Ash. The Legends of the Nameless World. Progression Gamelit Story by Kirill Klevanski (essential reading .txt) 📗

the man confessed to burning eight children alive and got ready to repent for his sins by being murdered... but the general left him alive.

What Ash cared about was making his men’s blood run cold with terror. Their crimes didn’t interest him at all.

“Listen to me, scum!” he roared while climbing onto the platform. “Tomorrow, we’re going to Arabist! We have no weapons, armor, food, or mounts! Nothing! Do you know what this means?!”

Silence.

“You’ve permission to speak, scum! Do you know what this means?!”

Murmurs and discordant grunts passed through the crowd.

“Wrong! It means that we must get these things on our own! We’ll burn, plunder and rape! It doesn’t matter who finds themselves on our path! Child, elder, peasant, or merchant, hell, even if God himself descends from the Heavens, we’ll kill him too! That’s your only mission, scum, to kill!”

Many of the future legionnaires grinned, feeling their hearts beat faster as fear intertwined with animalistic urges, madness, and lust for bloodshed.

“What are we going to do, scum?!”

“Kill!”

“Pillage!”

“Burn!”

“I don’t hear you, scum! What are we going to do?!”

“Kill!” they shouted.

“Kill!” he shouted back.

“Kill!” the legion echoed.

The battle chant continued until Ash gave a new command.

“And now, drop down and give me twenty!”

The Legion obeyed at once.

“Twenty push-ups, you motherfuckers!” he snarled, imitating Racker’s tone. “Those who stumble will be exiled. We have no need for weak members!”

Laughing joyfully, Racker went up to Ash and watched the convicts do pushups. There was something hilarious about four thousand grown men taking orders from a child with a big stick. Threats, whips, and shouts have become outdated — all they needed was a stare of Ash’s cold, empty eyes.

“You have my respect,” Racker said, sitting down.

“So, will you teach me the Word?” Ash asked calmly like he hadn’t just killed about two dozen people and made the most notorious scoundrels of the Middle Kingdom piss their pants in fear.

Racker shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

By nightfall, the legion was three hundred members short. Some say that their corpses still lie under the parade grounds, which had long been overgrown with weeds.

Chapter 20

8th of Zund, 322 A.D., Kingdom of Arabist

A sh, wandering around the castle, finally found the rest of his crew. They were discussing something rather noisily in a spacious room.

“Crazy,” Mary muttered. “It’s crazy.”

Judging by the fact that she was talking to the trio that they had met in the foyer; they were still under the effect of the curse.

“Greetings!” Ash smiled and waved to his companions as he walked into the room.

“Well, well, look at who the cat dragged in... You missed quite a lot.” Mary sneered.

Even the quiet Tul seemed gloomier than usual. Alice clung to Lari as if her life depended on it. Blackbeard was the only one who seemed relatively calm and unshaken. Perhaps it was all the sour wine that he had drunk. Rarely who liked its rancid taste.

“What’s wrong?” Ash asked and sat down next to them.

“You were right,” Mary whispered wearily, cracking her numb fingers. “The castle is cursed... To make things worse... There’s a werewolf roaming about and some sort of a spell... I mean temporary spells.”

“Temporary Spell?” the young mage asked in surprise.

“Check it out for yourself,” Blackbeard said and threw a scroll. “We’re... in deep sh— Manure.”

Ash, grabbing the scroll on the fly, immediately unfolded it and started reading. His expression remained the same as his eyes glided over the lines written on parchment with a shaky hand, but there were sparks of interest burning in the eye uncovered by a lens.

According to the writer of the scroll, the castle had been cursed by a powerful and skilled mage. What sort of a curse had been used was beyond the understanding of even the Fourth Master of the Order. And he, as everyone knew, was the strongest mage on the continent.

The invitation to the wedding, as it turned out, was a piece of cheese dangling above a very big mousetrap.

“There were twelve of us. Gods, I’ve never felt more joy in keeping a diary. If it wasn’t for it, we wouldn’t have a chance. Urvi was the first to disappear, dragged away by the beast. Where to? I got no idea...

We found two corpses. The baron and the lady in waiting... I saw their mauled corpses with my own eyes, so imagine my horror when I saw them at the feast! Sitting and chatting at their table! Nobody remembered what happened the night before, not even me. It seemed to us that all we had done was come to a wedding... Had I not lost Urvi... I never would have opened this diary...

There are seven of us now. The cycle is only one day long. The castle renews itself at the stroke of midnight. The participants of the feast are revived and their memory wiped clean. We still have no way out... The monster is still on the loose...

There’s five of us now... The monster is dragging away bodies somewhere. We still don’t know where its lair is. I think the duchess is the bearer of the curse. She doesn’t approve of her son’s choice, saying that his wife is of ‘pig’s blood.’

There’s four of us now... There are new corpses every morning. By the evening, they either disappear or are revived with the rest. Nobody saw the beast, but there’s no doubt that it’s something terrible. I’m more and more convicted that the duchess is to blame... There’s something in the way she looks at her son...

I forget many things when the clock strikes midnight... I can’t concentrate... Fear holds us in its grip. We’ve been to this castle for almost a month now, but it feels like we arrived only yesterday...

We’ve lost connection with the Guild...