Accidental Reaver

Chapter 211 - 210: New Manifestation

Swirling snows manifested a will of their own, harassing five Envoys at once. Cracking frost, blistering snows, and creeping ice produced a soundscape drowning out the Envoy's competing audible struggles.

A Lifefire Drake worked with a balrog to burn away the overwhelming cold. Shivering, the smaller Fairy Envoy summoned its illusions, suffering black lash often as this confounding target broke them with consistency. Craters appeared at random in a clash between Sooty and the Black Satyr Envoy. Xera came to assist when needed, fully using her new independence. Her resonance with the Reaver ensured the need for minimal communication.

Hopping to keep maximum mobility, Luke dodged the Frost Titan's gigantic axe. Icicle frost serpents came out of the axe to attack him, meeting crushing snows that dispersed them soon after. Jumping up, he rotated exploding frost patches all over his body for instant rotation, connecting a kick to the exposed wrist. With an audible thwack, the move shifted the Frost Titan's arms; the beast kept stable otherwise. Xera blasted a black essence orb into the Black Satyr, spreading Ruinous Echo to the three Envoy's on the ground. Spared of the effect, the Balrog gliding through the air, with the Drake beside it, rained down different fires. A shifting ice wall erected itself to clash into the fiery display.

Using a mix of the new flexibility, Triple Step, and natural speed, Luke avoided the fire rain and the Frost Titan's furious sweeping axe. His frost often canceled out the axe's summons and glacial effect. However, the same applied to him. Neither creature slowed the other down. Difference was, the Reaver stole away power from the Titan by the second, using the golden blizzard around him. He activated Polar South to maintain the Greed Concept for longer—a taxing effort. Illusion caught on to his senses, blacking out for not even a tenth of a second. He instinctively flipped back, catching a gale to glide with, avoiding the bisecting glacial gigantic axe, but a hellish blaze branded into Luke's ribs.

Crashing out hundreds of feet away, the elemental human got up, part of his left side gone. With a mind frozen by ice, the pain left behind dulled. Multiple healing effects set to work, Blood Haze, Vampiric Regeneration, and what he could reform with frost manipulation. Veins of Corruption and Blood Weave Artisan healed the wound at a visible rate. Each pulse of damage from the blizzard around him funneled health. All that to say, the Reaver concocted a regeneration akin to what the Envoy's enjoyed, if not superior, under proper conditions.

In full control of the encounter—even if the Satyr and the other four begged to differ—the evolved human kept the golden blizzard around the Frost Titan Envoy. Luke embraced the mixture of pure attributes, with strength as a standout, and ice affinity or frost resistance coming to bolster him permanently.

Alas, this 'method' came with a drawback. The Reaver effectively turned into a rag doll. Even with Sooty's assistance and Xera's independence to be in either battle, it was harsh on his abilities and perception. Keeping track of five extremely high attributed monsters, one with illusion, and another still near immune to his frost, resulted in errors. Still, the frustrated ones were the Envoys, not him.

They could sense it, how could they not? By now, they noticed the longer they stood in this blizzard, took any sword strikes or essence blasts, another small portion of their attributes left them—permanently. All the meanwhile, Luke's aura rose, and the blizzard widened. He found himself able to maintain the Greed Concept around the Frost Titan more often than not. With five separate targets offering what felt like an unlimited tribute to the Sin of Greed, Luke's coordination dropped somewhat. Strength control lost its finesse, and he was unused to how fast his brain started to process information, essence, and spatial awareness.

Other affinities he never encountered before dipped into his soul, adding themselves to the already lengthy list. Illusions fell further in efficacy, essence welcomed him as its own, fire spoke to him, life bloomed, wood groaned. He reached deeper. Sure enough, there it was. Ice affinity grew practically every minute. The Frost Titan, the sole focus of the golden blizzard, became the gift that kept on giving. After another collision against it, Luke noticed the frost favored him now, and the giant strength gap considerably shortened.

This style accelerated growth, but even Luke found it supremely challenging to deal real damage against this Frost Titan. As the majority of the time, Xera rotated away to assist Sooty. A necessary sacrifice. Sooty's abilities were a menace, with Vorpal Rot giving the Black Satyr Envoy serious trouble. But to expect her to handle what seemed to be the strongest Envoy all alone? Wishful thinking.

As a penalty, he often suffered the 'affections' of the other four Envoys by his lonesome. Flames licked at his chest, steaming away seconds later. Illusions shattered, ineffectually tugging at the senses. An iced axe tried to obliterate him, as howling blasts washed over. Mental fatigue stacked up, even if the physical wounds inevitably faded. None of those present landed damage high enough to overwhelm the other's healing, whether it be Luke's methods or the Ichor's natural properties for the Envoys.

The 'stalemate' dragged on. A paper-thin lie, Reavers never lost in a tie. The influx of attributes from constant theft against five sources began to dry, their river of attributes or perhaps the innate greed limit being brushed up against. After roughly twenty additional minutes, Luke no longer sensed additional ice affinity coming his way. By this point, he'd taken what the Frost Titan had to offer, although basic attributes, especially strength, came in spades.

White snows thickened, deep blue ice shimmered, arctic winds raged. At this rate, Luke became a never-ending plague that spread ruthlessly, reflected in the gradually expanding blizzard centering him. By now, it bled out into the central front, well past the west he was assigned to. With that came another problem, two actually. The sheer amount of elemental frost he controlled wore at the mind, at least for this long, worsened by constant calculations to fight against five Envoys.

And, not so surprisingly, this glacial display attracted the attention of others. Hordes of regular monsters struggled in, wandering from deeper on the Western Front. Additional Envoys headed his way, a real issue. An unsolvable one as things stood. The status quo needed to be shattered—now.

Satisfied for the moment, Luke darted his perception to every corner, tracking the four main Envoy's attacking him. He ignored the Black Satyr, wholly stalled by Sooty's shadow hopping, or Xera's assistance, whirling around as a sword. Assured the Frost Titan Envoy offered up all the Ice Affinity it could, Luke tugged on the Reaver's Link, signaling Sooty.

It's time.

Assisted by Luke's arctic winds, Xera snapped back into his right hand. A frost platform formed horizontally in the air, oriented toward the three-winged Fairy Envoy. Springing against it, the Reaver poured every ounce of strength and agility into the resulting jump. He shattered the platform right afterward, accelerating motion, electrified with Triple Step to turn him into a crackling frosted missile, aimed at the unsuspecting Fairy Envoy. Two eclipsed suns appeared, with Whispering Tome between them. Metaphysical chains loosened, a negative pressure settled, accompanied by a faint aspect. A gold and glacial-white deathly skull opened its mouth behind the Reaver's afterimage.

For its duration, the golden blizzard expanded, from a local condition around the Frost Titan to the entire terrain Luke's frost spread to. Just as the Fairy began to react, an all-consuming golden Essence Fissure brought its wrath down upon it, slamming it face first into the tundra. Temporal North reset the cooldown, Luke assigned a new Fissure to delay the Black Satyr, the only real variable against this working.

In a vicious sword arc, Luke beheaded the Fairy with Xera. Golden frosts ate into the Ichor regenerating the head, a pulse dug in, revealing the two hearts—the right chest and left calve. Sooty formed out of the Envoy's shadow. Her Reaver Beak was enhanced with true damage. Piercing into the Fairy's back, it spurted out white blood. Sooty's size doubled from Gigantification, her Talon Strike ripped in deeper, crushing the heart. Even decapitated, the Fairy used its rains and illusion to slow down their efforts—all but useless.

Golden snows spread upward, obscuring the Reaver and corvid, as mist flooded toward the conflict. Detonating meticulously placed frost patches on his body, Luke whirled back into the Fairy, sinking Xera into the other heart. The Envoy's vessel shook but lived, mocking the rules of life. The detached head musically laughed at the pair.

Luke returned a gluttonous smile. "We're far from done."

Lifefire and hellfire came down in tandem, burning into the surrounding snows. Heavy, thunderous footsteps bounded toward the heat. Acutely aware of the positions of every hostile, the Reaver formed Xera into a wand. Two golden Essence Lances conjured up, rather than play it safe, he went all in. Ruinous Echo ate into the fairy's frozen body, the two lances fulminated while inside the vulnerable flesh, tearing away a leg each.

Withstanding the searing flame branding his living ice, Luke reverted Xera into a sword. Golden ice caked the entire blade. Lightning crackled. The Reaver appeared above the fairy's slowly regenerating head. At the sight of him, it ceased laughing. He pierced Xera in the head, turning its brain into mush. Golden snows underneath smothered its prey, converting the resilient flesh into a messy gore pile. He threw Xera at the struggling body, impaling it beneath the consuming ice. With Xera as a stable conduit, a tsunami of rime transversed her into the Fairy Envoy's remains, still amidst regeneration in spite of multiple death-inducing strikes. It ballooned, then burst apart, frozen by the raging arctic winds circling it.

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Clutching his hand, the Reaver commanded the Elemental Plane nearby to compress, crushing every piece of the Envoy to bits. Xera faithfully returned to his grasp. Confirming the feedback, the sensation of stolen Ichor entered Luke's soul. The pressure radiating from him thickened, the chains to the Legacy further slipped. The illusion-focused Fairy Envoy died without a trace, consumed by the golden frosts and glittering winds.

A haze persistently sat at the edges of the Defier's vision. Mental fatigue climbed. Each eclipsed sun faded. Shadows gushing, Sooty nudged Luke, who unsteadily teetered on the edge of collapse. Physically fine, but spiritually and mentally a wreck. No matter his efforts, the golden flecks quickly dispersed against his command. It seemed he overdrew on the Greed Concept. Luke attempted to dodge, catching the Lifefire Drake diving toward him. Bodily commands crawled, and crushing jaws snapped onto his glacial body. Luckily, Sooty sensed something amiss, applying an Iron Feather to Luke, halving the crushing damage. Spitting up icy blood with a guttural noise, the Reaver stabbed Xera into the drake's right eye. Pained, the drake's lower jaw loosened, shoving it open with one arm, Luke jettisoned mist to dislodge himself, bringing Xera along for the ride. Falling toward the welcoming snows, he struck Xera out to his right, meeting an infernal whip.

Hellfire burst out from the whip, birthing conflagrations onto Luke. He started to smoke, the black air clashing against white gales all around. He'd underestimated the backlash from Rising West. While not terrible, the already present fatigue made the drawback worse than usual. Unfortunately, this fight only seemed to become deadlier by the second. Black vines and twisting branches wrapped onto Luke, beginning to pull and push.

Black horns glistening against the snow's reflection, the Satyr Envoy summoned up a dreadful thorned spear. "An astounding mortal, the Goddess warned of you Defiers, and further still, their evolved minority. Would killing you return my knowledge?" She licked her lips in amusement and desire. "How delightful you must taste. A delicacy perfect for Tribute, not spared of my sampling first, dear heathen."

Counter to the confident words, Luke spotted the Satyr's fearful glance at the fading gluttonous skull image behind him. He remained calm, if in pain. He applied Essence Bond and Siphon onto the Satyr. Sooty conjured behind it, bubbling up from liquid shadows, her screech spread the two debilitating effects, while worsening Vorpal touch and renewing Withering Echo. That earned him a constricting tightening all along his body, living ice stretched.

The other three Envoys closed in, the blizzard's rage the only reason they'd yet to approach, that, and Sooty's emergency interference. Spatial Distortion did wonders, even against an Envoy. But its key weakness was glaringly obvious; the opponent had to pay Sooty attention. The Satyr, listening to its instincts, honed every ounce of its capacity on the Reaver. On the other hand, the Frost Titan, less intellectually nuanced, fixated on the ice elemental human like it'd killed its kin, and plowed its wife. For good measure. Luke stole away some of its ice affinity and frost resistance permanently. Thus, causing irreparable damage to the power source it clearly based its entire existence around.

Thus, Sooty's run of crowd control proved effective on two of the four remaining Envoys in the vicinity. Such as his luck, the two unaffected also happened to be the bigger headaches to deal with. The Satyr with far denser Divinity, and the Frost Titan since Luke's Ice Elementalization—even now—drastically suffered in potency against it. The monster was walking frost, while its ice-based abilities hardly harmed the Reaver; the opposite also applied somewhat. Only after the recent ice affinity theft did Luke gain the edge.

He'd take the blessings as they were. Until recently, it was five against two. Four against two faired better, although this mental fatigue from overuse of Elementalization, and the moderate backlash Rising West judged upon him, threw the follow-up out of whack. Caught up in the Satyr's manipulated darkwood and vines, Luke dropped Xera. The sword-wand hovered, then rotated, distancing itself slightly to allow a full range of motion.

"You know what to do."

"Roger, boss! Back to the tree chopping days."

Xera arched as she molded her blade body, its razor edge sharpened. Essence runes glowed hot white on the sword. She giggled manically. With a vicious chop, Xera hacked away at the vines and wood, enjoying the challenge as the substances attempted to regenerate faster than she could cut. The haze interfered with the Reaver's efforts to manipulate the elemental ice all around.

Recognizing her lack of presence to the other two Envoys, Sooty selflessly sent an Iron Feather Luke's way. Her shade from Shadow Wing was completely swamped, annoying the Lifeflame Drake, the most easily swayed target. Likewise, the corvid fully operated on hit and run or containment. Facing two Envoys head on was suicide, no matter her recent upgrades. The Drake's maw blazed, as liquid life-fire licked where Sooty flapped a mere quarter a second ago, saved by the mobility Shadow Elementalization uniquely offered. An enraged flaming Balrog dragged its whip from one spot to the next, as fiery novas spawned, leaving living emberlings behind. That secondary effect was thoroughly neutered. The Reaver's blizzard—howling all the while— froze and turned them into ice shards.

Turning its pages rapidly, the runes omnipresent within Whispering Tome flashed a dead gray. Silent Domain devoured the space around the Satyr, killing its taunts and literal ability to speak. Innate Divinity deep in its blood fought against the silencing effect, entirely countered. If an artifact's abilities, albeit a quasi one, were so easily countered, they wouldn't inspire the fear they do among monster kin. They could never wield one created by the hands of the four races, and vice versa. That said, the horror effect lasted for a vanishingly small amount of time.

Coming from a different direction, the Frost Titan marched on like a wrathful father ready to annihilate the one responsible for defiling its daughter. It hefted its frosted axe, icicles cracked on its metal, power thrummed in its legs as it got ready to leap the remaining distance.

Situational awareness challenged by fatigue, but largely intact, Luke urged Xera. "Sever the connection to the ground underneath. I'll handle the rest."

Doing just that, Xera sheared the connection the darkwood and vines previously anchored on, freeing Luke's right side. He tried to command ice again, failing miserably, as pain spiked into his frontal cortex. Doing similar with the Greed Concept left soul-deep agony, unable to recover through regular means anytime soon. Although control over the ambient frost evaded him, control over the living ice that composed Luke was an exception. Left with little choice, with a titan ready to crush him underfoot, the Reaver exploded the elemental ice in his left arm, obliterating the darkwood sealing him in place. The remaining arm kept a skeletal appearance, even that suffered fissures all around.

With no time to react to pain, Luke stamped down against the tundra, rushing backward. A localized frosting fury displaced all of the snow and ice. The blizzard shrunk, and the three elemental marks shifted to maintain what was left. Abusing the new flexibility, the Reaver twisted just enough to avoid being sliced into by the Frost Titan's axe. Before he landed, Luke thrust the functional right arm to the ground, furthering the distance by a good margin.

The innate elemental regeneration crawled compared to its usual pace. Vampiric Regeneration and Blood Haze worked overtime to repair the self-inflicted damage. In no position to suffer a lost arm against either opponent, Luke activated Patchwork from his lesser used ring. It glowed white hot, and flesh reconstructed around the left arm. A black, blurring metallic missile plunged into the Reaver's right leg. The Iron Feather snapped, saving the limb from being crippled. Xera settled in Luke's right hand. He struck her against the Satyr's spear, extracting it from his leg.

Glancing at the Satyr, exiting the Silent Domain with a bemused expression, he saw where he miscalculated. The abnormal Envoy used pure strength and technique to physically throw its black spear, no abilities or spells involved.

Arctic ice trailed along the Reaver's face. His respiration grew excessively heavy. Xera seemed to be speaking, but his sense of hearing dimmed into a persistent ringing. The Spectral Heart began to call out, offering its greatest potency, while latent beats warned of a price to be paid. Forewarned by Aloysius, he grinned, knowing what it was. His vision clouded further, blood froze up, left arm bubbled with sickly white flesh, and his sense of feeling forsaken. He started to fall over, a merciless axe came to meet his exposed neck.

An ear-piercing thump echoed throughout the entire battlefield. Aloysius laughed in the distance at the central portion of the battlefield, his excitement carried all the way to where the Sin of Greed flickered. Upon a second glance, you could see his eyes also missing part of their humanity, while swinging around a two-handed mace like a light stick.

Greed closed its eyes again for the second time in recent memory, and much like the first, failing to kill it resulted in a far worse outcome for those who opposed it. Its all-consuming gluttonous gaze grazed upon the fields of monsters and corrupted—pupils missing and devouring gold swirls undulated at the edges. The blizzard sucked into the Reaver in an instant, and he righted himself. The Frost Titan's axe sank into the plain tundra underneath, cracking it apart all the way up to Sylen's battlements, splitting apart the barrier and outright killing those in the strike's direct trajectory.

Its intended target was spared of any such fate. Luke's rejuvenated his wounds back to near perfection. All signs of ice in the vicinity dried up. With a slow motion, he struck the axe head next to him with Xera, a thin blue-gold substance lined her edge. Despite the apparent lack of power, the axe went flying off toward unsuspecting tidal monsters deeper into the Western Front, turning them into newly minted gore piles. With the last bits of consciousness before the change fully took its price, the Reaver noticed a log line, written in gold spattered by blood.

[The Spectral Heart's stringent requirements have been met. It's latent gift, the Pupilless State, activates. Greed's will guides you as your mind kicks into its most instinct-driven state. The Reaver Legacy unlocks to the zenith of Master for the duration of the state. The Watchers take interest]

Behind him, a part gold, part glacial-blue skull with an eternal smile formed in a visible but metaphysical state. A manifestation of the mistake made by the Tide. An unholy pressure reached and caressed the nearest targets, stiffening the Frost Titan and Black Satyr into undistilled terror. Envoys?

Nothing less than a Diplomat should've been sent to crush the Sin of Greed once and for all. With the ten or less Diplomats left on the battlefield busy with any functional Defier, all that remained would be to suffer Greed's Price. The Soldier no longer kept back the Reaver.

Snapping his head up, Greed stared at the Satyr and Titan, with a smile matching the manifestation that hung over him. An emptiness occupied where he stood, an utter lack of pressure or presence. Except for the aspect manifestation and Concept honing Xera's edge, external representations of techniques or greater power vanished. Lightning minutely sparked, he flickered, then reappeared, with Xera already stuck in the Frost Titan's throat.

The skull manifestation behind Greed took its first bite, visibly eating into the Ichor and soul hidden deep with the Frost Titan, its endless vitality and power cracked apart. Part of its foundation fed into the skull, then a smaller part drifted into its owner. A sleek strength settled, while ripping Xera out, Greed flipped onto the Titan's upper spine, and whipped out a right leg. Gold and frost gathered at the tip of the foot, connecting with the Envoy's spine. The creature crashed into two other Envoys in another part of the Western Front, interrupting them from gorging themselves on their soon-to-be meal, a red-haired archer with brown eyes and a spell sword elf. Golden Lightning gathered at Greed's feet. He thundered toward the dazed Titan.

After controlling bodily shudders, the Black Satyr got a hold of itself, picked up the discarded black spear, and rushed to assist the other Envoys. That creature wasn't something it could handle with just the assistance of the other Envoys here. It released a beacon screech—futile as it may be—alerting all Envoys in the Western Front to gather.

Devoid of its signature amusement, it whispered, "Another Pillar of the Four cannot be born."