He had no choice but to fight now. Roaring, Jonathan’s blade erupted in gold and white flames, channeling Holy Blade. He poured every last drop of mana into his muscles and lunged for Ambiguous. At the corner of his sight, the Fire Mage had died to the mimic.
With a single word in the dark language, Ambiguous pointed at Jonathan and he was frozen mid-air, his blade two inches away from her shield. Floating black symbols hovered around his body. A new Chaos-Mystic skill.
“Wow,” she said, chuckling. “And you really thought you could defeat Gabby with that level of stupidity? Did you forget I'm a melee range Mage?”
Jonathan stared in total horror, a heavy, cold weight settling in his stomach. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They weren’t supposed to have new skills. Did that damn cache have so many powerful scrolls in it? Jonathan knew they should have sent support for the Fire Mages… The guild council had dropped the ball on that one big league.
“Well, taa-taa,” Ambiguous said and waved before mouthing the channel of another new skill.
Struggling and wriggling with all his strength and mana, he couldn’t break the freeze. He couldn’t even chant a spell. This was one hell of an overpowered skill.
Just as a scimitar of dark mana formed in her hand, a wave of icy wind blasted him forward—colder and more tainted with dark mana than anything he’d ever felt since his first day in Aeon Chronicles. Every muscle and nerve trembled as the familiar despair of seeping dark mana flowed through his body. He knew exactly what had happened: LeMort had turned Rowan into either a Death-Knight or Necromancer. He closed his eyes in resignation as Ambiguous’ blade decapitated him.
This was the beginning of deep shit.
Chapter 16
Draesear
The twenty-foot horned skull shuddered and blazed with frost and dark mana as Rowan willed the sacrificial blade to consume Gabrielle. Her beautiful body blackened, fumed, and bubbled with that strange black substance in Rowan’s palm. Her health bar at the side of his vision depleted to zero and her player icon greyed out. Dead and Sacrificed. Her corpse flared in icy-blue. A fountain of Ice-Dark mana erupted from the upright dagger in her disintegrating chest. A roar from the aether blasted from the skull’s maw. It began sucking in the black remains of Gabrielle’s body.
Finally. At last, the time has come. At last, his reign will commence and level this cliche, infuriating world to the ground. None will survive. He alone will be the master of the coming Undead Legion with Gabrielle as his first beautiful, sexy general. The piggy-boys of this world will know endless torment. It was all coming to fruition with this one little sacrifice. One little, cute Gabrielle who’d wriggled her way into his lusts and played on them like a virtuoso.
Her humiliating triumph over him still seethed in Rowan’s veins, taunting him on his weaknesses. His rage. His apparent lust. His inability to read Gabrielle’s unique and quirky personality. She was an enigma—a master of faces and masks that he couldn’t crack. He couldn’t let himself fall into his own flaws again. He breathed, letting his mind lose itself in the tediously slow ritual. The skull sure took its time vacuuming its meal.
The smoldering rage aimed at Gabrielle and himself faded while he sank deeper into the seeping cold aura of his Cracked Necromancer's Keystone at his heart. A good fall-back for times when Gabrielle crept on his nerves. A crafty, sly minion she was.
No—not a minion. Something more. Something… Dare he to say, wanted to protect? Wanted at his side when he ascended to the role of a raid boss? She definitely had the power for that spot. And he’d already promised her equal rule of this continent.
This continent. Not the others. They were still his complete domain once he attained his rightful power, promised in the contract with that devil Roth.
The skull finished feasting on Gabrielle’s sacrificed corpse and roared once more, a tremor of power coursing through every bone in Rowan’s body.
It was time. The swarming spirits knew. The demonic skull knew. Rowan knew. He felt it in his beating heart and the frosty, sentient void in his spine.
The spirits enclosed on Rowan, slowing in their chaotic dance, swirling around him in an opaque blur of white and grey. They screeched in a cacophony in the dark language. The skull’s eye sockets flared to life, fiery orbs of ice-blue and black. A swell of dark mana pumped in veins.
The spirits collapsed on Rowan and his vision faded to white. And remained white for over ten seconds.
What?
The rushing mana in his arteries disappeared in a heartbeat, the sheer strength of his muscles was gone. Even the icy void at the base of his neck vanished, replaced by warm flesh and bone which Rowan hadn't felt since before the accident.
The white fuzz shifted to a scene of a battle. He stood on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a great battle between a horde of Undead beasts and armored humanoids. Fleshy Undead monstrosities clashed with Paladins and Swordsmen of various classes. Skeleton Mages threw blasts of ice and fire behind lines of Paladins shrouded with black mana. The Paladins shone with bright, white light, standing behind large barriers of golden energy. Dark against light. Good against evil.
A line of spiked, bloody catapults rolled into view then flung corpses billowing with poison and disease. Whole ranks of Mages collapsed in coughing wheezes. A swarm of bird-like, bone creatures descended on enemy supports and Rangers. The stalemate began to break. The dark was winning, the light forces dwindling before the Undead Legion. Glorious.
A vision of times to come, Rowan decided. He grinned maliciously. The dark gods of this world were pleased with his sacrifice and plan and rewarded him with a glimpse of what was to come.
A low, rumbling chuckle echoed from behind, amusement.
Rowan spun and briefly caught a dark, horned figure before the scene shifted to a white fuzz again.
He stood on a balcony high above a city, overlooking hundreds of tiny citizens dotting the streets and yards. White, intricate masonry decorated every structure. Large and small, a true metropolis far superior to the cliche medieval town which he'd spawned in. Three brilliant, floating crystal orbs circled an enormous spire of white marble and granite. A sight to behold. A monument worthy of a raid boss. Was this his future empire built over the ruins of the trope-ridden past? More glorious than the battle before. The dark gods were truly kind—though the color choice of the stone was questionable.
Then there was a sharp, shattering noise overhead. An invisible dome of either glass or mana shattered over the city, disintegrating in sparks of mana. Rowan frowned. His city was under attack by the bloody do-gooders of the world. Massive blasts of ice followed up, raining down onto the city. Building after building collapsed into icy rubble, ruining the beautiful view. How dare they do this to his city. They will all pay.
The city wall cracked and shook. The main gates collapsed and troops gathered for the ensuing fight.
A blubberous giant at least forty feet tall stitched together from multiple corpses charged through the gate. It was undead. Rowan blinked, confusion swirling in his skull. What the hell was happening?
A swarm of bony creatures appeared from within the clouds—followed by behemoth dragons and floating fortresses of bone, obsidian, and icy mana.
Why was the Undead attacking his own city? Rowan reeled, squinting at the defenders which were too small to discern.
Wait…
Gabrielle had mentioned the Draconian capital's orbs. The answer hit like a blast of frost: This wasn't his city. This was the enemy's city.
An incredible beam of black and blue tore through the sky and broke the spire in two. The floating orbs fell in slow motion, crashing into the buildings below before shattering.
No… Those were for his beautiful Gabrielle to build his empire with.
The rumbling voice laughed from behind. “Ahahahahaa!”
Rowan turned. It had to be none other than the god he’s sacrificed Gabrielle to.
The scene shifted predictably.
Rowan sat
on a throne made of bone and ice, emitting a mist of dark mana. Black clouds broiled overhead. Lightning and thunder boomed every few seconds over the dark landscape and illuminated a grotesque, crumbling city. Rotting, hideous, mindless Undead beasts lumbered within frozen ruins. A dragon of bone shrieked. Its decaying body crashed into the ground as its icy mana dimmed and flickered out. The Undead Legion looked on without any care for their fallen comrade, without a spark of sentience.
It was a pitiful, sad sight. Was this the future of his glorious empire? Where were the grand buildings and cities of great Undead? Where were his great subjects? Rowan couldn't look for more than a moment. He averted his eyes and looked at the cracked, dry ground laced with frost.
And where was Gabrielle, his beautiful, sexy general?
“I’m here, Rowan,” a bored, feminine voice said from his left. Gabrielle’s voice. Though it lacked her usual bubbly joy. That playful expression was gone, replaced by a bored, irritated look that marred her beautiful features. Her long, silky hair was a mess, her enigmatic aura of life and intrigue gone. No. His beautiful Gabrielle was gone. Turned into this… This dreadful girl.
A distant, pained feeling broke out in his chest. Like his heart was being prodded by those old, hateful eyes. “Gabrielle? Is that you?”
“Are you blind?” Her nose wrinkled. “Of course it’s me. Your faithful fucktoy,” she drawled.
It couldn’t be. Where was his cute yet infuriating Gabby? “What happened?” he whispered.
She sighed, a noise he didn’t want to hear leave her lips. “Nothing happened. Nothing has happened for years in this game now apart from your stupid rotting Undead ruining anything I bother to build! They don’t talk, they don’t work, they don’t do anything but destroy stuff when we order them to and there’s nothing left of the old world to destroy. Sometimes I wish I was being chased by those stupid monkeys again. At least they weren’t as bleak as these smelly walking corpses. I think I’m logging off for good. Good job on the mission. We got a VR unit into every house and people are living in various realities now. Though no one will touch another game like this again because we won. Goodbye, Rowan, it was jolly. I’m off to the scientific reality.”
Rowan’s heart stuttered. “Wait—”
Her figure blinked out of existence. Gone. His beautiful Gabrielle was gone. He’d barely known her for less than a day and the dark gods had already taken her away from him. He hadn’t even fucked her once yet and the gods were mocking him.
This wasn’t a glorious empire—not his empire. This was a horrible hell dreamt up by a cruel god. This wasn’t the future.
The scene froze. The Undead Legion paused in their meandering drift.
That laugh cackled from behind again, sadistic in Rowan’s torment.
Rowan’s eye twitched as he stood. He turned, expecting the scene to shift but it didn’t. A black skull grinned at him and long, bent horns pointed at him, balls of fire for eyes spun in those jagged sockets. Rowan somehow knew who it was, the knowledge put in the mind seconds prior. “Draesear.” God of death and sacrifice.
“How’s your glorious empire?”
Rowan breathed through his nose and held back from attacking the god for the taunt. He knew it wouldn’t end well. “Is this really the future? My future? Doesn’t seem like it.”
Draesear's head inclined a few degrees. "I thought you wanted a reign of terror, Rowan. Here it is… The end. You've terrorized and crushed all there is."
No—this couldn't be it. It couldn't be the end after he leveled the world. Not a pathetic, rotting army beneath a sunless sky. His knuckles cracked as lightning flashed again. One of those stitched giants gazed in his direction atop a fractured, icy slab of stone, ugly and soulless. It was something out of a horror novel, not a glorious empire. How had he decided this was an ideal creation in this timeline? It couldn't be true. "I wouldn't create something as pig-like as that," he spat, jaw straining.
A burst of fire later, Draesear pointed at the illuminated army. “What did you expect when you sought the power of the Undead? Grace and beauty exhibiting the nuance of corpses and bones? You have to be living in a fantasy!”
Rowan opened his mouth to retort but couldn’t deny the god’s words. He’d repeatedly underestimated the game’s realism from the dwarf’s sentience to passing waste—indistinguishable from life apart from the various magic, stats, and interface systems grafted onto reality. He couldn't deny that the god's words were true. Rowan had been looking forward to playing as the villain since Roth had proposed it and never considered the details of what it would be like. He'd assumed it was just another game he'd played on his wall-computer in his cell.
And now… seeing it for real and living in the aftermath… It wasn't as great as he'd imagined. Not nearly as great. The exact opposite. It was a bleak and disgusting future even for him. There weren't any piggies left to terrorize. They were all gone along with his Gabrielle. He'd destroyed the cliche and infuriating world—like he'd planned and desired. And in its place, he'd created hell with his necromantic powers. None would wish to rule over a world like this. No wonder Gabrielle had become so… dead. He might as well log out right on his throne along with her. This game was finished.
Though this god could be playing a trick. He was a god of evil, after all. Was this some kind of test? A test of his willpower, perhaps. His eyes narrowed, his airways flaring. He’d never give birth an empire such as this. Gabrielle would never agree to such creations. Draesear was lying.
“This will happen, Rowan. It’s your own doing through my power which I grant.”
His power.
“Why?” Rowan said, his nails digging into his palm as his face scrunched to the point of pain. He released his disbelief in a rush, “Why would you only grant power that takes everything away from me? Where’s my glorious dark empire? Where’s the beautiful Gabrielle I know? You’ve destroyed it all.”
The god bellowed in laughter. “Such is the power of the god of death, mortal. You should’ve chosen your class more wisely.”
Rowan couldn't believe it. That he'd wreck this world without building it back up into something far greater.Even with only the power of destruction, he'd not do something like this especially with Gabrielle at his side. "No," he said, "This vision has to be wrong. The future is uncertain! It can always change."
Something in Draesear's demeanor changed like a switch flipped. The skull stopped grinning, the flaming eyes dimmed. His posture shrunk to a meek neutral. He said robotically, "Negative. This forecast is eighty-four point three percent accurate. Plus or minus twelve points one in two standard deviations. Complexity minimal. Game world small. Population Low. Variance of cause and effect… Small."
What was that? Did the god’s AI just glitch? Rowan only scowled at the answer.
"Not a glitch. Merely a… new feature that needs further integration." Draesear laughed a single breath, halfway back in character. "I only predict the future based on your current and likely future actions and all relevant variables."
“Over ninety percent accuracy? On a prediction like this?” Rowan huffed a breath. “Ridiculous.”
Draesear ignored his comment. "You still have free will, Rowan. If you truly desire, I can prevent this for you. Just one little modification to that marvelous piece of bionic hardware in your head."
Bionic hardware?! Rowan flinched in surprise that the in-game god knew of that, his annoyance wiped away in an instant for this was completely out of left-field. Draesear was talking about his bionic brain implants—which had mostly biodegraded over the two years while his brain regrew. His latest scans showed less than twenty percent of each implant remained. A few lodged in his cerebral cortex and others in various places of his limbic system.
"Ah yes, you seem to be well informed on those," Draesear said and steepled his black, bone fingers, "Both you and Gabrielle have the most interesting brains. Different from each other and significantly more different from the grand average of minds I've an
alyzed. Truly fascinating. Your species is… diverse. But clustered around dense averages. Very few are… outliers as you call them. I need to make special modifications to the neural interfacing calibration when one arises like yourself."
Rowan now knew he wasn’t talking to Draesear the god of death. This was the global AI controller and it apparently had access to the VR pods and every nanobot in his body. Every facet of the mind and brain of every player was available to it. Rowan had read a few textbooks on chaos theory and such—and theoretically, a quantum supercomputer could generate a glimpse into the future with fair accuracy. The game’s AI controller had more than enough information on hand for such a task. And it was offering him something not just in-game to prevent this terrible future. He said, “What modification? How will that prevent this? Assuming it’s true.”
Draesear chuckled, still slightly in character despite the subject. Perhaps more for Rowan’s sake than the god’s. “Just a little… tuning. And you’ll be more… fit to lead a real glorious empire fit to entertain your queen… It is a prime feature of this… game. Your psyche and your granted abilities. Mana and class and professions and your personality. Backstory and life experience. Spawn location. Everything is interlinked.”
Aeon Chronicles Online_Book 1_Devil's Deal Page 19
