The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1)

by Craig Kobayashi

  "What the hell?!" screamed Leviathan, turning to face him. She moved slowly and without any hint of retaliation. "I send you a friend request and you just fly over here and attack me without a word? Who the hell does that? Seriously."

  "Someone who intends to kill you," said Garath coldly. He was taken aback at first by the mind-fuck that this person, that had killed six of his friends, was a seventeen-year-old girl - but Garath didn't feel anything like himself. Between his raging need for vengeance and the effects of tainted soul just begging for her life force to increase his own power, all the Crystillium in the world wouldn't have been able to stop him from the decision he had made before he ever knew his prey was a child. He would kill her.

  "When I saw you were a Necrologist too I thought maybe we could work together," suggested Leviathan. She took a step toward him and extended her hand. "My friends call me Levi."

  Garath took a step back as she stepped toward him. He landed outside the range of the instant cast Blight on purpose and didn't intend to lose the damage over time battle going on even as they talked.

  Standing only ten-feet from her, with the light of a full moon on a clear night, he could make out her features easily. She was even taller than he had originally guessed and was wearing black combat boots with a thick heel, bringing her to at least 6'5". The enemy Necrologist didn't have any items equipped that Garath could see, not even the Necrologist starting hat that provided +30 Mana. Instead, she was garbed in all black. Black, baggy pants with pockets and chains that hung sporadically, connecting her black combat boots to her black, tight Metallica t-shirt.

  "I'm not going to attack you," she said, taking another step toward him and baring her teeth in an almost-friendly smile. Garath took another step back, causing Leviathan to frown. “Just think about it, dual-Plagues. Think of the Experience we could harvest.”

  Garath wasn’t having any of her shit. He would be lying if he said the idea didn’t get his attention, but he wasn’t a murderer. His staff extended toward the towering girl-child as he started to cast Haunt.

  “There are other ways to gain power, kid.” Garath paused, holding onto the Blood spell in front of him and considering briefly whether to offer her the opportunity to leave before he ended her. He decided against it. She would surely go on to kill more humans if he did, leaving their blood as much on his hands as it would be if he joined her - but without the Exp. No, he couldn’t let her go. Even if she ran, he would follow. Decision made, Garath released the Haunt and started funneling Mana into Creeping Death as the saunguine spectre flew screaming at Leviathan.

  As far as his DoT spells went, leading with Haunt was definitely the best way to go. Not only did it keep the damage-over-time battle going his way, it also reduced the movement speed of his enemy by 30% - effectively making him 30% faster in their 1v1 deathmatch.

  “Hey!” she shouted, the feigned smile departing her face and twisting into a cruel scowl. “Okay, fine.”

  Garath pulled the Flayer and Fel Hound from his mind and into reality instantly. He didn't need to give a command for them to attack this time, they each could feel his animosity toward the enemy Necrologist and acted on instinct. The Flayer lifted off with an easy beat of its newly improved, larger blue wings and fired a Death Bolt at Leviathan. The Fel Hound's sharp claws tore into the ground as he bolted toward the target, sending large chunks of tall grass flying in his wake.

  This wasn't Leviathan's first confrontation. As soon as Garath summoned his demons, she activated Black Blood. Unseen by Garath, tiny black droplets exited her pores and formed a black mist around her. He only noticed that she had activated the spell shield when his Flayer's second bolt of black energy impacted it, and ricocheted off. Inside her blood-formed spell shield, Leviathan began to cast.

  Apparently, Leviathan had not bound her demons to this plane of existence like Garath had. He recognized the cast immediately as Summon Flayer when a dark purple summoning circle appeared at her feet. A small, winged demon emerged from the circle three seconds later with a hideous scowl on its face.

  Garath looked unimpressed at seeing the little creature Leviathan had summoned. The initial form of a Flayer next to his, much larger Flayer almost seemed cute. Or it would, if the demon’s weren’t so repulsive. Garath’s slightly blue-tinted Flayer had nearly twice the wingspan and its horns were far longer. Even the little muscles on the arms and chest of his bonded Flayer dwarfed those of Leviathan's puny answer to his attack.

  During the three seconds that Leviathan had used to summon her Flayer, Garath landed another stack of Quickening Entropy on his target and started funneling Mana into Creeping Death to land a third. Though Creeping Death was easily his best single target option, the increasing Mana cost for each stack quickly became prohibitive. The first stack only cost him 60 Mana, a drop in the bucket. The second stack cost 78, and the third 101. Garath did an internal ‘woop woop!’ when he saw that his damage-over-time spell landed on his target without being affected by her shield of Black Blood.

  *Ignore the Flayer,* he told the demon hovering in front of him sending Death Bolts at Leviathan on repeat without concern for Mana depletion. *Kill her.* Then he addressed the Fell Hound. *Keep her demon busy.*

  Garath’s Flayer's Death Bolts were hitting Leviathan's Black Blood shield and ricocheting off into the night. Garath knew she would be able to use Black Blood as a shield for "up to five minutes," per the Skill description, but he himself had wondered just how much damage it could take. He resolved to find out exactly how much her shield could take by going over his combat log in detail after he killed her.

  Garath continued stacking Creeping Death's QE debuffs on his enemy. The five stacks he managed to land on her, in all, cost him 540 Mana (and five more taints to his natural form). He knew he was winning the damage over time battle and planned to continue that. The duration of his opening Blight ended and he considered rushing forward to release another of the instant-cast DoT, but things were going well enough that he decided against it. That was when Leviathan turned the tables.

  From behind the protective barrier of hardened blood, the insane Necrologist started laughing - sounding like the joker would have if he had ever outsmarted Batman. From Garath's point of view, her features were distorted behind black mist in the dark of night, but he saw her silhouette reach to the back of her waist and retrieve what was unmistakably a handgun tipped with a silencer.

  ‘Now how in the shit does a seventeen-year-old girl have a FUCKING silencer?’ was the thought going through Garath's mind as she lifted the pistol and fired.

  He didn't have time to react. A white-hot searing exploded from his shoulder as the projectile passed through it. His HP matched the pain, dropping by almost two-hundred in a flash. The HP Garath was regenerating each second would have been able to heal the wound completely in under ten seconds, had he not been taking damage from Plague - but as it was, the hole in his shoulder was closing slowly. Leviathan's gun shot had also blessed him with a bleed debuff that, coupled with Plague, did nearly as much damage per second as he was restoring.

  Garath cackled with delight. The pain aside, he felt truly powerful. He had just been fucking shot and the wound was closing before his eyes like he was Wolverine or some shit. With his HP steadily increasing and still over fifty-percent even after being shot, it was his turn to turn the tables.

  Garath activated Black Blood, super-human or not, a few more rounds from that pistol and he'd be wrapped in a sheet next to Mark and Sarah. Tiny droplets emerged from his skin and formed a protective barrier between himself and the gargantuan girl-child.

  Leviathan fired again but the bullet was deflected easily by Garath's sanguine shield. She loosed the entire clip into the barrier as Garath and his Flayer returned fire in the form of black balls of death energy and additional stacks of QE. The sixth stack of the Death magic debuff cost Garath 221 Mana, the seventh 287. He started getting light headed but kept his head in the game to stack the debuff an eighth time for t
he staggering cost of373 Mana - dropping his Mana bar to nearly zero.

  Large cracks spread across each of their defensive walls of Black Blood, but it was Leviathan's that went down first. The hardened blood wall around her shattered then dispersed into the night air.

  Levi fell to her knees with her hands covering her head. The spell backlash from the destruction of her shield, Garath figured, was causing a world of pain - having not experienced that himself, he wondered briefly if there was a way to dispel the shield before that happened but figured that was another thing to be explored at a later time. With her HP below thirty-percent and dropping precipitously from even more incoming Death Bolts, Garath hesitated. Could he really just kill this high school aged child?

  ‘Yes,’ he told himself. ‘Yes I can. For Mark and Sarah, for fucking Gran!’

  Leviathan looked up at him with unadulterated rage on her demonic face, her eyes glowing fiercely. She reached out with one hand toward her Flayer, then clenched her hand into a fist. A beam of pure darkness - so dark it was even visible at night - shot from her hand and into her own Flayer. The base level demon shrieked awfully in pain and then died.

  The effect of Leviathan's spell would serve only to prolong the fight. A quick look at his ever-scrolling combat log let Garath know that she had just cast Repurpose Life Force. In effect, she had killed her own summoned creature to restore 50% of her total HP instantly.

  Suddenly, Leviathan sprang to her feet, then turned around and sprinted toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean. With her long legs, only three strides were required to cover the distance and she jumped, screaming, off the cliff in a wild dash to escape with her life from a fight that she knew she had lost.

  Garath ran to the edge after her and looked over. When he didn't see her flailing toward the water below, Garath figured she must have shifted forms. He backed away from the cliff to watch his combat log while staying alert for any movement in his peripherals.

  Begin Combat Log:

  [15:36:49.003] Leviathan suffers 87.9 (death) damage from Your Creeping Death(8 stacks) [base 29.3 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:49.651] Leviathan suffers 27 (death) damage from Your Plague [base 9 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:50.003] Leviathan suffers 87.9 (death) damage from Your Creeping Death(8 stacks) [base 29.3 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:50.651] Leviathan suffers 27 (death) damage from Your Plague [base 9 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:51.003] Leviathan suffers 87.9 (death) damage from Your Creeping Death(8 stacks) [base 29.3 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:51.651] Leviathan suffers 27 (death) damage from Your Plague [base 9 (300% for form size: Diminutive)]

  [15:36:50.651] You have slain Leviathan. You are awarded 43,500 experience!

  End Combat Log.

  The story of Leviathan ended there. It was over. Her attempt to gain Health by consuming her Flayer before making a mad dash to escape had ultimately spelled her own demise. Had she stayed in human form, she may have had a chance but the 300% increased damage for whatever diminutive form she had taken after jumping off the cliff was too much for her rapidly diminishing Health to handle. Garath couldn't believe the amount of experience points he was awarded for killing a sapient being and the sense of euphoria pulsing, almost sexually, throughout his body became immediately addictive.

  He needed to feel that again.

  Chapter 36

  A Bright-ish Future

  Garath spent the remainder of the warm summer night alone. A gentle breeze sweeping up off the pacific cooled the air and the lapping of waves against the rocks below comforted the Necrologist sitting contemplatively on the cliff that he had ended the life of a child not long before. There were a myriad of reasons for his self-imposed solitude - not the least of which was that, after the euphoria from killing Leviathan had faded, the Necrologist feared that the addiction to murder that had obviously consumed Levi's rational mind would overtake him as well. He drank the Crystillium liquid as soon as the duration of its mind focusing ability faded but he didn't feel like himself. He still needed more power and the urge to feel that euphoria again felt impossible to resist. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything before in his life. Without knowing whether he was in complete control of himself, Garath wouldn't risk coming in contact with another human.

  Another thing on his mind was the overwhelming anxiety that threatened to overtake him at even the thought of discussing what had just happened with anyone. He had killed a seventeen-year-old girl. Even if she was an insane murderer, it was not something he was proud of and, even moreso, it was definitely not something he wanted to talk about. He did send a group message to everyone simply letting them know the threat had been quelled. In response, he received several messages of thanks and praise. But that only made things worse.

  The tiny silver egg in his pocket occupied his thoughts as well, a sliver of excitement and hope lightening his otherwise very dark musings. He decided to plant it right there on the cliff. It was far enough from the HQ building that he wouldn't have to worry about it and yet it was close enough that he could come check on it as often as he liked. But, as he pulled the egg from his pocket and looked down at it in his open palm, something occurred to him - Garath had never planted anything before in his life. The concept was simple enough: dig a hole, put the seed in the hole, then put dirt over the seed and water it. Right? He was sure it couldn't be much more complicated than that, but he accessed the Quest information again to see if it provided any useful tips.

  Quest: Water for the Egg

  It is clear that your Egg is from another world. To integrate successfully to Earth, its inhabitant requires fresh, spring water. Acquire fresh, spring water, plant the egg, and water it each morning at sunrise for three consecutive days.

  Success rewards: unknown

  Failure penalty: none

  He looked at the egg in his hand again and triggered his Inspect Ability.

  You have found a Consecrated Egg. Plant it in nutrient rich soil and water it each morning at sunrise for three consecutive days.

  Note: the placement of its planting and the purity of the water provided will affect the creature inside for its entire life, choose well.

  The Necrologist bent and probed at the grass between his feet. He ripped out a couple of handfuls and tossed them aside. Then, he scraped at the soft soil in the bare patch of earth he had made until he made it to the damp clay a few inches beneath the surface. He pushed one finger into the soil to make a little groove, took one last look at the egg, then placed it delicately in the hole and gently pulled some dirt over its new resting place. He stood up to take a look at his work, and found himself unhappy with the presentation.

  Garath spent the better part of an hour making the area around his planted egg a little more visually attractive - some manual labor to keep his hands busy and his mind off Leviathan was a welcome relief in any case. Using a gold-tipped Naga Trident as a spade, he cleared a one-meter circle around the egg. After that, he walked around the clifftop to find rocks with a similar shape and size - which proved to be rather difficult and time consuming in the dark of night, even with the light of the moon through a clear sky. He then brought each one that he found back to the egg. When he had gathered enough rocks, Garath formed a circle around the egg and stepped back to take another look. Satisfied, he found a seat on a moss covered log and pulled up the forums for some light reading while he waited for sunrise to water the egg. He didn't know if it would do any harm to water it immediately but figured that, with his lack of experience planting, well, pretty much anything, he may as well just follow the instructions and hope for the best.

  Only minutes after he placed the egg into the soil, Garath started to feel its presence in a way he couldn't describe. The feeling was similar to the connection that he shared with his summoned demons. A small part of his mind was now devoted to whatever was in that egg. He wondered
if that meant he would be able to summon and dismiss it, like he could with the demons, when it hatched. That is, if a creature came out of the ground after three days - and he was really hoping it would be, what the hell would he do with an otherworldly plant? And then he wondered for the six-thousandth time what would hatch - or maybe sprout? - from the egg in the soil just in front of him.

  Athios, Warrion, Sharon, Gary, and even Daisy had come to check on him throughout the night. They seemed to understand that he wanted to be alone. At least they did after he shooed each of them away in turn, telling them, "I'm fine. I just want to be alone. I'll be back in the morning. Just, please, go away."

  Garath was exhausted from a very long day. A day that had started off with a (literal) bang(s) well before he was ready for it, but the adrenaline still pumping through his veins and the constant sipping of Crystillium kept him from being able to relax.

  With the salty ocean tang whipping at his face and hair, the Necrologist failed to keep his mind off of the scrap with Leviathan. She had been eight Levels higher than he was, she had a gun, and it was Garath that walked away from that fight. He thought about every second of the fight in great detail and deduced that there were two main factors that contributed to his upset victory.

  One was the obvious advantage his demons gave him. Even facing another Necrologist, his bound creatures were a huge factor in the fight. When Leviathan started the three second cast of Summon Flayer, Garath knew he had a leg up on her. When her Flayer emerged from the circle, dwarfed by his evolved, blue-tinted Flayer, he knew he had even more than one leg up. His Fel Hound wasn't a big factor but his Flayer had kept up an almost completely uninterrupted torrent of Death Bolts at Leviathan for the whole fight. He remembered his promise to name them if they made it through the dungeon and resolved to do so as soon as he came up with suitable names for his summoned monsters.