47. Havoc #3
Locke pulls a large battleaxe from his inventory and settles into a ready stance.
The ticker tapes start to snap out aggressively, trying to wrap their ankles.
They shout and move out of the way as the elite finally descend from their balconies.
Their clothing tears as they turn into smaller versions of the Wolf, their eyes glowing as they snap at the edges of the opening arena maliciously.
The bell chimes and Vesper stumbles, stunned for a few seconds by the grating sound. To her credit, she recovers quickly, her Fang lifted as she rushes the Wolf. No hesitation. She’s a Tier One, has nothing to her power yet, and here she is, the first to rush into battle.
“Magnificent, is she not?” Cipher purrs.
I raise my brow. “You got the hots for the Beast Bound?”
Cipher laughs. “I am a machine, Legend.”
“And I’m the Luxe’s Propaganda Boy,” I reply. “Seems like we can both call ourselves something we don’t enjoy.”
Cipher hums. “I wish to keep her alive.”
“Why?”
“Those reasons are my own.”
“How close are you to growing your control?” I ask, waiting. “Why is she so important?”
He hesitates. “I cannot answer those questions, Warden.”
I drag my sword from my sheath. Close and for reasons he can’t tell me.
He’d once thought I could help, but I was never Cipher’s champion.
For some reason, he’s decided it’s Vesper, and well .
. . I hate Luxe as much anyone who came from Dross.
I don’t need to help. I’d rather keep to myself, but .
. . there’s only so long that it will last if Cipher is pushing forward.
Luxe will fight back, and this woman, this brutal woman fighting a massive werewolf without hesitation, there’s something about her.
Something . . . important. I can feel it in her presence.
Even if I don’t believe in prophecy and fate, I’d be an idiot not to follow it.
I leap into the fight, swinging my massive IronFold sword at the Wolf. He howls at the critical hit. “Correction accepted!” he shouts, and leaps toward Vesper.
I watch as his health starts to drop with the three of us attacking.
The Ophanim hovers back, not attacking, not bothering to speak.
The familiar attacks with a fervor, but she’s small and only adds small cuts to the Wolf of Wall Street.
She drops his health down five HP each hit, but it’s barely anything. Our weapons do more damage.
When his health falls by half, the Wolf roars. “You were supposed to stay poor!” he roars, attacking with a renewed fervor.
Vesper is panting by the time his health falls to less than a quarter, her movements getting slow. She catches a claw across her front and goes flying backward into the ticker tapes. They wrap around her.
“Vesper!” Locke shouts, turning toward her.
“No,” I growl. “Defeat the Wolf. They’ll release her.”
Vesper screams as the ticker tapes wrap her completely, her familiar rushing to slice at them. I slash at the Wolf, knocking his health lower. Locke hesitates and then attacks the Wolf, but he’s clumsy because of his worry. That’s a weakness.
I hit the Wolf one last time and his health falls and pops. He looks down at the blood blooming across his chest and presses his clawed hand to it. Then he looks up at us.
“No matter,” he wheezes. “Another market opens tomorrow.”
He bursts into coins that rain down around us. The ticker tapes stop running and Vesper drags her way out of them with Svetlana’s help. Locke rushes over to her as I stand in the middle of the raining Harrow Coins, my eyes on where the Wolf had been.
The ticker tape at the front of the room makes a noise and starts to run one last line.
“THE SYSTEM IS NOT brOKEN. THE SYSTEM IS FUNCTIONING PERFECTLY.”
Vesper scowls at the papers, just as the first NPC’s gun goes off.
She jumps and whirls just in time to see the NPC’s brains paint the Rune Stock Exchange floor.
Another leaps from the balconies to splatter across the marble floor.
She covers her ears as more guns echo, NPCs who lost everything in the game calling it quits.
I stand there, watching, as she screams. The death builds up around us as they acknowledge how much they lost.
“Don’t worry,” I tell them despite the sounds of dying. “They reset in a few hours.”
She looks at me, horrified, and I realize just how numb I’ve gotten to it all. My stomach doesn’t even roll as blood splatters my face when an NPC blows his brains out too close to me. I don’t even flinch.
Those brown eyes trace my face, take in my lack of emotion, and then she nods.
“They want us to lose our humanity. That’s the point,” she murmurs as her familiar flutters on her shoulder. Surprisingly, the praying mantis doesn’t seem enthralled by the lack of heads. Even she understands what’s happening here.
“Welcome to the Harrow,” I tell her. “The brutality is the point.”
Her gaze jerks to me and holds, as if she’s heard those words before. I don’t look away, not even as more NPCs die, not even as the Rune Stock Exchange grows quiet except for the drip, drip, drip of blood from the bodies.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
You defeated the wolf of wall street for the fifth time! Wow. You really enjoy watching people suffer.
REWARD: nothing. Your lack of emotion about this brutality is enough of a reward. Psycho.
I sniff as my XP goes up by seventeen points. “Asshole.”
Cipher’s laughter follows me out of the Exchange.