Chapter 6 #3
Alex shrugged. “I had the drop on both of you and came in at him from the sun’s angle.
Since I can’t Bullrush through the desert or air this time around, I couldn’t take the risk that he’d outmaneuver me with his flying boots and pepper me with who knows how many spells he might have had at his disposal.
So embracing the element of surprise and taking out his self-destruct collar with Piercing Strike seemed like the most expedient way to get rid of any backlash.
Even if the collar’s location meant that I had to decapitate the bastard to do so. ”
He bent down to peer intently into the eyes of the trembling sergeant gazing up at him with helpless dismay. He might have been corrupt, but he was no fool. He had to know what it meant, that Alex was willing to speak of such matters so freely.
Thus, Alex’s next words came as quite a surprise.
“So, this is where you come in, Erlu. Congratulations. You’re the last man standing. If you’d like to keep it that way, you’ll answer my questions.”
Erlu’s eyes widened with sudden hope that quickly died off with a bitter chuckle. “Then I suppose it’s time for me to fall beside my men. For I will answer none of your questions, no matter how desperately I wish to flee these desert sands for all time.”
Alex furrowed his brow. “Wait, you’re not from around here at all? I mean, the armor was a dead giveaway that a certain asshole’s influence has spread pretty damn far and wide, but I would have thought your master was training local troops.”
The soldier blanched, before giving a furious shake of his head. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Alex nodded solemnly and whispered in the man’s ear, “Because Dongfang Hong had you all forcefully bound to serve him via infernal contracts, right?”
The man lurched back in horror, stumbling to the desert sands while Alex smiled coolly back at him. “No. There is no way you could know that. No way!”
“Are the rank and file similarly doomed? Or is it still just his officers and noncoms?”
His foe flashed a bitter smile. “As if you cared.”
Alex shrugged. “Believe what you like.”
“Are you going to kill me now?”
“That depends,” Alex said, tossing the man a water flask that Erlu sniffed only once before drinking from greedily. “I know you can’t reveal anything about the Red Prince, but maybe you can tell me what, hmm… let’s say, changes a visitor to Wanshi City could expect?”
His grizzled opponent froze, breath turning ragged as he dared to allow a flicker of desperate hope to mar his stoic countenance, before giving a slow nod.
“Yes… this… this I could say. New travelers should be careful coming to Wanshi. Especially traders. The roads are no longer safe. Yet all those troubles will pass, just as soon as the royal family authorizes exclusive trading rights with Zuihaoshi merchants.”
Alex flashed a cynical smile. “Exclusive trading rights made all the sweeter as a tributary state?”
“Certainly it is true that any good protectorate would honor the fiduciary interests of their… benefactor.”
Soul Sight Perception check made. You sense the irony before you!
Alex nodded. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you or your men have to worry about damnation, save for the decades of purgatory you’ll be enduring when your soul is scrubbed free of all the sin you accrued in the final hour of your lives.”
The sergeant blinked. “But I was bound. We all were!”
Alex flashed a cynical smile. “Recruiting and maintaining the loyalty of native soldiers is a lot different than forcefully recruiting the elites of a neighboring nation. Hao Zei is dead, and it’s far cheaper to make a man believe he’s bound to sin than to actually pay the cost of an infernalist’s time and effort to make it so. ”
The man blinked, gazing at Alex with wonder, as if he had just gotten a new lease on life. “That means I’m free!”
Alex nodded, before moving so fast that he was an exercise in explosive power before the exhausted soldier could even form a smile.
“Free to start your next life without all the nightmares of this one tormenting you all your days,” Alex said as he took to the skies and raced to Wanshi for all he was worth.
His already distant form was glimpsed for a final agonized moment by the doomed head as it toppled to the ground in a shower of crimson rain, and how fitting it was that the sergeant’s final sight before roaring blackness consumed him was the glassy-eyed stare of the decapitated wujen who had ordered the ruthless slaughter of all the caravanners they ambushed in the first place, before trying to flee the blond-haired Ruidian just moments ago.
Most surprising of all, the doomed wujen was still alive, barely, eyes gyrating as his mouth gulped for air in a silent scream right before he faded into the blackness alongside his sergeant.
The pair now walked in perfect step as they embraced the ice-cold waters together.
Yet the screams of the innocent women and children they had struck denied them the mercy of warmer currents or rest. They would be forced to endure in perfect wakefulness the agonies of their own bitter cleansing until they were reborn once more.