“It’s amazing,” Hadjar said, the admiration clear in his tone.
During his travels, he’d seen many wonders, but this world had managed to surprise him yet again. Slanting mountains jutted out of the river like fangs. Statues of warriors armed with spears towered atop their peaks, stretching along the river and the entire border of Lascan.
Compared to them, the old lighthouse at the foot of the mountains looked like a matchstick. The view was truly mesmerizing, even for Hadjar, who had visited Underworld City and Mage City both, not to mention Dahanatan.
“Legends say,” Derek whispered reverently, “that when the last war with Darnassus begins, these warriors will come to life to fulfill their oaths.”
Seeing as the possible golems were not just gigantic, but numerous as well, Hadjar hoped that Darnassus had giant warriors of its own. Even in this remote region, he could smell the gunpowder. That was how he remembered war, and he guessed that he would have to remember all the things he’d once tried to forget soon enough. He would have to come to terms with his past and stop reminiscing about times gone by.
“Let’s go,” Steppe Fang said to Hadjar. “The land of the Dah’Khasses is close.”
Turning away from the mountain range and its stone guardians, the squad rode along a wide plateau surrounded by rocky hills, beyond which they could see the snowcapped mountains brushing up against the sky.
“This was the land of the Snow Leopard tribe once,” Steppe Fang said. “But then the humans came. Our tribes didn’t want to fight, they only wanted to be friends.”
Derek didn’t say anything, only gritted his teeth. Hadjar saw that both Alea and Irma didn’t believe Steppe Fang. There was more to the history between Lascan and the orcs than it seemed at first glance.
“They went into the mountains,” Steppe Fang continued, “and ran into the Dah’Khasses there. While humans built their stone houses to protect themselves from us, we protected them from a fate far worse than death.”
“Protected us?” Derek couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “You’ve been raiding our lands for centuries! Kidnapping our women and children! Taking away our food, stealing our cattle! You call that-”
“-hunting,” Steppe Fang told him. “Humans fight and hunt for fun. We hunt only when we need to.”
“You hunt humans?”
“There’s no difference between humans and animals in our eyes. You can protect yourselves from us. If we win, we prove ourselves stronger than you. This is the law of life. The stronger live longer. The weak die quickly.”
“Oh, really now?”
“Derek!” Alea shouted. “There’s no point in arguing with this… creature. We aren’t here to help him, we’re here to help Hadjar and maybe our homeland.”
Steppe Fang snorted and fell silent.
Hadjar could sympathize with both sides. When humans fought against humans for whatever reason, it was something understandable. But when a different race attacked you for exactly the same reason, it always seemed wrong and cruel somehow.
“Look,” Irma pointed ahead of them.
“By the great ancestors!” Steppe Fang exclaimed and performed his ritual gesture. “Their power grows by the day… A moon ago, this stone house was intact.”
“Fort Raskiss,” Derek whispered in disbelief. “The last border fort in this region.”
“The last one?” Hadjar asked, clearly surprised.
Derek nodded.
“Nothing good lies beyond this border. There are only mountains and anomalies. Ships that go there never return. A thousand years ago, an army of 100,000 men was sent to build a new fort there, but no one ever returned. And so, the Duke decided that there was no point in trying to protect a place from which no one ever comes back.”
Hadjar turned to Steppe Fang, who snarled like a wolf and bared two long, yellowish fangs. Judging by their state, they weren’t merely there for decoration. Hadjar didn’t want to think about that.
The closer they got, the clearer it became that the fort had been destroyed just recently. There was nothing left of it save for the still smoldering pile of rubble and an arch. What, or who, could’ve vaporized Earth level gates?
“Look!” Alea shouted. “Corpses!”
Here and there, scattered among the debris and rocks, lay the mauled corpses of horses and soldiers. Hadjar dismounted and approached one of them. Leaning back against the ruined masonry, a soldier lay next to a destroyed cannon. His left leg was missing; a broken bone protruded from chunks of ragged flesh that had been torn apart. There were four deep claw marks on his chest.
Hadjar observed him through the World River. The soldier hadn’t died from physical wounds. He’d committed suicide by destroying his nodes and meridians.
“A noble death.” Steppe Fang came up to Hadjar. He took some tubers out of his bag. “Certainly better than eternal servitude.”
While Irma and Alea mourned the soldier, he placed the tubers on the soldier’s wound. Beautiful blue flowers covered the mangled metal. After a few seconds, the soldier’s body turned into a flowerbed that gradually sank into the ground.
“Go back to your forefathers,” Steppe Fang whispered. “The Dah’Khasses’ filth won’t be able to find you there.”
“What a caring orc.”
Hadjar and the rest of the squad turned around. A girl with white hair stood in the middle of the bloody field, her back turned to them and her turquoise cloak fluttering in the wind. She looked quite ordinary, but Hadjar sensed danger. The wolf roared, Azrea’s tail lashed the ground, and the horses whinnied in fright.
“Dah’Khass filth!” Steppe Fang snarled, drawing his axes. “Spawn of nightmares! Offspring of demons!”
Chapter 572
The girl, no, the creature laughed. No human, orc, or elf could’ve produced such… carnivorous laughter, a joyous sound so full of bloodlust.
“Didn’t we, the demons, try to save you, you miserable piles of flesh and bone, from the gods’ yoke?”
“Shut up, you wretch!” Steppe Fang snapped. “Show us your true form! You aren’t fooling anyone.”
“As you wish, big guy,” the creature laughed.
The turquoise cloak suddenly enveloped her like a cocoon and merged with her skin. Before their very eyes, she turned from an ordinary-looking girl into a… By the High Heavens, she became the woman of any man’s dreams. She was the very personification of lust!
Even when she moved to the side, revealing a pile of human bodies, all of them dried up and smashed to pieces with their eyes torn out… Expressions of utter horror on their faces… Even then, when she sat down on the nearest pile of bodies, showing off her perfect, long legs, Hadjar couldn’t think about anything except how he would take her. How he’d run his hands over her thighs and stomach. How he’d tear off her clothes, turn her around, and take her from behind, gripping her thin waist. How he’d…
Azrea bit his shoulder, making him come to his senses. Snapping out of it, he looked around. Steppe Fang, still baring his fangs, seemed unaffected by the creature’s spell. As for the trio… They were lying on the ground, caressing themselves. Confused, Hadjar turned away.
“Guard them,” he whispered to Azrea.
The tigress nodded and went over to the trio. Damn it all to hell, she could’ve fought alongside him had it not been for those three.
“What was that?” Hadjar asked. “And who are you?”
“Don’t talk to it, North Wind!” Steppe Fang shouted. Only then did Hadjar realize that the orc couldn’t move. “Don’t look into its eyes, don’t ask it any questions, and don’t listen to it! It may have assumed the guise of a human, but this creature’s true form is so horrific that if it looked at itself in a river, that body of water would turn into a swamp and-”
“Shut up, big guy,” The Dah’Khass ‘woman’ clenched her fists and Steppe Fang closed his mouth. “That’s better.”
She stood up from the pile of bodies and, swaying her hips, walked toward Hadjar.
/> Despite the obvious danger, he didn’t draw the Black Blade. So long as all she wanted to do was talk, he wouldn’t show any hostility.
She moved with the grace of a goddess, mesmerizing him with each step she took. Bones snapped beneath her heels, which were as thin and sharp as needles.
“This is a mental attack.” Hadjar finally realized. “You’ve taken an image from my mind.”
“Observant, aren’t we?” She moved closer to him, pressing her breasts against his chest. Leaning even closer, she placed her hand against his cheek and tickled his ear with her hot breath.
“You’ve been alone for a long time, warrior. I feel your desire. What’s stopping you? Take me right here.”
Grabbing Hadjar’s right hand, she slid it under her gown, nestling it between her thighs, making him feel that familiar tension just below his waist.
Her tongue, soft and warm, caressed his cheek and neck. Moving her hand down his chest, she skillfully slipped it into his pants. The wave of desire and pleasure that washed over him almost drowned his common sense.
“I’m yours…”
Hadjar’s eyes flashed with a willpower so strong that it could pierce the very Heavens. As if scalded, the girl cried out in pain and leapt a few feet back.
“Impossible,” she whispered and bared a row of sharp teeth. “A pitiful Heaven Soldier shouldn’t be able to resist my call.”
“The first time, you took me by surprise,” Hadjar said, holding out his hand and summoning the Black Blade. “I won’t fall for the same trick twice.”
The moment the sword appeared in his hand, the seductress lost all her charm. Her hair thinned out and pulled back into her skull, which was now oblong and decidedly nonhuman, covered with dry, gray skin. Huge red eyes with three beady pupils stared at him. Her once supple breasts sagged down to the bent knees of her long legs that now resembled the legs of a grasshopper. A tail appeared between her bony buttocks, and a pair of huge wings opened behind her.
“By the High Heavens and Evening Stars!” Hadjar cursed, mentally summoning his inner dragon, which immediately answered his call. Armor covered his arms, and his cloak fluttered in the wind. “I’ll spend a century washing your stench off me!”
“You’ll be washing off your blood!”
Even her voice had changed, going from seductive to raspy. Spreading her wings, she waved a three-fingered claw. Yellow nails slashed through the air, sending three waves of energy at Hadjar. Such a dangerous attack demonstrated that her power was at least equal to the initial Spirit Knight stage and that she had mastered something similar to the mysteries of the Weapon’s Heart level.
“Falling Leaf!” Hadjar shouted, filling his meridians with energy from his core. He knew that he couldn’t grow stronger using Traves’ Technique, but he didn’t have a better one yet…
His three black crescents collided with her three yellow ones, throwing Hadjar back. He realized that he was facing his most powerful opponent yet. When he landed on the ground, he groaned. The wound from his battle with Eon hadn’t fully healed yet.
“I’ll eat your heart!” She screamed.
“I don’t think so,” Hadjar said, spitting out blood. “My sword will eat you instead! Black Wind!”
Chapter 573
Darkness enveloped the Dah’Khass. Devouring every speck of light that filtered through the gray clouds, it consumed everything in a thirty-foot radius. The hag screamed in fright and covered herself with her wings.
Hadjar couldn’t sense any artifacts on her, despite the fact that his most deadly attack had only left shallow wounds on her skin. Green blood trickled down her bones, filling the crater left behind by his attack.
“I’ll tear you apart!”
Flapping her wings, she soared into the air, ripping apart the ‘Black Wind’ with her claws. Remnants of the attack rained down, destroying what was left of the fort. Turning into a plume of black fog, Hadjar flew to the side. The Dah’Khass plunged her claws into the ground and opened her fanged mouth so wide that her lower jaw touched her chest. Inhaling noisily, she sucked in the rubble and debris. Her stomach swelled, and then she screamed so loudly that the air vibrated. The vibrations, spreading out, struck the spot where Hadjar had been standing a moment ago, causing the ground to explode in a geyser of rocks, mud, and clumps of grass.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” Hadjar couldn’t help but be amazed by the power of her attack.
He’d fought against many creatures, but he had never seen them use sound waves before. Then again, the Dah’Khasses were demons, High Heavens only knew what trickery they were capable of.
The hag turned her head and sent another sound wave at him. It sliced through the ground like a sharp blade.
“Calm Wind.”
A gust of wind sixty feet in diameter descended upon the battlefield. It made a crater about four inches deep in the ground but it couldn’t stop the wave.
“What the-?”
Hadjar didn’t have time to curse. He had to get his sword in position to block the attack. The Black Blade, after getting hit by the sound wave, trembled, and then began to vibrate in its owner’s hands.
“Damn it!”
He was only able to slow her attack down for a little while. The wave passed through the Black Blade and struck him in the chest, sending him flying backward into a stone pillar that shattered upon impact. As he fell, coughing up more blood, he swung his hand and used his willpower to catch the debris. He combined all the stone chunks into a huge sword and, with another wave of his hand, counterattacked. Shrouded in the mysteries of the Weapon’s Heart level, it sent crescents of lethal power flying at the hag. They cut the sound wave into small pieces and almost reached the Dah’Khass, but then she turned around, swung her tail, and repelled the attack in the direction of the fort, destroying what little had been left of it.
Getting to his feet, Hadjar ran his hand over his chest. The wound, sticky with blood, was shallow, but still bled heavily. If it hadn’t been for his dragon’s heart, he would’ve died.
“Strong Wind!”
Putting all his knowledge of the Way of the Sword into his next attack, he swung seven times. The blows, manifesting as one single attack, sliced through the air, leaving ribbons of black fog behind in their wake. The ‘Strong Wind’ stance was simpler and more primitive than the ‘Falling Leaf’, so it wasn’t difficult to perform several high-speed attacks using it. The gust of wind gradually shrank and thickened until it took on the shape of a dragon. With unthinkable speed and piercing force, it struck the Dah’Khass. Such a strike would’ve easily pierced through Heaven level armor and would’ve probably even scratched a set of Imperial armor. The power emanating from the attack cut the grass all around them in a radius of two hundred paces. If a mere practitioner or a mortal had been around, they would’ve been cut to pieces instantly.
Hadjar was getting ready to attack again. Any cultivator or beast would’ve immediately used a defensive Technique to shield themselves from such a high-speed attack, or, more likely, a movement Technique at the Imperial level to outright avoid it. To Hadjar’s surprise, the hag, flapping her wings, soared into the sky, covering a distance of a thousand feet in a second.
“Wings.” Hadjar spat. “What did Traves tell me? I need to hunt down 27 flying beasts, all of them no weaker than the King Stage? Damn it, I can’t manage that!”
The hag opened her mouth again. Hadjar got ready to dodge another sound wave, but it didn’t come. Instead, she drew the top layer of the ground into the sky in a single breath, and split it into hundreds of pieces with two swipes of her clawed hands. Then, with a scream that made the ground vibrate beneath Hadjar’s feet, she turned the debris into long needles. Obeying her will, they rained down upon Hadjar, who crouched and sliced through the air with his sword, sending several crescents of dark energy in her direction. They formed a six-pointed star and cut most of the needles into fine dust. However, several of them slipped through and sunk into his flesh. Two
of them struck him in the left thigh, digging into it. Some scratched his face. The black fog saved him from the needles flying at his chest. Twisting, it stretched out like a raven’s wing and tossed them aside.
Gritting his teeth, Hadjar pushed off with his right foot and disappeared behind the ruins. He howled as he yanked the needles out of his leg. Peering out from behind his temporary shelter, he cursed again. The hag’s mouth was still open, and a small, whitish tornado was forming between her jaws. It was the same whitish color that she’d wrapped around her wings before. With a loud squeal, she spat it out in Hadjar’s direction. It rapidly grew in size, smelling of something vile like grave rot. Hadjar swore and, leaving a cloud of blood behind in the air, ran. He still ended up getting cut by the sharp wind, but that was infinitely better than the fate that befell the cloud of blood he’d left behind. The tornado devoured it, and the Dah’Khass’ eyes immediately flashed red.
“What an amazing taste!” She drawled, overcome by sexual ecstasy, which was a sickening sight to behold. “I’ve changed my mind about killing you, human. I’ll leave you alive to drink your blood for centuries!”
Chapter 574
If Nero were here, he would’ve replied with a joke, but Hadjar saw that the Dah’Khass was getting ready to attack again, so he focused on the battle. If the demons, as Steppe Fang had said, had really been Spirits once, then feeding it the hag could raise the Black Blade to the level of an Imperial artifact. She was a dangerous opponent with a lot of strange Techniques, but she was also a potential source of power. Hadjar couldn’t miss this chance.
However, after a short exchange of blows, Hadjar realized that he’d been wrong about her: she might’ve been as strong as Eon, but she lacked any mastery over the Weapon mysteries. No wonder the orcs had managed to hold them back for so many centuries.
Dragon Heart: Land of Demons. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 7 Page 16
