One Moo'r Plow

Many though they were, the dead kept their silence. Only Valencia’s screams of rage sounded through the ruined castle as I slumped back against a shattered crag and let my head flop down from exhaustion. The system incessantly nudged at me, informing me that i had gained several levels, but I found myself too tired to care right now.

The day was won. At great price, we had halted a slaughter-tide in its track and hammered them into the dirt. A thousand minotaurs dead, maybe more. Humans as well, though I could not count their number. The Godtouched were slain, and the people within Ironmoor’s lands were saved.

My own death at their hands averted. And yet, I felt hollow from exhaustion. Even then, I still found a place for pity as I listened to Valencia howl.

Whatever the dreadknight had hoped for had been denied. After all this work, her hopes were callously cast aside, her great feat ignored by the Gods Above.

I knew, because once more the System congratulated me for their deaths.

While there was a certain gladness within me that they had been slain, that emotion was overshadowed by disappointment. Valencia deserved to be accredited for their deaths. She had been the one to keep them in check, had landed the final blow upon both of them.

I sat slumped and rested for a while, my limbs without energy. Naught stirred from among the ruins, be it the living or the undead. The valley wall was gone, I noted. Broken and shattered by the cataclysmic upheaval I had rendered. Great mounds of stone lay in slabs, the earth beneath them gashed open. It would be some cosmic joke if some monster crawled from the crevices, but for once, fate had no laugh at my expense.

Bloodsoaked Harvester had reached Level Thirty-Eigth after several months of not moving at all. The amount of lives fed into Harvest’s Bounty had kept me going, all my Skills lay exhausted. All save one. Now, several new ones had made their way into my possession.

Gift of Harvest made me look twice and wonder why it existed. It indicated very clearly that I may give a Skill of mine to another. Forever. Once gone, it would never return. I blinked and stared at it again. A pleasant, sharing person I might be, but I was not that selfless to give up my skills. For now, I ignored this and forged on.

Overflowing Bounty promised rich, ripe harvests without exception. Yet not only for crops and physical foodstuffs. There was an underlying malice in it, one that promised to feed into Harvest’s Bounty and nourish me more for every life I reaped. Greater rewards for slaying notable enemies. Faster progress towards new Levels as the corpses of my foes gave me more.

A Name had been given to me, I found.

Garek the Pathrazer, the System called me now. A title that held power to it.

Another Skill appeared once I read over this message, this one intricately tied to my new name.

Cragsmasher’s Hammer. A stronger, more potent version of Sundering Wrathblade, meant to pound the earth until it burst open.

Gifts overflowed on this day, and with every one, I felt just a little more sick inside. Some, if not most of these, belonged to someone else.

It was with caution that I approached Valencia’s kneeling form. The dreadknight had collapsed forward and refused to move once her howls of rage had subsided. There was no sadness, no tears on her face as I crouched, then knelt before her on one knee. Her expression was hollow. Emptiness lurked behind her eyes as she stared past me.

For a while, I knelt in silence, struggling to find the right words to say. Did I comfort her, give her words of reassurance? No, those would be less than useless. She was not a woman that needed soft words and promises that everything would be alright. The dreadknight was a woman that wanted what was hers, what she had earned and worked for.

“They gave it all to you, didn’t they?” She finally spoke.

I nodded in reply, not sure what to say.

“I hoped they wouldn’t. Blinded myself. Lied to myself that they might still acknowledge me after all this time.”

“Of what?’

She leaned back now, gaze tearing from mine as she looked up at the clear blue sky. Silence reigned once more as the moments passed. Yet I was ever patient. I owed her much more than a few minutes in which I rested.

“Every scrap of power has its price, Garek. And mine is so deep that nothing I have done or will do can gain me the acknowledgement of the Gods Above. It’s been years since the demon was bound to me. Years since I became dead to the System, was forced to take a pact with the Gods Below to survive. To keep my eternal soul intact, for now.”

Some of this I had known. Recent knowledge, but still things that lined up with what she had told me.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“But they are cruel, uncaring masters. Realize something, Garek; These minotaurs are children of the Gods Above. For as cruel and bloodthirsty and savage as they are, they are not creations of the Gods Below. Their children are so much worse. And now, they have their grasp on me. One day, they will become bored and snuff out my existence. On a whim, or to further another ploy. Those in their service are nothing.”

“And you have been trying to get out.”

“Every. Single. Day. I do everything that the System demands be done to be recognized. I slay monsters, defeat great foes. Challenge myself. I have slain their Godtouched, and it still shirks my presence.”

“I am a stranger in this world. A life ignored by those above. All because a scared girl called for help and cruel deity below was the only thing that answered.”

“Tell me how, and I would help you if I could.” I meant that.

“There is nothing we can do.” She spoke listlessly. “The only thing to do would be to kill you. And I no longer have the appetite for that. You’ve grown on me too much as a person.”

One fist abruptly smashed into the rock below, cracks racing away from the site of the impact.

“Gods damn it all why do you have to be so good?”

“I despise your entire race, minotaur. These blood-drunk savages with barely any coherent thoughts get to be coddled and held by the System. Gifted by the Gods Above even though they bring nothing but death and destruction. Nothing but misery and tears are left in their wake. And despite all that, their creators would rather still have them than me.”

“I was not born a monster, Garek. I became one through necessity. To survive. To preserve my eternal soul. To not be devoured by some demon and reduced to dust. And all these years I have thought there would be a way to go back. Be once more embraced by the System. Told myself that if a race as violent and brutish and evil as your kind could beget grace from those above, so could I. No good has ever come from your kind. If that can be tolerated by those above, why can’t I?!”

“No good, save for you.” She acknowledged quietly. “I needed you to be just like them so I could lie to myself. Tell myself I was better than all these beasts. That there was a chance I’d still get taken back.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? You’ve done nothing wrong.”

I didn’t reply. But there was part of me that marveled -and loathed- that the Gods ABove were keener to accept literal otherworlders like me rather than take back a lost daughter.

“I have become the monster in human skin, while you are of a monstrous race and a better person than I.”

That was all I could bear to hear. She deserved better than to put herself down like this. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her gently, taking her attention back to me.

“Be proud, Valencia. Stand, for you are strong. You’ve a strength that is beyond mortal, physical might. A spirit that endures, that refuses to bend and compromise. I have seen you face the greatest evils my eyes have ever witnessed and be unphased. Never have I seen you be anything but true to yourself. If the Gods Above will not take you, then I will.”

I paused, unable to believe what I had just said. That last sentence had slipped out without me fully realizing it. I meant it, however. I would not lie to myself and deny that. This woman was, for all her faults and evils, unique beyond anyone I had ever met. And as evil and cruel as she was, I would welcome her into my circle of friends if she accepted.

I found myself being seized and pulled forward. Danger lept to my mind and my instincts flared at the sudden movement, only for me to realize I’d just been pulled into a hug.

Awkwardly as you please, I brought my hands around her and gave her a soft embrace as well. Soaked in blood as I was, I doubted either of us cared.

“You surprise me, minotaur.” Valencia spoke.

“That’s the intention.”

“Your offer, I see and appreciate. But it will not help my situation. My body may remain warm in your presence, but the Gods Below hold a grip on my soul, and they must be appeased. Else one day I will just crumple and fall lifeless before you. There is a finger to either side of my soul, ready to pinch at any heartbeat. And I cannot rest until it is gone.”

Hope faded in me with every word she spoke. She pulled away and I let go, the moment broken.

“And there is nothing that can be done about this?”

“I have thought of everything, Garek. No answer have I found. If there exists one, it eludes me.”

“To prove myself worthy before the Gods Above was my chance. My hope. But they shunned me once, and will do it again, I fear.”

“What remains, then?”

“To be a leal servant of the Gods Below. To do their bidding. Shed blood in their name so I can tell myself they are satisfied. I am bound to this life.”

I had escaped mine, left behind the bloodshed and senseless violence for a new, happier one. Yet this I could not give to Valencia as well. I had offered, and she had been unable to accept.

“There exists only one path for me to tread, now.”

I stood silent and watched as she too rose and looked out over this place of ruin. Reduced to rubble and lifeless corpses. What had once been a might fortress brimming with life was now a storehouse of death. Shattered and broken, both walls and bodies that lay within.

“The Gods Above will not take me. They refuse to let me return. And so, all of this, I will offer up to my masters. Upon these ruins I will build a pyre and offer it all to the Gods Below. The thousands of dead here will be the smallest of morsels to appease them.”

“But the bodies, the souls of the Godtouched they will feast on. If they’ll not acknowledge me, then I will feed their children to those Below.”

On those words, thunder roiled across the clearest sky I had ever seen. Whatever was to come next, it stirred naught but dread within me.

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