Free Web NovelChapter 9: Farming Deaths!
Morning arrived without the sun.
In the Carrion Front, the sky never truly lightened... the suffocating gray smog simply shifted from pitch-black to a sickly bruised purple.
The dugout was completely and deathly silent.
The only sound in the claustrophobic dirt room was an agonizing creak.
Creak! Creak!
Caius slowly opened his eyes, pulling himself out of a light meditative trance.
He looked toward the center of the damp room with his crimson eyes adjusting to the flickering light of the dying oil lantern.
Three pairs of heavily muddied boots dangled a few inches above the dirt floor.
Three of the penal soldiers... The men who had been branded as criminals and sent here to die had decided not to wait for the Gore-Tide.
They had used their heavy leather armor straps, looping them securely over the thick wooden support beams of the dugout ceiling.
Their faces were entirely purple with their eyes bulging from their sockets in frozen suffocating terror.
They had quietly hung themselves in the dead of night while the rest of the squad slept.
The sheer dread of the impending monster wave had completely broken their minds. freewebnovёl.ƈom
The surviving mercenaries and disgraced nobles were huddled in the far corners of the dugout, shivering violently in their rusted armor.
They didn’t speak... They just stared blankly at the swinging corpses with hollow defeated eyes...
Caius sat perfectly still in his dark corner with his face entirely expressionless.
He didn’t feel pity.
Perhaps if it was the regular him from back on Earth, he would but when you witness your father and your brothers kill people a lot... It really changed one.
’That’s suicide...’ Caius thought with his mind immediately running through the incredibly dense lore of [God Reborn]. ’It is the ultimate taboo in the Age of Gods.’
In the world of Ur, your soul did not belong to you.
The moment a mortal formed a contract, their life force, their mana, and their very existence became the legal property of their patron deity.
To take your own life was not considered a tragedy... It was considered theft.
It was the destruction of divine property, a direct, insulting slap to the face of whichever God had deigned to bless you with their authority.
’The Gods absolutely hate weaklings,’ Caius mused internally, staring at the frozen bulging eyes of the dead men.
Suddenly, the temperature inside his mind plummeted.
’They do not hate them, Caius...’ Ereba’s chilling voice echoed directly against his skull.
The Goddess of the Void sounded completely unbothered by the macabre scene.
’They simply mock them.’
Caius frowned slightly, keeping his physical body perfectly still so the shivering mercenaries wouldn’t notice him.
’If it’s just a joke to them,’ Caius asked internally, ’then why is it that when a high-ranking noble commits suicide, their patron God violently strips the entire bloodline of their blessing? I’ve read the histories... Entire empires have collapsed overnight because one Saint couldn’t handle the pressure...’
Ereba let out a soft and incredibly melodic laugh.
’Because it is fun for them, Champion,’ the Goddess hummed with her presence wrapping around his consciousness like a heavy shadow.
Caius’s breath hitched slightly.
’Watching an arrogant, sprawling noble family squirm, beg, and ultimately collapse into violent ruin simply because one link in their chain broke... it is highly entertaining for the Pantheon,’ she explained smoothly.
’It breaks the monotony of eternity.’
She paused with a hint of genuine melancholic curiosity entering her voice.
’Though... having never possessed worshippers or a bloodline of my own, I suppose I have missed out on the punchline of that specific joke.’
Before Caius could even process the terrifying apathy of the divine entities ruling this world, the heavy leather curtain of the dugout was violently shoved aside.
The freezing wind howled into the room.
Sergeant Vance stepped inside.
The towering, black-bearded veteran stopped dead in his tracks with his slate-gray eyes locking onto the three swinging corpses.
Vance didn’t look shocked... He didn’t look sad...
His heavily scarred face twisted into an expression of unforgiving disgust.
"Cowards," Vance spat, his voice grinding like two heavy stones. He turned his piercing gaze toward the shivering survivors huddled in the corners.
"Cut them down," the Sergeant commanded with his voice completely devoid of any military brotherhood or respect.
The burly mercenary slowly stood up, drawing his combat knife with trembling hands.
"Should we... should we dig graves behind the palisade, Sergeant?" the mercenary asked.
"Graves?" Vance sneered, stepping closer and towering over the broken man. "You think I’m going to waste perfectly good manpower digging holes for men who stole the empire’s rations and then quit?"
Vance pointed a thick heavily armored finger toward the leather curtain.
"You cut them down, you strip them of their armor, and you throw their pathetic carcasses directly into the trench bonfires..." Vance ordered ruthlessly.
"No burial rites... No prayers to the Gods... Let them burn."
The squad flinched, but no one dared to argue.
Vance turned his head, his cold eyes briefly meeting Caius’s perfectly calm deadpan crimson gaze in the shadows.
The Sergeant lingered for a fraction of a second, still deeply suspicious of the Ash Contractee who had detonated an S-Rank artifact yesterday, before turning on his heel and marching back out into the mud.
Breakfast was served thirty minutes later.
It was an absolute insult to the concept of food.
Caius sat on his wooden crate, staring down at a rusted iron tin filled with cold watered-down gruel and a piece of hardtack that was literally crawling with black weevils.
’Do not put that filth inside our vessel...’ Ereba warned in his mind, sounding genuinely repulsed. ’It is biologically offensive.’
’I have to,’ Caius replied grimly.
He didn’t hesitate. He picked up the hardtack, snapped it in half, and shoved it into his mouth, aggressively chewing through the stale rock-hard bread and the bitter insects.
’The Void gave me a massive surge of vitality yesterday...’ Caius reasoned internally, forcing the foul mixture down his throat. ’My muscle fibers are denser... My bones are harder but this body still operates on calories. If I don’t feed the engine, I’m going to burn out before the Gore-Tide even arrives.’
He washed it down with the freezing, tasteless gruel.
He was treating his body like a machine, purely focused on optimization and survival. The dugout remained wrapped in a suffocating silence for the next two hours.
The men meticulously cleaned their weapons with their eyes darting nervously toward the leather curtain every few seconds, terrified that the apocalypse was about to begin.
WAAAAAAAOOOOUUUU!
The warning sirens violently shrieked across the frontline.
The agonizing wail instantly shattered the silence, vibrating against the dirt walls of the dugout. freewebnøvel.coɱ
"It’s here!" A disgraced noble screamed, dropping his whetstone and violently scrambling backward. "The Gore-Tide is here! We’re dead!"
"Shut up!" the burly mercenary roared, slapping the noble across the face. "Grab your sword!"
Caius instantly stood up.
He didn’t panic... The residual energy from the devoured Alpha core was humming pleasantly in his veins...
He strapped the rusted iron chest plate over his silk shirt and drew his generic steel shortsword then he rushed out of the dugout, stepping into the freezing deep black mud of the trench.
The sky above the Carrion Front was choked with thick black smoke. The distant thudding of magical artillery was already shaking the ground.
"Hold the line!" Sergeant Vance bellowed from the top of a dirt mound with his massive broadsword already drawn. "It’s a vanguard wave! Not the Tide! I repeat, it is just a skirmish wave! Do not break formation!"
Caius’s eyes narrowed, peering through the heavy smog.
Vance was right...
It wasn’t the apocalyptic wave of ten thousand beasts but it was still a massive, highly lethal horde of over two hundred Blight-Fiends violently charging the sector with their razor-bone plating clicking menacingly as they scaled the outer barricades.
’A skirmish...’ Caius thought.
He looked down at his left palm.
He still had the Scorched Earth Ordinance stored in the Grimoire of Emulation. He could easily step forward, unleash a massive pillar of golden holy fire and completely incinerate the entire vanguard wave in a single breath.
’No,’ Caius decided instantly, tightly clenching his fist.
He couldn’t drop another S-Rank Dawnfather nuke...
If he did, his alibi would completely fall apart. He had explicitly told Sergeant Vance that the Divine Storage Artifact was a one-time use consumable.
Producing a second apocalyptic explosion would paint a massive glowing target on his back. Worse, it would drain his Void mana reserves though did he need to be worried about that? He was sharing with Ereba after all.
He needed to save the heavy artillery for the actual Gore-Tide when there were too many monsters to know who was who...
Today, he had to maintain his persona.
"Here they come!" a penal soldier shrieked.
The first wave of Blight-Fiends violently breached the trench wall, raining down into the muddy corridors like corrupted missiles.
Complete chaotic slaughter erupted instantly.
A massive beast landed a mere three feet away from Caius, its heavy paws splashing the black mud.
It turned its glowing, sickly purple eyes toward him, its jaws unhinging to reveal rows of serrated, iron-crushing teeth.
The monster lunged, aiming directly for Caius’s throat. Yesterday, Caius would have been forced to dive face-first into the mud to avoid the lethal strike but today, his body was different.
The Blight-Fiend’s movements, which had seemed like a blur of terrifying speed yesterday, now registered clearly in Caius’s upgraded vision.
Caius didn’t retreat.
He planted his back foot in the slop, pivoting his hips with flawless newly acquired physical grace.
The beast’s massive jaws snapped shut on empty air, missing his neck by a clean two inches.
As the monster’s momentum carried it forward, Caius raised his left hand, aiming his palm directly at the Blight-Fiend’s face.
’Ereba,’ Caius commanded internally. ’Give me the husk.’
The Goddess didn’t need to be told twice... She flawlessly manipulated the residual, dying gray mana of his consumed Ash core.
FWOOSH!
A massive incredibly dense puff of blinding choking gray ash violently erupted from Caius’s palm, blasting directly into the beast’s glowing purple eyes and flaring nostrils.
The monster let out a confused entirely blinded roar, its head violently shaking as the thick soot completely destroyed its vision and clogged its corrupted lungs.
It was entirely defenseless and Caius didn’t hesitate.
He smoothly reversed his grip on the generic steel shortsword.
He didn’t aim for the beast’s thick, razor-bone plating.
He drove the blade directly upward, slipping the cheap steel perfectly beneath the monster’s armored jaw and plunging it deep into the soft vulnerable tissue of its throat.
That was where their weak point was in the game!
The Blight-Fiend gurgled, black blood aggressively spraying from the wound.
Caius violently ripped the blade out, stepping back as the massive beast collapsed dead into the mud.
It was an entirely flawless execution.
’Beautifully done, Champion,’ Ereba purred in his mind while being highly amused by his brutal efficiency.
But Caius wasn’t finished.
As the beast hit the mud, Caius took half a step forward, smoothly dropping to one knee as if he were just regaining his balance.
Under the cover of the chaotic, blood-soaked trench, he covertly slapped his left hand directly against the dead beast’s chest.
A microscopic flicker of absolute black Void flame leaked from his fingertips.
The solid, corrupted mana core resting inside the beast’s ribs instantly dissolved into absolute nothingness.
[Void Consumption Successful!]
[Converting raw energy into physical vitality...]
Caius sharply inhaled as a fresh burning surge of raw power aggressively flooded his cardiovascular system.
It wasn’t as massive as the S-Rank Alpha core, but it was still a potent highly refined shot of adrenaline that immediately knitted his micro-tears and hardened his bones just a fraction more.
A savage, unhinged grin split across Caius’s ash-covered face as he stood up, his eyes locking onto the next target.
The trench warfare was a meat grinder for the rest of the squad, but for Caius, it had just become a mid-combat buffet.
He became a ghost in the smog.
He didn’t rely on brute force... He utilized his absolute mastery of the environment and his unique camouflage...
He darted through the freezing black mud, moving with a terrifying lightness that defied his scrawny frame.
Every time a Blight-Fiend cornered a mercenary, or leaped toward a penal soldier, Caius was there.
He would aggressively blast a thick, suffocating cloud of gray ash directly into the monster’s face.
The beasts would thrash blindly, roaring in confusion and then, the Ash-Cloaked Butcher would strike.
Caius severed ligaments with precision... He drove his steel sword through their optical cavities, into their spines, and across their exposed throats...
He dropped them one by one and every single time a beast fell into the slop, Caius’s hand would covertly brush against its chest.
Consume!
Consume!
Consume!
He was literally leveling up in real-time.
With every single kill, the Void swallowed the corrupted cores, converting the filthy magic into pure raw physical stats.
Caius could feel the changes happening mid-swing.
His generic steel sword, which had felt heavy and cumbersome an hour ago, now felt as light as a wooden stick in his grip.
His reaction times were violently accelerating. His boots no longer sank deeply into the mud since his grace allowed him to glide over the slop, stepping lightly and pushing off with explosive terrifying speed.
He was entering an absolute flow state... He was a dancer in a slaughterhouse...
"Die! Just die!" the burly mercenary screamed nearby, violently burying his battleaxe into a beast’s skull, only to be brutally backhanded by a second monster, sending him crashing into the dirt wall.
The mercenary spat blood, completely exhausted with his arms trembling violently as he tried to lift his weapon again.
A shadow moved past him as a massive cloud of gray ash aggressively filled the air, completely blinding the advancing beast.
A split second later, Caius’s blade cleanly severed the monster’s spinal cord, sending it crashing dead into the mud.
Caius didn’t even look at the mercenary.
He just touched the beast’s chest, devoured the core, and immediately pushed off into the smoke toward his next target.
The skirmish raged for over two agonizing hours...
The constant deafening roar of artillery and the shrieks of dying men slowly began to fade as the vanguard wave was finally broken and repelled.
The sirens slowly spun down into silence as the trench was an absolute nightmare of severed limbs, black blood, and burning beast corpses.
The surviving members of the squad were in horrific condition.
The disgraced noble from earlier was missing two fingers on his left hand, weeping openly as a medic tried to wrap the stump.
The mercenaries were gasping for air, clutching deep lacerations on their arms and legs.
They were completely, utterly spent... and then there was Caius.
Caius Draxos stood perfectly upright in the middle of the blood-soaked trench.
His face and expensive silk clothes were completely caked in thick, dark mud and gray ash, but his posture was entirely unbroken.
He was breathing deeply.
The generic steel shortsword in his right hand was dripping with thick black blood, but his arm held it with stability.
His muscles were humming, vibrating with the raw, stolen kinetic power of over forty consumed mana cores. His frail, noble constitution had been violently overwritten. He felt incredibly, terrifyingly strong.
Sergeant Vance walked past with his slate-gray eyes scanning the surviving men.
Vance stopped, looking at Caius.
The Sergeant’s jaw tightened slightly, taking in the sight of the boy standing tall in a trench full of broken veterans.
Vance didn’t say anything, but the profound shift in his perception was obvious... The boy wasn’t just a rich kid with a toy anymore... He was a survivor.
"Fall back to the dugouts," Vance barked hoarsely. "Medics, tag the dead. The rest of you, rest while you can. That was just the appetizer."
Caius smoothly wiped the blood off his blade against a beast’s hide and sheathed his sword as he turned around with his crimson eyes glowing through the soot on his face.
He was ready for the Gore-Tide...
