Other people are busy, too...

It had been a year since his little sister had left, and his mother had been revealed as a changeling. That she was actually a Warlock was something not spread to others, but the search for the background of the woman was something that his father’s spies were delving into.

They had already found out that she had likely infiltrated the manor by taking the place of a servant girl who had disappeared from the kitchens about five years ago. Once inside the manor, it was simply a matter of time and place before his mother had been murdered and replaced by the Poison Heart Warlock.

Demonic Pactbound were notoriously independent, so it was entirely possible that her death was just a case of a woman taking revenge on her betters, and stealing his mother’s high status and life for herself.

Was it involved with what had been done with Veis? He didn’t know. But he knew that Seal under his parent’s bed was Hag work.

His ancestors had come to an agreement with the Stormcrone, something he wasn’t privy to, and really didn’t care about. Essentially, she received a territory of her own and would be undisturbed, and vice versa.

What had possessed her to force a Hagchild on his mother, he didn’t know, but he was certain he was going to do something about it.

His Angel Weight training was done, the benefits locked in. He was effectively a six-gravity heavy-worlder now; stronger, faster, tougher than anyone without magical enhancements, and his Endoskeleton would be next.

That would take a lot of gold and Karma, however.

It was time to go kill a Hag.

---------

“Father, do you have a moment?”

Duke Gilderalz barely broke stride as he headed down the stairs for his next meeting. “What is it, Errant?” he replied coldly, forcing Errant to hurry to keep up.

“Just confirming that whoever kills Zouma gets to keep the reward money, sir.”

That did give the Duke pause. He looked back at his youngest son, who had grown significantly in the last year. Although Errant wasn’t exactly the most welcome of his sons at events, he had built up a deadly reputation among the Duke’s instructors and soldiers for his sheer determination and persistence. His self-healing ability had gotten a lot of attention, and everyone was wondering where it came from.

Most thought it was a diabolic gift, and wondered where in the Gilderalz lineage it had come from. He was now giving sword instruction lessons to senior knights, because the other instructors kept getting humiliated by him.

“Of course they will, Errant. The bounty is a matter of public record, and the Gilderalz will stand by their promises!” the Duke stated coldly.

There was nothing but calm in Errant’s eyes. But you won’t commit House soldiers to that effect for some reason, nor send any of our uncles or cousins out to deal with a Stormcrone, he huffed inside. Heaven sang a tune behind his ear, and he had no problem meeting his father’s intimidating gaze.

“Very good, father. Best wishes for the negotiations.” Errant turned and strode away, leaving his father confused for a moment, but he dismissed their conversation quickly.

---------

Errant dropped down forty feet from the wall, and heard bone creak as he hit the ground. It basically did nothing to him, and he healed the damage to his ankles within two steps.

A horse would have been faster, but its absence noticed more quickly, and it wouldn’t have his endurance. With a light pack and lightfoot, he was heading out at a trot equal to what most men sprinted at.

There had been numbers of adventurers who’d taken up the bounty. Some actually came back from their attempts without being Cursed, Morphed, mind-reamed, Possessed, turned into undead, or made over into interesting and macabre objects d’art.

The number of adventurers attempting to collect it had dropped off, however. The only ones who could reasonably beard a Senior Hag Witch in her lair would be Tens, and most Tens had better things to do with their time... especially since the Good Tens had been chased off, and/or had no desire to aid a noble family of Hell-worshippers. Even the nobler-minded of them had noticed this was a spat between the Gilderaz and the Hag, and didn’t involve the citizens or peasants of the Duchy, and so were leaving the mess to those who had earned it.

By the measures of Huul, if they couldn’t handle it, it was because they were weak, and didn’t deserve their strength.

Errant’s disguise wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be. He had been going into town at the wrong ages for years, and was perfectly able to fake being at different levels of birth, what to wear, and how to act. While he wasn’t unhandsome, he didn’t really stand out with dirty dark hair, blue eyes, and a compact build a little taller than average, just looking a bit older and more well-built than his years.

It was thirty or forty miles to Zouma’s peak, if her lair was even up there. But it wasn’t her lair he was going to worry about first.

He needed some practical experience outside, and this was a great time to get it. He’d suspended all his normal responsibilities, or fobbed them off on others, over the past month. Nobody was expecting to see him doing anything anywhere, and given how ridiculous the stories about his self-training were, it was hardly unexpected. The tale of that night he’d run a hundred miles down the road to Colpenton, beaten the snot out of two of the Colpen heirs who’d been spreading nasty rumors about his family, then run home while avoiding the cavalry sent out to chastise him, was still making the rounds.

He had leeway, and no true responsibilities. His healing made him freakish, and his ability to take a hit was impressive, but he still couldn’t use chi or magic, so he was a failure as an heir and certainly not a marriage prospect for anyone of importance.

Zouma had servants and pets around her peak, and had probably set up Hag Eyes near their lairs and the main trails, along with magical traps. Those minions were ogre clans, trolls, a tribe of corrupted stone giants, at least one temple guarded by minotaurs, and a scream of harpies nesting higher up the slopes.

He’d had enough of killing evil men for now... although some of the guardian creatures he’d found during his nocturnal adventures had certainly been interesting, and given him enough Karma to get where he was today.

But there were places to go, and things to do.

======

Half-ogre wereboars. Wasn’t that a match made in a dark and filthy room...

They were definitely strong enough to dominate the mountainside. Their pig forms were the size of small elephants, with tusks well over a foot long.

Being able to constantly heal and fearless was a potent combination. The brutes had learned all about it. They were strong and fast... and they had met the first Grandmaster of the Sword in the Power of Ten.

One Sword.

He had been one of the first Warlocks in the game, and after Sole wowed everyone with his multiple Pacts and stuff, one of the few Primos players to remain pure, with a single Pact. Being a Warlock meant he couldn’t run around with a shield, and at best he’d be carrying a Warlock Scepter in his other hand. So, one sword was all he would ever use.

His One Strike Grandmastery had been impressive enough that even Sole had picked it up, recognizing its usefulness and how applicable it was for a Warlock.

This... weresow-ogress was now learning what had killed her sons. Lovers. Brothers? All three? The amount of inbreeding on the brutes he had killed had been that bad, and there’d been no other mates for the males, which didn’t bode well.

The weresow was fully as big as an elephant, weighing multiple tons as she charged at him in a rage. Given that she was so fat she could hardly walk in her normal form, it was understandable. Still, those short legs didn’t give her any leaping ability whatsoever, and avoiding her wasn’t all that hard, if you were prepared for her to blow through every obstruction between her and you to get at you.

Errant went out the window twenty feet behind him smoothly, hit the ground and rolled off to the side with perfect control. His Sword Grace burned with silver fire as he pivoted and cut, following her location perfectly through his tremblesense as she pounded after him, marking every hoof-beat and shifting of weight.

The wall exploded. The shrapnel spraying everywhere would have given pause to any normal fighter, but Errant just closed his eyes and cut, letting the splinters and logs bounce off him, and ripped a transcendent strike down her side with the mithral and adamant edge of his Sword.

Fully two feet of his Blade carved into her side. His Battle Stability was online, his heavyfoot was nailing him to the ground, and his Angel Weight meant he weighed over half a ton at the moment. She gutted herself along the edge of Grace... and utterly ignored it as a good berserker should.

With a thought, he released the Angel Weight and jumped as she rounded on him, easily clearing her backside and coming down on her flank. He held his breath against the wall of stench there and swung again as he hit the ground, nearly chopping off her leg on the opposite side, even as she was trying to turn on him.

It buckled under her massive weight, but didn’t stop her from moving with her manic strength. He was up and out of her line of sight for a moment, sliding down her side before jumping up again, light as a grasshopper, again easily clearing her bulk as her massive hooves clawed at the dirt trying to get at him.

She looked up just in time for Angel Weight to kick in, and the full weight of his body at six times gravity came down on her head, plummeting from twenty feet and hitting as hard as if from over a hundred.

He drove Grace fully through her head, slamming the porcine skull to the ground and pinning it there. He wrenched forth, back, and completed the mincing of her brain, and even her berserker rage couldn’t compensate for having a brain turned to mush.

Naturally, that meant the shapechanging was also going to let go, and the vivic fires start to burn. The power of the Curse inside these monstrous werepig-ogres meant the vivic fire was particularly quick to light up and start the process of feeding them to the Land. Errant’s magical self-cleaning extermination service, at your pleasure...

He didn’t want to look at the engorged, swollen body of the ogress... really, he didn’t want to look at much here. The whispers behind his ear were sorrowfully informing him about the purpose and history of the sprawling log home of this clan, of the Gentling Room where hapless victims were raped and sodomized repeatedly, the torture chambers, the butchering room, cold storage, the kitchen racks and roasters...

This place was an assault on the senses and common decency. It was all those horror movies about hillbilly cannibals done large by ten-foot ogre wereboars. How they ever got enough to eat here was solved when he found the two trolls chained up in the basement. The regenerators had obviously been carved up many times for meat and were completely mad from the repeated butchering...

Still, he had to take what was valuable before the scavengers moved in, which meant exploring. Finding the pit full of female ogre baby bones was something he could have lived without, as was the room of ogre-sized spiked sex-toys for humanoids who were largely invulnerable to normal items not made of silver. Yep, could have lived without all of it...

It took everything he had not to burn the place down. He could do it later, on his way out, but in the meantime, he didn’t want the other minions on the mountain to know something had happened. It might only buy him a couple of days, but he could get a lot done in a couple days...