Unbound Deathlord_Obliteration

by Edward Castle

  I sighed too. "Does it ever get better?"

  "Not without help." We didn't say anything for a long time. "Why did you do it?"

  "Revenge."

  "Why?" He asked. I wasn't expecting that question.

  "They killed my parents. You're the one who said family comes first."

  "The living family," he explained. "You only made things harder for all of us. Do you remember your cousin in Doctors Without Borders? He was removed from his post. And that is the least any of us suffered."

  "I don't care, old man. I was raised to be merciless, a machine with only victory in mind. My enemies are dead and I'm alive; I won. I'm now working on crushing the pride of those who remain."

  He took some time to reply. "You're just a kid, after all. The death of your parents came at such a critical stage in your development, that the guilt over the incident has made you stop in time, a perpetually immature boy."

  I didn't answer that either. I wasn't about to talk about that, not with a man who hired an actor to live with his daughter and show her how the world was so evil. He was telling me I was immature?

  "I can't help you if you don't come out of hiding," he said. "Do you need anything else? I have a meeting now, and a family to save."

  "No. Good day."

  He hung up.

  That day, I went out of my hideout for the first time. The army were patrolling the city so heavily, I was surprised we had that many active military personnel in the country.

  The nearby shops were all closed. I kept walking without a real destination and eventually got to the City Park. A few people were there with their pets and some youngsters were playing a multiplayer game on their smartphones.

  A food truck was nearby and I bought a hotdog.

  "Life goes on, huh?" The hotdog salesman said cryptically, looking around and smiling at me. I guessed my face was horrible.

  A puppy got close to me when I sat at a bench.

  Life went on.

  A patrol of three policemen walked by, guns in their hands. The same puppy who got close to me sniffed their feet and barked happily at them, which made one of them smile.

  By all reports, the cops and the army was killing citizens like rats, but here was a cop smiling at a puppy.

  For all purposes, a war was going on in the country, but people still found pockets of peace where they could.

  I had the weight of hundreds if not thousands of deaths on my shoulders, but maybe I could move on and find some peace.

  After some consideration, I decided against buying a puppy. I wouldn't be around for too long, after all.

  How were the police faring in the investigations, anyway?

  Back home, I checked the news and studied more about Valia while waiting for Daggers to call me. It took longer than I expected.

  "Hello?" I said when she finally called.

  "Everything is settled, sir," she said, and by the 'sir' I could guess she was still in the game. "I have your items."

  I sighed in relief. A considerable part of my power came from my items, especially the ring of fire. Without it, things would be a lot harder for me. It might even lead to me creating a new character without the difficulties of being an unbound deathlord.

  "I'm not complaining, but what took you so long?" I asked.

  "The enemy took your body and tried to escape, sir. I had low stamina when I finished with the enemies nearby, and had to ask Ted to hire a lizard to pursue. Bear barely survived and did not go with me, and the other surviving zombie also decided not to pursue. It was not easy or fast, but the mission you gave me has been accomplished." She was talking about my order to recover my items from my body.

  "So they wanted my money," I concluded. "Assholes. Did I drop the purse?"

  "Negative, sir. You will have both already with you when you revive. Sir, permission to speak freely?"

  "Yes?"

  "Your body is horrible, sir. You should work out more."

  I laughed. She had to strip me to take my armor, obviously.

  "Thanks for the suggestion," I said lightly.

  "There is one more thing, sir. When I was looting one of the enemies, I found a written order."

  That was unexpected. "Huh?"

  "They are the guards who were at the gates when we entered the city. After the incident with Robert, you were investigated and they found out that you are Jack Thorn, the one Dakar is paying three hundred gold coins in reward for." It seemed the price for my head had been raised. "The letter says this and then exiles the guards for failing their duty to the city. The cost for them to be allowed to come back was set at three hundred gold coins."

  "I see. So, they were sent on a suicide mission."

  No matter how you looked at it, someone with a head worth three hundred gold coins was expected to be powerful enough to deal with twenty common guardsmen. The fact that I had failed only made me feel worse.

  Well, at least the reward for my head had gone up. It's good to see people value you, even if it's in such a negative way.

  "How much did the lizard cost?" I asked.

  "Twenty gold coins for the six hours I hired it, sir. Six hours is the minimum."

  "Damn!"

  That was a lot of money! Supposedly, they were expensive to maintain, therefore not many wasted their resources on them. How much did they eat, anyway? And why didn't anyone tame cheaper mounts?

  "Bear said we should meet the day after tomorrow at two PM," Daggers said. "That is when the zombies will revive and travel back to the entrance of the Catacombs."

  "Sounds good. There's only one issue though. I have no idea where my revival point is." I said.

  "This is not an issue, sir. Manhart contacted me when he could not reach you. He said he would wait for you at the Resistance's Revival Chamber."

  "I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing."

  "Me either, sir. I will not take a chance of being ambushed again, therefore I will logout close to Manhart's cave. Let me know when you are back."

  "Okay. And Daggers? Thanks. Bear might be a better fighter in a direct confrontation, but you are much more versatile. I'm glad I have you by my side."

  She took a few seconds to answer. "Affirmative." She hung up.

  That was weird. Had I offended her? She didn't seem the type that would mind me being sincere like that but who knows with women?

  For the rest of the day I did nothing but check the news and chill.

  And then, sometime in the middle of the day I morphed.

  I was seeing a cat do something to a dog on the TV and then it suddenly hit me: I was acting like a damn dog, in the 'yeah, whatever master says is fine' way.

  Killing those people had scared me and without my parents to tell me I had done right and impart some of their twisted wisdom to me, without their inverted moral compass, I didn't know where to go.

  What would they have done if they had been alive? First, try to pay as many people as possible to keep the murders a secret. Then, pay the media and everyone else to also keep V-Soft's blackmail material from becoming common knowledge, and even discredit it. Release the truth slowly, in a controlled way, feeling out the public's reaction as it went.

  Meanwhile, I would have lost my car, my money, and they would have told me something sage sounding, like 'better preparation would have prevented all that.'

  That was it: it wasn't the killing of V-Soft's employees that was making me feel so lost and acting irrational, it was the relief of not having killed my parents. Me calling grandfather was a huge tell; I was still downright pissed at him, but the person my subconscious had chosen to call had been the closest one I had to my parents.

  After learning that I hadn't killed them, I had reverted to a damn child in need of guidance. I had begun to act in an irrational manner as if seeking to be noticed and scolded by them.

  I wanted those horrible people back.

  Well, that settles it: I'm just an oversized kid in the end.

  Of course, the killings h
ad affected me too, but they had been just fuel added to the existing fire.

  Why had I started playing Valia? Because I wanted to run from my reality. What had I done after grandfather's revelation? Instead of biding my time and taking revenge the right way, I had acted impulsively, then ran away to Valia again, to stop myself from thinking.

  That would not do.

  'Sometimes,' father had said to me. His face at the time was wet, since he had just washed his face. I hadn't understood at the time why his eyes were red too, but now, suddenly, it made sense. 'Sometimes, you'll have done something you didn't want to. However, it had to be done. You can, and should, hate yourself for it. But don't let it take you down, or you'll let the enemy win.'

  I had seen mother a few days later, and her eye were red too. She had just come from visiting a friend in the hospital — a friend I had never seen — and I hadn't connected the dots.

  Damn, had they cared enough about each other to cry over something between them?

  Had they actually been humans?

  The thought scared the shit out of me. If they had feelings, how could they do what I knew they had done to people? How could they justify to themselves the horrible acts they committed just to perpetuate their own power?

  My first instinct as I thought about this was going back to Valia, but I couldn't do it now. Then, came alcohol, but there was none in the house. I could go out and buy some but I knew that it would be too late when I got to it; my mind wouldn't stop thinking until then, and I would have already reached a conclusion.

  The truth had just marched up and slapped me in the face. Father and mother weren't psychopaths — they couldn't justify what they had done with a mind condition. They were merely people who had chosen to do evil to make their lives better.

  It terrified me while at the same time making me feel hopeful.

  That pity mother had felt for me...

  Could it be fondness?

  Could she have actually cared for me?

  Could she have... loved... me?

  I started to cry again.

  Before, I had cried over their deaths with guilt eating away at me. I had felt like a hypocrite and forced myself to push it down. Before, I had cried about the murderers, but did so feeling like a monster.

  Now, I just cried like a son who lost his parents.

  They would never come back.

  They were gone.

  Forever.

  It went on for hours. I had never felt so miserable in my whole life. I finally let myself feel their loss, I finally became aware of the hole in my heart. The heart they had twisted with their evil.

  My own parents had tried to make me twisted like them and I had resented them for it. Now, I wondered if that was also a kind of love: by making me like them, we could all relate to each other more easily.

  Amid confusion and loneliness, a new sentiment came. It was just like anger, but bigger. Like fury, but more tamed. Unlike what I had done to V-Soft, I didn't just want to destroy those who had taken my parents away.

  I wanted to obliterate them and every trace of their existence.

  Before, I had wanted revenge, to take their pride away by destroying Valia from the inside.

  Now, I had to utterly crush them. Pay other inmates in prison to make their lives hell. I wanted to inflict famine and frostbite, to break their bodies and mend them, so I could break them again. I would see their minds riven, I would break them, destroy their souls if I could find a way.

  Grandfather had been right. Before, I thought like a child and acted like a child. I wanted petty revenge.

  Now, in this moment, I finally understood my loss; I connected with my deeper self, and became an adult.

  Killing them was too little, too childish.

  They needed to suffer much more to quench my anger.

  For now, I had to endure, since I was hiding. But unlike a child who had to do it right now, I could bide my time.

  And I wouldn't destroy myself in the process.

  "Father, mother," I whispered. "I'll do as you taught me. I'll become what you wanted. I won't use this knowledge against innocent people, but I'll honor your deaths and make them pay with everything they have. I hope it will grant you a little comfort in the burning hell you must be in right now."

  This time, I wouldn't do it for me. I would do it for them.

  For justice.

  In my remaining offline time, I studied in-game tactics for battle, ambushes, and everything I could about Valia. Playtime was over.

  I wondered: how messed up was I to say that starting a civil war was just playtime?

  See, father, mother? I'm your son.

  * * *

  When I connected to the game again, the first thing I felt was warmth. Not an uncomfortable warmth that made my body sweat, but a cozy warmth that made me feel good.

  Opening my eyes, I found myself kneeling in my underwear in front of a gigantic white statue. And when I say gigantic, I mean it. Empire State Building size if not taller. It depicted a beautiful woman and radiated a golden light that was at the same time painful and pleasurable to look at.

  It wasn't the Mother. Although the beauty of the figure was literally goddess-level, the woman's skin wasn't ebony like the supreme creator goddess, and the facial features were also different. Her features were more mature and more kind.

  Not kind in a good way though. It was the face of that dumb girl you knew you could take advantage of, if you wanted. I don't mean romantic advantage; I mean that if you told her you had a dog in need of food she would go 'Awwww!' and give you money even if you were a complete stranger.

  I had researched her before and I recognized Ilishia, the Goddess of the Living Skeletons, Manhart's patron deity. The picture I had seen online didn't make her look this foolish though, and I instantly understood that Manhart was scamming her somehow.

  His serious act when telling me stuff from the Fallen Gods had been somewhat legit in my opinion, but I also believed him to be much more than a religious scholar or a holy warrior, and I doubted very much that he wasn't taking advantage of the goddess in some way.

  To begin with, she was a beautiful divine half-elf, not a skeleton. Why the hell would she care about the living dead being enslaved unless she had been tricked?

  And taking Manhart as her paladin? Each god could only have two high priests and two paladins, a male and a female for each position. It didn't make sense for her to pick an asshole like Manhart even if she cared about the skeletons before meeting him.

  On the ground in front of the statue were hundreds of candles of multiple sizes, all lit except for one. Direct feedback to my brain let me know that these candles had to be manually lit for the goddess to care about them, no magic allowed.

  The unlit candle was obviously meant for me. I could deal with this in multiple ways and I was tempted to just blow out the lit candles and see what would happen, but what I chose to do was to reverently take the unlit candle and light it with one of the other candles. Then, I closed my eyes.

  I prayed, willing my message to reach her.
 
 
 
 
  m know, please, that if they ever doubt my words, they need only wait until I leave the Underworld to the Surface. By then, it will be clear what my intentions are and how they are going to benefit the real owners of Valia.

 
 

  I bowed deeply for almost a full minute, got up, bowed yet again, and took three steps backward before finally turning to leave.

  There was no telling if my prayers would mean something but it didn't hurt to try. At the very least it might make the goddess order Manhart not to kill me.

  Status effect received: Divine Acknowledgement (level 1)

  Ilishia has heard your prayers. She hasn't answered, but just knowing you were heard by a goddess makes you elated.

  » Trait unlocked: Faithful

  A new trait. I opened the new exclamation point and checked it out.

  Trait unlocked: Faithful

  You're one who believes.

  » +1 charisma when dealing with gods (prayers included)

  That was interesting. In a world where believing in gods was very simple — they actually existed, after all —, the more faithful you were the more you could get from them. I wondered what Manhart's faithful level was.

  It hadn't been the first time I prayed in my life. In fact, I could start a Buddhist mantra right away, and tell anyone the main gods of the multiple native American religions.

  'You may need support from religious people in the future and you must understand how to look like a devotee,' Mother had taught me. 'Therefore, learn to pray to the many entities people believe in. An adequate public prayer can sway the heart of millions.'

  For Ilishia, I had chosen a slightly modified Christian prayer model. She was merciful to those who were marginalized, just like the Christian god was supposed to be — not that some of the Christians I knew ever seemed to get that, filled with spite as they were.

  Anyway, it couldn't hurt to have support from a god in this world, and if my main scheme failed, she could even function as my fallback plan.

  When I turned around, I finally got a look at the room I was in.