Supreme Swordfiend

Leon hadn't gotten lost.

That he knew for sure- he'd simply pursued alternative avenues toward his destination.

Cleaving a slaver in half as he ruminated on his circuitous path, he broke open a wall with two strikes, stepping into a fetid room.

The stink overpowered all else, forcing Leon to breathe through his mouth as he moved through what could be called a stable.

Naked creatures shook in their stalls as he walked by, each step provoking shivers. Some cried, some murmured to themselves but all eyes watched the new entrant.

Leon peered in at one of them and only after a second did he recognise these things as human. They'd had their fingers cut off and the stumps cauterised, their legs taken off just below the knee. All were hairless and nude, shivering in the unheated stable, chained to the walls with rune-inscribed chains, provided troughs of disgusting runny grey slop to feed from.

Even if these people had gained a few levels and learned to burn energy, as Leon did when wounded, it wouldn't help them. Accelerating the healing process wouldn't regrow amputated limbs.

The cruel realities of healing magic, a market for slaves and might makes right. The slavers had strength, thus they did as they pleased to the weak.

Two weeks ago he'd have kept walking- these people didn't really matter to him, but he'd gained a new appreciation for personal autonomy of all kinds since then.

Body, mind and soul deserved to be free of chains.

The human whose prison he entered barely moved as Leon stepped forward and attempted to break the chains, a repulsive force trapping the edge of his blade a millimetre from the iron.

So he delivered four cuts to the wall, a thin slice of brick and mortar falling free along with the chain.

Doing so for the thirty slaves cost him only a handful of minutes and he left feeling good about himself through a new hole made to unleash some of his anger, ready to unleash more on the first slaver he spotted.

In his wake, forgotten in the heat of battle, Mia followed Leon's trail of destruction.

Why she'd been sent to support the one-man wrecking crew she didn't know.

The crimson pathways told of swift, overwhelming violence, sprays of blood coating near every surface. In places the gore grew ankle deep and Mia had been forced to put down more than a few of the dark leather-clad slavers who'd survived losing a limb or had clung to life despite a disembowelling.

He didn't appear to stop or slow in the least as he carved a path towards the largest watchtower- a roundabout path, that zigged and zagged as new foes presented themselves but always found itself routing back to the target.

She caught him in the next field, facing down a slaver and their pet.

The female slavemaster carried a leathery whip in one hand while a pearlescent orb floated above the other and unlike the males she'd seen had two small black horns instead of a singular white one, though Mia mostly focused on the truly massive hound at her side.

Globs of acidic drool dribbled down its jowls, sizzling where they struck the dirt, though this proved the least horrifying thing about the creature.

Face forever frozen in a frightened scream, Mia watched the creature suckle on the bone marrow of the slave caught in its mouth, popping and cracking the femurs open bit by bit until the movement of its jaws caused the torso to rip and split, flopping onto the dirt with an accompanying shower of guts and entrails.

Growling followed at the loss of half its chew toy, a low powerful rumble accompanied by a tensing of its muscles that showed exactly how strong the creature would be underneath its layer of matted green fur and pudgy skin.

Its master spoke, then, hissing at the hound first then spreading her arms as she locked eyes with Leon.

"Sit. Foolish meat, Riuris will break you without my lifting a finger."

The accursed hound sat immediately, uncaring of Leon or Mia's presence.

That baleful aura still circled Leon, similar to the one she'd felt when they first met but strangely now nowhere near as oppressive as it had been when she'd been its focus.

He drawled as he spoke, managing to sound bored and angry at once.

"Bullshit. No way this is your strongest summon."

In response, she let out a peal of throaty cruel laughter.

"Already fractured of mind. Your breaking will be swift. Riuris' strength surpasses yours utterly"

"Oh, no. I mean, I gave you all that time to summon the dog, you had a whole big light show with glyphs and weird ritual chanting and it's just so... weak. Mia, keep the summoner busy if you want to be useful."

As he kicked off the ground, Mia had enough time to register the summoner's cruel anticipation curdle into cold rage as she issued her order, pointing at Leon.

"Kill."

Conservatively, Leon would estimate the dog stood as tall as a single-storey building, far from the largest foe he'd had to tangle with but far quicker. Claws like daggers attached to a pair of meaty paws, a snarling maw of yellowed fangs.

Yet, he hadn't been lying. This creature felt weak in his senses, not pathetically so but it would hardly be a challenge.

Warding blows with his blade as he danced backwards, he felt the beast's fury and responded with his own.

Calling it a technique would be too much- his attack felt too simple for that.

A step to the side sent the beast skidding across the dirt, its own momentum too great, its skin too soft to withstand the overhead slash that severed its back legs and left it howling in the muck.

Methodically, piece by piece Leon worked his way up the dog, slicing equal-sized sections out with each swing. Not quite death by a thousand cuts, trauma, blood loss and organ failure killed it long before he made it to the hound's head and split it open.

Across the field, Mia fought her own battle of blue arrows against spell and whip, a fight Leon chose to watch for a moment, considering the female slaver's physique just long enough to conjure a mental image of cracking her skull open with his hands.

Shaking off the intrusive thought, he judged the distance and moved, sword angled to achieve a perfect cut.

Steel entered just above the hip and carved straight up through the chest before veering to the centre, opening the throat and splitting the head in two, the point just barely poking through the back of the slaver's skull as she went limp on his blade.

He hadn't even really swung, just applied his maximum speed and let physics handle the rest.

"You have slain a Level Ten Cherno Hound!"

"You have slain a Level Forty-Five Slave Summoner!"

He made to continue his journey, only for a voice to call out.

"Wait."

Panting with blood running from a wound on her upper arm.

Leon deliberately averted his eyes after noting those two facts. Talking to people while you imagined killing them never got easier.

"For what? Actually, no, proper question- why are you here? No, wait, hang on, better question- why are we here?"

From the corner of his eye, he watched her shrug and wince as her wound began to knit closed.

"Your girlfriend says we need to save somebody here and I'm supposed to keep you from getting yourself killed, somehow."

Being assigned a babysitter would have annoyed him if he didn't recognise the necessity of it once he started really piling up bodies. Already the siren song whispered in his ears that he alone could handle any threat but the first part of Mia's answer demanded a response.

"Octavia's not my girlfriend."

"Does she know that?"

"Course she does- we're... fuck it, I don't know. Platonic partners in battle and life, I guess- never really put a label on it."

"Sounds like a girlfriend."

"Can it, let's move."

How he wished for a warm body with hot blood to cut down, yet the next ten minutes passed and nary a fool crossed his path. He could practically feel the tension in the air as he finally arrived at the foot of the watchtower to a standoff in progress.

Harald and Octavia stood to one side, spear and conjured flames respectively aimed at a group of five standing at the base of the tower's steps. Four slavemasters of little individual note and one truly bloated specimen, whose corpulent form strained against the armour to the point of cracking the leather.

He'd walked in mid-conversation and allowed it to run its course, Harald speaking for their side, the fat slaver for the other.

"I'm afraid that won't do, sir. We can hardly permit weeds in our garden, can we? The Stormbound Swordsman has torn your rank and file asunder- any you sent to stymie him are gone. The stupid, dead. The smart, fled. Surrender, leave and we need spill no more blood on this blessed clay."

Leon only noticed the large slaver had been snacking as a stripped finger flew from his mouth, teeth marks lining the bone and answering the question of where all the amputated fingers had wound up.

"Your swordsman is of no concern. The Cherno Hound will see to him."

Never one to let an opening pass by, Leon announced his presence then, both groups swivelling to face him as he spoke.

"Dog's dead. Summoner too. Killed a lot of people today actually. Freed some slaves along the way but mostly killed. Must be a couple hundred corpses back there. Dunno what you guys are talking about and I don't care. I'll give you ten seconds to surrender."

He made sure to count them. All ten of those strained seconds seemed to stretch into tiny infinities.

Then he struck and death followed.

Calling it a fight wouldn't be accurate, the four Earthlings tore the last slavers apart. The few that survived flash immolation and arrows aimed to pierce their necks died as Leon came in low, sweeping his blade through waists and into the leader's heart. A spear lay halfway buried through the leader's now imploded face, point buried in one of the watchtower's timber legs.

Sheathing his blade upon his back after removing the worst of the viscera, Leon lay down and yawned, shouting over to Octavia before he lay his head down.

"Taking a nap- get me up if you need me!"

By the time he awoke, the sun lay near directly overhead and a corpse sat sprawled out a few feet away.

All slaver bodies had been cleared away, leaving only this unfamiliar man's corpse. Buzzed ginger hair, a goatee and a slit throat. He couldn't have been in slaver custody long since he still had his legs and fingers but already his corpse looked thin. At a guess, they'd been starving him but Leon couldn't say for sure.

The rest of the team- a label Leon felt uncertain of applying aloud even as he thought it- were gathered around while Octavia knelt down, poking and prodding at the dead man.

Stifling a yawn, he peered down and passed judgment.

"Definitely dead. Who was he?"

Octavia didn't stop her autopsy as she replied, voice sounding forcibly calm, a slight waver his only hint that something had gone terribly wrong.

"Matt Reeves, the, now former, leader of the E.L.F."

"Ha! They called themselves 'elf'. Oh, that's dumb. What killed him?"

"Someone took the opportunity amid our incursion to slit his throat- a word, in private Leon?"

He nodded in assent though she'd already begun casting layered barriers that obscured them from sight and prevented any sound leaking out.

Octavia allowed some small panic to creep in now that they were alone together.

"We're already diverging from what I know. Reeves is supposed to live and lead a resistance movement. We'll need... someone, something else now."

Leon felt an idea sprout in his mind there.

"Easy fix. We just need a new guy to run things."

"We'd need someone with experience. Someone capable of wrangling difficult personalities, one ultimately subservient to our whims- this isn't as easy as you make it sound."

Leon allowed his helmet to recede, showing his calm smile to Octavia.

"Trust me, partner. Where there's a will, there's a way. Just gotta track him down first."