Three monsters ran through the forest on all fours, their sweat drenched fur and frothing mouths indicating they had been running all out for some time. They were not chasing some poor creature, but instead running for their lives. As if to spur them on, a ghastly wail echoed through the dark forest, a sound all too familiar.
The Urvock, a distant cousin of the mountain Vock were usually considered as scavengers, copper tier monsters with a bad attitude. Just like their larger cousins, they were extremely territorial, though unlike the mountain Vock, which were solitary monsters, the Urvock lived in dens of up to ten, with a matriarch leading the troop.
Usually, they would fight to the last member to defend their nests, but that thing was no ordinary monster. It had shown up without warning, and began mercilessly slaughtering them.
The troop had of course tried to swarm it, using superior numbers to bring it down and rip it apart. What was initially thought to be easy food, proved to be a walking calamity.. One troop after another was set upon and massacred, slaughtered to the last. It was so dire in fact, that the ones who escaped joined up with rival troops to try to take it down.
Resistance had been futile. It had ripped them limb from limb, its very presence causing the ground and air to freeze, making their footing treacherous.
By now, that ghastly wail was ingrained into their very being, filling the remaining survivors with terror.
Even now, they could hear it coming after them, unsatisfied with the young they left as sacrifices.
The matriarch was in the lead, carrying the precious heart, with only two troop warriors as escort. It was humiliating to run, but she was to protect the heart at all costs.
Even if fleeing meant sacrificing all the nests to do so. There was a crash from ahead, and she barked out a command in their guttural language.
Both of her warriors lept forwards, throwing themselves towards the abomination as it burst from cover. Tall, and lean, the humanoid monster set upon her warriors with unmatched savagery, its brutal ax ripping off chunks of flesh and fur with each swing.
The matriarch didn't even slow as her escorts were cut down, desperate to flee, to return to the origin. She would be punished for her failure, but at least she would be alive. Hope blossomed in her chest as she saw the shimmering vortex come into view, the portal that would lead home. It was a hope that died as an ax tumbled through the air and sunk into her back. Blinding pain shot through her, her last sight a strange forest and a foreign sky.
Chest heaving, Archivuald ripped his gore covered ax from the back of the short and lanky gorilla like monster. It let out a pitiful cry as he dealt the coup de grâce, severing its head from its shoulders with an overhead swing.
These Urvock were such a pain in his ass. First, they try to kill him with numbers, then they run. The savage little beasties had stolen the Nexus just when he was getting close, and ran away. As annoying as it was to chase the damned things down for over two hours, he couldn't let them take the Nexus away.
Resting his clawed hands on his knees, Archivuald panted, the pooling blood slowly freezing under his icy domain. Exhausted, he glanced up in the direction the monsters had been running. He had no idea why the monster had been running towards the exit, but it was actually quite convenient.
As he stood there, catching his breath, he eyed the matriarchs body. With the patches of died fur and ornate headdress, it was easy to pick it out. Archivuald hadn't even bothered to check the others, but this one was the exception. It was well know that the stronger the monster, the more likely the dense essence inside its body was to form an emblem.
Hot blood splattered across his face as he crouched over, plunging his clawed hand into the matriarch's chest.
A tremor of excitement shot through him as he pulled the essence stone free from its body. Exposed to the air, the gemlike essence stone began to shift, fractal patterns rapidly forming on its surface.
An emblem!!! All of a sudden, the blood and gore covering him didn't seem so bad. Archivauld grinned a truly monstrous smile. Well, it appeared he made the right call. For their first copper tier rift, Tanur had given him two choices, one a gamble, and one a certainty.
He either got a claim on half the essence for the rift, or any potential emblems that formed. If no emblems formed, he would have come away empty-handed. Not this time! Luck was on his side.
It was a fairly basic emblem, the complexity incredibly plain when compared to his divine curses. Even so, low tier emblems could still become fairly powerful if evolved to their limit.
This one, harvested from a copper tier rift, would likely only be able to evolve several tiers, but that was okay. Archivauld had double the nodes of your average person, and thus, he didn't need to be nearly as picky.
He wasn't even going to get it evaluated, deciding to just slot the emblem right away. He could figure out what it did once it was fused with his body.
A wave of exhaustion hit him as he returned to his human form. He shrunk by several feet, his body suddenly feeling much weaker.
It was always an uncomfortable transition, from the feeling under his skin, to the radical change to his senses. Archivuald grimaced, the stench of blood smelling heavy on his nose. For some reason, it smelled much worse in his human form, the stench making his eyes water.
Scrunching his face, he forged on, pulling back his torn and bloodied shirt revealing his blood-stained chest. Mouth suddenly dry, he reached in, and there was a burning pain as the emblem fused into the node just under his holy orb.
The pain lasted for only a few seconds, waves of heat bombarding his body as the intricate fractals fuzed into his node. It was like having a hot needle stabbed into his skin hundreds of times as the emblem fused with his being.
Once fused into a node, an emblem could never be removed. Not a problem for most people, who might never fill up all their nodes throughout their life. Emblems were expensive and hard to get, higher tier ones even more so.
For all he knew, this emblem might not even be able to reach Lord tier. Archivuald wasn't too worried about that. He had a feeling about this one. It might not have as powerful an effect as his divine curses, but his human form was distressingly weak compared to his other, and needed all the help it could get.
His heart beat loudly in his chest as he reached out his palm and infused essence into his new emblem. A strong gust of wind shot from his hand, tearing up dirt and leaves as it slammed into a tree over two dozen meters away. Archivuald grinned, letting out an excited laugh.
"That's going to mess up someone's day," he muttered.
He couldn't wait to test it out more, but first things first. Leaning his ax on one shoulder, he made his way to the rift exit, stepping through the swirling vortex.
Outside he looked around, noting a crackling fire underneath a copse of trees nearby. Not bothering to hide his approach, he made his way over, walking into the firelight.
All three people sitting at the fire jumped on their seats, drawing weapons. Archivuald raised an eyebrow.
"A bit jumpy, aren't we," Archivuald said.
"Scared the shit out of me. Alex, you could have warned us you were coming," Ivan said, one of the guild thugs, the man clutching his sword like it was a brick.
Archivuald grunted. "Duly Noted." He turned to Turner, tossing the man a glimmering gem the size of his fist. "Here you go Turner, as promised, the rift is cleared. All the monsters I could find are dead. There were four Urvock nests inside. There might still be a few stragglers remaining, but you three should be able to handle them," Archivuald said.
Turner nodded.
"That's good to hear. Did you get an emblem?" Turner asked curiously.
"I did. The essence is all yours," Archivuald said.
"Can I inspect the emblem? I'm trying to build a catalogue of different emblems and their abilities," Tanur asked, hopefully.
"Sorry Tanur, I already infused it. Perhaps next time. You three better get on it, those monsters aren't going to harvest themselves," Archivauld said.
Tanur stood, rolling his shoulders. "Alright, you sorry lot, let's get a move on, we don't have all day," Tanur said.
"It's the middle of the night," Ivan retorted.
"He's right boss, we could wait for sunrise," the third said.
"Noone asked for your opinion Vulga, now stop stalling and let's get to work," Turner snapped.
Sufficiently prodded, the two thugs jumped into action, hitching a pair of heavily built draft horses onto their cart. It was going to be a pain in the ass to traverse the rough terrain on the other side with no roads, but that wasn't his problem.
Archivuald had done all the work, now it was their turn to do the cleanup. Using a cart, and loading it up with monster corpses, was their solution to the problem of essence decay.
It wasn't by any means a unique idea. Essence stones were notoriously short lived, with even high-ranking stones decaying within a day once extracted.
So far, the only method found to delay the decay was to keep the essence inside the corpses. This was by no means optimal, but so far, no one had found a different way.
Even with this method, you could only delay it for about a week by freezing the bodies. That fact was quite convenient, considering his other form turned monsters into icicles on its own.
The fact that ice helped delay the decay of the bodies was just a happy surprise. Until now, his frigid disposition had just been an inconvenience, but since it was actually helpful to freeze dead monsters, that side effect suddenly went from a nuisance to extremely useful.
It was unfortunate that he wasn't able to collect any of that essence after killing the monsters, but that was part of the deal. The first emblem was his, while the essence and the Nexus went to the guild to cover their costs. Considering how much each rift cost in terms of taxes, guild fees and danger fees, not to mention import fees, it was a pretty good deal.
Especially since the agreement wasn't set in stone. This was just a trial run with a loose agreement in place to see how it went. Archivauld was already thinking about the next rift. With a copper tier rift cleared, the Black Heart guild would be allowed to bid on knight tier rifts.
The thought made his mind race. Those were in a whole other league, from the quality of essence and Emblems, to the danger of the monsters. He still handn't quite decided if he would try it alone.
Taking on a copper by himself wasn't that dangerous, but a knight tier, it could get him killed.
The thought was both exhilarating and scared him.
The feeling of pushing his emblems to new heights and seeing their power grow was addictive, but he couldn't let it corrode his reason.
He would need to be extremely careful. The designation of tiers to rifts was just a human construct, a designation set by an examiner based on ambient essence levels in the rift.
There were no hard and fast rules to rift, they appeared due to an overabundance of essence in the region. The monsters inside were usually beings from the other side. As for why said creatures wanted to enter said rifts was unknown. It was speculated by the world's brightest scholars that the monster's homeworld was a desolate wasteland, and they entered rifts for the much richer environment.
This theory was strengthened by the fact that most rifts were uninhabitable wastelands, though no one could explain the occasional utopia that appeared.
One thing was for certain. Every single rift had monsters, and those monsters were always hostile.
The worst were the rarely seen Nether rifts, gateways to dark lord's domain, hellish environments that would make most blade Cardinals shit their pants from terror.
The very rare rifts associated with the holy mother were just as terrifying, though in a different way. Despite the incredible danger, people still entered the two aforementioned rifts. After all, they were the only way to earn a divine blessing or curse, depending on which one you entered.
He snorted to himself. Entering one of said rifts was a distant future. He would need to climb the ladder, and expand not only his power but combat skills several orders of magnitude before having a hope of tackling one of those rifts.
Even Knight tier rifts, the second weakest category might be out of league. The thought of finding others to help him crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. Archivauld wanted to keep his divine curses a secret for as long as possible.
With the work out of the way, he found a stream, scrubbing his body and clothes furiously to rid it of blood and gore. It was a relief to be clean after several nights in the rift. Most people looked down on functional emblems, but he would kill for one that could manipulate water.
Not all emblems were alike, nor were some very useful. In fact, some were downright useless. He had heard of one that gave the ability to talk to fish. Turns out that most fish are dumber than a doornail, and not the most conversational of creatures.
Archivuald had no desire to have such an ability. He wanted only useful emblems, even if they were not related to combat.
On that note, he headed back towards town. Turner had things in hand, and would deliver the monster corpses back to the guildhall. Their newly bought place was a fairly decent place to stay, a much better arrangement than the rat infested dumps he had been staying in till now.
They even had official insignia for their guild, a black heart, above a field of blood stained white roses.
Chisled with excruciating detail by a master craftsman, it was almost beautiful, in a macabre sort of way. Archivuald supposed he should have expected as much. They were a guild that only accepted members from those affiliated with the dark god.
This practice of macabre insignias was quite common amongst dark affiliated organizations.
If he was being honest, Archivauld would have preferred something less off-putting, but it wasn't up to him.
He did enjoy the expressions of the inquisitor at the gate when he presented his documents. The woman's scrunched up brows and sour tone as she scanned his official documents brightened his mood significantly.
"What is your reason for being out of the city in the middle of the night?" the inquisitor asked, her official mask hanging by a chord next to her.
"I was on official guild business, clearing a rift not too far from the city," Archivauld replied, easily.
"Do you have any items gathered from the rift on your person?" she asked.
"No, nothing to claim. However, several of my compatriots should be arriving in a few hours with a cart full of harvested monsters. I just did the cleanup," Archivauld replied.
"Where are your papers to carry that weapon?" she asked.
"This is not my weapon, it is registered through the guild. You may scan it if you like, I assure you it is a registered weapon," Archivuald replied smoothly.
One of the guards took the proffered ax, and she scanned a fractal near its pommel. Her frown deepened as she looked him up and down, clearly wanting to harass him further, but unable to find a reason.
During the dragged out proceedings, a richly ordained carriage rattled up in front of him to leave the city, two beautiful grey mares pulling it.
The carriage stopped, and another inquisitor stepped from the other side of the gate. A richly dressed young man peeked out, and the inquisitor simply waved him through without even taking his papers.
All the while, the woman dissected every piece Archivuald's equipment. After a much to lengthy examination of his papers, and his weapon, she finally let him enter.
"You are free to go, sir… Do be careful now, there could be scum roaming the streets this late at night," she said, handing back his papers.
"Thank you mam, do have a pleasant evening," Archivuald replied, tucking his paper back into the watertight pouch at his waist.
What a pain in the ass! Even the guards had seemed tired of the whole ordeal, though none of them said anything.
Letting out a tired sigh, Archivauld made his way back to the guildhall, excited for a comfortable bed, and hot meal. Hopefully Pelus could acquire them the licensing for him to hunt a knight tier rift before to long. In the meantime, he was going to get a drink, something to wash away the stench of dead monsters.