Chapter 93 - The Hunt
Mason appeared in the middle of their camp. Finding it hadn’t been difficult; the Others who attacked Sparksford—minus the one he had already killed—had been sloppy. They hadn’t bothered cove
their tracks or made any attempt to stop the townsfolk from following them. It made sense; they had decimated the town and barely met any resistance. Still, their lack of discipline would be their downfall.
Taking in his surroundings, he noted with irritation that only three of the remaining four Others were present. Annoying.
The first was dead within the moment Mason appeared, Nightsong cutting his head clean off in a single, fluid motion. The other two froze, stunned by the sudden, brutal death of their comrade.
Mason had hoped to try out some of his upgraded abilities, but it would have been overkill against these pieces of shit. He could have sent in clones or constructs but decided this was personal, revenge required a personal touch.
The two remaining Others sat on either side of a bonfire, staring at each other like idiots. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Tweedle Dee, on Mason’s right, vanished, while Tweedle Dum scurried backward.
Mason sent a pulse of Mana toward Tweedle Dee, feeling the attack connect and hurl the invisible man ten feet back. Tweedle Dum raised his arms, firing a sickly purple flare of light. When the attack was mere inches away, Mason teleported behind him, grabbing the back of his neck. Using Mental Manipulation, he pushed loyalty into the man, watching as he raised his arm to fire more purple flares at the now confused Tweedle Dee.
The flare hit, and Mason watched with morbid fascination as the light boiled the man’s blood from the inside.
He knew he was going too far but couldn’t shake the image of the bodies littering Sparksford. Stopping the loyalty effect, Mason held the man at arm’s length, watching him as his friend died.
When it was over, he let the man drop to the ground. Casually, Mason said, “I heard you were looking for me.”
The man glared up defiantly, unbothered by his friend's death. “Looking for you? Who the fuck are you?”
Mason chuckled. “You left my friends’ town in ruin, looking for somebody. You just found him.”
Tweedle Dum’s eyes widened. “Yo- you killed Gael?” he stuttered.
“I did. Now, we’re going to have a chat. First question: where is the other guy that was with you in Sparksford?”
The man frowned, then looked up at him, something akin to hope flickering in his eyes. “If—if I tell you, will you let me live?”
“No.” He replied casually, “I made a promise to a friend that I’d kill the people responsible for her fathers death. If you tell me, you’ll die a lot faster than if you refuse. I have a few new things I wanna try out so Im pretty easy either way.”
***
It really hadn’t taken long, Tweedle Dum had coughed up exactly where the last Other had gone. Mason, true to his word had killed him quickly. It was strange, he would have expected to feel something. Gael and Aiden had mostly been self defence but he had actively hunted down his last three kills and felt no remorse whatsoever. The only thing he was feeling was the urge to find the last Other and kill them. He had apparently recieved a distress signal from another set of Others and had taken a detour to get details.
Even with just a general location with his newly picked up ability to fly he managed to find the last other pretty quickly. The flight ability was a weird one to get used to, his top speed started at around 30 miles per hour but quickly increased without draining more mana. He was tempted to see how far fast he could push it but annoyingly he found the last Other in under 15 minutes. It would be something to experiment with later.
He was elated to find not only the last Other from the attack but also two others he had unfinished business with.
He was stressed, depressed and couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a nap, but if there was one thing that helped him relax, it was fucking with people, usually, it was just a sarcastic remark here and there, but these people were the kind of murderers who would happily destroy and pillage a town just because they didn’t get what they wanted so naturally, he didn’t feel bad about what he was about to do.
Activating intangibility, he appeared in the house the three Others were in: Rhott, Shazi, and the final Other from Sparksford. All three of them were sitting around a battered table in a small, dimly lit cabin, deep in conversation. They looked tense as if they were teenagers sharing ghost stories around a fire.
Rhott, the burly brute, clenched his fists and muttered something while Shazi fiddled with a dagger, her eyes darting around. The final Other, the one he had been tracking, sat silently, scribbling something into a book. It looked to Mason like Rhott and Shazi were recounting what had happened between them and Mason, and the other Other was writing it down.
Mason could hardly contain his smirk as he moved closer, unseen and intangible. He took a moment to savour the moment before he appeared.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"Good evening," he said, materialising just behind Rhott. All three jumped, Rhott nearly falling out of his chair as he spun to face Mason, his eyes wide with shock. Shazi’s hand went to her dagger, but she hesitated, looking torn between fight and flight.
“That’s him! Treln, that’s the guy!” Rhott shouted as he backed away.
Treln? What kind of stupid name was Treln? At least he could stop referring to him as the other Other. That just got confusing.
Treln looked up at Mason, having had the least reaction to his sudden appearance, he looked to Rhott and asked, “This? This is the guy you’re so scared of?”
Unable to help himself, Mason nodded, “Yep, im ‘the guy’”. He teleported a few feet closer to where Rhott was, “Using a taboo word to get escape was a dick move, dude.”
Rhott opened his mouth, probably intending to say the word again, but Mason was faster, he manifested a stream of mana to cover the man’s mouth, so all that escaped was muffled and inaudible.
“Now, We are all going to sit down and have a nice chat,” Mason turned to look at Treln, “Except for you. You don’t deserve to live.” Using his new Mana Mastery, he created an ethereal-looking sword behind the man and sliced his head clean off. He was surprised it had only taken one strike as the man was quite close to his level.
A completed quest notification for a quest he didn’t realise he’d gotten appeared.
Quest update - Revenge
Objective: You promised Mayry you’d kill those responsible for the destruction in Sparksford and the death of her father.
Quest Complete
Reward: Mayry’s forgiveness, maybe.
Was his system purposefully trying to piss him off? Because if it was it was doing a grand job.
Mason turned and took the vacant seat Treln had just occupied, gesturing to the two Others to sit. It took him moving the still-manifested mana sword closer to them to get them to sit down. Shazi looked terrified, while Rhott looked like he was half scared and half furious.
“As I was saying, I’d like for us to have a chat. I have a few questions, and you guys probably have some answers. So, I’m going to ask a question and one of you is going to answer. If you try and say something you shouldn’t you’ll end up like him. Understand?”
The two of them nodded.
Mason settled into the seat, keeping his gaze steady on them both. His carefully constructed calm demeanour only made their anxiety and discomfort worse. With Treln’s headless body still on the floor nearby, his sword of manifested mana hovered as an implied threat.
Mason leaned forward, his voice low and controlled. “First question: why are you here?”
Shazi swallowed hard, glancing at Rhott before she responded. “We… were chosen. Sent to this world to train our systems and become elite soldiers for the Ganehfrel army.” Her voice was shaky, and she avoided Mason’s intense gaze. “We were told it would be easy as long as we got stronger, there wasn’t much the inhabitants of this world could do to harm us.” She started to tear up.
“Well, it looks like you were lied to by your elders because I’m here, and as you have seen, I’m fully capable of harming you.”
She nodded, doing everything she could not to make direct eye contact with him.
He looked between the two of them. “And how many of you were sent here? I’ve killed…” he looked at his fingers, counting them off one by one. “five… no six of you guys already, surely your people didn’t that many more of your young here to be killed.”
Shazi’s eyes darted around in panic, clearly, she had not expected him to have killed so many, though she clearly believed him. She stuttered, clearly unsure. “I… D-don’t know exactly,” she admitted, choosing her words carefully. “Each faction is only supposed to send two at a time… but those with money and influence always find a way to send their own. There could be dozens.”
Mason tilted his head, intrigued by the idea of dozens more Others. It was a lot more than he had thought there was, but dozens of more sources of experience, essence and abilities wasn’t bad news. “And how did you get here?” He asked, leaning forward, this was the question he had been most interested in.
Shazi’s eyes widened at the question, and she fell silent. Rhott, still unable to speak, gave him a smug look
He pushed loyalty to him into Shazi using his mental manipulation ability and she immediately started talking.
“Through a gateway between worlds, It was a super weird feeling, travelling to a whole different planet.” she answered, where before she had been speaking barely above a whisper, she not spoke louder and with a much friendlier tone.
Rhott’s expression turned to one of shock and horror as he began trying to speak through the mana covering his mouth. Mason ignored him.
Smiling widely, he asked, “And can you tell me where this gateway is?”
Shazi smiled, “Oh sure, it’s near the mountains of Zarek, pretty away far from here. There was a teleportation array set up there, too. So we could spread out a bit. They bring us in waves, and there is always a lot of infighting when people from different factions interact.”
Mason leaned back, dropping the loyalty effect. watching as Shazi slowly realised what she had done. After a moment, he said with a smirk at Shazi, “I think that’s about it. Thank you so much for your cooperation.”
Shazi looked from Mason to Rhott, then back to Mason. “What… what happens now?”
But before Mason answered, he simply vanished, leaving them in stunned silence.
Rhott released a shaky breath, finally able to speak, glancing nervously at Shazi. “Do you think that means we can go?”
Before Shazi could respond, a massive boulder, moving at impossibly fast speeds, crashed through the ceiling, killing both of them instantly.
***
Outside, Mason watched the dust settle from a distance, his expression unreadable. He felt a twinge of guilt but pushed it away as the kill notifications started coming through.
He skimmed them, too tired to read through in much detail. Essentially, he had killed a grand total of 5 Chaos system users, the two from the camp he’d never gotten names for, Treln, Shazi and Rhott.
Only three of the five activated his absorb skill, netting him three more stat points, which he put into perception and three new abilities. The kills had translated into roughly 1400 XP with an additional 8000 XP because they were all system users, which was enough to push him to level up once more and unlock a new Skill selection. He decided he would take a look at the specifics of the new skills as soon as he had gotten some rest. He teleported closer to Sparksford, took out his Trunk and got inside. His last thought, before falling asleep, was that he was now one step closer to getting Mayry to forgive him and to saving the world.