Chương 382: Chapter 9-380 – A Cleave Train of the Damned

Wow, Sama thought. Just... wow. It was so nice to just vent like this. Like letting out one long damn scream of frustration and anger and resentment and pure annoyance at how so many people could be such total wastes of breathing space, greedy self-interested wankers, or just lazy excuse-makers who had a thousand and one reasons for not helping, not contributing, not doing the right thing-!

Her steps picked up for another thousand paces before slowing down again, the rage simmering just below all-consuming, and not abating with the slaughter. She could kill everything that came within range of her, carve a path across the world without stopping, harvest every single one of the Damned who crossed her trail, and it was a Good thing! What a wonderful psychological tool for letting out pent-up emotions so deep she'd been stunned feeling them being released like this.

Of course, that wasn't WHY Fae had been down here, but it was why Fae COULD be down here. If this was the wrong thing to do, neither of them would have been doing it. It was even subtle enough that if Fae had been doing it among the actively Damned, it would have been a Sin, as being Damned and having to suffer and be exploited was actually exactly what was supposed to happen to people who took that route in life.

But these, these were souls that had suffered through the punishment they were supposed to, had been broken and given up all they could, and had not been allowed to pass on. The fact they still existed at all was the Sin here, and finally allowing the last residues to give up and rest was, in effect, one of the highest Mercies that could be shown them. They had paid all their Karmic Debt, and still weren't allowed to pass on.

The Sin tied to them was no longer theirs, and every soul she put down was an act of moral kindness! Of course, the fact they were mindlessly aggressive and would tear her apart in a second even with their minds completely gone both kept her on her toes and helped alleviate any residual sympathy.

They may have paid their Debt and were empty shells, but all their instincts and actions were still in service to Sin, so she couldn't be complacent, especially in the Netherworld and this crazy universe where everything was so much more overpowered than the memories she had inherited from her forebears.

The semi-living terrain, sometimes composed of little more than the writhing bodies of mindless Damned, didn't bother her Waveskating Step, her lightfoot at a transcendent level that meant she might as well have been a stream of mist and water. Not even convulsing ground-traps could snap shut or suck her down fast enough before she was past them and gone... unless they were the size of a football field or something, which was its own problem.

Her Tempest of Serenity kept her both focused and motivated, both analysis and instinct wedded together in a killing mindset sustained with emotion, motivation, and discipline. She had actually brought out Quaver, Tremble's non-intelligent off-hand twin, for this, Main Gauche making their killing power exactly identical, and the combined patterns of the Cleave Train easier to execute. Her job here was simple.

Trace out a specific path and trail, a formation on a grand and great scale, with her footsteps and the things she slaughtered. Even if it left no visible or sensory trace behind, the metaphysical resonance of death and vivus would follow where she had been, carving out a trail and path just as if she was gouging out something in the not-soil of the nether-realms. And so, that was exactly what she was doing.

Who and what exactly she was was concealed behind an Umbral Veil, a Faerie Fire -like set of black flames about her that completely obscured what she looked like, and even what her Swords did. It was a powerful yet restrained illusionary effect, nearly solid in its effectiveness, and something she used all the time when going out and getting rid of people who had long since yielded the right to continue drawing breath by their actions.

Not that they would have acknowledged that, but that was one of the reasons why she had to kill them, acting on behalf of those they'd murdered and the survivors who either didn't know or didn't have the power to act against those who'd done the killing. It was something she just didn't get tired of, something she chalked up to the Hag in her background, and probably a whole goddamn lot of Lower Planar influence in the Rantha Hag Racial Class.

She just received absolutely no satisfaction from beating up Good people, having had to do so to fools and impulsive knuckleheads on more than one occasion. Doing that literally left a bad taste in her mouth. Hah, it was distasteful!... Killing Neutrals was just work. She was as apathetic and uncaring as those she had to cut down, avoiding it if she could, and if they worked with Evil because it was easier and benefited them, then cutting them down because it was easier and benefited her own people was only fair.

But killing Evil? It just got her heart pumping and working with glorious purpose. The feel of Sin burning, of souls going off to the Damnation they'd earned instead of inflicting their asshattery on the living, of being the hand of justice for those who couldn't fight for themselves and punish the evil that mortal souls had caused... No, she never got tired of it.

Standing up for others in a Good Cause, be it big or small, was just one of those things that made her beam contentedly, almost as good as a night with Fuzzy. Fuzzy had been moping that he couldn't come down here and vent crazily, too, but he was getting all the personal stress relief he could give himself up top against the undead, who, she had been gravely amused (hehe) to see, were both alternately terrified of him coming in to personal melee, and kept trying to swarm him when he did. Love this story?

Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! Obviously they didn't know how Cleaving Techniques actually worked. The more weak things converged on him, the more weak things died. All the nasty stuff that might actually be a threat to him were far too big to gang up on him, and anything powerful enough to be a threat and small enough to swarm him was not numerous enough to do the same, or too proud and intelligent and independent to resort to base swarm tactics to kill him.

It was the same reason she liked cutting down Shadow Knight blademasters and their thinking that Bigger Bladewind = Awesome Swordsmen. The ones that were strong enough to actually hurt her in physical combat were like generals to the rest, and simply wouldn't gang up against her. She was more than happy to exploit that by slaughtering them individually when in melee against them, completely uncaring of their scything bladewinds and punishing their lackings in actual melee combat.

These things around her, however, were just random luck and instinct, regardless of how big or small, and she was just cutting through them. If they were big, that just meant she had to be more precise. If they were small, she could just use straight power and move on to the next. The strongest ki in the whole world, rivaled only by Briggs, swirled about her. It still wasn't chi, but it didn't need to be.

It was strong enough that her physical form was a feather, that momentum and inertia were little notes at the bottom of the page to pay attention to sometime, and fatigue was a reminder at the end of a long, long report that could be acknowledged some other time. Her Singing was completely internalized right now, a thrumming double-strength melody amped up by Courageous that was warping reality inside her Null and Tremblesense with obscene levels of self-confidence.

Tremble had hoped that she might be able to really Sing out down here, but that would have warned the undead and attracted attention, making their job harder. Behind her, Stand moped as he couldn't do more than pulse quietly in support, but her Shield knew his job, and nothing was going to get through from behind her.

No, this was just the melody to an internal bladedance of terrifying intensity to the few allowed to listen to it, living and adjusting to the undead around and in front of her, a final sad dirge to send them off in peace, notes carrying along a Sword of true and final absolution! She wasn't leaving much of a trail, actually. This wasn't a Pyramid Domain, where a massive piece of Magical Architecture was feeding on the undead and siphoning off their power.

No, this was just death, and the thirsty ground soaking up the last residues of the Damned. Blasts of arcane magic from her Null Universe pulsed and slew them with deft precision, bypassing any magical resistance, cutting through their physical protection, and administering lethal damage to the spent and wasted cores of their being. These things were as tough as any other undead to a mage. To a swordswoman?

The Bursts of arcane finality Tremble released into them destroyed them with ease as she hewed through all the defenses that had kept them intact for who knew how long. Her backtrail wasn't a trail of burning, dying corpses. It was just a swirl of soulfire and vivus floating through the air, and the undead exploding into white dust that the hungry, empty ground sucked up thirstily, drinking the last dregs of them.

Fall and Down were likewise busy at work as her Hand Autobows, wielded in her Arakne Arms (when did she get to use those in combat situations up above?), ceaselessly acquiring minor Undead to kill with headshots or finishing off gravely wounded ones that somehow were holding on. Four Manticore Tails rose behind her and whipped burning projectiles in to supplement her Blades, making the job of her Autobows easier as they helped open a path ahead of her.

The size of the undead didn't truly matter out here, since they weren't intelligent enough to exploit their size and she was totally capable of piercing through their defenses, Hewing and Finishing through numbers of lesser undead atop or around the big ones to send in dozens of Cleaving attacks, using Sharding if they were particularly big to get to vital points and cut them down.

It only took a few more seconds of circling with her Bladedance, after all, and then she was on her way, her killing Dirge a funeral hymn raised to send as many on their way as was needed. She kept the Formation in mind at all times, her path weaving across the miles to put it in place. She had first completed the Formation that Fae had carved out, a series of concentric circles and linked lines designed solely for the fell purpose of direly wounding a Realm Lord.

Then she had begun backtracking over the full area that Fae had covered, adding careful flourishes and a steely line of completeness, able to cover in hours the territory that Fae had spent months moving to, one day at a time, a thread of absolute linkage over thousands of miles of annihilation that had almost completely filled back in as countless more Damned souls spread back into the areas they'd been wiped clean of, and if anything were even thicker than before, spreading to where the sucking power of the landscape wasn't pulling at them at all, and anything preying on them had been cleaned off.

And there it was, the Awareness of a Realm Lord. It probably thought it was subtle, but against Her Null, it might as well have been ringing a bell. Sama glided to a halt, emptying the area around her of undead as she did. They dropped and Burned away before they hit the ground, things less than ants to the being up above. It wasn't looking for a line of emptiness carved through the omnipresent undead, or even them dying, as undead still mindlessly tore at one another occasionally and dropped to the ground.

No, this Awareness was looking for the thing that had Burned the not-soil of this place, rendering it stale and impotent, not a sole Sword-swinger tracing an artful path of future destruction through useless, drained souls not allowed to die. A few undead of amassed skeletal types saw her, but the concealing shadowy flames around her were totally neutral in aspect, concealing any hint of life.

She might as well have been a burning stone, but that was still enough for one of them to come shambling over and take a swing at her, all five of its skulls moaning mindlessly at her. Tremble plunged into its internal nexus of energies, vivus devoured it, and arcane energies drove the vivus out even as she ducked under a multi-limbed arm sweeping at her. There was a pulse, and then vivus spread out from within the creature, eating away the necroic energies holding it and its withered, agglomerated souls together.

It crumpled down and away, not a single bone hitting the ground before everything was ash and dust, and even that was sucked into the hungry soil. The other skeletal masses seemed to shiver as they beheld annihilation, seeing only the thing like themselves crumple down as it approached her. Sama waited calmly, relaxed, fury beating urgently in her heart, railing against the Awareness seeking about that was holding her up, and readied herself to move if anything else tried something.

There was a tinging as a dozen bone-missiles hurled by another gathering of multiple corpses fifty yards away was hurled at her. They struck Stand, who scornfully sent them back the way they'd come, not that such would really hurt the undead. A few seconds later, the Awareness here passed on, and Sama flowed into motion once more. Shardings, Autobow Force missiles, and Manticore Tail Spikes chewing through the things close to her, and she continued on with her killing. Only about another thousand miles to go!

, she thought cheerfully to herself, and continued with her emancipatory preliminary tour of the borders of the Netherworld.