Ruthless: Path of Conquest

“I can’t believe I agreed to fight naked,” James grumbled as he placed the last piece of his equipment into his magic satchel. He now stood in the dense, humid air with no protection from the elements but his boxer briefs.

“Lord Anansi wants you to know that you negotiated well, sir,” Hester said. “You preserved what was most important. ‘A king must maintain his dignity,’ he said.”

James wanted to tell Hester to can it, but he could tell that she was genuinely earnest. She—and perhaps even the old Spider God himself—really thought it was good negotiating on his part that he got the Bat Queen to agree he could keep his underwear, which he had to promise was non-magical.

“More importantly for the actual fight, I got her to agree to fight while the sun is still up,” James said. “So my senses will be at their sharpest, while the light makes it harder for her to see.”

“That’s a good point, too,” Hester agreed. But James thought she was probably just trying to make him feel better.

Agreeing to unarmed, unarmored combat with a monster, in her territory, put him at such an obvious disadvantage that it didn’t really bear much discussion.

I guess I can’t blame the Bat Queen for being afraid to face me, he thought. He had realized what the root of her change in attitude must have been. The Bat Queen had to have overheard one of the Goblins telling the Squirrel Queen that James defeated another Ruler that same week. The Bat Queen had convinced herself that it must have been his equipment that allowed James to win the fight.

In fact, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. James actually hadn’t inflicted any damage on Samuel with his weapons. His armor had been almost useless. His insane Stats and ridiculously powerful Skills had done all of the damage. And Samuel was certainly stronger than the Bat Queen.

That was the silver lining in all this. The Bat Queen would realize her mistake soon enough.

Dave approached James now, and he frowned.

I thought they were all going to leave me alone while I prepared.

“What’s up, Dave?” James asked.

Dave handed him a slip of paper with something written on it.

The text of the note read, “Do you want us to launch a sneak attack when the duel starts? We could blow the monster away as soon as she steps out into the open to fight you.”

James smiled and shook his head. “Thank you for the offer. I like where your head is at. I’ll defeat her with my own power, though. If the opponent was actually scary, I might have considered it.”

Dave looked incredulous for a moment, then placed a hand on James’s shoulder and silently nodded.

James sent a pair of identical telepathic messages to Duncan and Luna. Do you detect anything wrong with the space where we are meant to fight?

I can detect no magical interference, and the Bat Queen has not done anything suspicious, Duncan sent. Besides posturing as if she believes she can somehow win this fight.

No, my king, Luna replied. I’ve walked up and down the clearing. I can detect nothing wrong. The only thing amiss is the stench of bats.

The responses made him smile. “Enough delaying,” he said finally.

He rose, set Hester down on a branch close enough for her to watch the fight, and stepped out from among the trees, into the small clearing the Bat Queen had suggested as the site of their battle. She stood there waiting, tapping her right foot on the ground as if she was getting impatient.

James looked at her and smiled. She responded by twisting her face into an even more hideous version of its usual mask-like appearance.

“Everyone knows to stay back during the fight?” James asked in a loud voice.

There were murmurs of assent from his side.

“All of mine know to keep away from us while I’m killing you,” the Bat Queen replied.

James pantomimed a yawn. “Let’s get this over with,” he said. “I’m starting to get hungry. Some bat flesh might do my body good.”

Then the Bat Queen was charging at him on foot.

This soon? he thought. I could have sworn she would try to make it a long distance fight to start.

He braced for impact—and then the Bat Queen kicked off the ground and launched herself into the air above him. Her wings carried her up above him, but the upward movement was slow and awkward.

James whipped his right hand forward and threw an Air Strike, and it instantly unbalanced her. She did not cry out in pain, though James saw a rip had opened in her left wing.

A quiet cheer went up as the soldiers watching below saw a few drops of blood fall from the torn wing.

“James! James! James!”

Unless I’m very much mistaken, the Squirrel Queen is cheering for me too.

James almost wanted to laugh. But he knew he had more to do before the Bat Queen would lay down and die.

He leaped into the air after her—grabbed a tree branch, and threw himself further—and finally pulled level with her in midair.

Then she let loose a loud screech. The sound was much more intense than he had experienced from the other bats. His ears erupted in agony. His teeth rattled. Again, he almost covered his ears but resisted the impulse.

This was certainly a weakness of his now, but he didn’t want to make that too obvious. Higher Perception meant greater vulnerability to these kinds of attacks. It would only get worse over time unless he developed stronger defenses.

His body started to fall, and he threw another Air Strike before he could drop too far. This one struck the other wing. Hitting from such close range, it tore the vulnerable membrane from the bottom edge to almost halfway through the center.

Not bad, he assessed. If I can just keep her on the ground, the fight’s basically over.

The Bat Queen yowled in pain this time, and James could see her flying visibly slowing, her wing noticeably less effective. But she continued to rise, albeit more weakly. He tried to throw another Air Strike, but she managed to fly to the side and evade it.

Then he was falling out of reach. He braced himself, taking the landing with bent knees while looking up to see where she might strike from next.

His ears were still ringing from her attack, so his detection of the Bat Queen would have to depend on sight and smell more than hearing.

He stood there for a minute in a fighting stance before he realized that the bat was doing something else rather than just preparing a sneak attack. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead and then realized that the temperature was rising.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he asked aloud. “You’re making the air warmer?” He shook his head and raised his voice even louder. “Don’t you know this is Florida? We’re all used to the heat!”

James couldn’t hear himself talking very clearly, so he also couldn’t hear the people around him very well, but he saw some of those in the surrounding area were moving their bodies as if they were laughing.

If this was going to be one of her tactics, she shouldn’t have had me strip off my armor. Although his underwear was starting to stick to his body, being naked right now seemed to him much more advantageous than wearing armor and a helmet.

James began gathering Water Mana. If he was waiting for the Bat Queen in a sauna, he might as well keep cool while he waited. Perhaps this would prompt her to show herself sooner.

Almost as soon as he had the thought, he sensed movement in the leaves behind him. He stood still and pretended not to notice.

The black shape launched itself at him—and James instantly spun to face the Bat Queen. He stopped charging Water Mana and threw the small amount of conjured water into her face. The Bat Queen blinked, and then James had leaped right into close range.

He grabbed her head by both ears and yanked her downward. She tried to flap her damaged wings, but they were too weak with their torn membranes to bear his weight as well as her own. She tried to rake his chest with her claws, but she left only shallow cuts.

Then they collided with the ground, the Bat Queen head first.

James held the giant bat down by one of her huge fleshy ears and ignored the claws which raked his side and back now that they could no longer reach his front. But he took one hand off her head and began snaking it around toward her throat. If he could just crush her neck, the fight would be over. The bat had shown no great physical prowess, so he thought he could do it.

The Bat Queen managed to turn her head, without breaking fully free of his grip, to face him. Then she opened her mouth and issued the loudest, most painful screeching sound James had ever heard. It weakened but did not break his grip. She managed to lean her face a little closer to James’s and shriek even louder and more painfully.

In his peripheral vision, he saw members of all three armies bending and clutching their ears, experiencing the same sound that he was enduring, albeit less directly.

James felt intense pain in his head as the sound seemed to shatter something inside his ears. He didn’t want to take his hands away from the monster he was grappling with, but he felt fluid flowing down the sides of his face from his ears.

Nausea, disorientation, and dizziness hit him all at once alongside the pain—and he tightened his grip on the monster. This had to be the Bat Queen’s best move. Her best opportunity to weaken him for a killing strike.

All he had to do was hold on and bear through the pain.

He endured. Several seconds passed. He realized his hearing had faded to nothing.

The Bat Queen was still shrieking, but he only knew it because he saw her body moving the same way it had been when she was screaming in his face.

The pain continued, but he realized that it had peaked.

Well, that was not your best use of that weapon, he thought. Now you’re fucked.

He shifted his posture slightly to hold her down with one knee. Then he grabbed the Bat Queen’s throat with both hands and began crushing the life out of her.

“I was considering so many different ways to kill you,” he hissed quietly. “I have so many different abilities I could try. But now that you’ve flown right into my lap, I’ll give you a nice simple death.”

The flesh of the Bat Queen’s neck burst under James’s grip, and blood began to gush onto his almost naked body.

“Time to kickstart the healing process,” he said almost to himself.

Still holding the Bat Queen by the neck, he leaned in and bit into the lightly furred flesh of that region. He tore out big chunks of flesh and fur, barely tasted them, and swallowed them down. Then he went back in for more juicy life-giving flesh. He could feel it restoring his Stamina and Health as he consumed it.

The Bat Queen stopped resisting after a few seconds of this. Her only movements were spasms of the body. Uncontrollable death throes. The fight was over, and he continued to eat her flesh to accelerate his own healing process. And to make sure she really wouldn’t ever get up again.

As the death throes waned, his ears started to pick up some sounds again. The speed of his healing felt remarkable even to him.

James’s soldiers were cheering, chanting his name again.

A few seconds later, the Bat Queen stopped moving entirely. It was finally over.

A series of alerts swam in front of James’s eyes, but he ignored them. It was the crowd he wanted to engage with now, not the System.

James stood, thrust his blood-soaked fist into the air, and roared.

The soldiers cheered again, more loudly, while the small army of bats and flying squirrels fell to their knees.