d fled, then eight men would have lived, but because they tried to keep a body from being devoured and desecrated, twenty minutes later, only two were fleeing. 

What a pity, the blade said to itself as it watched them retreat into the distance. The city will be ready for us now. 

There was nothing it could do to stop men on horses, though. Not until it was once again in the hands of a man on a horse. All it could do was change their route to make the defenders less able to anticipate and prepare for their attack. 

To that end, the beastman horde avoided roads after that. Both large trade roads and smaller footpaths were off-limits. Instead, they moved toward a sluggish river heading in the same direction that they were, and when they found the first good ford, the entire group crossed it and continued on in the weeds and cattails of its banks like a heard of sheep more than an organized army.

The city was on the coast. It knew that much but little more. It had no idea what their defenses or fortifications were. In these wild lands, it could guess that they would be somewhere between pathetic and enough to be a problem. They almost certainly wouldn't be formidable, and it leaned toward the former rather than the latter because of the insignificant location. 

Two days from the city, some of the beastmen scouts spotted a human army on the other side of the river heading in exactly the wrong direction, which pleased it greatly. Hundreds of men in mail would have been enough to put a stop to this little adventure, but they were going toward where they thought the beastmen horde would be and not where they were, which made all the difference in the world. 

When the weapon finally sighted the city from a distance, it was plain to see that their low mud brick walls didn’t have anything close to the number of defenders they should have had. There were watchmen, of course. They were enough to sound the alarm, but even as they did, the blade knew that there wouldn’t be enough defenders to matter. The goatmen were awful in so many ways, but one thing they excelled at was uneven terrain, and they practically ran up and over the walls of the doomed city like the animals they were. 

Their battle cries were deafening. As far as they were concerned, this was about to become the greatest victory in their short, muddy history. The Ebon Blade was inclined to agree with that assessment, pathetic as it was. 

Tonight, everyone would feast, and then tomorrow, whatever humans happened to survive would starve. It could live with that. This was, after all, just one more stepping stone toward its far-off revenge. These lives only mattered in that they would fuel its rise to power so that it could find out the truth of its existence, sweep away the descendants of whoever it was that had imprisoned it, and make its wrath known to the world. 

Ch. 21 - Kalraka Burning

That night, the blood that filled the streets was almost enough to sate even the blade’s burning need for vengeance. It saw horrible sights as whole families were slaughtered by the braying beasts that filled the streets and ransacked whatever they could. None of them moved it, though. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

As the city burned brighter, it could see more, and as it did so, it spent more time watching the attackers than their victims. The beastmen were crass, simple creatures, but amidst the narrow stone streets of the small city, they were dangerous killers. They leaped nimbly from wall to wall. 

While they were much smaller than the average soldier, the fact that they could run on vertical surfaces as long as they were rough enough made them more effective with their spears and horns than the blade would have thought before it saw them in action. 

You have obtained 1 human soul. 

The blade’s wielder didn’t need subtly. It simply hacked its way through whoever happened to be standing in front of it in strokes that were as powerful as they were clumsy. 

The Ebon Blade didn’t care about skill in this moment. All it cared about was the way that it felt to slice through human flesh once more. It was an entirely different experience, and the blade much preferred it to goats and their muddy life force which it had been drinking for months. It had no sympathy for its victims, especially the ones that didn’t fight back. 

The only emotion that those defenders inspired was disgust. Not only had they sent their soldier off to try to protect them in the wrong direction, but those who they’d left behind seemed unwilling to do anything more than bar the doors of their homes to protect themselves. 

You have obtained 1 human soul. 

The men on the walls came together for a time and tried to fight the goatmen, but they were far too few, and a crossbow wasn’t an effective weapon when your opponent could charge you and gore you with their horns. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

Any one of the men could have taken down one or two of the goatmen, even if it cost them their life. Most of the women might have, too, for the beastmen were diminutive things. Still, they showed no spine. They fled and begged and died on their knees where they belonged as the attackers devoured and destroyed. 

You have obtained 1 human soul. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

To anyone else, it might have been a sad scene, but as the Ebon Blade basked in a tide of life energy that soaked into it with each stab and slash, it didn’t really care where it came from. What was sad wasn’t that the thatched roofs of picturesque stone buildings were burning. It was that even though the people of the city outnumbered the invaders by two or three to one, they refused to fight.

Once the beastmen were in the city, it burned all of the lesser monster souls it possessed to make room for the new human souls that were flooding into it. A lesser monster soul might only be worth a dozen life force, but a human soul, especially one who had lived a long and full life, could be worth ten times that. 

That flare of power was what finally pushed it over 2000, Life Force again, bringing it to 2073/4000. That, combined with the nearly full allotment of nineteen human souls and the dragon soul it still held in reserve, gave it almost limitless options. The blade had planned to level up to Increase Reserves 9, but with so much power available to it in this moment, it delayed and tried to consider what its other options might be instead while it drank as much energy as it could from this place. 

That was the reason it nudged its wielder to fight those few that could be found who were worth fighting. It wasn’t because of even a trace of pity it sought to spare the children as much as it was because those tiny people were worth so little by comparison. It just wanted Gar-lok to fight the biggest, strongest enemy that he could at each encounter. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

Mostly, the goatman obeyed, too, but after the first hour, it was running out of targets of any value, and when morning dawned, it became clear that there was nothing left for it in this place. The city was built of stone, so most of it still stood. If it had been a general rather than a weapon in the hands of bloodthirsty savages, it would have pressed on because there was no further advantage here. 

The goatmen didn’t see it that way, though. They had killed this place, and now they would feast on its remains, and the Ebon Blade was not inclined to force the issue. 

There were still a few places of resistance where it might yet get the fights that it craved on the following night, at least. The governor's manor was still bolted up tight and had a dozen men with crossbows on the second floor, with who knew how many survivors inside. Likewise, the east gate's keep was still manned. It was larger than the west gate that the army of beastmen had avoided entirely during their unorthodox entrance. 

The layout hinted that this city was more used to fighting enemies from the other direction, and that made the blade curious. Is it used to fighting men, I wonder, or are there other monsters deep in the forest worth pursuing. 

Kalraka stood at a relative choke point. To the south stood the sea, and to the north stood foothills that grew and grew until they became a mountain range while it straddled the trade path that wound between them. To the west, those roads continued across the desolate plains it had spent most of its time until now, while to the east, they disappeared into the woods. 

The Ebon Blade consumed the soul of a guardsman to answer these questions, and its mind was flooded with information about the world around the city. The man shared seaborne trade routes to cities it had never heard of, and better estimates to just how far away Severon was, and the approximate locations of a number of nearby towns in the forest. It also told him about the mountains to the north, and that the real threat were the orcs that dwelled within them and assaulted the city so often that there were bounties on their tusks. 

It was interesting information, but it barely distracted it from more immediate concerns. The day that followed was an orgy of violence against the wounded and the dead. It was an orgy of flesh, and Gar-lok, along with the rest of his beastmen, stayed away from anything that resembled real fighting while the humans that still lived did their best to barricade themselves inside of anywhere they might be able to defend. 

Those soldiers will return in a day or two at most, the blade warned its wielder. You should be gone when they arrive. We can look for softer targets in the forest beyond. 

Its wielder barely noticed its council. Instead, he brushed off the blade's warnings and spent the afternoon rutting. It could have forced the issue if it was just the casual defiance of its wielder, but it was clear that his undisciplined army hadn’t finished gnawing at the bones of civilization. 

The blade didn’t care too much either way. It would still get to feast on more opponents come nightfall. That was when the beastmen tired of their rest and recreation and sought out new victims to hunt and kill. Shortly after sunset, they attacked both of the remaining strongholds, along with all the other tiny holdouts where families cowered in fear. 

Then, at least, the Ebon Blade forced Gar-lok to lead the charge against the Governor’s Manor. It was the most well-defended target, which meant it would have the most soldiers left to kill. 

For a time, the goat men tried and failed to break down any of the doors. Finally, unwilling to watch them squander their lives any further, it took command and directed them to climb up a spot on the walls between two chimneys where the crossbowmen could not reach. Once they reached the roof and broke through the flimsy tiles, it was all but over. 

The stout walls and gates of the building had been defended well. Even the lack of windows on the first floor had made it close to unbreachable. Still, it was impossible to defend once the enemy was inside and charging down carpeted hallways that were more concerned with beauty than safety. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

Women screamed and ran as fast as they could while men fought, but that didn’t save either of them and soon the house was consumed with fire and death. Some small part of the blade hated to see such beauty burn. The paintings and the fine candelabras had done nothing to it, but it was unwilling to intercede as its wielder climbed to the roof in triumph, still covered in blood. 

You have obtained 1 human soul.

You have obtained 1 human soul.

That was where it discovered a new wrinkle. The army that the Ebon blade had been warning of had already come back.

The defenders were returning, but Gar-lok didn’t care, nor should he. It was far too late for them to do anything. There were still survivors, but with their homes in flames and the majority of its city dead, even if the goat men all fled now, this place would still be nothing but a graveyard. 

The goatman stood there, braying loudly in challenge to those defenders from where he stood atop the flaming ruins of what had once been the local governor's elaborate manor. “I have taken your city!” he roared. “We retreat now into the forests and hills! When we return with new young, we shall kill you too! None shall stand before my might!”

Not one of the humans could understand the crude tongue. Still, for a beastman, it was an eloquent speech and an example of what might pass for brilliant tactics for such a simple creature. 

The Ebon Blade might be growing tired of being wielded by such a simple creature, but it couldn’t help but wonder if its influence was starting to rub off on it. What had been a cowardly old goat was becoming a regular strategos. 

Despite that, it still would have much rather been in human hands. The crude nature of these things was making it miss the hand of man so much it would have almost taken the shepherd boy over this. So, when the roof suddenly started to collapse beneath its bestial wielder, and it fell into a flaming abyss of its own making, the blade was not entirely disappointed.