Chapter 74: Aftermath
[You have killed The Tyrant.]
[The legend of The Terror has began to spread.]
Lucas stared at th notification that still hung in the air, quiet as it had always been.
’Quit calling me that. Terror? You got no idea of what I went through just to get here...’
He let out a tired laugh at the ridiculous simplicity of it — as if a title alone could summarize everything the last several deaths had actually cost him.
He closed his eyes, letting himself breathe, and didn’t try to stand again for a long while, his chest simply rising and falling in tired rhythm as his energy slowly began to return...
Lucas stared at the ceiling again. Though his strength was slowly returning, he still didn’t feel the need to move. He was perfectly content with lying on the cold floor for a few more minutes...
Hours maybe...
The blood began drying stiff against his skin, then he heard footsteps coming from the hall behind him...
"Lucas!
He sat up.
Eleanor rounded the corner in a sprint, skidding to a stop the instant she caught sight of him seated on the ground— his hands bloodied and bruised, and blood on his face. Her eyes trailed forward and found Ryker’s body a few feet away, and on her face were a mess of emotions wrapping into something messy. Anyone watching could easily see relief, horror, fury, all spreading across her face at once.
She put the emotions away and knelt in front of Lucas, her expression laced with worry.
"You’re alive. You’re actually—"
’I don’t think alive is the best word for it but fine. Let’s go with that,’ Lucas thought.
She reached for him, hands hovering uncertainly over his wounds, like she wasn’t sure where it was safe to touch. "What happened? You look— what happened?"
Lucas managed to raised his hands, his limbs still sore with exhaustion as he pointed at Ryker’s corpse.
"He happened..."
Mark appeared a moment later, the exhaustion on his face. He took in the scene showing that they too had their own fair share of the battle.
He looked at the scene— Ryker’s body and Lucas sitting on the ground and bleed.
He looked at the notification again, the words presumably still sitting fresh in everyone’s system and let out a low whistle.
"The Terror versus The Tyrant. Damn," he said. "Feels like something people are going to be telling stories about. Bet your reverence counter’s about to go through the roof."
"Please don’t," Lucas said weakly.
"I’m just saying. This is prime legend material. ’The man who single handedly took down—’"
"Mark." Eleanor’s voice cut through. "Not now."
She turned back to Lucas, some of her usual composure fighting to reassert itself even through the visible tremor still in her hands and worry on her face. "Start from the beginning. What was he doing to us? Why did you two end up fighting like this?"
Lucas took a breath, gathering the pieces of the last several hours into something coherent, carefully sorting what he could say from what he couldn’t.
"Ryker had a skill," he said. "Some kind of hypnosis skill. It had a slow influence I think. Using that he was able to make you all think that this place was the safest place out here. It’s why everyone got so attached to staying here, and why you all stopped wanting to leave. It’s the same thing he used to keep his people here...It worked on basically everyone."
"Everyone except you apparently." Eleanor said slowly, understanding flooding.
"I was immune. Apparently, you need a perfectly working system to be able to register the skill." That much, at least, was true enough not to strain against the system’s warning.
"According to it, I ’failed’ to fall and once he realized it wasn’t working on me, and realized I kept asking questions everyone else had stopped asking, he decided I was a problem. Bro actually tried to poison me."
He said that part with a tired bitter laugh as he remembered just how much he went through.
"When that didn’t work either, he came at me directly, and now we’re here..."
"He tried to poison you," Eleanor repeated.
"Yeah, he did." Lucas said, downplaying it like he had always did.
Of course, he left out the fact that it was more than once, and each attempt had actually killed him.
"So how did you know?" Mark asked.
Lucas shrugged "I got lucky, I guess...told him to have a bite and when he refused, I got my answer."
"Told him to take a bite?" Eleanor asked confused. As far as she knew, Lucas couldn’t have possibly guessed that something was wrong with the food.
"What? So I’m not allowed to be careful? It was just something I blurted out and when I saw his reaction, I thought that something must have been wrong somewhere."
Mark crouched down beside them, studying Lucas’ wounds. "So you’re telling me you’ve been trying to figure out shit and probably fighting off assassination attempts from a guy with a mind control skill, alone, for what, days now? And you didn’t think to mention any of this?"
"I tried," Lucas said in a deadpan. "You were all under his influence. When I mentioned leaving, you all would just stare at me like I wasn’t speaking English. Even got into a fight with Elle cause of it too..."
Something in Eleanor’s expression cracked at that, guilt making its way to her face. "That’s — Lucas I’m sorry. I don’t remember it, any of it. But I know for a fact that, that must have been so lonely. Watching all of us act like strangers, not knowing if any of it was real and leaving you with under pressure."
"You think?"
Mark scratched his head. "Sorry man, must have been rough."
"It’s fine." Lucas said, putting it down as always, and both of them gave him unconvinced looks.
"It’s not fine," Eleanor said firmly. "You don’t get to just wave that off."
"I handled it though," Lucas said, softer this time and through some of the exhaustion. "It wasn’t easy. But I handled it. That’s what matters isn’t it?"
Eleanor studied him a long moment before simply deciding to let it go. She helped him upright instead, steadying him as his legs protested, wanting him to lay back down, and Mark took his other side to keep him steady.
"Damn. The only person that wasn’t fully under Ryker’s control. You sure that system of yours isn’t doing you any good? Because if I were you...."
"There’s nothing to be proud about having a broken system, Mark."
"We should get you looked at properly," Eleanor said. "And figure out what happens to the rest of this place, now that its leader is—"
"Dead," Mark supplied helpfully. "Very dead. Impressively dead, actually."
"Thank you, Mark."
They made their way back through the fortress slowly, passing survivors still blinking in confused, scattered clusters throughout the halls, the lingering effects of Ryker’s influence lifting piece by piece as his death spread.
Some wept openly, overwhelmed, Others simply stood in stunned silence, staring at nothing, trying to recollect all that had happened these past days.
Mark cleared the collapsed entrance Joro’s axe had brought down, hauling debris aside with gauntlet assisted strength until a path opened wide enough for them to pass through.
"So," Mark said, looking at the scattered, disoriented survivors gathering slowly, "what do we do with all of them?"
"They come with us," Eleanor said, without hesitation. "Everyone who wants to. Nobody wants to stay behind in a place that did this to them. It’s not like they have anywhere else to go anyway...."
Word spread fast once the offer became clear, and by the time they’d finished gathering the last of their own people from throughout the fortress, a considerable portion of Ryker’s former Faction had assembled at the gates, ready and willing to follow wherever Eleanor led.
The walk back toward their own Faction Zone took most of the day, a long, tired column of survivors moving together through quiet forest, exhaustion and relief mixing across every face.
Lucas walked near the front despite his wounds, refusing the offer of support once his legs had steadied enough to manage on their own, Eleanor and Mark standing next him the entire way just in case his legs decided to file a formal complaint.
By the time the familiar walls of their own fortress finally rose into view, the sun had dipped well into the horizon, and a ragged, exhausted cheer rose from the gathered column at the sight of it.
They were home, or whatever was close enough to it.
They’d made it somewhere close toward the gate when the ground beyond it shuddered, and three familiar, bronze plated shapes emerged from the treeline surrounding the fortress, amber eyes fixed unmistakably on the approaching column.
[Warning: Bora Class Entity Detected]
[You have Encountered a Bora Golem.]
"Oh, come ON," Mark groaned, gauntlets already flaring back to readiness despite the exhaustion clawing at him. "We just got here."
"Bora Golems," Eleanor said grimly, blade of living flame igniting in her hands. "Guess we’re not finished till we get inside."
Lucas exhaled slowly and forced [Ignition] to flare weak but present around his knuckles one more time.
[Skill: Ignition has been activated.]
[Warning: Skill Ignition is unstable.]
Lucas stared at the screen and clicked his tongue. ’You never are...’