CHAPTER 564: IMPECCABLE TIMING

Mason ‘Wolf’ of House Mason, Nexus Lord and Duke of the West, walked downhill towards a demon army. He was in a very good mood. First of all, he’d found the eastern players right where his scouts (and elven oracle) thought they’d be. Second, they all looked alive. And third, he maybe even got to kill a bunch of demons. With actual purpose!

The main purpose being to test his new raid item.

[Marilith Honor Blades. Innate. Rewarded by the demon itself, after death on the prime, to an exceptional combatant. Mediocre, if judged by the standard of magic blades. But then they do come with extra arms.]

‘Extra arms’ still sounded pretty awesome. It might have seemed strange a few months back. But now Mason just wanted to find out if they’d grow out of his torso like he was using shapeshift. Or maybe it was more metaphorical. Maybe the swords would just levitate up and fight on their own.

“Don’t run, don’t run, don’t run,” he muttered as he picked his way down. He literally knew the second the demons spotted him and his now obscene aura of planar murder. He’d killed at least two greater demons, one from the abyss, and one from hell, plus a few major demonic beasts, and some kind of four-armed ‘officer’ that gifted his blades. On top of a very large collection of other ‘lesser’ demons. The system marked him for it with a glowing color to demonic eyes.

The things started hooting and pointing and freaking out. A few black, humanoid-animal ‘hybrids’ came charging like they’d smelled demon-nip. Mason smiled and activated his Honor Blades.

Turned out both his ideas were wrong. Curved swords materialized in the air. They were attached to ghostly, stick-thin, black bone-like arms surrounded in red mist. But they flickered as if struggling, and he watched his primarily defensive, but also affinity-shifting, unique-gifted Apex Predator power flare.

[Innate item: Marilith Honor Blades. Soul-curse detected. Attempting to nullify. Curse nullified. Affinity change required. Infernal == Nature. Synergies found.]

“You naughty, naughty girl,” Mason muttered, thinking of the Marilith who’d ‘gifted’ him the swords. He supposed it should have occurred to him. His brother Blake’s demonic necklace literally choked him to death when it got testy.

The black bone of his ‘phantom’ arms grew muscle, skin, then dark fur, until they looked more like they belonged to a ghostly, mini-Cerebus. The red mist turned slowly green and grew until it clouded the air. The blades themselves went from something like ornate scimitars to shorter, piercing blades, with a familiar green tint.

He didn’t feel he ‘controlled’ the arms at all—like they operated outside his conscious mind. But it was time to find out. The eager, abyssal hybrids came up the hill, and he went down to meet them.

They creatures were undisciplined—too in each other’s way to use their numbers properly. The first three came in and Mason ignored his ‘extra arms’, treating the fight how he usually would. He slashed off the first clawed wrist that raked at his face, jabbing his other blade into the creature’s gut.

His ‘Marilith’ arms plunged down from both upward angles, and sunk both long knives into the thing’s shoulders, straight down at least a foot. It dropped to its knees, and Mason spun away and took its head.

The rest of the pack took their turns, grabbing and crawling over each other to get at him. He cut off anything that got close, but his extra arms weren’t fucking around. They didn’t pierce limbs or bleed flesh. They waited, and went for organs. They jabbed into brains, lungs, or hearts like a predator’s fangs. They hunted. And they killed.

Mason soon stood beside a small pile of dead demons. He saw no cooldown, no duration. His new arms just waited, their knives dripping with ichor. He looked at the small army below and smiled.

The others at the edge huddled together as they got yelled at by ‘infernals’ or roared at by bigger ‘abyssals’. Mason jogged towards them, inspecting as many with his Ranger’s Mark as he could. Then he sighed with disappointment.

So far he’d found the demons out in the ‘real’ world were a lesser version of the planar creatures. As with everything in the ‘great game’, there were rules.

He’d learned the ‘destruction’ gods trying to obliterate the world had to kind of ‘bid’ their conquests, and negotiate with the other gods. This meant they attacked in semi-predictable ways, and without committing more of their troops than necessary.

You didn’t send a greater demon to conquer some tiny settlement, now did you? Not when you had limited troops and had to nitpick with some asshole arcane god or whatever over every little thing. It would be like attacking a lightly defended town with a brigade of tanks.

So despite being large in number, the ‘demon army’ at the bottom of the hill was really a collection of footsoldiers. With what looked like a few beefier or brainier fellows to keep some order.

And now that the pathetic little bastards saw Mason’s ‘planar’ aura. And watched him dice a few of them like fruit. And probably realized he was a bonified murderer, and not some healer, who personally killed demons about three steps above their pay grade…

Well. They were very likely going to…

He sighed as the first batch of infernals started to run. The stupider, bloodthirstier abyssals looked torn between pleasure (presumably that the meat/victims would be all theirs), and paranoia (presumably because the one thing they knew was that cunning red demons might fuck them over).

Mason gave up his dream of cutting apart a whole demon army with his four, bare hands. This would be more like catching rats. He summoned his bonded apocalypse wolf, Streak, who flashed into existence with an impatient howl for demonic blood. Then he banished his swords and summoned his elven bow.

“Hunting time,” he said, grinning as the wolf took off.

Together they raced across the rocky ground, Mason’s Fang Brothers power flaring to bolster the wolf with all his passives and innate items. He was starting to realize Streak had some kind of ‘boost’ to him, too, because whenever the wolf arrived he felt a surge of speed and energy.

His first Power Shot blasted a fleeing red apart like that liquid robot from Terminator. Then he circled the right flank of the horde, loosing arrow after arrow on the run with practiced ease. Between his superhuman reflexes, the impossible draw of his ‘short’ elven bow, and a combination of magic shots and arrows, his targets burst like he was using some high powered rifle.

Some demons had shootable spines or could spit acid or zapped with little spells. Their shots zipped past and mostly missed, but a few went on target. It was all very cute.

Mason’s Great Tree gifted armor or Nature’s Sleeves stopped most of it. His titles, natural defences, and ridiculous regeneration did the rest. His first and arguably most powerful defence, Apex Predator, which could change his affinity (on top of other things) didn’t even bother to perk up.

The infernals were all scattering and panicking. The abyssal clumped like herd animals, finally their largest coming forward. He was a third bull, a third man, and a third elemental. His curved horns lowered as he charged.

On a whim, Mason lowered his own head and (fake) horns, and ran straight to meet it. The ‘old earth’, mortal piece of his mind was screaming this was lunacy. But the immortal, Cerebus-infused part just made a snarling sound.

He didn’t waver or slow down, glancing to make sure he was right on target before he lunged to meet the thing with the hardest part of his skull.

They collided with a crack that echoed through the hills. Force and pain shivered down Mason’s spine, his helmet’s fake horns shattering. He stepped back and shook his head to see he’d punched the demon’s head half into its body. The creature collapsed with a broken neck and shattered spine. Mason shook his head and grinned at the other abyssals.

They ran too, after that.

He picked off a bunch more with his bow, and let Streak keep going when he eventually decided it was time to turn back.

“Yeah, yeah, go have your fun,” he called, waving in dismissal. “But stay in sight of the cave!”

His head hurt, if he was honest. But the look on those demon’s faces was worth it. He walked back to the cave, swatting at Demi’s spores as they floated harmlessly around him.

He wasn’t sure if it was their shared ‘Divine Title’, or what, but they’d learned her deadly magic wouldn’t even try to harm him. When they discovered it she’d looked annoyed, then promised if he pissed her off it would change. He’d blown her a kiss.

Chinua and his people were all staring as he arrived. Some looked between him and the fleeing demons. A couple sat on a rock.

“That was…” one of the soldiers trailed off and shook her head.

“Thank you,” Chinua said, looking exhausted and relieved. “Your timing couldn’t have been better.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” Mason clapped the man’s shoulder and pulled a shy looking Demi over into a half hug, still blinking a few stars out of his eyes. “If I were you, I’d have preferred to see me days ago.”

“Weeks,” muttered the female soldier. “Months, maybe.”

Chinua frowned at her, then looked back at Mason and smiled politely.

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