Supreme Swordfiend

The pounding of his heart in his ears.

The screams of the dead and dying.

Steel on steel, a tempest of screeching metal whirling and gnashing around him, he stood within the storm's eye.

Powerful mana thrummed through his legs and waist, with a kick he rose.

Above the swelling tide of battle, Leon took in one singular moment of perfect clarity.

Then the arrows blackened the sky and his blades found tender flesh to part.

Roses of blood bloomed as he burst through breastplates, his burning blade bisecting both hearts and minds.

The slaughter comforted him. The simplicity, the unambiguous nature of battle which precluded morals and ethics.

Enacting violence for personal gain.

All too soon nine hundred and ninety-nine men lay dead and their furious commander emerged, flaming spear aloft.

"Once more your people surprise us Ku Kulin-"

Before she could react he'd cut her open, from her groin to her forehead, two halves falling to the corpse carpet.

He'd gotten sick of her canned lines.

"Quest Complete- Frenzied Tempest

Reward- Skill- [Stormcaller]"

"Stormcaller- With blades in hand the Chaotic Stormblade stirs heavenly fury. While fighting a localised storm forms to strike alongside you. Its intensity grows the longer you battle."

With this Skill, the path forward grew clear.

With a storm at his back, Leon would need to catch a bolt of lightning with his scimitars, completing his second Class quest.

That quest would then reward a tempering method, one he'd have to use on his Speed.

Stepping through the egress portal, Leon breathed in the sickly sweet decay of the rot mound.

Evening light dyed the sky overhead in hues of vibrant red.

Sheathing his blades, with a flourish to cleanse any lingering blood, Leon briskly made his way home.

He'd changed into his Droplet Soldier Armour, refilling the mana battery with water mana while he burned through lightning mana to fuel the Ascending Demon circuit.

The ring full of cores on his finger distracted him- there would be time to forge only after he'd forced his way through the final Unique and Trial.

He stole into his own house with relative stealth, body and mind both tapped from a day of battle.

Zerasos had disappeared.

No surprises there.

With war brewing, Leon knew his advisor would need to intervene personally, to ensure the credits still flowed.

He slept in his armour again. The cold metal reassured Leon, his thoughts turning to a desolate battlefield.

"You return whelp."

Auberon, First Swordfiend spoke with the weight of the world behind every word.

Leon, as ever within his dreams, replied without thought.

"Since the day I recognised these foreign impulses I have tried to control them. Reign them in. I partially succeeded, then failed. Catastrophically. Please. Teach me to control myself."

A pair of seats materialised from thin air, forged of black iron. Gesturing to them, Auberon sat with Leon following shortly after.

"Very well. We will begin with your mind."

Auberon paused, allowing Leon to shift and grow comfortable against the cold metal.

"Surrender the idea of control whelp. Our best and brightest, your great-grandfather included, all tried to forcibly control their blood. It is akin to binding yourself with fetters of paper. The second your feeble self-imposed restraints break, you experience a sudden rush of clarity, a certainty that you alone are supreme. Delusions of grandeur invariably lead to death. No, you must embrace defeat to tame the beast."

Leon hung on every word. He'd experienced a sudden release of his bloodline before, lending credence to Auberon's words.

"How?"

Auberon pinched his bare chin, his tone growing closer to that of a lecturer or teacher as he continued to espouse solutions.

"My son took up herding cats, whipping his extended family into a clan of mercenaries. Your grandfather carried a shatranj board with him on campaign. He never grew beyond the level of a novice. The pup learned to forge and worked on only the most ambitious projects. Your second grand-uncle devoted himself to mastery of mana circuitry- something he had no aptitude for. Loss comes in many forms. Identify a weakness whelp and embrace it."

Leon made to reply, only for Auberon to cut him off with a raised palm.

"We all kept retainers, found friends. Comrades who lived alongside us. The word chosen changed from fiend to fiend, but for these people, their purpose remained singular. Anchors to our ankles. A Swordfiend unbound and untethered either ascends to the pinnacle in decades or dies within days. Find people, ones who will keep pace with your abilities and you can trust with your life."

He paused then, weighing his next words carefully.

"Never forget this whelp. The beast grows alongside you. Comfort yourself that it can be driven to submission. Beaten and bloodied you will feel it cower in your soul and cry while gnashing its yellowed fangs in impotent fury. Every day you deny it bloodshed it will scream and wail as it makes you long for death; it will demand obliteration, first of all else, second the self. A tide of blood grand enough to drown the Myriad Worlds would not slake its thirst. A second of surrender is all it needs to sink its claws deep into you, to puppet you, to take you as an agent of rack and ruin. It cannot be slain. It cannot be excised. Only managed. Never controlled."

Leon and Auberon then shared a silence, one borne of a surety that no words remained unspoken.

"Wake. One month's worth of time I give you, to find a source of continuous defeat and to gather your anchors. Then you will return to me."

A wave of malicious intent emanated from Auberon, flared for a microsecond, then smothered, with the First Swordfiend grimacing after the use of his bloodline

"Go."

Leon shot awake, the lessons of the dream chiselled into his brain.

Zerasos remained missing in action as Leon stuffed an entire chicken down his throat for breakfast- a shame.

Today's dawn marked the final day.

Perhaps, he'd see Zerasos on Earth when next they met.

Come hell or high water Leon would finish the Tutorial before the clock struck midnight.

Kicking open the door, Leon met with an empty camp.

All the better, he had no stomach for niceties today.

A sort of grim seriousness he rarely felt had settled in overnight.

Thousands, hundreds of thousands would lie dead by his hand.

These days of bloodshed, of desperately clawing for power as he discovered who he truly was; Leon knew he would look back on these as a light relaxing time.

Two fights lay between Leon and a war that would last years.

An hour of travel found him sweating in the desert.

Barren sands sucked his heavy feet in, the reflective Swordfiend still mulling over his ancestor's guidance when the enemy struck.

A burst of sand, pushed from below the ground, spraying particles of fine silicate into the swordsman's eyes revealed Leon's latest foe to him, his passive air senses having revealed the creature lurking beneath him long before it had moved.

Small gaps of air in between the grains of sand allowed Leon to foil the ambush.

A pair of mandibles rose to snap down on Leon's legs, only for the would-be victim to cut the attack short, shearing half of each mandible off in the exchange.

Furious hissing followed alongside jets of venomous green ichor.

The beast's whirling maw of teeth chittered as it pulled its full length from the sands.

A barbed tail rose over the arachnid's body, oozing a clear liquid from its tip as the monster locked its eight eyes on the prey who'd broken its face.

Leon looked right back, swords drawn, bloodline taking the measure of his prey.

"Level Thirty Lamprey Scorpion- An ambush predator that doses prey with the paralytic venom secreted from its tail while its mandibles and teeth flense flesh from bone. Pathetically weak."

The scorpion had no idea it had been found wanting.

Leon moved as a blur, alighting upon the dull brown carapace of the monster before it could react, his swords tearing through the tail, severing the appendage.

Slamming Silent into its sheathe, Leon then hefted the scorpion tail overhead while the beast writhed beneath his feet, plunging the venomous stake through centre mass.

He then dismounted and watched.

Watched as the hissing and writhing sped up, then slowed until a slight spasm in the legs became all the movement the beast could manage.

Then he ended its misery, stored its corpse and moved on.

He'd felt the air still, a tension forming as he'd fought which had dissipated once Silent entered its sheathe.

Summoning a storm could wait.

None of the Lamprey Scorpions offered any challenge.

Leon simply cut, his blades and brain operating on autopilot.

Each slice, each life claimed drained his spirit.

Without challenge, this slaughter served no purpose.

A voice rang across the dunes, a larger scorpion cresting a dune

Leon filtered the words, the canned lines of a glorified NPC weren't worth listening to.

This scorpion featured the upper body of a shapely female, her modesty only preserved by long silken hair that covered her chest.

Dark skin with pale white hair, eight eyes locked on his burning blade, the Unique boss' own spear exuding a billowing gale.

An order to the beast had it sink its teeth into the boss, her imperious aura fading as she realised her place.

"Level Thirty-Five Desert Despot- The Unique Boss of the desert wastes within the Proving Grounds. An uncaring matriarch, master of her lesser brethren. A long-range caster, her spear beguiles her foes and allows her skill with earth and wind magic to surprise them. Feisty prey, it will struggle as you bleed it- it will die screaming and the victory will be all the sweeter for the suffering."

Leon dismissed the evaluation, wondering whether his Fiend Eyes were responsible for the disturbing little post-script on the pop-up.

The scorpion said something else, its tone panicked.

An enemy's fear in battle to a blood-lusting Leon had become much like a single drop of blood in the ocean to a starving shark.

It sparked a visceral and primal reaction.

Stirred his appetite for violence to heights beyond the norm.

So he replied to the panic-stricken boss, though it could only be called a reply if one were feeling generous. More accurately, he'd thrown a non-sequitur.

"The last Unique, quaking with fear. The one before you disappointed me. So weak, so easily killed. Entertain me for a while, before I squash you like the bug you are."

He'd begun sprinting before the boss could reply, a sheet of wind batting Leon into the air as he reached the halfway point of the dune, a wall of earth rising behind him to batter him.

Crashing through the wall, Leon spat a mouthful of blood and laughed.

"Yes, that's the spice! More, show me more!"

Now prepared for the wind, Leon kept low, only for the sand to morph into mud as a spear of swirling pebbles and constrained wind bit into his arm.

Plunging the still burning Scream into the mud both quenched the blade's flames and hardened the mud, allowing Leon to kick free.

Another spear of rock and air tore through his leg, the burden on his energy considerable yet not critical.

Three-quarters of the way, a dome of earth rose around Leon.

Razor-sharp winds poured from above, forcing Leon to stop holding back.

A pair of swings beat open the prison and with one final push, he crossed blades with the Despot.

He grinned as he parried blow after blow, defending only to watch the scorpion queen grow increasingly desperate.

Words rose once more, his pity sincere and all the more terrifying for it.

"Mana all gone? Shame. Good fight. I'm done now."

A cloud formed above Leon's head, small yet brimming with fury, following him as he leapt over a low seep, providing a bolt of fury to his blades as they entered the tender torso of the scorpion.

Silent, the invisible blade writhing with lightning, tore into the creature's base, separating the female upper half from the scorpion as Scream plunged through the monster's face.

The beautiful features caved inward and began combusting as Scream came aflame.

The lightning coating the blades exploded outward, vanishing into the desert sand.

"You have slain the Level Thirty-Five Desert Despot! Experience lost due to capped level!"

Stowing the corpse, Leon moved on, in search of the final trial.