After Holmen, there were a dozen towns and villages in as many nights. The first couple were as empty as the lands that separated them. They’d managed to escape with their lives, at least for now. The Ebon Blade did not attempt to direct its army to run them down. Instead, it curved ever more northward, away from the most likely paths of commerce and flight.
+14 Greater Monster Souls.
Everyone down the main trade road would be warned by now. The knowledge that such a large city had been sacked would soon proceed them by weeks, which meant that their prey existed in the hinterlands, blissfully ignorant of the danger that awaited them.
These hinterlands were vast, open spaces, and though not quite as desolate as the eastern steppes it had started its life in, they were still too dry for agriculture in most places. So, small herding villages were spaces far apart in the rolling hills, and smaller towns clung to streams and the tributaries of the two rivers they’d just bypassed.
These hamlets were so small that no real strategy was required. They were defeated before half the army even heard the screams over the sounds of booted feet and battle cries. Still, the blade forced its wielder to force them to wait until night to assault and to spread out before each battle in a wide, crescent shape that would fully envelop the town. This wasn’t to make the combat faster or more survivable for the orcs, though. It didn’t care who survived and died so long as they did the dying near it.
+9 Greater Monster Souls.
What it cared about on these small, soft targets was that no one got away. While there were never enough people to recreate the overwhelming bliss it had achieved in the courtyard of Holmen’s keep as men had died by the score all around it, the deaths of hundreds were enough to keep it fed as it moved closer to the real prize, though it was forced to spend 4,000 Life Force on Lesser Life Storage 3 and Lesser Soul Storage 3 just to keep from overflowing with the energy it was gaining from their near nightly raids.
Each of these battles pitted an unready and inexperienced populous against a hungry horde, so each cost it less than a dozen lives of its own men. In time, those losses would add up, but for now, they were acceptable, and in Var’gar’s hand, the blade rampaged across the countryside, killing hundreds.
From each town and village, it selected a few souls to tell it more about the region, but the rest it consumed. Those deaths gave it a chance for significant upgrades, but even the council of spirits was almost never wasted. Traders told it the fastest ways to get places or which of the nearby villages, and shepherds told it about shortcuts or holes in the walls of towns that actually had walls. Everyone knew some secret, and it used those to speed their journey as it learned about the area one death at a time.
The landscape seemed far from dangerous. Sometimes, tucked away in quiet corners, they even found little, half underground halfling villages. They were hidden in plain sight beneath hills well enough that the orcs would have missed several of them entirely if not for the whispers of the dead.
+28 Greater Monster Souls.
The vast plains were currently held by treaty by the Principality of Markhem, but the locals didn’t seem to care about that. It was just a distant name attached to a city-state on the sea. The whole area changed hands a couple of times each generation as it was sold, traded, or conquered by someone else. That earned it the title of the Contested Lands from the people who didn’t really care who they paid their taxes to, only that they had to pay them.
Only once in all of those occasions did they encounter any real resistance. A band of would-be heroes that included a mage and a priest tried and failed to defend a village of nearly five hundred souls before they realized the size of the orc band they faced. They tried to run, but by then, it was too late.
The group reminded it a bit of Ivarr and his little band as the orcs slaughtered him. There were other, vaguer memories too, though, that it shied uncomfortably away from, too. Baraga had been a mercenary, hadn’t he? Did he engage in heroics with friends who shared his death wish? It didn’t remember.
The blade could have saved and repaired its soul again, but at least for now, it decided against that, too. It had too many other powers to consider. Connection, control, senses, and soul were all its lowest scores, and while it could spend 5,000 Life Force to repair its soul further, it could increase all three of the others for only slightly more.
Even that was only one of many options. It was very cheap to increase the magics that would upgrade its wielder, but those seemed to come with a heavy burden that was only offset by its Parasitic Link ability, and it did not like to think about how quickly it would burn through its reserves should it find itself stranded again. The forest that Ivarr had left it in had been full of things to kill, but if it were high in the mountains when it was abandoned or left on these plains, it would have a tougher time.
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Life Force: 3398/7800
Path: Death, Level 5 - complete
Blood, Level 2 - 8/18 offerings.
Reserves: 10 - Your gemstone is perfect. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖✦𝙣𝙚𝙩
Siphon: 7 -Your blade islong andsharp.
Connection: 3 - Moderate - Your hilt is tight but tarnished.
Control: 3 - Moderate - Your runes are clear.
Senses: 3 - Dim - Your hilt is tarnished.
There was also its Aura of Hunger to consider. Though it had worked hard to finish that ability so that one more loose thread was tied up, its thoughts lingered on it. It wasn’t finished. Apparently, it would never be. The real question was just how it should use it.
For 5,000 Life Force, it could apparently double one trait at the cost of halving another. At first glance, that seemed like a very expensive zero-sum game, but was it? Would halving the number of targets to increase the speed at which it devoured them be worth it? Perhaps it wasn’t speed it should be concerned with, but the amount it drained from them instead. One thing it knew, though, was that at least as long as it was engaging in the wholesale slaughter, what it was really missing out on was range.
Both its Path of Death and Path of Blood abilities used its Aura of Hunger as their own range as well. Which meant that on a crowded battlefield, it was possible to claim more of those souls. Surely, it would be worth it to halve the number of targets or even the amount that it drained to increase the range, wouldn’t it? Increasing the range once would increase it from twenty feet to thirty, and increasing it twice would increase it from thirty feet to forty-five feet.
The blade could definitely see the value in that. When it had been trapped in the dragon’s lair, an extra five feet had made all the difference in the world. The only thing that prevented it from doing just that was that it hadn’t done it in the past. In fact, it was fairly certain it had the same range then as it did now, based on the spacing between the bars of its cell and the altar where it had been placed.
If it’s such a good idea to do now, why didn’t I do it then? It wondered. Did I focus on pure power? Is that somehow better?
If the blade increased the rate at which it siphoned life away by reducing targets and range and increasing the speed, it could see how that would be helpful, too. Focusing that sort of hunger on a single human and devouring them whole would be a way to kill almost anyone within a few seconds. Still, if it did, would it ever be able to engage in meaningful combat again, or would the desire to simply consume its enemies be too strong?
The blade spent days considering all of those possible choices. It considered everything from having the lightest of touches on things over a hundred feet away to having the strongest of grips on a single soul within arms reach, but in the end, it decided to go another way altogether.
As its army crossed the rolling, arid plains, sacking villages as they went, it eventually decided to increase its senses. It had planned to increase its connection after that. But after it saw what Increase Senses 4 revealed, it decided that Increase Senses 5 had to be the next step, even though it was another 3,000 Life Force.
Increase Senses 4: The world dims, even as your sight grows sharper. You can see further than ever before, but now you can see within your opponents as well.
You have gained the ability to detect magic and mana flows to a limited degree.
Increase Senses 5: All this time you have seen more than a weapon ever should, but now that your senses have been perfected you can see more than should even be possible. The world has been stripped of any beauty it might have held in your gaze, but now, at the cost of Life Force you can drill deeper into anyone or anything you focus on, gaining the ability to see unseen traits like their strengths, abilities, or even their motivations and morality.
As the blade read each of those messages, it was confused by how something could become dimmer as the world became sharper, but it was true. It could see clearly to the horizon now, and if it focused on the souls of any of the orcs in its army, it could see their dark souls and sluggish mana flows, but it couldn’t concentrate on the mundane details that one of its wielders might care about. Instead of looking at a tree on a hill with the sun setting behind it and noting how lovely it was, all it could see was the potential for ambush.
In a sense, it was like a caged beast that had reached the edge of its cage and could see the world clearly, but it could only see that the world held nothing for it. It was a sword, after all. It existed to kill, not to appreciate.
That metaphor of the caged beast haunted it through the next several days. No matter how many people they killed, it kept coming to mind, even though it didn’t know why. It wasn’t caged. In this metaphor, it was the cage. Does that mean my powers are the beast? It wondered idly as the orcish army marched on in the background.
+11 Greater Monster Souls.
Was it afraid that its power was growing too quickly? It didn’t think so. Still, it was unable to pin down why that image should even occur to it in the first place.