Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior's Oath: A LitRPG/Wuxia Novel - Book 4

by M. H. Johnson

  Silver Fox & The Western Hero

  Warrior’s Oath

  M H Johnson

  Copyright © 2020 by M H Johnson

  Cover art by Andrey Vasilchenko

  Typography by Bonnie L. Price

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and events are the work of the author’s imagination and all locations are either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons or events is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Thank You

  Additional Links

  1

  Lightning flashed and thunder roared as Alex flew through the heart of a howling storm like a blazing phoenix racing across the heavens, compelled by dread as chilling as the torrential rains washing over him.

  Just the tiniest speck in the sky to the handful of cultivators facing off against a band of warped and twisted men wearing the skin and bones of their kills and wielding obsidian weapons, all of them radiating vile energies filled with malice and hate.

  “You have my property, fox-bitch!” roared none other than Hao Zei, the one-time infernal merchant now possessing the massive, grotesque body of a man who had surrendered himself utterly to darkest arts. Now as much demon as human, his twisted face chuckled with darkest mirth, eyes glowing a sickly yellow-green as he whipped around a massive two-handed blade that looked more than capable of cleaving even an ox in half, his engorged muscles rippling across flesh that was now the color of dried blood.

  He sneered at the pair of fierce-looking women guarding the wagon, and even from this distance Alex could taste their fierce resolve. Lady Feng Huang, Hao Chan’s powerfully-built instructor, and Lady Ning Jing herself, radiating a deadly mixture of Metal and Voidal Qi.

  Atop the massive wagon Alex knew so well were Hao Yin and the other kitsune girls under Lady Jidihu’s care, all of them with long spears expertly aimed at the approaching infernalists. Hao Chan was there as well, gazing at her stepfather with a look of unmitigated horror. She alone held her spear in a trembling grip, as if caught in a terrible dream she would do anything to escape.

  Hao Zei flashed a vicious grin, his still mostly-human face cracking wide in an inhuman fanged smile. “Ah. My beloved daughter. Still in pristine condition. Untainted. Uncorrupted by that Ruidian! This is good. Good!” He waved his oversized weapon in a come-hither gesture. “Come forth, child. Come forth and prepare to submit to your new master, and we will make this expedition a profitable one yet!”

  Hao Chan cried out in horror as the man she had once thought so highly of licked his bulbous lips with a forked tongue. “It’s time to come home, my darling girl. Time to savor pleasures too long denied!”

  Something in those foul, unforgivable words, and Hao Chan’s terrified gaze crackled with sudden heat. “You promised me so much! A chance at a new life, a chance to grow and blossom as a cultivator. All lies! You were actually going to sell me like chattel, bind me to that unspeakably vile flesh-peddler, force me into a life of degradation and despair! My own stepfather! And my own cousins, you promised their rescue, that they would find salvation at Dragon Academy, but really you were going to sell them as slaves!”

  Hao Chan spat her contempt. “You’re an inhuman monster, and now you look just as foul as you truly are! Get the hell away from me, you vile bastard! You are dead to me. Dead!”

  The two giant cultivators next to Hao Zei roared with laughter.

  Qi Perception check made!

  Alex no longer puzzled over the odd flashes of perception that allowed him to overhear glimpses of far off conversations. Instead he felt a cold shiver of fear even through his fury. The pair of eight-foot giants were Silver, as was Hao Zei himself, for all that the dozen or so men behind them were basic cultivators at best, with no Bronze among them that Alex could spot.

  Three diabolic Silvers.

  Alex clenched Elder Panheu’s parting gift, a fangtian ji that glowed with enchantment. He didn’t know the exact nature of his magical treasure, but at least he could rest assured that it was unlikely to break in a battle with foes that could chatter normal weaponry like toothpicks. Men that could shatter him just as easily, he knew, though he refused to let fear of his own likely death slow him down as he raced through the heavens, rapidly approaching the scene of the ambush.

  “The Swan will make a fine prize,” agreed the leftmost Silver diabolist, smirking at Hao Chan. “I can taste how perilously her life-force clusters around her loins, her Lower Dantian coaxed out of alignment to better suit that vicious art, and it is we who shall reap the sweetness within!”

  “Wrong!” roared a furious Hao Zei. “It is for our master that we shall deliver her, pristine and pure, so that he may sup upon her youth, vitality, and soul in equal measure! Remember our oaths, fools. No merchant breaks his word, once given. You have but to feel the power that now burns through our veins to know that we made the right choice!”

  “Oaths? Keeping your word? Are you truly that much of a fool?” Lady Ning Jing spat her contempt. “You embraced the folly of external transformation. It matters not your merchant titles. No city ruler will let you within fifteen miles of his holdings!”

  The exceedingly beautiful and inconceivably deadly former assassin flashed a wicked smile as a sickle of midnight blackness and a spinning disk of Metal Qi edged in darkness formed in her hands. “Not that your mad ramblings will mean anything, once I claim your heads!”

  At which point an awful discordant ring reverberated through the air. Lady Ning Jing abruptly fell to her knees, crying out in pain, eyes wide with disbelief, her Voidal-edged prizes disappearing from trembling hands.

  Hao Zei’s mocking laughter was echoed by the dozen infernalists present. “Fool! Did you truly think we wouldn’t deduce the nature of your forbidden arts? That we wouldn’t discover the secret of your dark pact, allowing such an unnatural forging between the Void and your single art? Pathetic!” He sneered, nodding to the Silver to his right, dressed in robes of living flesh. The hideous abomination of a man flashed a vicious smile, holding up a strange little tuning fork of lead. “We know the secret to your art, fallen assassin, and we know how to neutralize it!”

  “Mother!” Yinzi cried, the alabaster-skinned kitsune girl gazing down at her mother in horror, Ning Jing suddenly too weak to stand.

  Hao Zei’s laughter turned cold when the crimson-eyed girl of eighteen or so summers sprang off the wagon, silvery hair streaming behind her as she swooped down to gather up her mother i
n deceptively powerful arms before springing back to the carriage top once more, her true nature hidden from all save those who knew her best.

  “What an interesting mongrel child you forged, assassin! She is pretty enough, and will no doubt fetch a fine prize when we collar and sell her.” The corrupted merchant flashed a cruel grin. “Though not nearly so much as we will get selling you! Revealing all your deadly secrets, with the Fork of Dissolution to keep you tame!”

  He flashed a wicked smile at the trembling kitsune girls unable to hide their terror.

  “The fox brats are ours to consume or capture as we wish, once we deal with the Silver bitches before us!”

  “You will not find us so easy to defeat as all that!” declared Instructor Feng Huang as she and Alex’s friend Qie Qie quickly jumped down to help the defend their carriage.

  The demonic Hao Zei snorted. “QiFu Li, miasma the fools.”

  The eight-foot crimson-skinned diabolist to Hao Zei’s left, protected by dark lamellar armor covered in crimson sigils, flashed a devilish smile before whispering foul words that tasted of sickness and death.

  And much to Alex’s horror, the kitsune on the wagon rooftop, including the all too human Hao Chan, cried out and fell to their knees, trembling and retching as if struck by sudden horrific illness. Even Qie Qie collapsed with a groan, and Lady Feng Huang suddenly looked so weak, the shimmering spear of silver and gold she held slipping from her grasp.

  “How is this possible?” the Silver-ranked instructor hissed.

  Hao Zei roared with laughter. “It’s all about bending the rules, fools! It is far easier to crush your cores with visions of mortal illness that your souls have tasted many times before, even if just as mortal children, than it is to strike you all down with a wujen’s vilest arts! Death magics are dramatic, but they are costly, and require far too much power to strike you dead with a whisper and a word. Far better to incapacitate you all, forcing you to fight while your stomachs roil with vomit, thereby assuring both your exquisite suffering and our rapturous victory!”

  The mad merchant gleefully rubbed his hands together. “Now it will be effortless to capture or kill you all at our leisure!”

  Then his brows furrowed when the skies grew leaden gray in just heartbeats, still air abruptly whipping with hurricane-force winds, pushing the startled infernalists back.

  Thunder boomed, the gloomy air flashing with unexpected lighting.

  QiFu Li frowned. “Wild Qi is in the air! The auguries foretold no storm of this nature!”

  Hao Zei snarled. “And where is that fox bitch?”

  Alex, heart racing as he rode the surging storm like he had once dreamed of catching waves with his board, howled with exhilaration and fury as he beheld the tableau below.

  Not daring to hesitate for a second, he embraced his wild talents to the utmost.

  From the crucible to the furnace, the pressure had only increased without surcease from the moment he had ascended to Bronze.

  But for the sake of everyone he cared for below, so many of them just moments away from death, he would embrace the madness that was charging the trio of Silvers, Alex now plummeting straight down as Storm Flight and lack of air resistance generated truly insane speeds, knowing that if he timed things even a heartbeat off, he would explode into a fine crimson paste.

  And at the very moment a flicker of panic raced through him, he beheld the gaze of the vile cultivator jerking his warped head up, all the corrupt deeds committed and what he planned to do to all the girls present suddenly writ large upon the infernalist’s twisted soul.

  Alex saw Haw Chan’s doom in that monster’s gaze, and suddenly the death he courted meant nothing.

  Shield them! he screamed in his mind.

  Alex’s laughter was madness and fury in equal measure. “Impact, motherfucker!”

  Saving throw made!

  Critical failure avoided!

  You have elected to maintain full inertia!

  You have successfully triggered temporary invulnerability!

  Kinetic force generated at Mach 1 speed successfully transferred!

  Breakthrough made! You have successfully fused Storm Flight and Adderstrike into Phoenix Strike! Because any time you’re able to charge straight down from a half-mile height using hurricane force winds and avoid oblivion, you’ve risen from the ashes of your own grave.

  Experience earned!

  His world exploded with pain as the earth roared and shook and bodies went flying.

  2

  “Alex! Alex! Gods’ mercy, please don’t be dead, please wake up!”

  Alex gasped, lurching upright before toppling back over, feeling strangely nauseous and seasick. He groaned even as he righted himself again, frowning in consternation as he found himself in the bottom of a shallow, steaming crater, only then hissing, realizing he had suffered more than a couple second-degree burns, and his clothing was in tatters. The only thing still in one piece was the fangtian ji he held, glowing with a faint silver-blue hue.

  Alex crumpled his nose, snorting away the stink of what he thought was charred flesh. But how?

  Then it all came crashing back as he quickly leaped out of the still-steaming crater, awed and maybe just a little bit shaken by the scene of destruction before him.

  A dozen powerfully-built men kitted in full armor had been sent hurtling back, weapons and shields torn free of their hands, more than a few groaning with injuries and pain.

  But of the three massive Silver cultivators, two had quickly righted themselves, snarling like furious beasts in truth, their heads snapping Alex’s way.

  Of the third Silver diabolist, there was no trace to be found.

  Perception check made!

  Except for the smoking foot that had embedded itself in a tree some distance away, and Alex suddenly realized what the stink of charred meat was from.

  Then Alex gasped, realizing what an absolute fool he had been. If his friends hadn’t gotten his message in time…

  He spared a quick glance towards the wagon, relieved beyond words to see all the girls he had sought to rescue gazing at him with looks ranging from disbelief to outright awe, the wagon itself surrounded by a crumpling shield of Blue and Voidal Qi.

  “You fool!” screamed Ning Jing and her daughter Yinzi in unison, grimacing as they desperately held the Voidal elements of their shield together, only now relaxing their wills. “You could have killed us all!”

  “Idiot!” snapped Lady Feng Huang, upraised hands clearly responsible for the Water Qi portion of the field. “Move!”

  Alex blinked, suddenly not sure if he was being scolded or warned, but his reflexes thankfully had already taken over, raising his fangtian ji up in a desperate parry as the furious merchant cultivator lashed out with a great scimitar crackling with dark infernal magics, eager for his head.

  Contest of Strength engaged! Your opponent easily overpowers you!

  Finesse + Skill check made! You successfully wind past the blow!

  Alex felt his back twinge as he abruptly arched back before flipping to his feet, his enemy’s massive sword nearly knocking his own weapon out of his hands as he used the momentum to further twist himself away before that vicious blade could slice him in two.

  Alex felt a fresh jolt of terror he refused to call anything but exhilaration. If his fangtian ji hadn’t been a nearly-unbreakable enchanted treasure with the blood of three fallen Silvers further strengthening it, the shaft would have instantly burst into kindling.

  “You!” roared Hao Zei.

  “Me!” Alex flashed a mocking grin, even as his heart raced with dread, feeling the furious gaze of the other Silver infernalist now behind him, quickly twisting around and darting back to keep both Silvers in his sights.

  “You’re no Storm-channeler! You’re just a goddamned Ruidian monkey! You arrogant wretched cur! You filthy vile piece of goat puke! You stole my fortune! You rewrote my contracts! You stole my gold! I will have your head for that, you vile little thief! But f
irst, I will rip free your soul and bind you to one final bloody contract that will mark you as my slave for eternity!”

  Alex’s heart pounded with terror and fury in equal measure, realizing how deeply the odds were stacked against him, darting back when his enemy teased him with open feints, lazy one-armed swings with the oversized blade that all but begged Alex to slip under the bloated bastard’s guard and run him through.

  Because he sensed the growing ball of infernal crimson his foe was slowly building up in his off-hand.

  Qi Perception check made!

  And he could taste death stalking him from behind.

  So when Hao Zei mocked Alex with his laughter as his massive blade cut through the air in cleaving moulinets, Alex already knew what his next move had to be.

  “Ah. Fear grips your heart. You cannot deny it! You’re weak, hesitant, ready to collapse from exhaustion, tasting at last your mortal peril,” said a coldly chuckling Hao Zei. “And now I think it’s time to end this, worm.” His grotesque head turned left, catching the eye of the remaining Silver who had gone from circling Alex to dashing across the churned, dirt clod-covered field, hunting for the infernal chimes that had been so devastating to Ning Jing and that must have flown free from the infernalist’s clutches when Alex had made explosive impact just seconds ago. Infernal chimes Alex could instantly sense, even from forty paces away.

  “Wonang! Break the assassin bitch. I have this Ruidian well in hand! Men, charge the wagon and bring me Feng Huang’s head! The one who lands the killing blow can have his choice of girls to ravish ‘til we make it back to the slave markets!” His gaze turned further to the half dozen righted slavers who nodded and roared as one, shields held at the ready, dark obsidian axes radiating a foul glow Alex could sense even from where he stood, suddenly afraid those vile artifacts could very well mark even a Silver cultivator’s flesh.