The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 78-80

Ch. 78 - A Kingdom of Ash

The fighting was far from done when Var’gar ran out of people to kill on that blood-soaked street, but even after he finally rested his exhausted sword arm, the energy did not stop flowing. Life and death had mingled completely, and the Ebon Blade’s dark red runes glowed brighter than the light of false dawn as it drank it in. 

+117 Life Force. 

Even after spending so much on so many different upgrades, its reservoirs were still full, almost to the point of overflowing, and it would have to decide what to spend again soon. What mattered more in this moment was the tactical situation, and there it did not need Var’gar’s help. Its new range did not extend its sight, but it did allow it to feel each death, and the rate at which people were bleeding and dying was slowly falling to zero. 

Even the castle at the heart of the city, overlooking the bridge that connected the two halves, was in flames. They’d been attacked so quickly that even without the Ebon Blade’s direct intervention, they hadn’t been able to seal their defenses before the green tide had reached them. 

What a pity, the blade thought. It had been looking for something stronger to fight. Despite the strangeness of the experience, it had enjoyed fighting the necromancer and wished that the old man would have lasted longer before perishing. 

+94 Life Force. 

That thought led it to wondering what other heroes it might be able to find in the city. Were there other mages besides this necromancer? It would settle for knights or even Witchunters, but the blade hadn’t noticed any, but it would know better when it saw the state of its current army. It hoped to still have more than three thousand orcs under its command. If that number was closer to two thousand, well, then there’d been some real resistance somewhere that it hadn’t accounted for. 

The blade reviewed its character sheet as much as the carnage, and then, when its Life Force ticked over ten thousand, it did what it had been waiting on since it entered the Inner Kingdoms and purchased the largest upgrade it had available to it. Improved Siphon 10.

Spending ten thousand Life Force at once was a chilling experience. Even as the length of its blade grew slightly and its reservoir emptied, it was left feeling like nothing as its strength evaporated. For a moment, it didn’t even feel like it was made out of steel; it was nothing but a shard of ice, and its runes were practically snuffed out before the trickle of Life Force started once more, and it began to thaw. 

The fact that it had spent the last few hours immersed in the fuzzy glow of intoxicating power only made the contrast that much more jarring, and its soul clung to that warmth even as it explored its powers in more detail. 

Primary Powers:

Accelerate Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force
Amplify Wielder 3: 1500 Life Force
Amplify Blade 3: 2000 Life Force
Increase Connection 5: 2500 Life Force
Empower Blade 3: 4000 Life Force
Disrupt 5: 5000 Life Force
Repair Soul 5: 5000 Life Force
Increase Control 5: 6000 Life Force
Bolt 4: 7500 Life Force

Secondary Powers: 

False Image 5: 4000 Life Force
Giant’s Strength 3: 800 Life Force
Speed of the Shadows 3: 1000 Life Force

With that, the Blade’s List of additional upgrades shrank slightly. Truthfully, without Siphon and other mainstays, it was looking almost achievable that it might be able to finish the entire thing with another city or two to fuel it. More interestingly, though, was the fact that despite all of its recent upgrades, the next rank of Parasitic Link hadn’t appeared. 

+87 Life Force. 

What drives that? The blade wondered as the orcs finally began to gather around their leader, now that the majority of the fighting was done. It doesn’t seem to be the most powerful abilities that place the largest drain on my wielder. There were still distant shouts and screams on occasion, but since they were outside the blade’s much-expanded reach. So, since it could not feel the violence, it ignored it and focused on large concerns.

It took the blade several minutes of reflection as it reviewed the previous upgrades it had made, but eventually, it decided that those abilities that were always on were the ones that required further link upgrades. None of the abilities that seemed to require it to spend Life Force directly seemed to cause it. 

So if my power causes me to gain or lose Life Force, then it is powered by my reserves, the blade thought as its wielder exhorted his men about their wild success. But if it's passive and always on, then it is powered by whoever holds me. I suppose that makes sense. 

+96 Life Force. 

“The humans are dead again!” the orc chieftain roared, as uninjured as ever. “Truly, nothing can stop before the greatest of tusks!”

The weapon heard their praise but tuned it out as it continued to explore its thought. In the long run, the blade didn’t care if its wielder died because all wielders would eventually die. That was the nature of combat and, more broadly, life itself. Neither of the paths it had walked down already would disagree with that; it just didn’t want them to perish too quickly, and certainly not before the Altbarstein was sacked and its throne was cleaved in two. 

+91 Life Force. 

They were getting closer to that every day now. It had devoured enough minds to have a good idea of the region, and there were only a few paths to take. The only question was where the enemy would seek to oppose it and if they would do so with a full-blown army in the field or if they would choose one of the few remaining cities. 

The blade considered the defenses of each, trying to decide where it was most likely to face true opposition. Which one had the most favorable geography? Which one had the most formidable defenses?

One advantage that the orcs had over humans, besides mobility or even size, though, was speed. The Ebon Blade didn’t mean that in the sense that their stride let them run faster, either, but that it took time to raise an army. Men required armor, supplies, and planning, while the orcish army that it was steering flew into the heart of its enemy like an arrow.

+89 Life Force. 

No, a wildfire is probably a better example. It decided after a moment. An arrow would have been preferable. If it was an arrow, it would have flown directly into the heart of the men who were responsible for creating it, but it couldn’t do that. It lacked the power or the precision for such a surgical move, so instead, it burned everything in its path, jumping from town to town and building to building and leaving nothing but carnage in its wake. 

The weapon contemplated all of this before deciding that it probably wouldn’t encounter the bulk of the army until it threatened Severon itself. On one hand, that conclusion surprised it because there were half a dozen cities within striking distance over the next few days, but it was inescapable. A kingdom that had let it push this far forward with so little resistance and let orcs take the river crossing was leaving the weak to find for itself. 

Do they think that there is no intelligence at the head of this horde? It asked itself as it watched the orcs cavort and begin their usual celebratory ritual of cannibalistic feasting. It would be an easy thing for it to believe. The weapon wanted to believe it, but the fact that at least one mage had found it made it seem that the assessment was entirely too optimistic.

+105 Life Force. 

The Ebon Blade spent the rest of that morning contemplating the tactical and strategic details while the orcs boasted, ate, and eventually slept. By the end of all that, the blade had decided to travel along the east bank of the river Alendin, but only because it would give it more options of where to move in the days ahead. 

Once that was done, all the blade had to do was wait while its wielder snored. All through the feasting and the fighting, it had climbed back over three thousand Life Force, doing nothing at all, but it couldn’t pull the trigger on the Path of Vengeance until it reached four thousand. So, the blade turned back to the handful of souls it had managed not to eat during its rampage and decided if any of them were worth devouring for a boost to its Life Force. 

+111 Life Force. 

In the end, the blade decided not to speed things up. Though it had consumed most of the souls it had captured immediately in last night’s fighting, even though its madness, it saved those that had glowed brighter than the rest, and it decided it was right to do so. 

Instead of consuming any of them for an amount of Life Force equal to what was radiating from the gutters of the city in less than an hour, it put each of them to the question, saving the necromancer for last. From the grizzled veteran, it learned where the vaults were hidden beneath the goldsmith that might yet have the magic items it sought to learn from. From the young nobles, it learned who were the wealthiest families and which buildings might have treasure waiting to be taken. Though gold interested it scarcely more than it would have interested its orcish wielder, there were other things that might tempt it. 

+109 Life Force. 

Still, all of those promises of riches paled in comparison to the things it learned from the death mage. Tell me of Necromancy, the blade commanded. Tell me how you capture the dead to do your bidding!

The blade knew nothing of magic, but it knew something of souls, and as the man showed it his darkest secrets, the blade could sense a resonance there. I’m powered by necromancy in some ways, it realized. 

That wasn’t the only realization that occurred to the blade. When the spirit whispered about how to use souls to power magical items and the runes that powered such things, it was interested, even if it didn’t understand all of it. It watched as the venerable mage carved lesser magics into objects of gold and then powered them with dead. Each of those cursed things thrummed with that stolen vitality, and oftentimes, the men he sold them to had no idea what evil it was they were buying. 

+99 Life Force. 

Though dark, the evil was impersonal. It wasn’t until it experienced the memories of the necromancer tearing loose the spirit of several siblings to power a collection of orbs that could speak to each other over great distances that it all struck home for the Ebon Blade.

The souls of those who share a deep connection are often used together for larger things, it remembered the Elven Mage explaining to Ivarr weeks before. The Ebon Blade was one of the only souls in the world that didn't need to be reminded of that grisly reality; it had lived it. Binding souls to eldritch contracts and forcing the dead to work against their will was too much, and the weapon had several flashbacks about some of the things that it had seen in its own memories. 

+88 Life Force. 

It felt the psychic residue of their anguish, and by the end, it was shaken. Though the blade generally regretted these glimpses when they ended, especially if they were informative, this time, it was glad to watch the necromancer go. It might be a monster, but the joy that the mage had taken in some of the things he’d done to the living and the dead was worse than anything that weapon contemplated during battle.  

+94 Life Force. 

By the time all of that was done, the blade was at 4168/10,500, and it spent that instantly on Empower Blade so that it could complete its last path. There was just one problem, it was no longer its last path. 

Ch. 79 - On the Horizon

The Ebon Blade had already completed the Paths of Death and Blood. While it didn’t know what to expect when it finally completed vengeance as well, the last thing it expected was to open up that ability and find two options. 

The shards of your soul are well on their way to mending, but the more you become yourself the more secrets are unlocked. Which path will you choose to explore next:

Vengeance - Not all deaths are the same. Gain more power from claiming those who have wronged you or your wielder, and rebalancing the scales. 

Death - Advanced (undeath) - As you have learned, the opposite off life is not death, but undeath. Death is but the end to the natural way of things. Do you wish to step beyond and observe what happens after that? 

(Each path is a commitment, and new paths may not be started until older ones are complete.)

The discovery shocked the blade. It had not been expecting that. It froze for several seconds as it considered the implications. Are there an infinite number of paths? Do all paths have advanced paths? Will I never be free of this ability?

+35 Life Force. 

Still, even as it deliberated, it had already chosen. The Path of Undeath was merely a curiosity, while vengeance was its true nature, l and with Severon and the people who had betrayed it so close at hand, it could only ever select the Path of Vengeance. 

Swords are not meant to carry grudges. Those are for those that wield them. You are different in that regard, but even so there is still only one way to wipe away that debt: with blood. Even so, the Path of Vengance is not a simple one. For every grudge you strike down at least one new one will take its place. 

The Path of Vengeance: Level 1 -> take your vengeance and kill one person that wronged you to reach Level 2.

Level 1 Powers: 

Judge Soul:  For one Life Force you can judge whether or not someone is good or evil at a glance. 

Righteous Fury: All damage you inflict against someone who has wronged you or your wielder is increased by 10%.

That proved to be a mistake almost immediately. No sooner did it read what the requirement for level two was than its mind sank. Killing one person was easy, of course, but killing someone who had betrayed you was much harder.

They’re all dead already, it thought forlornly. Must I pay a necromancer to bring them back to life so I can kill them a second time? 

The blade had seen blasphemous experiments to that effect in the memories of the mage it had devoured, but it had no wish to repeat them. Instead, it forlornly studied the abilities. They did not excite it. It had several ways to examine or control its opponents now but no interest in doing so, and it had little interest in whether the people that it struck down were good or evil. 

+34 Life Force.

All things being equal, it would prefer to kill those that deserved it, of course, but even if the blade encountered a saint on the battlefield, it wasn’t like it would just choose not to kill it. That wasn’t its nature. For a moment, it wondered what it would do if its wielder chose not to kill someone who was good, but as soon as its mind went down that path, it thought of Ivarr, and that derailed it entirely. 

Ivarr! It cried out loud enough to make Var’gar roll in his sleep. Of course. I can strike him down. He betrayed me and must be made to pay for that. 

The blade wasn’t even phased by the idea that his previous wielder might not have survived his injuries or that he’d be difficult to locate after everything that had happened. What mattered was that there was someone he could strike down to fulfill the requirements of the path. That was enough. 

+33 Life Force.

The Ebon Blade lay there quietly, lost in thought as it continued to soak up the slowly dwindling mist of Life Force that permeated the ruined city. It did nothing until its wielder woke. Then, before he’d finished rubbing the sleep from his eyes, the blade directed him to tour the city. 

“You think there’s more people need killin’?” the orc asked, but the blade ignored that. 

The weapon was sure that many people had lived, but that was not what it was after. Instead, it directed him to various locations it had seen in the minds of those who have lived here in search of treasures to study, but what it found was a mixed bag. 

+52 Life Force.

Many of the places that the souls had suggested were obliterated, and there was nothing obvious in the rubble. The goldsmith’s street had a vault the blade had been prepared to cut open, but it was already open when they arrived. Someone had plundered it for as much as they could carry in the chaos, and though they didn’t find a few trinkets that it was able to attempt to connect with. 

You have found Duchess’ Grace! Do you wish to replace one of your existing secondary abilities with it?

Duchess’ Grace 1: +1 beauty, +10% to all social interactions in a formal setting. 

You have found a Ring of Succor! Do you wish to replace one of your existing secondary abilities with it?

Succor 1: Increase healing given and received by 20%.

None of them seemed worth the effort, though, and it kept the abilities that it had, meager though they were. As much of a waste of time as those were, the castle was even worse off. The whole thing had been gutted by fire, and the walls had caved in in places. Still, the blade insisted that the orc not give up right away, and they searched the place thoroughly. 

Though they never did find the corpse of the count that lived here, and the treasury had been entirely collapsed by the damage, in the home of the noble family, the blade finally hit pay dirt when it found the still smoldering blade in the hands of a now dead night. Whoever it was he’d been trying to protect was nothing but a pile of charred bones now, but then, the blade wasn’t interested in the hexblade. 

+18 Life Force.

While Var’gar looked at the flaming weapon with curiosity, the sword made contact with it. It felt the heat race through its blade as the runes along it slowly restructured to incorporate this new one. You have learned Inferno!

Inferno 1: Spend five Life Force to cause your blade to ignite for one minute, dealing additional fire damage.

While the blade really didn’t need to learn another magic attack, it thought that the new power was interesting and decided to toy with it another time. I wonder how many different kinds of hexblades there are? It wondered as they walked back to their waiting army. That would be a question that it would have to ask the next mage that it devoured, it decided. 

When they returned from their expedition to the burnt-out ruins of the castle, Var’gar’s main objective was to form his forces up again. The blade was fine with that, but its goal was subtly different. It wanted to know how many had died, and there was no easy way to do that. Instead, as they prepared to move on to the next battle, it counted those who remained and, after several tries, decided the number was about thirty-one hundred, which was a little better than it had hopped.

+30 Life Force.

That was only about as many orcs as they’d had when they left the mountains and moved toward the decrepit Dwarfs’ Fist Fortress, but it still meant they’d lost nearly a quarter of their number. None of the orcs seemed particularly disturbed by that, and neither was the blade; it expected to spend all of their lives before this was over. That was the point. 

As the now smaller orc army marched away from the ruin of the city, it was impossible for the blade not to look at it as a wound upon the world. It still smoldered in places, but if it hadn’t, it would have looked like nothing so much as a mortal wound, sliced deep into the heart of the kingdom, and now that the blade was no longer intoxicated with blood and death, it felt a little bad about that, but it did its best to push those feelings down. 

+84 Life Force. 

Those people existed to be devoured, it told itself, not entirely sure it believed the words. 

For the next day or so, off and on, it wondered how many grudges its actions had created in the hearts of other men and women. That was close as it dared approach empathy, and once the first scouts were spotted, all of those concerns drifted away like the smoke on the horizon. 

+77 Life Force. 

At first, the men on horseback stayed well away from their lines. They obviously feared the orcs and were right to do so. Half a dozen men would do nothing at all to the shrinking horde. On the second day, those groups quadrupled, but even then, they only harried the horde with a sprinkling of arrows here and there. 

Once, a group of them got too close to the center, and the blade lashed out with its new Bolt ability, striking the man with his short bow and knocking him off his horse a hundred feet away. There were no more attempts to harry them that day.

However, by morning, the blade noticed something new. The little patrols that had been watching it from afar had congealed into something larger. What awaited them was an actual army, and the blade’s excitement grew as it studied it. 

+76 Life Force. 

Row upon row of well-armored warriors stood there, with archers in the rear and cavalry positioned at its right and left flank. There might be ten thousand there, it whispered to itself, as it counted the disciplined lines and estimated the forces with a growing sense of eagerness. Ten thousand warriors. That’s only three to one, but it should still provide some fun, even if it cuts this army in half. 

Once it had decided that the fight was not just inevitable but desirable, it quickly relayed the plan to its wielder. What it told the orc didn’t really matter, not compared to the fight that lay ahead. The orcish mind was only capable of so much strategery, and any plan more complicated than charge there or charge at my single was likely to be botched, so the blade didn’t try. 

All it did was try to pick the weakest point for the battle that lay ahead, and for that, it chose the center. No matter what we do, the blade reasoned, their horses will find our flanks. There’s no stopping it, but the middle ground is the roughest, and they will be expecting that point the least. So, I’ll carve a bloody path straight to their general and end this almost as soon as it begins. That is the greatest advantage I can offer my army. 

Still, even as it made perfectly rational decisions, it grew ever more eager for the bloodshed that would blossom within hours. This wasn’t another pointless slaughter against unarmed and under-trained men. This wasn’t another bloodbath for the sole purpose of feeding its terrible hunger. This was the battle it had longed for almost since the time it had woken up in the shepherd’s hand. 

It would finally get the chance to test itself against hard-bitten men. It would get to shatter bones and cleave plate mail until its remaining opponents fled in terror, and now, with its expanded reach, it would be able to steal almost every soul that died on both sides of the fight!

Ch. 80 - A Celebration of Steel

The Ebon Blade waited only long enough for the stragglers in its long, winding column to form up. That took less than half an hour. Once all of the orcs stood together in a vast, seething mob instead of a mile-long snaking formation, Var’gar issued the order to charge. 

As he did so, the Blade did the math and decided it would still have the strength to reach its ultimate goal. It might lose a thousand orcs by the time this meat grinder was done, but it would be worth it. It might even be able to get away with less if it used some of its power to heal the worst injured once the fighting was done. 

The weapon would certainly be overflowing with power by the end of this.  The souls… the fighting… it thought wistfully as it gazed across the battlefield at the wall of shields. Each of them might have a different heraldry, indicating where they came from or who they fought for, but all the Blade saw was a banquet.  Whether the plumes on their helms were blue, green, or white, it wanted to stain them all red with blood. 

It would soon, too. The war cry that came up from the orcish side was deafening, but it was the only thing louder than their thundering charge as seven thousand huge feet pounded the ground up the slope where the enemy lay. The humans were sounding horns as well. The Blade couldn’t hear them over the cacophony of its orcs, but he could see them, and he could see the cavalry respond. The men at arms were standing their ground and being the anvil that their plan needed, but the Blade knew their hammers would fail. 

Hundreds of orcs would die. That was a forgone conclusion given how many lances were involved, but they’d already withstood a larger charge, and when this one broke against their strength, all it wished for was that they didn’t sound the retreat, too.

The two forces met seconds later. The humans enveloped the green wave on all three sides in a giant pincer move, but the orcs didn’t retreat. Even if they had some direction to retreat to, they had nowhere. Instead, they endured everything that was thrown at them. They took the lances and the heavy horse before dragging their riders down from their huge mounts and bashing them to death like beached turtles. They shrugged off the rain of longbow arrows that pelted them and then savaged the front line, and the Blade was right there with them. 

+334 Life Force.
+64 Human Souls.
+44 Greater Monster Souls. 

It hammered against burly, well-armed men, cleaving steel shields in one strike and penetrating the armor of its opponents in two or three more. Their gear was well-made and well-used. It even felt the surge of magic among it as the occasional breastplate or helmet would resist its wielder’s ferocity, though the Blade could not connect with it. Something about the magic in armor felt like it was practically the opposite of the weapon enchantments it was able to see access so easily. 

Synchronization Achieved, +100% damage, +100% dodge for one minute.

In that moment, the Ebon Blade and its wielder Var’gar, were one. They wanted exactly the same thing, and for the first time in the long weeks it had known the orc, it did not care that he was not human. All it cared about was the way he roared in bloodlust whenever a halberd failed to bring him down and the way he struck back so hard that even if the knight’s magical armor managed to resist his blow, the warrior wearing it was still sent flying. 

+458 Life Force.
+112 Human Souls.
+59 Greater Monster Souls. 

Not all of them died from the brutal, scything blows, but they didn’t need to. They were still shattered or stunned, allowing it to move on to the next opponents. There were ranks and ranks of warriors ahead of them just waiting to be struck down, and each time someone stabbed Var’gar, the Blade felt stronger for it. 

The front line was a meat grinder, but even with the steel-clad warriors inflicting dozens of wounds in just a few seconds, the Blade’s power was going up precipitously. They simply could not make the orc bleed fast enough to counter the tide of life that was wafting off of the dead and dying that were falling all around them. 

+551 Life Force.
+77 Human Souls.
+33 Greater Monster Souls. 

The red mist that was becoming more and more common began to slowly materialize around the Blade again. It, and the power flowing into it, only intensified when seconds into the real fighting, its soul reservoir was already full, and each new soul was instantly converted into Life Force. 

Then it started buying more upgrades just to keep its Life Force from maxing out. Accelerate Wielder 3 was followed by Amplify Wielder 3. It didn’t matter what it got, though. It got Parasitic Link 4 after that, but only because it suddenly appeared and was the cheapest ability.

The Blade wasn’t thinking about anything but killing. It was just selecting whichever ability was at the top of its primary list each time its energy levels approached 10,000, and it was buying whatever was there. It thought that all of that together was 4,000, but as the battle continued, it knew that wouldn’t be enough. Amplify Blade 3 came after that, letting Var’gar strike his armored foes even harder.

+669 Life Force.
+101 Human Souls.
+88 Greater Monster Souls. 

“You’re nothing but meat!” the giant orc roared in his guttural tongue, hacking a bloody path deeper into the enemy lines.

The Ebon Blade enjoyed that more than it thought it would. It had pierced shields and armor before. In the hands of the orc, it had even felt what it was like to piece a hardened steel breastplate, which had been a rare treat. Now, though, it could feel not just what it felt to slice through the haft of someone’s spear. It could also savor the feeling of meeting a sword blade with its own and cleaving right through it.

It was not how parries were supposed to end. Weapons were supposed to be slid past or batted aside, but in the hands of Var’gar, not even the hardened steel of an opponent’s Blade could meet an amplified blow without shattering against its dragon-forged edge. 

+774 Life Force.
+124 Human Souls.
+99 Greater Monster Souls. 

For several minutes there, the Blade lost itself in the flow of battle. There was nothing beyond the red-black haze of blood and death, and though its victims would eventually end, the Blade would have gladly continued this forever. It would almost have traded its quest for vengeance for ten thousand more knights for it to massacre, one at a time, but that was not to be. 

It’s all I’ve ever wanted, the blade breathed. It would have preferred a touch more artistry, of course. It would have appreciated a human hand, too. This, though, was enough. 

Rank by rank, it disassembled the enemy forces, pressing forward as a vanguard of death. At the beginning of the fight, there had been so many rows of soldiers between it and the archers that it hadn’t bothered to count. It had been at least a dozen, though. Now it was down to three, and though the other members of Var’gar’s vanguard lagged a row or two behind, the Blade could practically taste victory. As soon as it broke through to the soft underbelly, it would scythe through the archers and the general of this force. 

It would consume every soul but that one. It would save that one to interrogate and learn about the distribution of forces throughout the region. The Blade studied the fearful eyes of the helpless archers who were already starting to break and run past the men and women standing further behind them. 

+661 Life Force.
+75 Human Souls.
+66 Greater Monster Souls. 

Women? That struck it as odd and caused it to search through the rest of the commander’s entourage. At first, it thought that the girl was just a fresh-faced page boy, but as it found other women and an old man, it suddenly realized the truth. Those weren’t messengers. They were mages. Why were they holding back, and did that one look like Ivarr, or was it—

As the Blade tried to understand what it was seeing so it could decide how best to act, a pillar of fire slammed down from the cloudy sky, making the clouds ripple and retreat as it descended through the heavens to strike him, along with arms reach with a blazing torrent of flames. 

-231 Life Force

+145 Life Force.
+262 Human Souls.
+244 Greater Monster Souls. 

So that’s their plan, The Blade thought, watching its wielder fall to one knee as everyone around him died screaming. The army was not the defense. It was bait. 

-298 Life Force

While the mages were still fifty yards from it, the fire expanded and then expanded again. Even as Var’gar struggled to rise, the flames thickened and expanded in a widening circle of death. Five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, and finally thirty feet. As the circle finally reached its limit, almost everyone around the Blade, human or orc, was dead. 

-346 Life Force

+111 Life Force.
+98 Human Souls.
+85 Greater Monster Souls. 

Most of the humans were already halfway to partially shared skeletons with cooked meat, and those few humans or orcs that had been far enough away to survive were running in whatever direction they could. The Blade couldn’t blame them for that. Its wielder was currently burning brightly enough that he was dead thrice over. The contents of his stomach were boiling, and his eyes had already burst in his skull. Even then, he still crouched there, trying to rise despite the abuse. 

Hundreds and thousands of Life Force followed through him, refusing to let him perish, but for the first few seconds, when the fire that pinned it to the ground was at its fiercest, it captured and consumed hundreds of souls as everyone else caught in the expanding grip of the spell. 

-466 Life Force

That tide of death was over before the spell was, though, and then, its overflowing reservoir began to drain rapidly. The Blade consumed most of the souls that remained in its reserves then, as it wondered how long the group of mages could keep this level of raw power up, as it watched its reserves plummet precipitously. 

Even as it thought about that, though, the flames began to shimmer and fade. They had cooked the world with a firestorm wide enough to take out hundreds of their own men, and from the looks of things, a few of the mages had died or at least passed out as they cast their spell, which would make what came next easier. 

-598 Life Force

The Blade’s wielder didn’t move yet, though. It couldn’t. No matter how powerful the healing abilities it possessed, thanks to the Path of Blood, the orc had been cooked through to the very marrow! His soul was still intact, though his mind was more questionable. As that overheated mush slowly began to think spasmodically once more, but there were no sane thoughts in that morass that the Ebon Blade could find; it was just a sea of bloodlust. 

-419 Life Force

That was okay because that was all the Blade needed. Moment by moment, the orc healed at an impossible rate as it stood there, looking just as wretched and carbonized as everyone else. A few men stood by the edge of the blasted area, but it couldn’t make out many details because of the smoke and the heat shimmer. 

-322 Life Force

Those were probably witch hunters, it realized. They were meant to be its executioner, but at least for now, the inhuman heat held them back, giving it a chance to recover as muscles regrew and tendons reconnected. Var’gar had a heartbeat once more, and in a moment, 

-251 Life Force

His charred lungs would take their first breath of new life as the orc's flesh revivified. It took another minute and a half, which was enough time to let it glimpse its opponents through the haze in an attempt to decipher what it was they were planning next. 

-203 Life Force

Those were tense seconds, but by the time its orcish wielder rose to his feet and took his first step toward the edge of the blast crater, his charred flesh already flaking away and sloughing off to expose the fresh new skin beneath it. 

-198 Life Force

It almost reached the edge of that fury hellscape before the weapon saw him. Before the mages had unleashed Armageddon, it hadn’t been sure. It had thought that it might just be too drunk on bloodlust and that it was seeing what it wanted to see, but the man in the middle was definitely Ivarr, and he was standing there at the edge of the charred earth, flanked by a pair of witch hunters, and bore a silvery sword in hand.