War God for Hire- Mercenary: A Reincarnation, Cultivation, Litrpg Adventure

by David Burke

  Kyle turned and walked away. He knew the outcome might be different, now. Perhaps there was hope if he could raise an army of Sabers. Well, it was a decent beginning.

  Chapter 13 - Truth within Lies

  Once Kyle was sure Saber had things in hand, he simply walked away.

  The recruits were all clamoring to talk to Saber. It might take a bit to get them back under control, but they would soon be eating out of his hand. Being trained by a former arena champion would have been an honor for most of the trainees, but being trained by a battle mage? That was something on an entirely different level.

  Kyle started thinking about what project he should work on next, when he felt a man quickly approaching him. There was no lethal intent in the running man, so Kyle just stopped and waited till he got there. The man’s attire was a bit perplexing. He wore what looked like livery, but it had a war hammer across the chest.

  That device match any of the noble houses that Kyle had seen before, either in Thena or at the Governor’s luncheon.

  The man came to a stop, panting, but finally got himself under control. “Oh, good, it’s you, heir. The Governor sent a messenger. He is waiting to speak to one of the guild’s officers, but they need you.”

  “Catch your breath. Then explain. First off, who are you? And secondly, what do you mean calling me ‘heir’?”

  The man looked scared for a moment but then gulped and squared his shoulders. With only a little tremor in his voice, he said, “I’m sorry, heir. I should have introduced myself. I'm Jakob.” He bowed.

  “Lady Meeka hired me as part of your staff. I work for the guild, but specifically for you. There aren’t many of us yet, but Lady Meeka said she had to interview us to find people worthy of serving the heir.”

  “Okay. It’s nice to meet you, Jakob.” Kyle frowned. “It would have been nice of Meeka to consult me first, if she was setting up a staff for me.”

  “Are you going to fire me, M’lord?” Jakob asked in a panicked voice.

  “Calm down. Seriously. I need the people who work for me to be calm.” He snorted. “There is more than enough tension around here already. As for your question… No, I’m not firing you. I will need to get to know you, but even if you don’t end up on my personal staff, we will find a place for you in the guild.”

  He eyed the man. “But if we are going to get along, then you need to answer my questions, when I ask them. So… one last time. What do you mean by ‘heir’?”

  Confusion was plastered all over Jakob’s face. “I’m not sure if this is a test, M’lord, but you are the heir… the war god’s heir. That is what Lady Meeka has been telling everyone.” He paused. “Is that not correct?”

  Kyle groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Do you want us to call you something different, M’lord?” Jakob asked.

  Kyle sighed, shaking his head. Just one more thing he’d have to speak with Meeka about. “Well, I guess we better go see what this messenger needs.”

  Jakob led him to the messenger, who was pacing in the front room.

  “Ah, it’s you,” the messenger said. “The Governor orders you to slay a new monster that has appeared to the west of the city.”

  “No one orders me to do anything,” Kyle growled.

  The messenger stumbled over his words as he blanched, “I... err… well… I thought that was the deal.”

  “What deal?” Kyle demanded.

  “I can answer that, M’lord,” Meeka said, walking up to them.

  “I certainly hope you can. We need to talk,” Kyle said. He frowned. “About this, and a few other things, too.”

  “We can go to my office. Or if you prefer more intimacy, we could always go to your private chambers,” Meeka replied.

  “Not, now,” he grunted. “Explanations first and then we can play your games.”

  She bowed her head and then led Kyle to her office.

  He hadn’t even known she had an office, but figured it was appropriate, given everything she was doing for the guild. Instead of going to sit behind the desk, she sat on the small two-person couch that was against a wall and patted the empty seat next to her, inviting Kyle to join her.

  He remained standing, a few feet in front of her. “I said, explanation first, remember?”

  “Yes, sorry.” She sighed. “It is force of habit. You left the luncheon and I had to negotiate on your behalf. Unfortunately, you had given them enough to see that you were valuable, but not enough for them to respect, let alone fear, you. My father always said that respect was ideal but impractical, and that given a choice between fear or mutual desire, fear would always win out.”

  “Cynical, but not wrong,” Kyle mused before turning back to Lady Meeka.

  “So, you are telling me this is all my fault? You should tread very carefully here. I have been putting it off, giving you as many chances as possible—some would say too many. On the surface, you have treated all of us fairly and have certainly been more than helpful to the guild, but I know you are hiding things,” Kyle snapped.

  She giggled, somehow making it seem seductive. “Why, of course, every woman has to keep her secrets. You may have discovered some of them, but all the women in your life have secrets.”

  He narrowed his gaze at her.

  “In this case though,” she continued, “I will speak plainly.”

  Kyle nodded for her to get on with it.

  “I needed to come up with a way to cause them to fear you. So, I revealed to them that you are Krig’s heir. They started falling over themselves at that point, trying to come up with ways to appease you.” She shrugged. “Nargossa is but a small city, owing fealty to Khepri, Queen of Calrissi, a woman better known as the Empress of Shade. If they had their own powerful patron, then they wouldn’t have to pay tribute to Calrissi.”

  “So, you set about to deceive them?” Kyle asked.

  “It would hardly be the first time I've deceived someone, but we both know it isn’t deceiving them.” She smiled up at him.

  “What is it you think you know?” he growled.

  “Krig is gone, yet you wield a great deal of his power. It isn’t hard to put two and two together. You are either Krig reborn, or you have inherited some of his power. You don’t need to tell me which it is, we just have to play this game in order for you to build up your power here in Nargossa,” Meeka said.

  “And what do you expect to get out of this?”

  “I had to ask myself, was it better to be the ruler of a noble house in Thena? Or the right hand to a god? The answer was fairly obvious to me.”

  “There is more that you aren’t telling me. I can’t let you stay if you’re going to lie to me, let alone be my right hand. So why don’t you tell me what is really going on, Meeka?”

  “How do I know you won’t just strike me down?”

  “You don’t have any guarantee, beyond my word. I won’t waste a valuable resource just because of prior mistakes. But I also won’t give a place to someone who can’t be loyal,” Kyle answered.

  “I have been thinking this through over and over. I have been testing you repeatedly, but now I believe you really are the war god reincarnated. You just don’t have your full powers yet, for some reason. I propose we become partners… of sorts. You will lend me your strength and I will organize your army for you,” Meeka offered.

  “So, you admit that I am a god, and yet you talk about a partnership?”

  “An incomplete god,” she retorted.

  “And what are you?”

  She suddenly got very coy. “Well, this might sound rather naughty, but in a sense… I’m your niece.”

  Kyle leapt back from her. His soul bound weapon was instantly in his hands and his essence wheel spun as fast as he dared make it, even with Hav’s pendant. Suddenly, many things fell into place. He pressed on her with his senses out and felt a resistance.

  He would never be able to break through her cloak, though, if h
e treated her gently. Now, he had to treat her as a threat. His aura simply swallowed her.

  Her head tilted back, and she moaned in bliss at the pain he must have been causing her. He could see the weaves of deceit essence layered around her. There was more to her than that, though. She clearly wasn’t human. He could see the splinter of Bedrag’s power within her.

  “Show your true form!” His command filled the room, the power exerted through his essence reinforced words bringing Meeka to her knees.

  The smile was wiped off her face in an instant. “How could you have become so powerful without me realizing it?”

  “You don’t know everything,” he snapped, “and you aren’t the only one who can hide their power. Show me your true self.”

  “Just remember that you gave me your word and don’t forget that we have a contract,” she replied as she stood.

  The air surrounding her shimmered as the illusion fell away. Kyle then saw Raina for the first time rather than face of a noblewoman named Meeka that she’d worn. Whereas before, she had been a gorgeous blonde, at the peak of human beauty, now she was something more.

  Nyda’s beauty was innocent and sweet, the kind he wanted to protect. Kierra, on the other hand, was a fierce beauty—a beauty composed of not just her appearance, but also by her wild demeanor as determination as a hunter. Hilde’s beauty was perfection personified, far beyond what any mortal could possess. Even Marie had a distinct beauty to her, actually enhanced by the numerous scars he had seen spread across her skin.

  No, Meeka was something different. It wasn’t that she was any more beautiful than Hilde. In fact, there were slight flaws in her beauty that made her somewhat less than his fiery Celestial: a smile that was more leering and eyes that betrayed a deep hunger. She was every bit the hunter that Kierra was, but it was obvious that he was her intended prey.

  Her body was covered in only the loosest sense of the word. The leather dress she wore resembled a web and was clearly meant to draw the eyes to all of her most salient features. She had wings, just as Hilde did, though hers were black and leathery, like a bat’s. Her tail was long and sinuous, with a barbed tail. The largest pieces of material she wore were her black, knee-high leather boots.

  “Succubus,” Kyle hissed.

  “Yes. I didn’t know if you would know what my type is… but this appearance can be as startling as it is enticing,” she mused

  “You realize had you revealed yourself as this to me two days ago, we would be locked in battle now. Even now that I know you are much weaker than me, I have no way to trust you,” Kyle said.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to fight you, even two days ago. Your increase in power has been significant, but once I saw you battle Barak to a standstill, I knew I wasn’t strong enough to beat you head-on in a fight,” Raina admitted.

  “So that was your fault?”

  She brought one of her long razor-sharp nails to her lips, sucking on it suggestively. “What can I say? I’ve been a bad girl. You should punish me.”

  She turned and leaned over the couch, presenting him her perfect, heart shaped ass.

  “Sit down,” he growled, “and stop acting like that. I should probably destroy you, but it would ruin our cover and likely bring one of the other gods down on us. From what I can tell, you must be Bedrag’s daughter, but I don’t even know your name.”

  Kyle shook his head. He knew he couldn’t trust her, but he also blamed himself for not having noticed this sooner. Even sitting, sexuality simply oozed off of her. Any subtlety was gone. He saw lust essence just leaking out of her.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “my parents are Bedrag and Suge, queen of the succubi. My birth name is Raina.”

  Kyle paced back and forth. He was able to resist the temptation that she presented, but even when he spun his essence wheel and shielded his mind, he was always aware of it. “I don’t know what to do with you. Who else have you told about me?”

  “Are you crazy? Only Barak.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a light-hearted one. “Surely you know that we demi-gods are not liked by the gods—usually not even by our divine parent, who consider us tools. One of the few ways that we can power up is by killing other demi-gods, so we generally hate each other.”

  She smiled—almost leered—at him again. “My mother’s gifts, combined with the power I got from my father, have allowed me to have some success manipulating other demi-gods. Well, the ones who are male, at least.”

  She shrugged. “Barak was the perfect tool. He is physically strong, but a moron.”

  “A perfect tool for what?”

  “Why, to consume your power, of course. But that was before I realized you were truly a god. At first, I thought you were just a fool who had inherited some fraction of Krig’s power. I even thought that if I let you power it up enough, that when I defeated you, it might even push me all the way up to the Divine Tier.”

  “And now? You are a succubus. On my world, that means that you survive by draining the sexual energy of other beings. How would I ever be able to trust you? And if anything, ever happened between us, you should know that I don’t share what is mine with others.”

  “That is an interesting misconception,” Raina smirked. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘your world’, but we succubi don’t live on sexual energy, although it is like alcohol or a drug to us. We live on essence, as all Spirit Tier beings do… the same as your pet celestial,” Raina admitted.

  “What are you proposing I do with you?”

  She smiled and said, “Well, if you don’t want to punish me…” but quickly cut short what she was going to say when she saw the glare Kyle gave her.

  “Fine,” she sighed, “I propose you let me prove myself to be your most loyal and valuable assistant. I fear your power, and we have a mutual desire of surviving the wrath of the other gods.”

  She batted her eyes at him. “Why not let me aid you? I swear upon my father’s name that I will faithfully serve you.”

  Kyle burst out in laughter at her vow. It helped to ease the tension he was feeling. Not as much as time with one of his girls might relieve his stress, but he didn’t dare let his mind go there—not while staring at Raina.

  “As though I would trust an oath made upon the god of deceit,” he snorted.

  She didn’t say anything as Kyle continued to pace back and forth. He had an idea, but it was risky. The problem was that she offered a lot of additional power, and the greater threat of the void had made all the champions come together once before. When it came down to it, he would be a fool to throw away a weapon now.

  “I don’t trust you to be faithful to me… not yet at least. But I do trust you to look out for your own self-interests. I will consider giving you one of my divine splinters, but first you will have to prove both your loyalty and your utility. And no, I don’t mean like that.”

  He glared at her, surprised at the heat that suddenly sprang up in her eyes.

  “I will also have to make some other arrangements. In the meantime,” he continued, “you will have to continue to hide as Meeka. If any of my other women were to find out what you are, I wouldn’t blame them for trying to kill you. Then, even if you survived them, I would have no choice but to end you.”

  “Very well,” she bowed her head. “When you are ready, I can show you how to use that seed of deceit essence within you. I will prove myself to be very useful, both in that way and in… others.” The way she said the last word with an emphasis ably demonstrated what she meant.

  “Change back to Meeka and then tell me about this monster the Governor wants us to destroy,” Kyle commanded.

  “Yes, M’lord.”

  Chapter 14 - Old Foes

  It turned out that the monster in question had attacked a salt mine that was vital to the economy of Nargossa. Salt was one of its chief exports, as most of the rest of the city’s income was generated by its role as a trade route. So, a monster attack here was particularly inclined to att
ract attention.

  Kyle was a bit disgusted by the lack of concern for the miners. The message from the Governor was all about ensuring that the entrance to the mine didn't collapse in whatever fighting they had to do to drive the monster away. The messenger, in turn, was confused that Kyle expressed concern for the well-being of the slaves who worked the mine.

  All the information that they could provide, was that this monster was some type of burrowing lizard. Kyle looked around for his team. Nyda was working with, Selma and he didn’t want to interrupt that. Gilthan was nowhere to be found, although Raina informed him that both the elven sorcerer and Kierra were out scouting for more undead.