Chapter 233

Chapter 233

Chapter 233

The room beyond the trapped door was something to be seen. Dim light reflected off thousands upon thousands of coins and jewels from a glow-stone embedded in the ceiling. A pile of weapons and armor with lesser enchantments were also stuff into a corner on the right hand side of the square room, while trinkets, baubles and low-grade artifacts were piled in the very front. It was the smaller pile to his left that caught his attention most, as it was the pile that was supposed to be things he’d be interested in having for himself or for his minions.

“How much is this?” Riven waved around at the piles of bronze, silver, gold and platinum Elysium Coins higher than he was.

“Uh...” Athela held out both hands to either side. “No idea. Put them in a storage bag and find out?”

Riven rubbed his temple with two fingers. “Rat boy, come hither.”

The dungeon avatar popped into existence next to him with a scowl and folding its arms. “What is it now, vampire!? Is it not enough that you’re already robbing me?! Do you seriously expect me to-”

“Yes.” Riven glared down at the avatar with a flare of his aura, holding out his bag of holding that Negrada had given him. “And do it now. Those two piles over there as well.”

Grumbling to himself and raising a hand, the dungeon avatar quickly made a series of gestures that saw the flood of coins rocket towards Riven’s outstretched bag. Like a river of money and jewels, the bag guzzled it all down over the course of five minutes until the last of the coins was swallowed into the spatial abyss of Riven’s item.

“Now get lost, you’ve already ruined my day and I have lots to do.” The dungeon avatar humphed and vanished in another flash of light, leaving the demons and Riven to stand only in front of only a single, very small pile of stuff that he was quite keen on inspecting soon.

Looking at his bag, he nodded in approval at the stacking numbers of coins that’d appeared there with the monetary value added up. “I had less than 63 million after spending some millions on keeping the population fed, but now I’m back up to 82 million in Elysium Coin value. A couple dozen low grade artifacts, weapons and armor - along with a few spell scrolls and tomes in both the Fae Foundational Pillar and... The Zodiac Sub-Pillar of the Harmony Foundation? I haven’t seen that one yet. Interesting, but not applicable to any of us. Maybe some of the people in the other room will want these.”

A splashing sound from Riven’s left sounded, and when he turned to look - Athela was gone. Instead, only bloodstain remained.

He furrowed his brows at Azmoth, who just shrugged, and then at Fay who also shrugged.

“What?” Fay asked innocently, blinking twice underneath her purple flat-brimmed witch’s hat.

“Where did Athela go?”

“I don’t know.”

“She was right there.”

Fay giggled. “She was, but now she’s not.”

...

...

...

“I see.” His eyelids half lowered, and his head swiveled back to the bloodstain on the floor. He saw it move slightly in his direction, and he reached out feelers to get a grasp on the inborn mana. That mana was not accessible to him, and he lifted an eyebrow.

Intentionally ignoring the slowly moving blood puddle and guessing that this was very likely one of the two new martial arts she’d been wanting to show him, he tried to hide his smile and pretended not to make the connection. “Very well, I’m sure she’ll come back to us in time. I’d probably smell her foul stench before she actually got close anyways. Now let’s take a look at these gadgets.”

He walked over to the small pile of stuff set out for him, internally chuckling when he noticed the puddle abruptly freeze at his words as if grievously offended, and got into a cross-legged sitting position on the floor.

One item was a pair of flaming antlers stuck onto a ring of light, giving off an orange-yellow glow. The next item of interest was a large black grimoire, its pages yellowed, with a green viper set onto the front of the thick leather front. After that was a huge belt with a metal boar’s head slightly protruding from the belt buckle, created from thick metal rings. There was a set of bone-made boots as well, plate armor with death mana that oozed out of them at a slow but steady rate. Then, lastly, there was a set of two red katanas that were rather long and slender for their make.

“Care to join me?”

His minions did as asked, both of them sitting down next to each other and across from him on the other side of the pile. Meanwhile, the puddle of blood remained sitting there without doing much otherwise.

“So first things first,” Riven began, picking up the two red katanas and handing them to Azmoth. “These were going to go to Athela, but I figure they can go to you since she’s not here to claim them.”

“UNHAND THOSE SWORDS, VAGABOND!” Athela launched herself from the puddle of blood on the floor - or more accurately, warped her figure into her humanoid version and swiped the katanas out of Riven’s hands while humphing loudly. “And I do not smell! You snore when you sleep, ingrate.”

“I love you too Athela.” Riven gave her a wink, and she immediately blushed before clearing her throat to sit down next to him.

Glancing his way just once and then averting her eyes again, she scooted in closer, twice, and gave him an embarrassed peck on the cheek. “Love you too.”

Fay looked a bit jealous, but otherwise didn’t comment.

Flame Skin: Applies a passive flame shield to skin that activates on violent contact, with defense equal to one third of your total sturdiness. Resets every 5 minutes.Set Piece: 1 of 3. This Item is part of the Ragar’s Hellsteed Set. Acquire 3 items of the Ragar’s Hellsteed Set for additional bonuses.]Cannibalize Armor: Absorbs adjacent armor pieces of the wearer and enhances them up to the quality of the original Lich-Kin Boots.]Whispers of Agony: From time to time, these blades will whisper to you. The stronger your bond, the louder they whisper, and the louder they whisper, the more pain your strikes inflict regardless of damage.The Red Tide: Unleash stamina, mana, or divinity into these blades via your Blood Sub-Pillar to charge ranged sweeping attacks in the form of a red crescent. Damage and range depends on the amount of energy infused.]

“And what’s that?” Riven asked.

“They want to kill stuff.”

“I shouldn’t have even asked.” He shook his head, facepalming. “What else would blood-attuned katanas want? Are you going to use them?”

“Of course I’m going to use them!”

“Then you might want to start training at The Blood Moon Requiem’s enclave for practice. You haven’t had sword training back in the nether realms before in illusory bodies, have you?”

Athela grimaced. “Eh... yes, but not much. When anticipating our change into humanoid forms of our arachnid bodies, future arshakai are given lessons. I’d focused more on daggers and claws back then, or the blades from my back when using illusory versions of what I would likely become. Not a lot in swords unfortunately.”

“Would you mother and other kin of your demonic clan train you then?”

“Probably. It’d also be easier to visit them than visit the vampiric enclave, so I’ll probably just do that in my spare time whenever you’re sleeping.”

Riven nodded in approval and got up, happy to see that each of his demons had their own upgrades even aside from his bone-crafted boots and leg armor. Azmoth had the boar’s-head belt and flaming antlers, Fay got the grimoire that’d no doubt help her catch up to his other two demons - which was exactly what she needed right now, and Athela’s new weapons were no joke either. It was a great haul, and it made him ask himself why he hadn’t done more dungeon diving like this in the past.

Then again, would the prizes have been as good if those asshole invaders hadn’t shown up?

He could only guess at that one.

Speaking of which, it was probably time to check on Genua. He could feel her heartbeat in the next room begin to quicken, and although her transformation into thrallhood wasn’t quite done - it was approaching the terminal.

So getting up and motioning for the others to follow him out of the treasury room, he began to head for the new thrall he’d acquired - excited to see just what class she’d choose and how it would turn out when she was finally able to bind to the Blood God’s Markings.

***

Aksilias Bloodmare and his two sons, Rufus Bloodmare and Jakromi Bloodmare, had been rather relieved when Allie had told the native vampires of Panu that she’d come see their city as requested. When she’d agreed to speak to their coven’s patriarch and matriarch to learn more about this vampiric elder-god world quest. They’d left with smiles on their faces and apologies on their lips for the poor interaction they’d had with Riven’s thrall-to-be Genua as guests, and they’d hurried off into the underdark after supplying Allie with a map to their underground city of Bernzee - self proclaimed home of ‘The Hundred Covens.’

What Allie had note expected to find, therefore, were the hundred covens all gone.

Or better said, they’d all been killed.

Towering spires of blood-covered rock, shattered walls, and burning homes giving off plumes of smoke for sprawling miles in a vast underground cavern. Piles of rubble and scattered pieces of half-devoured corpses. This is what she found in their stead.

Allie’s footsteps echoed through a ruined city of the underdark that was devoid of any sound aside from the crackling of flames and the splash of her steps in pools of crimson fluids. Her red eyes scanned the tens of thousands of dead she passed by, building by building, street by street, in what was nothing less than an absolute genocide of the populace here. What was even weirder was that her vampiric senses couldn’t pick up any heartbeats at all, meaning that not only could she not SEE anyone living - but it was very likely there wasn’t anyone hiding here either.

Weirder yet was that the blood mana that should be here, given the absolute carnage and splattered crimson streaks or pools of blood pretty much everywhere, was absolutely gone. There wasn’t a hint of blood mana to be found, and she certainly wasn’t the savant of the Blood Sub-Pillar like her brother was - nor did she even have the sub-pillar - but she was still a pureblooded vampire and she should have been able to identify it in any normal circumstances.

Add another layer of oddity to it, and the ghosts, souls and wraiths that usually kept her company in the beyond had scattered - sensing the presence of something that she could not. Even when reaching out to them for answers they did not agree on what it was or how they knew it was dangerous, only sending her vague signals that she should not be here.

That none of them should be here.

This was not a place for the living or the dead, they whispered to her. This was not a place that she should remain.

“Finding anything?” Allie asked in a low tone, scanning their surroundings when they came to a crossroads filled with more of the same.

Mara shook her head from underneath her black cowl, and the necromancers behind them all stood out at intervals with eyes seeking just as much as their scattered minions were. “My shadow ravens aren’t seeing any movement from above. It appears that the covens here have been completely wiped out, along with all of their slaves and all of their thralls. Be it vampire or mortal - it did not matter to whatever or whoever did this. Not a single ounce of life, even to my soul sense, is detectable. My skeletal assassins also report no movement as they go house to house, and I am at a loss for what could have caused this amount of carnage in what appears to be a very short amount of time given the way they all failed to escape.”

"There were no bodies out in the tunnels leading here, so it must have happened fast." Nin nodded his agreement, stepping through the afterlife to appear next to Allie with the sound of a breath. “This is wrong. There is a distinct lack of blood mana here where there should be just as much as the death mana permeating this city. I cannot fathom why that is, or where it would have gone in such quantities.”

Allie frowned underneath her skull mask. “You sensed it too then? I was thinking the same thing.”

Then she realized: Why were there no bodies other than the populace? The creatures that’d done this were monsters, without a doubt, because of the claw and teeth marks left in the innumerable corpses. Where were the bodies of these beasts?

And why had the citizens all died in their homes? Had they not heard the carnage before it’d happened? Not just once, but dozens of times now she’d seen the bodies of children next to dolls and toys, or the corpses of their parents at tables attending to untouched dishes of food now gone cold.

Gritting her teeth and taking another look down at the map, she decided on the only course of action she could take that may provide answers for her. “We head to the Bloodmare estate. If Aksilias and his sons, or their clan, are all dead... then we search it for clues. I have a feeling this butchery is related to the world quest and the fallen elder god, things just line up too perfectly for it to be otherwise. Something is very, very wrong here... and I intend to find out what that is.”