Chapter 281: Peak of Slaughter

Chapter 281: Peak of Slaughter

“This is the peak of Slaughter,” Chung Nam-Cheong said.

Mercury looked at the mountain - and it was a mountain. A tall, thin spire of jagged, dark rocks, with houses built into it, and sharp spikes of stone poking from it. Some of the spikes were adorned with bodies, arranged to look almost beautiful, like leaves on stony trees.

“That’s a lot of bodies,” Mira noted with disgust.

“It’s the peak of Slaughter,” Chung replied with an uncaring shrug. “Death is everywhere. This only teaches you to look.”

Elder Guleum, with her shortened hair, gave the mountain an almost fond smile. It was calm and graceful, like a circular ripple across a pond. “Yes,” she said. “Everything dies. From the smallest ant to the greatest dragon. The mountain is a reminder - we are not infallible. We must cut down or be cut down. We are part of the martial world, and part of that is slaughter.”

A small shiver ran through Mira. Mercury watched her grit her teeth and clench her fists. He looked at the bodies again, and hummed softly. It was… kind of disgusting, but appropriate. This world was rotten, in some ways. It was full of violence and war.

The cults felt a little like the fae. When the veneer of flowers and beauty was stripped from the court of Blossom, all that was left was festering rot, and crawling insects. The world was dying, and looking away from that death didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Yet, a monument to it seemed a bit much, even for Mercury’s standards. He hummed again, looking at the spikes of black stone, corpses stacked high in between humble huts. He watched as a young woman walked out from one of the houses, and began hopping over the mountain, her feet landing carefully on the stone.

“To look away is a sin,” Mercury said softly. “But to be forced to confront is a cruel fate, too. There must be rest between the horrors.”

“Rest?” grand elder Yozai of the peak of Frozen Blood asked, shaking his head. There was a wry smile on his aged face. “There is no rest in the martial world. Sleep and die.”

Mercury shook his head. “Everyone rests. The righteous do it, and that’s when you cults strike. It’s funny, in a way. The righteous hide when they hurt people, they’re terrified that truth will get out - that there is strife, that there is cruelty. And then, there are you.

“Cults. Ones all about war, slaughter, cruelty. And you’re scared, too,” he said, eyes glinting. “You’re scared people will figure out that you rest. When you sleep - when they may stab you in the back. What a sad state of affairs.”

Silence hung in the air as Mercury took his first step up the mountain - though that’s a lie. Chung saw that his foot never touched the ground. It landed on an invisible stair, a technique so profound he could not even feel a breath of Qi  or sorcery from it. For a few heartbeats, the disciple simply stared, then rushed to follow, same as Joo Mira. 

When Mercury reached one of the brutally splayed out bodies - that of an older woman wearing righteous colours, with an arm brutally torn off at the shoulders, and her face cleft open by claw marks, he sighed softly, then reached out with a hand. He didn’t flinch or cower, but instead simply closed her eyes.

The motion was soft and small, and it was still a grisly picture. Her limp, ruined body, splayed out over the rocky mountain, cruel stone piercing through her back and belly. But it at least made her a little more dignified. Mira looked and felt fear at the corpse, Chung looked and he felt resentment at the world.

And they were both wrong.

“The world is a terrible place,” Zyl whispered with a smile. “But it need not be feared. It need not be hated. Find your own slice of it, your own freedom, and seek happiness there.”

“I will never be satisfied without my vengeance,” Chung snarled. 

“Vengeance has never brought anyone happiness,” Mercury shrugged. “I am not above it. I’ve killed in retaliation. I’ve wiped out an entire world for what it did to met… though it was a minor world.”

His audience didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Old monsters were known to be eccentric, but that was a bit much.

When he refused to elaborate, and simply walked higher up on the peak of Slaughter, Chung was the first to pose a question. “Were you… satisfied?”

Mercury smiled and shook his head. “Yes,” he said sadly. “But I was also empty. Bereft of purpose. Happy, but only because I had something to return to. So, build that,” he said, looking at the disciple. “Build somewhere you want to be.”

Mira swallowed hard at those words, and her nails squeezed into her fingers again. She was faced with the question, too. Was the Joo clan where she wanted to live? Was it somewhere she wanted to return to?

Maybe, in this mad world, it was safe there. To some degree, at least. It was a place where the cults wouldn’t break the door open at night and stab her in the back over a stolen carrot. But, at the same time, she may be sent to a war. Over an artificial, pointless gripe, just to get more resources.

Was that worth dying for? Resources? For a thankless clan with no scruples? That would throw you to the wolves in hopes of getting a few pelts? 

Kill other people?

She breathed, then looked at the corpse. Chung closed his eyes and snarled. Fear and anger. People got wronged by the world, but that did not need to carry on. Mercury smiled quietly. ‘Doesn’t every person have a duty to make the world a better place, just a little?’ he thought.

There was no way to not have a negative impact. To live was to hurt - plants, animals, people, monsters. It was to break hearts, sometimes, it was to be hurt, too, but it was also to be kind. To try. In a way, living meant trying one’s best to do right by the world.

[<Truth> has levelled up! <Truth lv. 6 -> 7>]

Mercury took another step up the mountain, when a kid, barely older than thirteen, slipped and fell. It was a simple slip-up. They picked the wrong rock, and it slid out under their feet, crumbling away. Chung watched as the kid plummeted downwards, towards one of the rock spires.

“Failure is death,” elder Guleum whispered, her hair swaying in the breeze, her eyes closed in peaceful acceptance.

Zyl flew upwards and caught the kid, like any sane person should.

For a moment, Mercury saw grand elder Yozai sigh. With an almost pained expression, the old man dragged a nail across his chest, let blood well up from the wound, and coalesced it into a blue-red sword over his fingers. He looked at the kid mournfully as his body lifted into the air, robes fluttering behind him.

A heartbeat passed, and Zyl, carrying the shocked, wide-eyed kid, watched the elder approach. “There is a price for failure,” Yozai said. “You cannot interfere in the cult this way. It is the peak of Slaughter, not that of coddling children.” His voice was stern but weak.

Zyl moved slowly. Ever so gently, he tilted his head to the side, looking at the older man. His greying hair, his balding head. Zyl simply sighed. “Are you serious?” he asked.

“Yes,” Yozai replied.

Then, politely, Zyl nodded. “Okay,” he said. His wings beat once, and he landed on a reasonably stable part of the jagged mountain peak. He placed the kid down on their feet. Yozai nodded, and floated forward.

The blood-blade flashed, and Yozai’s detached arm flew through the air. The stench of ash hit Mercury’s nostrils. Fire roared in Zyl’s eyes, and plasma hummed in the air like a pack of angry dogs. The grand elder stared at the wound, his mouth slowly coming open in shock. “Ah-” he said.

Before he even screamed, Mercury was next to him and removed a chunk of the pain.

It hurt about as badly as a stubbed toe, because agony was not the punishment. Instead, Mercury sealed the wound. “You have failed, grand elder Yozai,” the mopaaw explained calmly. “You have failed to recognize your betters, and the punishment for failure is death.”

New flesh sprouted from the stump. The old man was pitiful, but possessed powerful vitality. His body was already on the mend. But once his hand returned, only four fingers grew back. And by the end, he was a panting, ragged mess.

“I-” the elder stammered, unable to form words. Guleum stared, wide-eyed, at what happened. Chung’s mouth hung open in shock, and Mira watched with fear. Mercury just stood.

His face was expressionless, but he felt anger. The same as Zyl. The kid was still trying to kill the dragon, but not making much headway. Their pitiful shiv didn’t even break his scales.

“You will be quiet,” Mercury hissed. He held the elder’s hand up to his face. “This has cost you a finger. I will make it so you can never regrow it. So you are a four-fingered creature for the rest of your life. No treasure will heal it, because there is no wound, because it is the proper way for you to be. You wanted to take a life, and so I take from you, instead.”

In the martial world, this action was akin to a slap on the wrist - but it spat in the elder’s face. Yet, what was he going to do about the dishonour? Fight them over it? Threaten and scream.

No. 

Grand elder Yozai of the peak of Frozen Blood swallowed his pride. He cupped his fist, bowed his bald head, and leaned forward. “Yes, esteemed masters,” he said quietly, his breathing ragged with exhaustion from the regeneration. “I apologize for my failures.”

Despite everything, he was sorry for the consequences, not for the intention of killing a teenager.

And Mercury thought that was profoundly sad.

- - -

How would you change the world, when the world is rotten?

Is blood and violence the answer?

Do you choose diplomacy? 

Carve out a little place of safety for yourself?

What is the responsibility of those that have power?

Mercury could make his own slice of safety. He’d [Carved] away the elder’s finger, removing it permanently. No healing would bring it back. He could easily, easily hide away somewhere forever. Let the world fester and rot and shelter those he found worthy of sheltering - a little like the Guardian’s nation of Unbahr. 

The city Zyl had built was, largely, peaceful. Yes, they had crime. Petty theft, for example. But there wasn’t… this.

Placing another foot on the rocky slopes of the peak of Slaughter, Mercury grimaced. Some of the stone was slick with fresh blood - thought most of it was dried. Dark, black-red flakes that lifted off the mountain when he took more steps. So much death, he thought. So very much death in one place.

Was it truly fair of him to only carve out a small slice? Should he have to do better? Where, exactly, laid the bounds of his responsibility?

Everyone could make the world a better place - in smaller and bigger ways. He had the capability to make a pretty big difference… and honestly? He had the desire as well. The child who’d slipped had been terrified, frothing at the mouth, trying to murder Zyl for the crime of saving them. 

It was just sad to see. Grand elder Yozai didn’t speak of the issue anymore, but his eyes were sad. And Mercury knew the truth.

There was no saving the kid. They’d be torn apart by the other little cultist apprentices on the slopes, because they were meant to be dead already. That was tragic, too, and there was something they could do, which was move the kid. Place them under protection. And so on and so forth.

Of course, they did. The kid was transferred to the peak of frozen blood, and elder Yozai promised to do right by them. But it was a stopgap measure, it wouldn’t solve any of the problems that clearly plagued the cults.

The righteous sects were willing to kill outsiders to fuel their petty wars for resources. The cults willingly threw kids into a crucible to turn them into brutal killers. Everyone who participated in something like this was a horrid person, no two ways about it. And yet, Mercury could not run.

So, he returned to the question: What should he do about it?

And Mercury decided on a very simple answer. He’d tackle each problem he encountered, big and small, one by one. Not because he was perfect or an altruist, but because he could make the world a little better, and he wanted to. It just annoyed him to see people suffer if he could help it, especially people who don’t really have much of an own hand in their suffering.

Pallisade-girl, for example, was eight years old, he’d learnt. She was the only survivor of a man who had his family exterminated for seven generations. The very last. Orphans at the young age of four. She’d stolen food to survive, and joined the cults at six, being part of the peak of Broken Swords.

Mostly focused on disarming their opponents, she was already well versed in weapon-breaking techniques and grappling. Of course, the grapples they learnt were all intended to hurt - and it was common to break an arm or dislocate joints during even supervised sparring. 

The eight-year-old had proudly bragged about only having her legs broken twice.

Thinking about it again, Mercury shook his head and took another step up the mountain. The rocky ground was growing steeper, but he still held his footing. <Itinerant> was meant to create a path for him, after all. Take him wherever he wanted to go. And he wanted to go up the dang mountain.

And so, he walked, standing upright on an almost vertical surface, and taking step after step up the slope under the watchful eyes of fewer and fewer disciples. The air grew thin, and it was harder to retain footing this high up, so only the most advanced disciples of the peak would climb this high. Teenagers near the end of their training - around eighteen years old.

Some of them tried to approach Mercury. One even made it close - a young girl with flowing, blue hair. She tried to kill him, too. Which was, apparently, roughly what a greeting looked like on the peak of Slaughter.

Mercury formed a sword from assimilated ice, and wrapped it in weapon intent. Then, when her knife slashed against his, the stone cleanly came apart, and Mercury caught the wayward piece of the blade with his other hand. “Your intent needs work,” he directed.

It was a silly bit of advice, since intent usually only developed once people were past the stages of disciples, but the girl did immediately sit down and meditate on it, so what did he know? The elders following him also seemed pleased.

So he ignored it, and climbed some more.

- - -

The Peak of Slaughter was a small thing. It was a desolate collection of a few houses. There was a manor, yes, but it was broken down. Little more than a rotten shack. Mercury did not go there, though.

Instead, his path led to a smaller house on the side. Called an “admission office.”

Calling the people on the path up the mountains “disciples” was a rather generous term for them. It was more correct to call them cultist aspirants. They weren’t even properly admitted into the cult yet. 

No, to be admitted, and become a member of the cult, climbing to a peak and speaking to a deacon was necessary. And so, that’s what Mercury did. He walked into one of the abandoned looking shacks, with a half-rotted roof and broken floorboards, and walked up to a rotten counter.

Behind it lounged a middle-aged man with a long piece of grass in his mouth, his legs up on the rotting counter, clad in tall leather boots. He had a scruffy beard, and glanced at Mercury from the corner of his eyes with a good bit of disdain.

“The feck’re you?” he asked with a nasally, annoyed voice.

Mercury smiled calmly. “Good evening, deacon,” he said. “I’ve come to join the Cult of Infernal Flames.”

At that, the man raised an eyebrow. He looked Mercury up n down, shaking his head. “White robes, face without a speck of grime, and fucking polite too? You ain’t no cultist, man. If you’re a spy, you’re doing a right shit job at it. Piss of back to where you came from,” the deacon said, nodding at the door. 

“I do not believe he should,” a muscular man said from beside Mercury. He had a thick mane of spiky hair, spilling down to the middle of his back, and scars covered his shirtless body - including the kind usually associated with top surgery. A thick beard spread on his wild face, which was pulled apart in a grin - giving him an appearance of someone more beast than man. 

“Peak Master!” the deacon said, blood leaving his face as he took his shoes off the table and bowed deeply. “My sincere apologies,” the man said, voice quivering. 

“Fakakakaka!” the beastly man laughed. “Don’t worry about it,” he assured the deacon with a slap on the back. A slap that was so powerful it sent the middle aged man rocketing teeth first through the wooden counter, smashing the wood into splinters as the deacon slammed into the floor. The master of the peak of Slaughter just grinned. “Whoops,” he said, then turned to Mercury.

“You,” he said, eyes glinting. “You’re a beast.”

“I’m not,” Mercury said calmly.

“You are.”

Slowly, the mopaaw tilted his head. “I may have the body of the beast,” he said slowly, “but you have the mind of one. We are not the same.”

His grin widening, the peak master looked almost feral. “The body of a beast,” he said, licking his lips. Already, his legs shifted, his fists clenched, and he got into a stance for combat. “Show me.”

And then he punched.

And then, his punch landed, in the palm of a dragon.

Zyl stood in front of the peak master, and the entire house around them was torn to splinters in a single moment of violence. “Do not touch him,” the dragon said calmly, frostily.

The peak master’s eyes glinted. “Another beast,” he whispered. “Fakakaka. Today must be my lucky day…”