Book 8: Chapter 103: Trinity |
Zeke had already felt the Magic leaving his body, so he knew the spell had worked. However, there had been too many factors for him to accurately predict which form his will had ultimately taken. But judging by Viola’s shocked voice, it likely wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Before he had closed his eyes, he had been looking at a sea of corpses. Now, however, that scene had changed. A countless number of creatures had risen, seemingly emerging from the bodies of the dead. They were horrid beings. Their bodies were wholly the red of blood and seemed to lack all substance. Their skin appeared to be in a constant state of flowing, or melting.
Their shapes, though vaguely humanoid, behaved more like shadows flickering under torchlight than actual beings that should exist in this world.
Zeke watched them move in that eerie, unnatural way. But he didn’t feel the same revulsion Viola clearly felt toward these beings. He knew exactly why they had turned out that way. These creatures were, in the clearest sense of the word, animated blood.
The form they took was partly inherited from some kind of genetic memory, and partly the result of the inherent property of blood as a fluid. It was as if someone tried to build a statue out of water. It would constantly distort, leaving the artist with no other choice than to correct its form again and again.
Did it look grotesque? Certainly. But the knowledge of the process made it so that Zeke saw nothing but the underlying principle instead of the horrifying sight of melting blood-humans everybody else would see.
“Are these… people?” Viola whispered from nearby. “Did you… revive the dead?”
Zeke snorted. “How would I even do that? These things have nothing to do with the people who died here. It’s merely blood.”
At that exact moment, one of the creatures, the one farthest away from Zeke and Viola, began to move. It took a step, slow, lumbering, clumsy. It almost lost its balance as it did so. It was like watching a newborn calf trying to walk for the first time.
Zeke chuckled at that. Leave it to Viola to bounce back from seeing such a shocking sight in a matter of moments. “Just watch.”
As if it had been a signal, the rest of the creatures began to mimic the steps of the first creature. They fared no better. Each and every one of the few dozen creatures began to stumble forward awkwardly.
But then, likely through sheer coincidence, one of them took a step. It wasn’t anything more grandiose than that. Just a step. However, there was no wobble, no awkwardness, and no loss of balance. It was an ordinary step.
And yet, at that step, the entire swarm of creatures halted their movements, once again standing frozen like melting statues. Then, after a single moment, they all stepped forward in unison. This time, their step was solid. A perfect replica of that one successful step.
Zeke’s lips curved upward in an arc as he watched his small band of roughly fifty shapes moving in sync. In moments, they had turned from a band of stumbling fools into organized troops of soldiers marching in lockstep.
“What is going on?” Viola asked, her voice full of confusion. “How are you doing this? And how are you controlling so many at the same time?”
Zeke shook his head. “I am not controlling anything.”
Viola looked from him to the creatures. “Then… how are they moving. How are they learning?”
Zeke didn’t reply and instead gave her an enigmatic smile as he once again closed his eyes. It took a few moments in which he tried to enter that same state of selflessness he had reached earlier, tried to conjure that exact same mental picture that had allowed him to cast this spell.
It took only a few moments until, suddenly, another few dozen creatures rose from the corpses all around.
They looked identical to the first batch, the same melting blood humans. However, unlike the first batch, they didn’t start out by walking clumsily. From the very first attempt, their steps were orderly, trained, and completely synchronized.
Viola didn’t say anything, watching in silence as this second batch formed a new formation and headed out in the same direction as the first.
For a while, she waited silently as Zeke repeated the process over and over again, creating more and more of these creatures. Soon, their number had reached the high hundreds, approaching four digits.
Only when Zeke finally ran out of corpses did she speak again.
“Is your Mana limitless? How can you create so many?”
Zeke could easily read the emotions on her face. Shock. Awe. Fear. But most dominant of all, an intense curiosity. It was the curiosity of a scholar encountering a phenomenon they could not explain. It was a feeling he himself had experienced far too many times. A curiosity that burned you from the inside.
“It’s not what you think it is.”
“…And how would you know what I think it is?” she countered immediately.
Zeke shrugged. “You must have assumed this is some kind of summoning, or maybe guided attack Magic… or perhaps some form of blood puppetry. A way to shape blood into bodies and move each of them by force of will. Yes?”
Viola didn’t answer, but the slight tightening around her eyes told him enough.
Zeke shook his head. “As you said, I don’t have nearly enough Mana to sustain something like that.”
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“Stop acting all mysterious and just tell me!” Viola had reached the end of her patience, pouting the same way she always did when he teased her too much.
Zeke smiled and finally revealed the truth behind these creatures. “They sustain themselves.”
“Sustain… themselves!?” Her eyes went wide. “Do they have working Cores!?”
Zeke denied it immediately. “Of course not. If I could do that, then it would be no different from conjuring Mages out of thin air. Who would I have left to fear then?”
“Then… what?”
“There is power in Blood,” Zeke said. “Vitality, Energy, Mana, whatever you want to call it, there is a lot of it inside each and every one of us. That doesn’t just disappear the moment a person dies.”
“You are tapping into that… power?”
“Kind of. You can compare it to pushing a boulder down a hill. It takes a little effort to get it moving, but after it begins to roll, I won’t have to do anything to keep it going.”
Viola fell silent for a moment, thinking it over. “I hope that’s not an accurate analogy.”
Zeke looked at her. “Why is that?”
“Well, for one, once a boulder reaches the valley, it will simply stop moving, won’t it?” She looked at the formation of creatures that were just about to clash with the first troop of Legion mages moving in. “You’d be moving on borrowed time.”
Zeke nodded. “I definitely couldn’t store them for later use, but with the enemy this close, I don’t think that’s going to be much of an issue.”
Viola accepted that answer without protest. “The much bigger problem, though, is that once a boulder starts moving, you lose any and all control over where it goes, and who ends up being crushed.”
Zeke’s relaxed expression slowly turned into a somewhat bitter one. “Beggars can’t be choosers, can they?”
Viola’s head whipped around so fast that he honestly feared she might break her neck. “What? Please tell me you’re kidding. Tell me you have a way to control them?”
Zeke couldn’t help but chuckle at her extreme reaction. It was as if she expected his army of creatures to turn around and attack them at any moment. Well, to be fair, from all she knew, that wasn’t an unlikely scenario. After all, everything he had told her so far made them out to be mindless balls of energy that had been given an initial push and were now completely off the leash.
But even though that wasn’t entirely wrong, it wasn’t quite right either. After all, this wasn’t a mere Blood Magic spell. But instead of explaining, he merely pointed at the front, where the first troop of Legion reinforcements was just about to clash with the creatures.
“It’s about to start.”
***
“What should we do, Captain? These things are coming right at us.”
“What else?” the captain responded nonchalantly, already leveling his sword over his shield. “We punch clean through. You know as well as I do what the orders are. These things are an obstacle, but they don’t change our objective, got it?”
His sergeant looked at the horde of horrifying creatures for a moment before returning his gaze to his captain. “Aye, sir.”
With one swift motion, the man mirrored his captain’s stance, soon followed by the rest of his troop. Though they were only members of the so-called Greycloaks, the lowest tier within the Legion, being selected to serve in this elite army was already a testament to their skill and bravery.
“For the Empire!” the captain roared.
“HOOOAAAA!” his men echoed as they all followed him into a fast trot.
“For Arkanheim!”
“HOOOAAAA!”
The trot turned into a run.
“FOR THE EMPEROR!!”
“HOOOAAAA!”
Now at a dead sprint, the distance between them and the horrifying blood creatures disappeared in an instant. The captain braced himself as he led the charge. At full speed, he rammed his massive tower shield straight into the foremost creature.
He had expected many things. A block. A counter. A dodge. Or any manner of magical nonsense. But what he did not expect was for this nightmarish creature to take the full brunt of his hit and get flung away like a sack of rice.
His men fared no differently, for the most part. Barely anyone found their attacks obstructed. Shields, blades, kicks, and fists found their targets almost without resistance. After even a single clash, the enemy formation was in complete chaos.
The captain stood there, stunned. For a moment, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Until, finally, a hoarse laugh tore itself free from his throat. His men joined in a moment later. All their pent-up fear released in that cathartic moment.
“They are weak!” he shouted.
“…WEAK!” his men echoed as one.
Damn that Hohenheim brat. With all the stories going around, the kid had managed to scare the shit out of him. But now, it turned out that it had all been a bluff. These creatures, though seemingly very difficult to kill, were as weak as they came.
They didn’t dodge, they didn’t attack, they didn’t even try to defend themselves. It was almost as if the only thing they knew how to do was march…
“Quickly,” he shouted. “Kill them before the next batch arrives!”
His men answered him by hacking even more furiously into the enemy formation. Though the captain wasn’t afraid of facing more of those useless things, the idea of getting surrounded wasn’t appealing to the tactician in him.
“ARGH!”
A quick grunt of pain. But it stood out, as it was the only such noise in a sea of aggression. The captain turned his head to the left, where he found one of his men with a shallow cut on his forearm. The man had clearly been negligent, lowering his guard after noticing that the enemy didn’t even try to attack. But now, one of the creatures had actually managed to scratch him. Apparently, their fingers were quite sharp.
The captain clicked his tongue, remembering that particular soldier’s face. Maybe a few weeks of latrine duty would teach him not to be so careless again.
However, that was where his thoughts ended. Because that initial, isolated scream of pain was soon echoing from all around him. The captain ducked behind his shield, quickly scanning the situation.
His blood froze cold at what he saw. These guileless creatures, basically no different from walking punching bags, had suddenly started to show aggressive behavior. Their hands, shaped into claws, shot out in a ferocious manner. At first, they only struck at arms that remained unguarded, but after an unfortunate soldier collapsed from taking an unlucky hit to his throat, their targets changed.
The captain watched the rapid changes with a growing sense of horror.
These things. These creatures. They were learning. They were adapting. But most disturbing was the speed at which the knowledge spread. It only took a single one of them to make a discovery for the whole swarm to learn.
The melee had started less than a minute ago, but already, he saw these creatures dodge, roll, block, counter, attack, defend, hide, cover for each other, feint, and even display the most rudimentary outline of an overall strategy.
It didn’t take long for the first of his men to die. It was like a chain reaction. Once these creatures tasted blood, once they had identified the weak points on a human, there was no stopping them anymore.
The captain took a desperate step forward, throwing himself in the way of an upward strike aimed at the throat of his sergeant. The attack vibrated against his shield, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
The same was true for the follow-up strike that came from a different angle, and for the one after that, which tried to take advantage of his blind spot.
But the fourth, the one that slipped past his shield by taking one of his slashes directly, actually connected with his forearm. From there, it was a not so slow spiral of despair. Every injury slowed him further, every fallen comrade made the advance of these monstrous creatures more unstoppable.
As the captain felt his lifeblood slowly draining away, and the men at his side dwindle to a precious few, he couldn’t help but chuckle bitterly at the reality of the situation.
Less than a minute ago, he had urged his men to slay these beasts before reinforcements could arrive. But now, it was actually him and his men who would be killed before anyone had been able to save them…
“Curse you, Hohenheim,” he spat, his mouth frothy with blood, “what manner of plague have you released upon this world…!”
That was the last thing that would ever leave his lips, as his entire position was completely overrun.
