[1% LIFESTEAL BOOK 5 START] Chapter 203 - The Cycle Scythe

[AUTHOR'S NOTES]
Am back boios and girlies! Tremble before my presence!

Sorry about the break. I had decided to postpone the start until after the holidays and all the family time was over in order to not be an asshole, and then I got super sick after New Year's, but not I'm back in full swing, ready to shit out some peak. Strap in because, as always, it only gets crazier from here.

Have a good day and enjoy the chapter!

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Freddy woke up. “Oh fuck my life.” The urge to vomit immediately swelled, a shivering terror licking up and down his spine. “No no no no…” He closed his eyes, hoping he’d see something else when he opened them again. No such luck.

Before him was the faded ceiling of what had once been full of life and color. But, well, so many decades in the dungeon had worn it down, fading the colors into a mute grey. 

Tears swelled in the corners of his eyes. “No no no no no… I knew it.” He punched the size of his shitty little hut, blowing a large hole in the wall. “I KNEW IT!” A shout of pure indignation tore itself out of his throat.

Out of fear it might make it real, he’d never acknowledged his fear before. But it had always been there, always lurking right around the corner. He’d seen what Insanity was capable of firsthand. He knew that, if it wanted to, it could have easily tricked him into thinking he had left. 

The jig was up.

He was still trapped in the dungeon.

“I can’t do this…” he said, breath panicked and voice trembling. “I’m killing myse—” Rustling interrupted his words. He turned to the entrance, where a strange, bald man stood, peeking his head from the outside. The head retracted, and a quick series of footsteps sounded as the man fled somewhere.

Freddy’s heart hammered in his chest. Who is that? He took a hesitant step forward, eyes wide open as he simply remained there, paralyzed and overwhelmed. Oh god. He’s heading to the generator—

***

Freddy woke up with a gasp, sitting up in his bed. A long moment of tense silence passed, the sound of his heartbeat unnaturally loud in the quiet, cold bedroom. “A nightmare.” He flopped back-first onto the bed, releasing a slow breath.

The panic, which had felt so vivid and lifelike in his dream, now felt muted. He felt the beating of his heart, the haste of his breath, the coating of cold sweat across his skin. But it was all… irrelevant. Background noise.

He clung to the brief feelings of terror like a child holding on to a toy, before it was torn out of his grasp, leaving him alone, abandoned in the depths of bottomless ennui.

A hollow chuckle fled his lips. The dream had been all-too-pleasant.

This was the real nightmare.

Turning his head, he glanced at the digital clock atop his nightstand. 9:14 a.m. He blinked. 10:57 a.m.

His lips tightened into a line. That skip had been a bit worse than usual, and he knew he had to hurry out of bed; otherwise, he’d blink another whole day away. As tempting as it was to succumb to the siren’s call of non-existence, a stubborn part of him would always refuse to let go. He had a life to live. He’d be damned if he didn’t fight for it.

Pulling himself out of bed, he went through his usual morning routine. Frankly, he didn’t have any real reason to leave his pajamas, but he’d long learned that having something to do was the best way to keep himself attached to his own conscience.

Before long, he found himself standing before the mirror in his bathroom. 

He was shirtless, revealing the unpleasant sight of his emaciated upper body, as well as the coiling black tattoo around his left arm. 

The faintest of notes of relief flickered through his chest, a mote of warmth against the all-encompassing cold. His face, which he’d once cast away so recklessly, was back. He was himself. There was not a single strand of beard anywhere to be seen, and his hair once more reached all the way to his shoulders.

It was like he was back in that communal bathroom, getting himself mentally ready to go to work. Well, no, actually—he was like a hundred times better-looking now, with smooth, acne- and scar-free skin, and healthy, voluminous hair. 

He brushed his hand through his dark locks, which lightly curled and flowed around his face. It was odd how his hair just kinda looked like that on its own. He could probably be a shampoo model.

A near-unnoticeable urge to chuckle swam around somewhere in his stomach, and he latched onto it. A forced laugh came up. He clicked his tongue. “That one didn’t feel right.” 

It might have been his desperation at play, but he could have sworn that forcefully grabbing onto the wisps of emotion he felt every now and then helped him undo the tiniest little bit of soul damage. He might have been imagining it. “But it isn’t like I know jack shit about soul damage.” Sighing, he headed into the kitchen.

There, he started the slow, arduous process of making his morning coffee. Not that he could even notice the difference between cheap instant crap and the high-effort espressos he spent half an hour putting together, but again, giving himself things to do was critical.

He slowly baked the beans over a fire, using a special container. When he guessed they were finally done (they were burnt to a crisp), he ground them up (into charcoal powder) and used his fancy espresso machine to… cook himself a cup? Brew? Brew was the right word, he was pretty sure.

His idle musings were interrupted when a little squirt of high-pressure coffee decided to take a detour from the cup to splatter all over his crotch. He sighed, turning the thing off and sipping on the final product.

Now, as with everything else nowadays, he struggled to tell what exactly his senses were telling him. Sure, he could taste the coffee, but it was almost like his ability to judge the flavor was turned off. He knew two things, though. One, this tasted nothing like any coffee he’d ever tried, and two, even if he couldn’t judge the flavor directly, involuntary spasms of neck muscles weren’t exactly a common sign of pleasure.

Shrugging, he grabbed the cup of charred stillbirth off his kitchen counter and headed for the living room couch, where he turned the BC on. They had finally rebuilt the local receiver. BC was great for someone with soul damage. Just mindless enough that it required minimal effort to partake, and just dynamic enough to keep him engaged and prevent chunks of time from evaporating into nothingness.

For the most part, Freddy was just waiting. Soon, the investigators the adjudicator warned him about would come, and there would be a whole thing with getting everything sorted. After that, he would be free to leave the Northern Belt and get his soul properly treated.

But the wait was starting to drag on. While he was doing a great job at lying to himself and keeping himself distracted, the reality was that his condition was getting worse. The listlessness was getting more insidious, and—”Goddamn it, I forgot to eat for two whole days again.”

Grumbling, he made his way over to the fridge. He didn’t bother with cooking, since his ingredients usually went bad before he remembered they existed. He instead grabbed some of the ol’ reliable food pills and swallowed them.

He gulped some water straight from the faucet. It was ice cold. 

Sighing, he leaned against the counter. He knew what needed to be done. He needed something to engage him, even just for a day. Thankfully, he’d been saving something. A thing. 

A thing he actually cared about—nay, something he was deeply curious about, even with the soul damage he was suffering.

His gaze slowly drifted to the tattoo coiling around his left arm. Lifting his hand to his face, he examined the golden lips, touching them with the fingers of his right. They really did feel and look like nothing but a tattoo. Well, a damn fine tattoo. The lips were incredibly intricate, with beautiful shading and vivid colors. They even reflected light just as gold would, giving them a mesmerizing three-dimensional look despite the fact they were flush with his skin. 

He could appreciate it even with his soul damage.

Try as he may, there was nothing he could do to hide the tattoo, sans just covering it. Thankfully, fancy tattoos were nothing rare among archhumans, so he doubted he’d have trouble lying about it. 

That was enough stalling. He raised his arm.

Taking a deep breath, for the first time since his meeting with Sophia, Freddy set the Cycle Rose loose. He watched it uncoil, until a large black scythe materialized in his hand with a loud, metallic clang.

Rather than a chorus of cackling, the golden lips simply smiled, waiting in an eerie silence. A pang of discomfort spread through Freddy. “I think it's high time we get this over with. Tell me—what exactly do you do?”

The pair of lips he just happened to be looking at parted into a large smile, a thin stream of blood flowing down their corner, a set of pearly white teeth shining his way. The stream of blood trickled across the kitchen floor, but the blood was conjured from essence, so it would simply evaporate in due time. 

“You would love to know, wouldn’t you? About me. All you can use me for.” Another pair of lips opened, letting another stream of blood loose as it spoke in a deeper voice. “And I would be glad to tell you.” A third pair parted, its voice high-pitched. “But we both know there is a better way for you to find out.

“Use me. Experiment. See what I can do with your own eyes.”

Freddy frowned. 

“You need this,” the first pair of lips said. “You’ve been wasting away. While it feels like you’re putting in a monumental amount of effort into keeping yourself awake, the truth is, you’re rotting.” Second pair. “Yeah! Go outside!” Third pair. “You’re crystallizing into a pseudo-person.”

Freddy’s lips trembled. They were right. Like all other sentient ether constructs, the Cycle Rose couldn’t lie. Sighing, he nodded. He moved the bleeding scythe into his right hand grip as he extracted a brick-sized phone from his storage ring. He dialed a number. 

“Freddy?” Georgie’s surprised voice came through. “Did you need me for something?”

“Yeah… Do you have some free time? I’m going to need someone to make sure I don’t pass out alone in the interspace.”

***

Freddy met up with Georgie in the cave beneath Valhalla’s headquarters. The woman waited for him right beside the underground passage, clad in full metal armor. This was the first time Freddy had seen her wearing so much gear. It seemed like being stomped into the dirt by Sophia’s golem had taught her something of a lesson.

“Hey there!” she greeted him enthusiastically. “Been a while.”

He nodded in reply. “Mmh,” he muttered half-heartedly.

All around them, a number of people moved in and out of the passage, whispering under their breaths as they pointed at Freddy and murmured in awe.

For his part, he was wearing a plain white t-shirt and stained black sweats, looking utterly casual.

She tensed when she noticed the lack of equipment. “You sure you don’t want at least some protection?”

He shrugged a single shoulder. “I’m half hoping something just puts me out of my misery.”

Georgie chuckled. 

Freddy supposed his words did sound like a joke. “Anyway…” Changing the subject, he pointed at the passage. “We’ll go a few steps out—not too far, but I’d like some privacy. You’ll wait a passage away while I test something out. It shouldn't take me too long. If I’m not out in, say, half an hour, it's safe to assume I’ve passed out somewhere.”

The woman nodded. “Well. We should get going then.”

“And Georgie?” he called. “Thanks for this. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”

“It’s no issue.” She waved him down. “Really. I owe you at least this much.”

Rather than needlessly argue, he simply nodded, and they wordlessly proceeded into the interspace. He had a pretty detailed understanding of the local interspace here, given the wholesale slaughter he’d committed here, so he found an apt realm after a short search.

The realm was B-class, on the smaller end. It took the form of a desolate, grey landscape, with dour skies locked in a permanent twilight. The only monsters around were these rodent things the size of dogs, and only passage Freddy found was small enough to make this realm something of a dead end. “This will do,” he said, turning to face her. “Wait outside.”

Nodding, she stepped back, giving him some privacy. Freddy respected Georgie, but he didn’t trust anyone with the exact details of how the Cycle Rose worked. 

“Now then…” he muttered, looking out across the depressing realm. A small smile tugged on his lips. For the first time in a long, long while, he was truly looking forward to doing something.

He stepped out, raising his left hand. The scythe uncoiled, appearing in his grasp again, and this time, it immediately started cackling.

Testing this thing was going to be a little rough. Freddy couldn’t use abilities without feeling like he was tearing his own soul apart, so he would have to improvise. The first thing he wanted to know—what exactly could this scythe do on its own? 

It could be attached to weapons, but he hadn’t tested it as was. 

Locating a boulder about his own height, he nodded. Then, he paused. “Are you gonna break if I smash you into solid stone?”

The scythe found the notion hilarious. “Breaking me will take a lot more than that.”

“Figures. Doesn’t hurt to ask tho.” He pulled the scythe back—and immediately ran into his first problem.

Scythes made for terrible weapons. As in, actually atrocious. Due to the position of the blade, pretty much all practical ways to attack became unviable. He’d seen this enough times while using the weapon in the Netherecho, but there, things were a bit more… conceptual. In hindsight, it was obvious that the general fuckiness of the Netherecho made the weapon more practical than it had any right to be.

Unfortunately, that fuckiness didn't translate well into reality. 

Sighing, he raised the weapon the way he would a pickaxe, aiming the tip of the blade at the stone. Then, he swung. The weapon bounced off with a shrill ding, and blood splashed all across the boulder as the many mouths came to an abrupt stop with various pitches of “oof” and “ouch”. Freddy winced. “Sorry.”

Despite having no eyes, the numerous mouths still managed to stare at him judgementally. “You know, it should be pretty obvious that this isn’t how you’re supposed to use me.”

“I just wanted to know what I’m dealing with here, just in case I ever find myself without a weapon to use you with.”

“I’m sure you can think of something a bit better than this.” And again, even without eyes, the scythe managed to pointedly stare at his arm. 

He cocked an eyebrow. With a moment of focus, he managed to make the scythe melt and coat his right fist, wrapping all the way up to his elbow. “Huh.” He punched the stone. Freddy had punched quite a bit of rock in his life, so he generally knew what to expect. This wasn’t it. 

His fist landed with a crunchy impact, and cracks spread through the rock all around it. Even with a pretty hard strike, given how thin his body was at the moment, he just didn’t have the strength to break the entire boulder. Still, the damage was definitely greater than it would have been without the scythe.

“Hmm?” It was a bit hard to notice with the splashes of blood accompanying every swing, but now that he was paying close attention to the spot he struck, the stone was… bleeding? He thumbed the spot, and sure enough, his finger came away bloody. A few moments later, the splash of blood evaporated into essence, but the blood seeping through the cracks in the stone remained. “What the fuck is that?”

The lips cackled, refusing to elaborate. 

I can make inanimate objects bleed? Well, that’s creepy as fuck.

Where the hell was that blood coming from? And more importantly, what exactly did that do? He tried absorbing the blood, but even just a little drop gave him a deeply unpleasant feeling, making him stop.

Choosing to move his attention elsewhere, he looked down at his right arm. Sure, the scythe could be used on his own body, but something was obviously missing. There was an element to the scythe’s power that required a weapon to utilize.

He materialized the scythe again. For a moment, he contemplated risking it and conjuring Sanguine Avenger, but that just wasn’t a good idea. His gaze moved over to a nearby rock. Bending over, he picked it up. It took a moment of focus, but he managed to wrap the scythe around it.

Immediately, he could tell that something was different. It wasn’t quite that the stone became weightless, but his soul construct was definitely doing something to help him carry it more easily. It was hard to describe it, but it was almost like he had a new muscle in his soul, one that could assist with lugging whatever the scythe was currently attached to.

Again, he smashed the rock against the boulder, and this time, another part of the scythe’s powers became readily apparent. Rather than crack apart as he’d expect it to, the rock remained unblemished, while the boulder it smashed into suffered even more damage. And again, the boulder bled.

It was clear as day that the Cycle Rose hadn’t eaten Freddy’s ring and pendant just because it was feeling a bit hungry. He gave the construct a pointed look, and one of the lips smiled at him. “Do your best to figure it out on your own. I’ll give you the details for anything you can’t solve on your own..”

He slowly nodded. “Fair enough I suppose.”

Next up, he approached a tree. It was a sickly, rotting thing, with little more than a handful of gnarled branches for a canopy, but it would do for his test. The first thing he tried was to wrap the scythe around it as it was. 

As expected, it didn’t work. He nodded and kicked the tree a couple times, aiming to fell it. Once he successfully toppled it, he tried again. Once more, the scythe simply flopped against it, like a fish on dry land. Next, he braced himself and lifted the tree, and this time, with a bit of effort, he managed to coil the scythe around it. 

The entire tree turned a dark shade of black, with large pairs of lips all across it.

He was caught off guard by the fact that actually worked, but quickly recovered as he made a few key discoveries. 

His soul construct worked on anything that could be used as a weapon, as long as he demonstrated that he could use it as a weapon. There was no hard weight limit, other than his strength. And second—

Freddy made a disgruntled groan as he tried swinging the tree around a bit. The aforementioned muscle in his soul wasn’t happy with having to haul a giant tree. That being said, it did work, however briefly, allowing him to swing a tree around with apparent ease. Soon enough, Freddy felt the muscle fail, which forced the scythe to retract back to his arm, and sent the tree crashing down.

The fatigue persisted for a little while, maybe about five minutes. It wasn’t too bad, but if this happened during a fight, it could be rather punishing. It was something to keep in mind. He still remembered the utter ease with which he wielded Sanguine Avenger against Nahar. Now, he realized he needed to be careful. Proper form and strength were still crucial.

Once the scythe recovered, he continued testing. There was one thing he was curious about above all. 

Sighing, he mentally selected Terror Knuckles. It was an extremely cheap ability, and even then, using it felt like the soul equivalent of shitting out a hedgehog. 

Releasing a shuddering breath, he focused, finding it effortless to coil the scythe around the frail-looking spikes. Funnily enough, the lips became so tiny that their laughter became barely audible and extremely high-pitched. The weapon found that funny, too, and soon enough, a subtle, disharmonious cacophony of voices whispered cackles into the wind.

This thing is so damn creepy.

Putting those thoughts aside, he stalked the rocky landscape for his first victim. The rodent things liked hiding inside large cracks, but given how small the realm was, finding them wasn’t particularly challenging. 

Before long, he was holding a large rat thing by the scruff of its neck as it thrashed violently. 

He first retracted the scythe and used the Terror Knuckles on their own, lightly stabbing into the monster’s side. The monster screeched and redoubled its thrashing. Then, he coiled the scythe over the spikes and swung again. 

The spikes sank into the monster's side with utter ease, as if he had dipped them into a liquid rather than stabbed into solid flesh.

The monster didn’t thrash. It simply seized, clearly paralyzed. The wound bled profusely, spilling blood down the creature’s leg like an open faucet. A moment later, the monster died.

Freddy’s breath hitched. The fateful moment had finally arrived.

It was becoming increasingly clear that the Cycle Rose was mimicking the functions of the unique cursed items it had swallowed. But his items weren’t the only thing it had swallowed. Most importantly, it had taken his soul construct. 

His heart hammered in his chest as he waited to see what would happen as the creature died.