Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 257: Blood, Rules, and Revenge
🕑 Added 2023-10-22 13:13:38 +0000 UTCVanar
“I surrender!”
Having beaten his first opponent, Vanar desummoned his blade, not one of the new swords Lord Aalam had made for him but the original blade he’d used for the last 40,000 years, Blood Slicer, a weapon originally made and sold to him on the same B rank planet he was on now. Then he walked to the teleportation platform in the middle of the large 100 km wide stadium used for the first round of the C rank Universal Tournament for the seventeen galaxy clusters ruled by the Thunderstrike Empire and used it to teleport to the ready room where he would wait for his next fight.
There, as expected, after sitting down on one of the stone benches, he was quickly surrounded, nine of the several dozen C ranks in the large marble room moving over to him with weapons drawn.
“You show a lot of misplaced bravery coming here, Three-eyes.” One of the nine, a human C rank named Sameal Canvan, moved a bit closer than the others, the black sword in his hand held a couple millimeters from Vanar’s throat, the same black sword Vanar hadn’t picked up after he’d killed its previous owner, Sameal’s master. The same sword which had been bathed in Vanar’s half-sister’s blood.
“Not misplaced.” Vanar didn’t bother to move, just smiling as he closed all three of his eyes, leaned back against the wall, and filed a complaint with the System. “But I am feeling threatened. So, should I kill you all now, or in the arena? Your choice.”
To make the C rank Universal Tournament safe, there were a lot of rules about doing anything to try and lower the combat effectiveness of the competitors, with rather extreme punishments for acts like stealing artifacts, taking hostages, and especially attempted murder. For something like what the nine in front of him were doing, for example, so long as he first asked the System for a judgement, they would lose all their protections as contestants while threatening him, allowing him to kill them all not just with no repercussions, but with the System’s blessing instead.
Five of the nine, smarter than the other three and Sameal, quickly backed away. Then, just as the System gave the go ahead, blood red leather armor appeared over Vanar’s body, an Empyrean grade artifact made for him by Lord Aalam, its couple centimeters of padding pushing away Sameal’s much lower grade sword, and Vanar started his offense. Two blood red swords appeared floating on either side of his body, both also Empyrean grade, and immediately flew out, severing the jugulars of two C ranks each, Sameal and the other three idiots immediately under the effects of Vanar’s Blood Poison skill, their Vitality, Toughness, and Endurance stats nowhere close to Lord Isaiah’s.
As Vanar continued relaxedly sitting on the bench, never having opened his three eyes, he then desummoned his armor and swords and continued to wait for his next fight, ignoring the four screaming on the ground in front of him as their blood turned into fiery energy and ravaged their entire bodies, killing them within a couple seconds.
“How dare you!”
Just two seconds after the four’s deaths, one of the seven B ranks of the Thunderstrike Empire arrived, Grimloc, the Berserk Blade, a large muscular human man with bright red eyes and short-cropped silver hair, but he was at least wise enough to not get within three meters of Vanar, with no weapon drawn, so the System wouldn’t count his yell as a threat.
“Why wouldn’t I dare?” Vanar relaxedly opened his three eyes, truly not nervous in the least but very much trying to hide how excited he was. “I earned quite a few credits from my kills just now.”
He’d also earned the rights to the four’s belongings as well, but he’d deliberately not moved for their artifacts and spatial storage rings, hoping one of the other C ranks would attempt to pick them up, committing a much worse crime than making threats in the System’s eyes.
“What’s your goal here, Vanar?” Grimloc growled.
“To kill as many of your powerhouses as possible and lead to the destruction of your empire so long as you’re stupid, and, if you’re not, to kill your demigods and C ranks.” Vanar smiled, deliberately copying the type of infuriating expression Lady Li liked to use when she wanted to get under someone’s skin.
Grimloc glared at him, obviously wanting to take his life, but then he sadly started taking a few deep breaths, calming himself down. “Do you dare fight me one on one, Vanar?”
“Too pointless.” Vanar closed his eyes again. “Bring Layla and Zara for a three on one and maybe I’ll consider it. You yourself weren’t involved in blocking my path to advancement and slaughtering my family, so you’re not really worth my time.”
“You killed my wife!”
Vanar brushed his hair back behind his right ear, giving himself enough time to control his own emotions before speaking, all while hiding them from his aura using the technique the Yin Yang Sage had taught him during his fifth visit to one of her temples. “She poisoned my soul on Taravan’s orders and cut off my wife’s head while forcing me to watch.”
Vanar, in full control over his emotions again, then opened his eyes and deliberately smirked. “But why do you care? You do know she was sleeping with Taravan, right?”
And there it was. Grimloc, just as Vanar wanted, lost control of his emotions and summoned out his own blade, Bloodstrike, the Mythic grade B rank sword used by the ancestor of their shared blood blade class path, swinging it down at Vanar with full strength. And Vanar, in response, took out two talismans from his spatial storage ring, holding the rune-covered strips of B rank paper in front of him.
The first talisman used time and space elementalized mana to create a special type of domain two meters around Vanar’s body which forcibly slowed Grimloc’s movements while also greatly increasing the distance between his weapon and Vanar’s body, allowing Vanar to easily dodge just by moving his torso to the side. Meanwhile, the second talisman used life and death elementalized mana to create a stream of invisible energy which entered into Grimloc’s body, poisoning the B rank badly and causing him to lose control over his energy, including the mana and qi he’d put into his blade.
Bloodstrike entered into the wall behind Vanar, sliced through, and released Grimloc’s uncontrolled energy into the room behind where Vanar was sitting, the stadium’s VIP waiting room, the location where Empress Li, who was somewhere in the stadium, had informed him Taravan’s two children and the third most talented C rank from the Thunderstrike Empire were all waiting.
Then, as the poisonous life and death energy continued sapping away the power from Grimloc’s soul, Vanar sent his senses through the hole in the wall formed by the attack and saw about what he’d expected. The third ranked C rank was dead, his stats nowhere high enough to survive a full on assault from a B rank, but Taravan’s son, surrounded by thunderous energy, seemed perfectly fine. Taravan’s daughter, however, was on the ground, a giant gash cut into her torso, and Grimloc’s powerful blood poison was eating away at her almost as fast as the poison Lord Aalam had created was eating away at Grimloc.
“It’s about time you show up, right, Taravan?” Vanar smiled as a bolt of lightning entered into the VIP room behind him, forming into a large man with azure hair and eyes. Then, without looking at the A rank power, he summoned one of the Empyrean grade blood swords Lord Aalam had made for him, stood up, and calmly walked over to Grimloc. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
With a single slash of his sword, Vanar split Grimloc, whose energy was already mostly completely gone, from skull to groin, making use of just how sharp his sword was. And then he gathered the five corpses and all their belongings into his spatial storage ring.
“But our discussion will have to wait as the System has just called me up for another round.” Vanar moved to the teleportation platform in the room and only then turned around to look at Taravan glaring at him as the man used his lightning to burn away the blood poison in his daughter’s body. “As for the reparations you owe me, I’ll be lenient. Just give me the copy of ‘Ms. Horval’s Guide to Fungi and The Dissolving of Corpses’ in your personal library, without any alterations of course.”
With that, Vanar activated the teleportation platform and in the arena he met one of the new C ranks of the Thunderstrike Empire, someone who had nothing to do with what had happened to him or his family and who wasn’t strong enough to make it to later rounds. So, when he fought the man, he didn’t even use Blood Poison, following Lord Aalam’s example and not taking his anger out on those not involved.
And, when he teleported back, Taravan was there waiting for him, his son standing right behind him, radiating a calm aura almost certainly completely different than what he was actually feeling.
Comments
nugitoBambino
jarring is maybe the wrong word. what i meant to describe was going from a story largely told from Mila's perspective (or at least /around/ her perspective) to one with a larger cast of side-plots or characters makes sense from a novel-writing perspective but the transitions between chapters felt sudden. Or, at least the Edi chapter felt out of place. going from vanar/ intro to the force -> edi -> vanar hundreds of years later was a weird transition. I was expecting maybe some chapters of edi coming to earth to learn about what the earth the a rank planet has access to or a re-intro to our core character perspectives (and finally finding out what the power of order actually does!). Not that you need to do either of these if you want to wait on those, but the flow between the chapters made it a bit less smooth.
Thirteen Life Legion
Could you elaborate a bit more on what is jarring?
nugitoBambino
honestly, i'm intrigued but not enthralled by the b-plot. I really want something to wet the whistle while we wait for our main characters to come in. I'd love to at least see a status from Vanar and what a normal high ranking c rank is if we're going to watch his plotline before figuring out our mc's new status. While i could see how the last ten chapters are solid openers from the perspective of a novel, it's been kind of jarring as a patreon member.
