Chapter 82: DD3 Chapter 028 – Moody

With a pained grunt, Arilla shifted the last of the heavy stone above her and crawled out into the daylight. Her makeshift tunnel promptly collapsed behind her adding fresh particulates to the dust that clouded the air. She was temporarily concealed by the screen of aerosolized stone, but Arilla knew—both from the lack of System notifications and her own wits—that it was only a matter of time before she was found. Iron rankers were made of tough stuff and the eight or so she’d left behind weren’t going to be stopped by a little thing like a building falling on top of them.

The warrior looked down at her unconscious burden and frowned. Hellyn. The mage was responsible for the majority of Arilla’s recent problems and it was hard not to hate her for it. There was the nagging temptation to let her go regardless—there was no joy or honour to be had in executing a defeated foe—but the mage had already proved that she was both dangerous and committed to avenging her father’s death. Letting her go now was the height of stupidity and while Arilla was a lot of things, she wasn’t that—not anymore.

With a quiet sigh to grieve her lost innocence, Arilla stamped her boot down.

*Congratulations on defeating a level 137 Theurge of Raging Winds. Experience is awarded.*

*Congratulations, you have reached Noble Slayer level 99.* 

*Your class is at its level cap. Rank up to claim further experience.*

The soft dings that accompanied the System’s fawning reassurances helped to mask the wet crunch of her foot moving through bone. Not nearly enough for her to ever forget the truly singular sound, but for a moment Arilla almost allowed herself to believe it when the System said she’d done the right thing. Smart—sure, but right? The pulped skull beneath her foot could never be that.

Arilla didn’t have time for any more introspection or guilt, so she pushed her worries to the side and decided to work quickly. Hellyn was a little shorter than her, but the allowances made for the other woman’s more generous curves would accommodate the warrior’s muscles just as well. Stripping a corpse was not an experience you could ever—or should ever—get used to, but it helped that it wasn’t a particularly difficult one. If Hellyn’s tortures hadn’t left Arilla practically naked then she’d have skipped scavenging the dead woman’s clothes, but hells take her if she was about to ride nude through the streets of Helion.

Arilla’s dislocated arm wouldn’t move at all, and the other was both slow and weak. Fortunately, weak for her was still an order of magnitude beyond what was required to move the mage’s corpse out of a flowing robe and a breastplate so thin that it might as well have been made for a child. While she worked, Arilla parsed her way through the System’s prompts.

 *Congratulations, you have reached level 100. You must now rank up your Noble Slayer class before you can absorb any more experience.

Noble Slayer - You have overcome the odds and slain those who should have been above you. As a result, this class strengthens your ability to face challenges beyond your level.

+4 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Vit, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Warrior] tagged.

Will become…

Ashen King - You have made the difficult decisions necessary to forge a kingdom. As a result, this class strengthens your ability to rule. 

+4 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Vit, +1 Will, +2 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [King] tagged.

Butcher of Humanity - You have taken part in more than one massacre where thousands of humans died. As a result, this class strengthens your ability to commit wholesale slaughter.

+5 Str, +3 Dex, +3 Vit, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Warrior] tagged.

Dragon’s Consort - You have been recognised as the official consort of a true dragon in a leadership position. As a result, this class strengthens your ability to stand by their side. 

+4 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Vit, +3 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Noble] tagged.

Arilla’s frown deepened. The System’s ‘choices’ were a joke. She’d been expecting it to force her into Ashen King from the moment her armour had changed, but she had never imagined that her other options would be so insultingly bad. 

Ranking up into iron was supposed to be a truly massive step in a classer’s progression, one that few humans moved beyond. It hurt Arilla to know how little say she actually had in who she would become. This was her life. Her choice would set her on a path that would determine if she had the tools she needed to face the challenges to come, and the System had sullied that with options so awful that they would have been funny if the stakes were any lower.

Iron rank would give the System’s whispers in her ear even more volume, and choosing between giving them a more carnal, murderous, or actually helpful slant was no choice at all. For a moment Arilla allowed herself to wonder how much of Hellyn’s decision to pursue revenge was based on her class’s urges. It didn’t take a genius to realise that a ‘Theurge of Raging Winds’ might just have an anger problem. 

In the end it was pointless to wonder, but the System’s actions still stung. It was supposed to be reactive and benign. Some ancient entity that watched over all creatures great and small with a caring hand—but increasingly, Arilla was starting to doubt that. Sometimes she thought it had agency, and looking at her classes, she knew what it wanted her to take.

Arilla awkwardly shrugged on the mage’s fine robe, forsaking the pathetic excuse for armour in her haste. She reluctantly accepted the prompt for Ashen King and walked away from the tavern’s wreckage as it started to shift dramatically.

Power on a scale she had never experienced before flooded into her mid-step while the sound of shifting stone filled her ears. Her skin felt electric, her breaths invigorating and her very sense of self crystalised into something distinctly more. The howls of her tortured class faded as the System’s magic twisted it into a cold unknowable thing of smouldering malice and spite. Arilla had known it would be different, but she’d underestimated the yawning chasm of distinctions that separated a warrior-tagged class from a king one. 

Arilla clenched her fist and could barely comprehend the wealth of power contained within her palm. She was barely stronger, her significant stat raises had been to her willpower and charisma, but the changes were nevertheless profound. Her urge to throw herself headfirst into violence was simply gone, and in its place, there was the quiet need for control. The maddening tethers tying her to her hateful subjects quivered with her rank up, and with a mere expression of her intent, she grabbed a hold of each one within her mind and compelled them to obey. It only took an instant, but the previously immovable bonds that had slowly been driving her insane moved to a quiet corner of her psyche and were still. Arilla felt fear, confusion and anxiety rapidly travel along her shared bonds only for them to gradually give way to begrudging acceptance and finally… approval.

Something other than hate flowed into Arilla from her subjects and her steps took on a more assured stride as she stood a little bit taller. Her doubts ebbed and more resolved than ever, Arilla approached her horse.

“You ready to go, Moody? I need you to fly for me,” the King said.

Moody stared at Arilla with her big brown eyes and predictably said nothing in response. The Thesian purebreds that had accompanied the old workhorse were nowhere to be seen, likely having bolted when the tavern had collapsed in front of them, but Moody had stayed.

“Too lazy to run, huh?” Arilla asked, briefly resting her forehead against the horses. Moody neighed indignantly before pulling back. “Yeah… that’s what I thought.” 

Arilla made her way to the saddle and was relieved to see that her sword was still amongst her bags. She pulled herself up into its seat and then glanced back over her shoulder at the moving rubble.

She was out of time.

The ruins of the tavern exploded outwards with a concussive wave of force. Before the dust had cleared, Laesin staggered away from the blast site followed by five others—two rogues, a mage, a ranger, and another warrior. Collectively, they took some unsteady steps, before spotting Arilla and then Hellyn’s stripped corpse. 

The pregnant pause that arose was finally broken when the two rogues suddenly disappeared. Then the warriors charged forwards at a sprint while the mage’s eyes began to shine, and the ranger readied their bow. Arilla leant forwards in her saddle and Moody, for the first time in her life, responded to her rider’s desperate urgings and galloped away. 

Adventurers were fast. In their line of work being slow simply wasn’t an option, as too many creatures could simply move faster than an unclassed human could react. Warriors needed to have a decent dexterity score otherwise they’d struggle to actually hit their faster-than-human foes, and the same—albeit to a lesser extent—could be said of mages. For rogues and rangers, maintaining their dexterity-enhanced speed was less of an annoying requirement, and closer to the foundational underpinnings of their respective classes. 

Horses had kept their place in Terythian society—and Astresia as a whole—for being faster still. Animals had largely been spared the brutal effects of the Sundering, and so enjoyed efficient and unrestricted levelling that their human riders, and nonhuman counterparts, could only dream of. While unclassed ranchers across the continent bemoaned the difficulty in actually raising trained horses, the advantages to the rider far outweighed the inconveniences to the producer. This almost always translated into an exorbitant price tag, that counterintuitively, continued to grow as the animals increased in both years and levels. 

Moody had certainly benefited from all of this. The stubborn mare had spent most of her life on a modest farm outside of Rhelea where she was the prized possession. Pulling a plough was hardly a difficult task for a beast with a strength score like hers, and she had been well-compensated for her efforts with a steady diet of apples and rolled oats. The horse was spoiled, and only begrudgingly accepted Arilla as her rider. Carrying the warrior-turned-king on her back was far more strenuous than working a few small fields ever could be, and usually, she wasn’t shy about making her displeasure known. 

With well over fifty levels worth of stats and skills to her name, Moody had forgotten what it was to struggle. She was used to an easy life, one that had been rudely interrupted by Arilla. But crucially, the bronze-rank horse was fast when she wanted to be and when a hail of crystal flechettes shrieked loudly through the air along with glowing arrows, thrown knives, and two rampaging warriors in full plate, Moody quickly decided that she wanted to be elsewhere.

It was all Arilla could do to hold onto the reins with her injured arms as the paved slabs of the open road were rapidly consumed beneath her workhorse’s hooves. The stubborn mare fled the scene, rocketing down the conspicuously empty streets while the adventurers’ rushed to pursue. 

Arilla’s sword practically leapt out of its scabbard as she drew it with one hand. The heavy slab of sharpened metal felt lithe and deadly—she twisted in the saddle, bringing both herself and her blade to bear against the rogue that materialised in mid-air with a pair of hatchets raised. [Slayer’s Sight] blazed in Arilla’s eyes as she fought through their stealth skills. [Slayer’s Steel], [Slayer’s Strength], and [Slayer’s Promise] thundered into life at the cost of the king’s stamina. Her three skills worked in concert, allowing her to both wield her weapon and carry the rogue’s additional weight as she momentarily lifted the adventurer with her blade. 

The stranger briefly hung suspended in the air while their weapons clashed, and Arilla stared impassively into his eyes. In an instant, she saw the hunger and arrogance that filled his gaze give way to shock. Then, with the System’s power running through her arm, she violently tossed the man into the path of the other rogue who had leapt forwards to strike at her with his knives bared.

The two rogues collided with a muted thud and a tangle of limbs while spells whistled through the air and Moody ran. Arrows curved to intercept them, and while Arilla was able to swat some out of the air with her zweihander, too many clipped her. If her pursuers were going for the kill instead of the capture, she’d already be dead. Fortunately, they still wanted her alive, so the wounds she took scored deep furrows in her flesh or struck her legs, robbing her of her precious health points.

Arilla needed a new skill to turn the tide.

Luckily, she had a slot going free.

*You have one unassigned class skill.

Choose once from the listed abilities below…

Ashen King’s Champion - This skill allows you to designate a champion to receive a portion of your power. You may temporarily reduce your stats to increase their own at a rate of 1 attribute point per skill level.

Ashen King’s Cloak - This skill allows you to cloak yourself in a crude aura. The size and strength of this effect is limited by your charisma score + this skill’s level.

Ashen King’s Demand - This skill allows you to syphon a portion of your subjects’ strength. You may temporarily reduce their stats to increase your own at a rate of 1 attribute point per skill level.

Arilla would have preferred a ranged attack skill, but if she wanted the System to grant her that wish then she should probably have started training with a bow by now. Perhaps if she strapped a cannon to her back she might get something interesting by steel, but that was just a flight of idle fancy. Blackpowder was far too dangerous to be used so casually, and she couldn’t imagine anyone would ever be insane enough to try and use explosives as a personal weapon.

[Ashen King’s Champion] was an almost tempting choice, although she wouldn’t be designating anyone other than Moody her ‘champion’ any time soon. Its inverse skill [Ashen King’s Demand] looked great on the surface, but it would only serve to aggravate her subjects who frankly didn’t have the levels to make it worthwhile.

Even from its limited description, Arilla could tell that [Ashen King’s Aura] was a versatile skill. She’d spent enough time around Typh to have seen what could be done with an aura. The prospect of having shining magical scales of her own, not only excited her but would also be very much appreciated right now. She was relying entirely on Moody’s agility, her skill-enhanced skin and a rapidly deteriorating robe for her defence. 

Another arrow sprouted from her thigh and Arilla had to pivot in the saddle to avoid taking two more. The rogues were gaining again, and when she looked back over her shoulder she could see the mage had retrieved one of the missing horses and was now riding double with a warrior. A hand was extended and a torrent of crystalline shards were conjured out of thin air and sent flying towards her.

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Arilla accepted the skill and immediately pushed her mana through it.

In the past, she’d fed both her armour and her weapons mana to fuel their runic enchantments. This was Arilla’s first time actually using a skill that fed on her magical reserves and it was so very different to what she had been expecting. Her warrior skills were undeniably powerful, but they made her feel progressively more fatigued as they consumed more and more of her stamina. While there was an element of strain in using her mana like this, the two different sensations couldn’t compare. 

When Arilla activated her new skill, intoxicating power raced out from her chest and she was struck by how superficially similar the experience was to the attribute raises that were initiated by the System. Except where the System’s power came from the air that surrounded her, this was already hers. It wasn’t invigorating, nor was it pleasurable, but the sense of strength that it gave her was hard to resist.

In irregular bursts, waves of mana roared out from her chest where it circulated through her body along narrow pathways she hadn’t known were there. They extended all the way through her, running in thicker veins down her limbs that rapidly branched off into smaller channels as they approached the surface of her skin. As the mana travelled through this hidden network within her body, it did so without any sense of coordination. Waves of magical energy poured out of her, manifesting against her skin, seemingly at random.

The wind whistled with the incoming spell while Arilla tried to figure out what she was doing wrong. Realising that she didn’t have the time to figure it out, she settled on using brute force. 

The king knew that Creation ran on power and intent. Arilla had both in spades. The clue was in the name of her skill and so she imagined a billowing cloak trailing behind her. It needed to be thick and resilient so that it could shield both her and Moody from harm. Arilla leaned into the fantasy of it, focusing her mind on the weight of a heavy cloak settling over her shoulders, the feel of the warm fabric against her cheek and dutifully… Creation complied.

A disorganised weave of mana raced out from her core. The suddenness of her loss caused her head to swim as the numbers on her status quickly adjusted to her expenditure. A cloak of unnaturally familiar black fell down from her shoulders filling the shape she’d demanded so easily. It caught the breeze and billowed out behind her, promising safety and security.

Then, the spell struck. A hail of crystalline razors tore through her ashen shroud in an instant. Flechettes dug into her back and Moody’s flanks for several painful seconds before the hostile spell cut off abruptly. The pain was manageable, and thanks to her steel-like flesh it hadn’t penetrated too deeply, but her skill was undone and Moody noticeably slowed. 

Not knowing what else to do, Arilla reformed her cloak yet again. It came easier the second time, and she was able to focus more on the arrangement of her mana. She smoothed out the knots and bunches within her magical weave as she tried to quickly cram the chaotic energy into a tight, protective layer. It fought her every step of the way, but she made progress and her second cloak was a far superior creation to her first.

And then another arrow came and destroyed all of her hard work.

*Congratulations, Ashen King’s Cloak has reached level 2.*

Arilla barely noticed the pain thanks to the System’s notification. She smiled and reformed her cloak for the third time only for it to be ripped apart by another hail of crystalline flechettes. So she tried again, and again her efforts were ruined a heartbeat later by her pursuers' attacks. Each time she tried to use her new skill another ranged attack followed, harming her and ruining her attempt. But each time she remade her cloak, she improved. It grew back faster, or smoother. The ashen fabric grew noticeably in strength and detail even when the skill’s level didn’t rise. Every improvement she made, caused her skill to rob her pursuers' attacks of some of their momentum and let Arilla stretch out her dwindling health while Moody’s hooves thundered down the empty streets.

[Ashen King’s Cloak] quickly reached level 5 and she ranked it up just as fast. Then before she knew it, it was at twenty and it was time to do so again. Her level and her attribute-boosting skills gave her vast wells of mana to draw upon and her low-level ability sprinted to catch her up.

The first time her cloak completely blocked an attack she thought she’d been mistaken. The second time, she couldn’t stop laughing as she patched the damage with mana and roared her vicious approval.

In celebration, Arilla grabbed her dislocated arm and rammed it back in its socket. Compared to the arrows sticking out of her back she barely noticed the pain. Moody was in a bad way. Whilst most of the arrows had been targeted at Arilla, her horse hadn’t emerged unscathed. Workhorses like Moody typically had endurance-related skills, but Arilla really didn’t want to put them to the test any more than she had to.

She yanked hard on Moody’s reins and the horse nearly stumbled. A rogue whizzed past overhead, his blades trailing streamers of light and then he disappeared. An arrow ricocheted off her cloak and collided with a nearby building which exploded outwards.

She’d instinctively led them deeper into Helion, closer to where she might find help, but Arilla had yet to come up with a plan beyond surviving this chase. She checked her status and thought.

Name: Arilla Foundling (King)

Species: Human

Age: 19

HP 1587/2700

SP 2428/2700

MP 1870/2100

Strength 95

Dexterity 50

Vitality 86

Intelligence 5

Willpower 26

Charisma 54

Class: Ashen King - Level 100

Ashen King’s Cloak - Level 32

Slayer’s Strength - Level 94

Slayer’s Promise - Level 92

Slayer’s Steel Level - Level 90

Slayer’s Resilience - Level 96

Slayer’s Sight Level - Level 89

Arilla knew that her capture was part of a wider plan. It wouldn’t do to free herself if the rest of their enemies' objectives were successful. She knew the Southern Lords had sent them, which meant their most likely target—after her and Typh—were the hostages. She wasn’t remotely worried about the safety of the dragon. The woman habitually carried around enough mana on her person to invade a small country, but the hostages… they were a target a dozen or so iron rankers could get to.

They weren’t that far away either.

The king tugged sharply on Moody’s reins and led her down a narrow side street and towards where the noble hostages were being held. A chunk of crystal larger than her horse’s head whizzed past her own and went on to bounce off a shopfront before skidding further down the road.

She quickly glanced back over her shoulder and saw the mage behind her conjure another oversized bolt while the ranger sprinting alongside subtly shifted their aim to hit Arilla’s centre of mass. Ahead of her on the street, the two rogues were already waiting for her. They stood together in a defensive stance with what looked like a particularly nasty poison dripping from their blades.

It seemed they were done playing around and were finally starting to take her seriously.

Which was fine by Arilla. She was done pulling her punches, and Moody could do with a break.

The [Ashen King’s Cloak] started to smoulder as her horse charged. A cloud of trailing ashes caught the breeze. Arilla lowered her sword like a lance and Moody’s hooves thundered out over the warded stone.

Violence ensued.

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