The Power Of Ten: Sama Rantha 154 Chapter One Hundred And Fifty-Four – The Stormcrone, Part One

They had already found out that she had likely infiltrated the manor by taking the place of a servant girl who had disappeared from the kitchens about five years ago. From there, it was simply a matter of time and place before his mother had been murdered and replaced by the Poison Soul Warlock.

Demonic Pactbound were notoriously independent, so it was entirely possible that her death was just a case of a woman taken revenge on her betters, and stealing her high status and life for herself.

Was it involved with what had been done with Veis? He didn't know. But he knew that Seal under his parent's bed was Hag work.

His ancestors had come to an agreement with the Stormcrone, something he wasn't privy to, and really didn't care about. Essentially, she got a territory of her own and would be undisturbed, and vice versa.

What had possessed her to force a Hagchild on his mother, he didn't know, but he was certain he was going to do something about it.

His Angel Weight training was done, the benefits locked in. He was effectively a six-gravity heavy-worlder now; stronger, faster, tougher than anyone without magical enhancements, and his Endoskeleton would be next.

That would take a lot of gold and Karma, however.

It was time to go kill a Hag.

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"Father, do you have a moment?"

Duke Gilderalz barely broke stride as he headed down the stairs for his next meeting. "What is it, Errant?" he asked, forcing Errant to hurry to keep up.

"Just confirming that whoever kills Zouma gets to keep the reward money, sir."

That did give the Duke pause. He looked back at his youngest son, who had grown significantly in the last year. Although Errant wasn't exactly the most welcome of his sons at events, he had built up a deadly reputation among the Duke's instructors and soldiers for his sheer determination and persistence. His self-healing ability had gotten a lot of attention, and everyone was wondering where it came from.

Most thought it was a diabolic gift, and wondered where in the Gilderalz lineage it had come from. He was giving sword instruction lessons to senior knights, because the instructors kept getting humiliated by him.

"Of course they will, Errant. The bounty is a matter of public record, and the Gilderalz will stand by their promises!" the Duke stated coldly.

There was nothing but calm in Errant's eyes. -But you won't commit House soldiers to that effect for some reason, nor send any of our uncles or cousins out to deal with a Stormcrone-, he huffed inside. Heaven sang a tune behind his ear, and he had no problem meeting his father's intimidating gaze.

"Very good, father. Best wishes for the negotiations." Errant turned and strode away, leaving his father confused for a moment, but he dismissed their conversation quickly.

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Errant dropped down forty feet from the wall, heard bone creak as he hit the ground, but basically it did nothing to him, and he healed the damage to his ankles within two steps.

A horse would have been faster, but noticed more quickly, and didn't have his endurance. With a light pack and lightfoot, he was heading out at a trot equal to what most men sprinted at.

There had been numbers of adventurers who'd taken up the bounty. Some actually came back from their attempts without being Cursed, Morphed, mind-reamed, Possessed, turned into undead, or made over into interesting objects d'art.

The number of adventurers attempting to collect it had dropped off, however. The only ones who reasonably could beard a Senior Hag Witch in her lair would require Tens, and most Tens had better things to do with their time... especially since the Good Tens had been chased off, and/or had no desire to help out a n.o.ble family of h.e.l.l-wors.h.i.+ppers.

His disguise wasn't much, but it didn't need to be much. He had been going into town at the wrong ages for years, and was perfectly able to fake being at different levels of birth, and what to wear and how. While he wasn't unhandsome, he didn't really stand out with dirty dark hair, blue eyes, compact build, a little taller than average, just looking a bit older and more well-built then his years.

It was thirty or forty miles to Zouma's peak, if her lair was even up there. But it wasn't her lair he was going to worry about first.

He needed some practical experience outside, and this was a great time to get it. He'd suspended all his normal responsibilities, or fobbed them off on others, over the past month. n.o.body was expecting to see him doing anything anywhere, and given how ridiculous the stories about his self-training were, it was hardly unexpected. That night he'd run a hundred miles to Colpenton down the road, beaten the snot out of two of the Colpen heirs who'd been spreading nasty rumors about his family, and then run home while avoiding the cavalry sent out to chastise him, was still making the rounds.

He had leeway, and he had no true responsibilities. His healing made him freakish, and his ability to take a hit was impressive, but he still couldn't use Chi or Magic, so he was a failure as an heir and certainly not a marriage prospect for anyone of importance.

Zouma had servants and pets around her peak, probably Hag Eyes located near their lairs and the main trails, along with magical traps. Those minions were ogre clans, trolls, a tribe of corrupted stone giants, at least one temple guarded by minotaurs, and a scream of harpies nesting higher up the slopes.

He'd had enough of killing men... although some of the guardian creatures he'd found during his nocturnal adventures had certainly been interesting, and given him enough Karma to get where he was today.

But there were places to go, and things to do.

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Half-ogre wereboars. Wasn't that a match made in a dark and filthy room...

Definitely strong enough to dominate the mountainside. Their pig forms were the size of small elephants, with tusks over a foot long.

Being able to constantly heal and be fearless was a potent combination. These brutes got to learn all about it. They were strong and fast... and they got to meet the first Grandmaster of the Sword in the Power of Ten.

One Sword.

He was one of the first Warlocks in the game, and after Sole wowed everyone with his multiple Pacts and stuff, one of the few to remain pure, with a single Pact. Being a Warlock meant he couldn't run around with a s.h.i.+eld, and he'd be carrying a Warlock Scepter in his other hand, at best. So, one sword was all he could ever use.

His One Strike Grandmastery had been impressive enough that even Sole had picked it up, recognizing its usefulness and how applicable it was for a Warlock.

This... weresow-ogress was now learning what had killed her sons. Lovers. Brothers? All three? The amount of inbreeding on the brutes he had killed had been that bad, and there'd been no mates for the males, which didn't bode well.

This weresow was fully as big as an elephant, weighing multiple tons as she charged at him in a rage. Given that she was so fat she could hardly walk in her normal form, it was understandable. Still, those short legs didn't give her any leaping ability whatsoever, and avoiding her wasn't all that hard, if you were prepared for her to blow through every obstruction between her and you to get to you.

Errant went out the window twenty feet behind him smoothly, hit the ground and rolled off to the side with perfect control. His Sword Grace burned with silver fire as he pivoted and cut, following her location perfectly as she pounded after him through his tremblesense, marking every hoofprint and slamming change of weight.

The wall exploded. The shrapnel spraying everywhere would have given pause to any normal fighter, but Errant just closed his eyes and cut, letting the splinters and logs bounce off him, and ripped a transcendent strike down her side with the mithral and adamant edge of his Sword.

Fully two feet of Grace carved into her side. His Battle Stability was on line, his heavyfoot was nailing him to the ground, and his Angel Weight meant he weighed over half a ton at the moment. She gutted herself along the edge of his blade, and ignored it as a good berserker should.

With a thought, he released the Angel Weight and jumped as she rounded on him, easily clearing her backside and coming down on her flank. He held his breath against the wall of stench there, and swung again as he hit the ground, nearly chopping off her leg on the opposite side, even as she was trying to turn on him.

Her leg buckled under her ma.s.sive weight, but that didn't stop her from moving with her manic strength. He was out of her line of sight for a moment, sliding down her side, before jumping up again, light as a gra.s.shopper, again easily clearing her bulk as her ma.s.sive hooves clawed at the dirt to get at him.

She looked up just in time for Angel Weight to kick in, and the full weight of his body at six times gravity came down on her head, coming down from twenty feet and hitting as hard as if it was from a hundred.

He drove Grace fully through her head, slamming the porcine skull to the ground, and pinning it there. He wrenched forth, back, and completed the mincing of her brain, and even her berserker rage couldn't compensate for having a brain turned to mush.

Naturally, that meant the shapechanging was also going to let go, and the vivic fires start to burn. The power of the Curse inside these monstrous werepig-ogres meant the vivic fire was particularly quick to light up and start feeding them to the Land. Errant's magical self-cleaning service, at your pleasure...

He didn't want to look at the engorged, swollen body of the ogress... really, he didn't want to look at much here at all. The whispers behind his ear were sorrowfully informing him about the purpose and history of the sprawling log home of this clan, from the Gentling Room where hapless victims were raped and sodomized repeatedly, the torture chambers, the butchering room, cold storage, the kitchen racks and roasters...

This place was an a.s.sault on the senses, and common decency. It was all those horror movies about hillbilly cannibals done large by ten-foot ogre wereboars. How they ever got enough to eat here was solved when he found the two trolls chained up in the bas.e.m.e.nt, where they were obviously carved up repeatedly for meat, and were completely mad from the repeated butchering...

Still, he had to take what was valuable before the scavengers moved in, which meant exploring. Finding the pit full of female ogre baby bones was something he could have lived without, as was the room of ogre-sized spiked s.e.x-toys for humanoids who were largely invulnerable to normal items that were not made of silver. Yep, could have lived without all of it.

It took everything he had not to burn the place down. He could do it later, on his way out, but in the meantime, he didn't want the other minions on the mountain to know something had happened. It might only buy him a couple of days, but he could get a lot done in a couple days...