Paladin Of The Forsaken Lands (Monster Crafting "Nature" Paladin Lit-Rpg) 132- Power Is Relative

Arthur Decius—Kings Road

Arthur galloped faster; they were following him. They knew that he knew. He was still on the edges of the East March duchy after a few weeks of following the prodding of his god. He had encountered one other instance of Rembrand forces preying on the innocent on the absolute reaches of the empire.

That village he liberated fast enough, arriving at the sa ti as a small squad of paladins who were there to “collect heretics.” Arthur won that fight handily and managed to find out where they were delivering them. He trekked to the small town known as God’s Respite; that was where the “heretics” were being delivered. It was one he knew of from his days in the church.

The town was mostly owned by the Order of Rembrand. They used it as a staging point for their eastmost forces in the Duchy; it also had a rather grand cathedral. That he had always wanted to visit. He pulled to a stop on a rise in the road that overlooked the town. He didn’t have long to try and sneak in; his mad dash on the road had bought him only a few hours.

The Order were actively hunting him now. Forces of the inquisition, from what he could tell, were scouring up and down the road after his latest battle. Thankfully it was just the inquisitor's soldiers, maybe one of the investigators. If his old ntor or any other of the actual inquisitors ca for him, his journey would be over in less than a heartbeat.

Arthur was fairly certain from the little ti he spent with Inquisitor Vanessa as his ntor she was at least third tier, but honestly he suspected her to be higher than that. The small shows of her power he had seen were nothing but insignificant to her, flicks of the wrist that annihilated anything in her way.

He was nowhere near being able to fight her. Even just surviving if she got eyes on him was almost certainly beyond him. Arthur sighed heavily as he hopped off his horse and started creeping through the woodline to the town below. He needed to tell soone about what was happening, soone who would believe him.

He had tried several of the small chapels along the duchy; they were good, honest folks who obviously had nothing to do with the darker things happening inside the main church. But when he had told them of dark dealings and human sacrifices, they had thought him mad. Honestly Arthur couldn’t even bla them much.

He felt mad half the ti lately and certainly looked it, wandering around on a solo crusade for the truth, covered in filth and blood, wearing armor that had half lted off of him when he renounced his God and his new one had protected him from reprisal.

Arthur had one insane recourse if he survived this trip into town and could find the truth of what they were doing, preferably with proof. There was one individual of growing power he knew would take the information seriously. The damned Forsaken Paladin.

Arthur still hated Vrax; his wanton and unnecessary cruelty was legion, and the horrors he released on the world for his own amusent were almost unfathomably evil. But the man hated the order; he would do whatever he could with the information to hurt them.

He had also shown that despite his rciless nature and sick imagination, he had lines that even he wouldn’t cross. A twisted sense of wrong and right that at least extended over noncombatants and his willingness to protect them.

And sohow the man had beco a king. Even out here, Arthur had heard the whispers in taverns, the fearful talk of traders wondering what it would do to the region. Vrax had placed a claim within the hellish woods and was amassing power. The kind of power you would need to stand against an order as powerful as the church.

Arthur didn’t hate the Order; he hated the lies, the dark dealings of those in power that undermined all the good its true mbers did. But he wasn’t a fool; if it was as corrupt as he suspected, there might not be any reforming it until the holy father himself was cut out of its rotten core and the leadership burned to ash to make way for those with true intentions.

Arthur finally made it to a small side gate in the large walls ringing the town and approached the gate guard with his hands held clear of his weapons and purposefully let his golden armor peek plainly from within his tattered clothes.

The guard raised his spear up slightly, then back down again to a more eased position once he got a better look at Arthur. “Rembrand protect, Paladin sire, what happened? Do you need aid, sir?”

Arthur smiled sadly at the man as he began subtly weaving the light above him into a minuscule searing beam of light. “I’m afraid I do.”

Vraxious— The Forsaken Lands

Vrax flung himself through the dense foliage after the Voruk, his talent shrouding his travel. It was gaining on him quickly, though. He waited until it was out of sight so it didn’t just turn around and eat him instead, the mont it was gone, he summoned malice so he could keep up.

Duchess’s trilling laughter and a deadly lody from Edwards’s violin sang out louder and louder as Vrax approached. The Violin cut off sharply after a tree fell and The Voruk bellowed a challenge.

Vrax and Malice burst onto the scene just as Duchess rounded on the new challenger in her hunting grounds. Vrax took the mont of pause before the battle began in earnest to try and scan the surroundings for any advantage, any hope. This still wasn’t a fight they could win. The goal here would be escape and survival.

Duchess was leering out of an ancient, half-crumbled stronghold. Practically a miniature castle that had been retaken by nature. Low stone walls surrounded a square keep with three towers still rising from the ruins. Pine trees dotted its roof and outer wall tops. The forest having simply grown over one side of the keep and conquered the stone. Setting roots into the brick and mortar.

The less overgrown half was a tangle of fleshy webbing and sinew roughly strewn into tent-like angles and small tunnels crawling with vicious insectoid creatures the size of a man. They walked on two legs and had pale pink flesh under uneven sharp layers of chitin. Large mantis-like scythes jutted from their first set of arms, and the second set held uncomfortably human hands. A mandible set below thin, cunning eyes finished the disturbing appearance off.

Duchess had a pair of the creatures loosely dangling from her claws. She leaned farther from her perch midway, wrapped up a tower, and threw one of the bodies at the Voruk as if to tell it to piss off.

Edward himself was on top of the central tower, eyes wide in fear but refusing to give up. It was obvious the crazy bastard was out here with Duchess hunting for levels. All around him an entire flock of devourers zood around, many dangling insectoid prey below their bodies impaled upon feeding tendrils.

Hollyyyy shitttt… Okay, guys, I wasn’t gone that long, what the fuck. Edward, I can appreciate wanting to level up and get stronger to help more man, but wow, just wow… This is the kind of shit people expect to pull.

Alright, what the hell is the play here… Honestly, Duchess needs to grab the musician and fly the fuck away before the Voruk gets ahold of her or Edward. I could certainly distract it, but then how the hell do I get away myself afterwards?

Vrax’s planning break was interrupted by the Voruk, well, being a Voruk and unleashing indiscriminate violence on everything around it. It caught the body Duchess threw effortlessly in one of its tails and slamd it into its own maw.

Then apparently it liked what it tasted because it scuttled forward so fast it tore the ground and charged straight into the fleshy nest in a shower of gore and clods of earth and cracked the wall even further when it finally ran into it at full speed.

Vrax pointed malice at Duchess. “Go, go, GO!” Malice flung them up the side of the wall onto the roof and then on the tower next to Duchess in three jarringly violent bounds. Duchess looked at Vrax like he was interrupting as he held on for dear life while malice clung to the side of the tower.

“No lip. Grab the fucking terror bard and run!” Vrax shouted loud enough for Edward to hear as well. Duchess looked like she was going to try and argue or ignore him in her own special way. But the Voruk suddenly finished with the nest.

It climbed straight out the top, coated head to tails in gore and entrails. It had a half dozen insectoids still wriggling in its overfull mouth as it chewed the living prey. And another four writhing in its clawed talons.

Its tails all suddenly dashed their cargo against the top of the wall with a whipcrack of sound, shearing a nearby tree in half and creating a perfect circle of gore around it for nearly ten strides.

Duchess pulled her head back in concern as the devourers, too dumb to know better, dived towards it after the fresh sll of blood. The Voruk kept chewing, stuffing the now pulped remains into its already overfull maw to ready itself for the adapted life diving towards it.

The Voruk waited for them to get nearly within range, and then it moved violently. It lunged forward and struck out with its tail’s claws closed so they would spear through their targets. Three devourers all t the sa fate too fast to even track.

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Tails punched through them dead center mass and then whipped them at the closest stone tower so hard the entire tower ca down as three devourers' dinsional interiors ruptured simultaneously. Gysers of blood, gore, and bone shrapnel rained across the entire half of the keep the Voruk still resided on.Bricks and mortar bounced across the rooftop as the tower finished its fall. The Voruk brought an almost amused gaze onto the next few devourers tottering towards it.

Whatever cruel thing Duchess was planning to say did not co out; instead, she started quickly floating towards Edward’s perch above, screaming the whole ti, “The taxman is here! “Hide the jewels, darling. HIDE THE JEWELS!” She wrapped around Edward's tower to give him a chance to climb on.

He made it half a step onto her shoulder before a Devourer thrown at truly staggering speeds hit him square in the chest flinging him from the top of the tower as the Voruk interfered with their escape plan.

“Fuck!” Vrax cursed, at the sa ti throwing his hand out and emptying the cistern across the tower Edward was falling from and the top of the roof below. It wasn’t pretty; he bounced down and across newly sprouting branches and shrubs and crashed through a half-grown tree into the grass Vrax had summoned, but it was probably enough to let him survive the fall.

Duchess pounced off the tower straight down into the dense tangle of still-growing flora to grab Edward. Vrax turned with a resigned sigh towards the Voruk, which was now staring straight at him, head cocked like it had found its next al. Just for the hell of it, Vrax used his predator's gaze; he figured he might as well see what level the monster that was going to eat him was. [Voruk Tier-2](lvl 44) [Threat: Extre]

Vrax dismissed malice and dropped into a short freefall, turning the cistern onto the castle roof below him. At the sa ti the Voruk shuddered forwards. A devourer still hanging bleeding by one of its tail claws and another mostly intact in its mouth, ineffectively trying to stab at the creature's face.

He softly alighted into a mossy patch surrounded by short mushrooms and imdiately used his stigmata garden. Vrax summoned everything he had packed into it, even Sunshine; there was a fair chance that the immortal flower might be about to actually die a permanent death.

The Voruk would have killed him right then and there if he hadn’t summoned the garden instead of snapping one of its tails straight into his face; it crashed into the dense boughs of a mangler tree, tearing a hole clean through its branches.

Then things got ssy fast. The mangler grabbed onto the Voruk and pulled, managing to tear one of its jaws clean off. Sunshine, a retriever, and other plants started tearing into it with reckless abandon.

The Voruk went from playing with its food to serious in a heartbeat. It clamped down on the devourer in its mangled jaws, showering everything, Vrax included, in gore and fragnts of bone. Then it clambered onto the mangler straight in front of it. Its tail lashing out and ripping a massive hunk straight off the tree. One tail shot through its eye and straight out the back in a shower of glowing sap.

Vrax ran, his feet slipping in the blood and rot nearly ankle-deep across the rooftop. Lurker mushrooms and Retrivers had the Voruk at least partially busy at the mont, and Sunshine was halfway on top of it, trying to stuff its whole head in its maw. This was the best chance he was probably going to have to run.

Vrax emptied his cistern behind him as he ran, managing to make a semi-serviceable wall of shrubbery between him and the Voruk. Then he leapt straight off the roof, aiming to clear the castle wall itself. He didn’t quite make it, crashing to a painful and unlucky stop on one of the more barren parts of the periter wall. With another colorful curse, he flung himself the rest of the way from the top of the wall and let his talent cushion his less than graceful fall.

Vrax started running as fast as he could; he figured his best chance to survive was to find a bolt-hole sowhere to utterly enshroud himself in vegetation before the Voruk finished up with his forces on top of the keep and got eyes on him again. He was fairly sure at this point if it saw him again, he was dead.

Normally he would have run on Malice, but he really wasn’t confident they could get away. The Voruk wasn’t a massive or high-level specin of its species, but it was fucking fast. Vrax had seen quite a few Voruks at this point in his life; they seed to show up uncomfortably often after big battles to murder the survivors.

The one they had the misfortune of running into seed even more savage than most, and that was really saying sothing. Probably the runt of a litter that had survived and thrived by just being aner than his siblings.

Vrax spotted a marshy divot in the ground ahead at the base of a tree that had exposed roots half-subrged trailing into it. He altered his mad dash towards it and looked back to make sure the monster wasn’t staring at him hungrily from the edge of the roof.

Duchess was quickly rising from the forested patch Edward had fallen into and was carrying the Bard’s bloodied form to safety. She looked like she would make it as she started flying in the general direction of the Grove. A grand total of one living devourer was getting pulled along in her claws. The rest of the flock had already been killed.

Sunshine’s massive top half went sailing over the edge of the wall to land heavily in a pine tree’s boughs. There was the flower, the eye, and most of the maw left, but the rest of the sunshine was either missing or shredded beyond recognition. The only tendrils left were the constantly sprouting ones from Vurune's blessing.

Vrax dove into the pit of water at the base of the tree at just the right ti. The voruk exploded from the edge of the castle roof, crashing down onto the wall, then over the edge, scanning for prey.

Vrax squeezed himself under the roots and gently used adapt life to grow them out and make them dense, essentially sealing himself under a tree and most of the way in a muddy pit. He left the tiniest gap in the roots so he could at least see out.

The Voruk prowled forwards, eyeing Sunshine's thrashing remnants with amusent as it tried to fling itself from the tree towards it. Sunshine managed to flop heavily onto the ground next to it and reached out with unfazed fervor to take bites from the Voruk's savaged but rapidly regenerating body.

The Voruk snorted and stepped onto Sunshine's face, pinning it in place, ignoring the wounds Sunshine inflicted across its body. All the tails clamped onto a different corner of Sunshine's remaining body. Then they jerked apart suddenly Sunshine splattered across the forest floor, its body torn into four uneven chunks.

Oh goddamn it! Sunshine buddy. You got this right? You can survive being torn into, like, eight pieces, right?

Vrax couldn’t see if any of the hunks of his favorite plant monster were moving, and the Voruk was on the move again. He subrged himself deeper into his hiding spot, only letting his eyes peek out to keep an eye on the Voruk.

It was a tense few minutes as it wound its way through the trees, snuffling at patches of grass and under logs, then into burrows searching for its prey. A loud, high-pitched animal call in the distance caught its attention, and just like that, it was gone in a flash towards new prey.

Vrax breathed heavily in his hiding spot for a few more minutes, trying to let his heart rate settle and making sure the clever bastard wasn’t trying to draw him out. It probably wasn’t Voruks were clever, but not that clever, he hoped.

Well, that was kind of awful… Good strike on the town, though; got a bonus few paladins eaten and probably at least another week of them trying to burn back the forest.

Vrax adapted the roots again to free himself from the moist tomb he was sealed in and halfway crept, halfway crawled towards the chunks of sunshine. They were all still except for one. There was a single hunk composed of one quarter of its flower, its ruined eye, and a single still-twitching tendril that Vrax added to the nagerie.

How? How are you still moving? You're only like level 48 now; did I miss you getting another bullshit talent or sothing? Okay…if you co back from this, I'm officially considering you effectively immortal. This was worse than when Arthur smited the shit out of you in the big battle.

Vrax made his way slowly back up to the top of the keep to look for any other survivors from his nagerie. It was an impressive ss on top of the keep. Blood from the devourers had pooled to above ankle height. Piles of spare organs and pieces of bloodsoaked fluff were absolutely everywhere.

Lurker remains sizzled as their acid dropped into the plethora of organic matter. He didn’t even see the retrievers. The mangler he had summoned was actually broken in half in the center of the roof, like the fucking Voruk had snapped it like a twig.

Gods, I cannot wait for the day I can take one of those on and win. The day I can adapt a Voruk is also the day the forsaken lands actually beco mine. That’s a good goal to keep in mind… But for today I need to get back to the grove and make so plans. Also, I hope so of the knights have shown up even with those dicks blockading the road.

Vrax began the trip back to the grove; he slid through the forest for several leagues quietly before being comfortable enough with the distance he had put between him and the Voruk. He popped Malic back out and settled in for a fast but slightly traumatizing ride.

***

Cormag – The Forsaken Lands.

Cormag pulled upon the tethers of his soul in the darkness. Weaving them, binding them around the bones in his dark resting place. Things beyond understanding began slithering closer, drawn to his exposed soul.

He worked faster; it was ti; he could feel it. His consciousness began fluttering between his sanctuary and the material world just as a form found him. Eyes, dripping tongues, and greedy hunger stared at his soul threads approaching to pluck the morsel he offered to a beast such as it.

With a final blast of ethereal blue mana, his soul lurched outwards and bound to the bones. His view spun as he stood up and whirled to face the encroaching creature. It wouldn’t leave on its own now that it had found prey. He held a hand out towards the lolling tongue as the maddening thing cocked its head in confusion.

Flesh flowed like water between his fingers as the body began to rebuild itself. He didn’t have ti for that, though; he needed to kill this thing now before it struck. A flash of sickly light lazily struck out from his finger into the creature.

It shrieked soundlessly as its form was bound to a bone on the ground, binding its fate to the material world. With a clumsy step, Cormag brought his fleshless heel down on the bone, shattering the creature's anchor and fragnting its soul. The creatures wispy form cracked apart like broken glass. It wouldn’t quite permanently kill it, but it was no longer a threat.

He stood in the dark, painfully gasping in breaths as at and muscle ford over bones. Organs filled in the empty spaces, and his body was made “whole” again. He took slow, scrabbling steps up the tomb stairs, slipping in the sea of bones scattered here. He crawled the last stride into the light.

It was beautiful; his borrowed eyes showed him the glorious joy of sunlight for the first ti in thirty years. He smiled and took in a deep breath. Roses, the wonderful sll of roses. This was his chance to make it right. To free his daughter's soul.

He would do it differently this ti. As far as the world was concerned, the necromancer was dead. He would stay dead. Chronus would figure it out eventually, but Cormag had left a sliver of his soul in so of the bones below; it was horrifically expensive and cost him a asure of power, but he didn’t know any other way to convince Chronus he was still gone.

He couldn’t beat Chronus; he could only avoid him and try to accomplish his tasks. First he needed to find what he was looking for when the…thing…had slain him. A fragnt of one of the fallen gods. That would be powerful enough to break the demons' hold over his daughter.

Then he needed to find whatever horrific shell the demon was hiding in now. And burn it from the face of the earth. With it dead and his daughter's chains broken, she should be able to find her well-deserved rest.

Cormag looked towards the gently trailing smoke from the Ashen Stands in the distance. And spoke for the first ti in what felt like a lifeti. His voice was soft and gentlemanly but held unmistakable confidence. “I wonder what changed while I was away...”