Blight Leech - Grimdark Fantasy LitRPG, page 1
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Blight Leech - Book 1 - Grimdark Fantasy LitRPG
Copyright © 2023
Published by Unum
Cover illustration by DevDia Art
From simple words to published work by Ormstad Multimedia
Ebook ISBN: 978-82-93724-23-0
Paperback ISBN: 978-82-93724-24-7
Audiobook ISBN: 978-82-93724-41-4
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No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent from the author - Ben Ormstad - except in the instance of quotes for reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents, and places are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real except where noted, and authorised. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
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Blight Leech - Book 1
Grimdark Fantasy LitRPG
Ben Ormstad
1
There.
An ever so subtle, yet delicious odor of pain swirled in the air.
Pulsating somewhere among the ruins of an ancient fortress, the alluring smell caught Kane Zerriah’s attention.
From his bird’s-eye view as he flew across the moonlit sky with wings flapping lazily – just enough to keep him afloat – he found the remnants of the dilapidated fortress draped in the moonlight. Every protruding, craggy structure painted long shadows around itself, creating an interesting play of silvery white and coal black. Interesting for a hunter, at least, whose job often was to move undetected in the environment’s contrasting color palette – at one second blending in with the light, and in the next moment sneaking through darkness.
Wind washed across Kane’s face as he descended, the cool air filling his nostrils and making his ear-length black hair flail about his head. He swiftly scanned the surroundings for anything – or anyone – worth paying attention to, but the ruins seemed mostly desolate – save for the alluring scent, of course, which increased slightly.
Aiming for a cluster of broken pillars on the outskirts of the torn fortress, he swooped in like an airborne shadow and landed softly on the gravel ground. A few crows gathered in the shadows squawked hoarsely. Dry branches cracked when they scattered from the surrounding lifeless bushes and took off. Shiny things reflecting the moonlight dangled in their beaks.
As Kane watched them disappear against the black sky, he noticed something else glimmer where they had been. He could faintly smell it, too. It carried an almost unnoticeable odor of negativity, even subtler than the one he came here to investigate. Scorched wood and roasted meat also hid somewhere in the exotic mix of smells.
Kane snuck past the closest pillars and waded through the dry bushes until he reached the spot where the black birds had been.
He passed multiple crow carcasses spread on the ground – all burnt to crispy pieces of coal. Stepping over them and pushing away the last branches, his eyes widened when he uncovered the dead body lying there – not because it was a dead body, of course, but because it was… an orc.
“What the hell?” he whispered, feeling his stomach muscles tighten. It made no sense. Orcs, goblins, ghouls, daemons and all such crude races had been permanently driven out of Sanctishi during The Great Expulsion fifteen years earlier when the Blight Leeches’ former ruler, Grandrir, inherited the throne.
During those fifteen years, only three orcs had been caught wandering around in this universe. And as expected, they’d been swiftly wiped out before their corpses were shipped straight back to their home world with a grave warning to their people.
Leave us alone, or die.
Grimacing, Kane flipped the beastly humanoid over on its back and scanned the dark gray-blue corpse from head to toes while pulling in the sweet stench of death.
A female orc. Even pretty, in her own grisly way.
Surely, it could have been a coincidence? Simply a stray one that got away and was quickly taken out by Sanctishi’s brutal wildlife? Yes, it indeed seemed probable.
But still… something just felt off.
Coagulated blood covered her beastly facial features. Bruises and gashes went diagonally from her rugged brow and down to her jawline. Even her large, pointy ears and nose bore marks of a recent battle – most likely the one that ended her existence.
Had even a minor whiff of life remained in her, Kane could have devoured her negatively charged essence and nourished himself with it. Unfortunately, merely a diminishing aroma lingered, and soon no trace of her ever being alive would be left at all.
Kane scratched his clean-shaven chin, wondering how an orc had managed to cross the dimensional border to Sanctishi? Not only was it heavily booby-trapped by energetically installed security systems that would literally disintegrate intruders into their constituent energy parts, but a group of appointed members of The Divine Watchers always monitored Sanctishi’s metaphysical borders – ever vigilant and ready to question and / or terminate any interdimensional beings attempting to visit this world.
Kane crouched by the dead orc and slid his fingers across her shoulders, chest and hips, inspecting her closer.
The jewelry-loving birds had ripped her clothing to ragged shreds in order to get to the good stuff. A few remaining pieces of a gold necklace that had clearly been forcefully torn from her neck littered her chest. Likewise, other remnants of shiny things spread around her hands, and one of her ears was bloody from having rings ripped straight out of the earlobe.
Greedy little bastards. Kane knew from experience they would steal anything they could get their poky beaks on. He’d even seen an old, defenseless fellow get his prosthetic silver eye hacked straight out of his skull by a flock of these merciless winged rats – while he was alive and screaming. When they were done with him, only a large, bloody crater remained where his fake eye had been. And they were smart, too. Working together, they quickly realized how to best disable their target in order to get what they wanted.
Goosebumps fluttered down Kane’s spine at the thought of it, knowing he’d electrocute an entire legion of them if they ever tried something like that on him. But of course they wouldn’t; he was way beyond even the highest leveled crows. To him, they were a mere nuisance, like background noise – or in this case, someone who stole loot he could have use for.
Switching focus back to the female orc, he further examined what she wore. Pieces of well-crafted bronze armor protected her shoulders, elbows and groin. Metallic gauntlets covered her hands. They were deeply charred and even smelled roasted, as if she’d been shooting fire from her palms.
Interesting, he thought, ignoring her dirty boots for the severely dented helmet that lay cracked next to her beaten face. Black feathers poked out from the top of it – well, what had been feathers. Now they were mangled so badly it looked like someone had had a pillow fight with a chainsaw.
“Hm,” Kane mumbled. Perhaps the crows hadn’t liked her cocky display of probable bird-torture, and they were the ones who’d killed her? Could a few crows kill an orc, though?
Especially an orc of this calibre…
Kane touched the brownish red robe draped over her light armor. Made of fine linen, but too shredded to be worth anything. Orcish symbols adorned the edges of it, and although they meant nothing to Kane, he nevertheless knew what they signified. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, because this female wasn’t just any regular old orc; she was an Orc Mystic.
That explains how she could have bypassed the dimensional security, he thought as his eyes moved back to her charred gauntlets. Orc Mystics were powerful fire mages – and they became more powerful the more they leveled up.
This meant she was the one who had fried those dead crows who lay around here like crispy chickens. Orc Mystics were also the only kind of orcs with an understanding of the metaphysical and magical aspects of reality. An accomplished Mystic knew how
“I don’t like it,” he whispered, and set up a reminder for himself to discuss the matter with the other members of his guild when he returned to their meeting place later. If they even believed him. A dead orc in Sanctishi, all alone, one and a half decades after The Great Expulsion?
Riiight. Not likely, mister!
With a second glance at the dead orc, he smiled. Oh, they would believe him, alright. He equipped his triple-enchanted and magically imbued sword – the Pain-Eater.
***
Name : Pain-Eater +3
Type : One-Handed Sword
Rarity : C Grade
Physical Attack : 337
Magic Attack : 246
Special Ability 1 : Consume Blight
Special Ability 2 : Cut to Scan
Attack Speed : Fast
Durability : 11221 / 13000
Weight : 1.9lb
Description : Easy to wield like a katana, and shaped like a modified dao, the Pain-Eater is a lightweight one-handed sword invented by Kane Zerriah. It slices through meat and metal alike, dealing both physical and magic damage. Enchanted thrice to substantially increase its physical and magic attack, plus imbued with magical elements that grants it additional special abilities.
Special Ability 1 : Consume Blight
Imbued with Kane’s own insatiable hunger for Blight, the Pain-Eater enables him to acquire nourishment simply by dealing damage to Blight-infected beings.
Special Ability 2 : Cut to Scan
The Pain-Eater automatically scans a target’s stats, regardless of it being alive or not.
***
Kane lifted the Pain-Eater above his head, enjoying the prickling sensation of it in his hand as a web of ocean blue energy flashed across the reflective blade and its rugged hilt. With a lightning-fast downward swoop, he severed the female orc’s neck, slicing her head clean off. At the very moment it separated from her body, Kane automatically absorbed information about who she had been via the Pain-Eater’s special ability Cut to Scan.
The dead orc’s class information printed across his field of vision:
***
Name : Orc Fire Shaman
Type : Humanoid
Level : 29
Disposition : Inquisitive
HP : 0 / 573
Physical Attack : 101
Magic Attack : 72
Speed : 120
Attack Range : 40
XP : 2776
Blight : 3%
Description : Through a series of transcendent rituals, Orc Fire Shamans have been awakened to the essence of Fire, enabling them to command fire spirits rather than merely asking favors of them. An accomplished Orc Fire Shaman may entrap such spirits within themselves, thereby acquiring a select amount of their spells, skills and abilities – based on the relative power of the shaman.
***
Kane smirked without enthusiasm. She had been decently powerful and high-leveled, then. Too bad she was already dead when he found her, which meant he wouldn’t receive any XP bonus.
Neither would he receive any infusion of her Blight, since the dead carried no active negativity. Any amount of negativity within a being’s consciousness flowed straight back into the Dark Energy at the moment of death – well, unless they died at the hands of a blight leech such as himself, of course. In that case, it would be processed in an alternative way which more optimally benefited the totality of the Apocosmos.
Kane ogled the Blight counter in her stats a little longer. No other race of beings even saw the Blight counter in someone’s stats. It was a Blight Leech’s prerogative to gather and process this most supple and omnipresent energy for the benefit of the Apocosmos. And this particular orc had only possessed a measly 3% Blight while alive. An abnormally low amount of negativity to hold – especially for a vicious race as orcs. Even most angelic and otherwise holy beings had at least around 5% Blight swirling around their mind.
Not only that, but this orc wasn’t just a Mystic, but an actual Fire Shaman, which made it even more strange. Kane knew enough about orcs to know their mystics tended to be a bit… ‘free-spirited’ – at least at the beginning of their magical journey, which was often caused by the shamanic rituals they had to go through. The rituals ripped them out of their ordinary daily lives and expanded their experience to include the metaphysical planes of reality.
However, this free-spiritedness tended to subside as their power and knowledge increased and was instead exchanged with a deep-felt purpose to defend and protect their kinfolk. And this one was surely too powerful to be on a lone-wolf kind of mission.
Or was she?
Kane grumbled. Time would tell soon enough.
It always did.
Viscous blood spurted from the head’s severed throat and splattered across his boots when he snagged it by the braided hair, lifting it in the air. The orc’s dead, blackened eyes stared vacantly out at nothing while her mouth hung open, slack-jawed and drooling. He threw the head into his inventory; a deceptively small leather pouch hanging at his waist, which in reality was an immensely large bag of extradimensional space.
He had barely strapped the pouch back on his belt when emerald-colored flames suddenly burst to life around him. The cool nightly air drowned in heat waves as the dry trees and bushes surrounding him caught fire. Even parts of the dilapidated fortress walls began scorching.
Stepping away from the headless corpse, clutching his sword, Kane flipped his pupils from one blazing inferno to the other. Realizing what was happening, anticipation spiked in his stomach. These things weren’t just randomly appearing natural phenomena.
They were rapidly expanding extradimensional gateways.
Four helmeted heads appeared inside the fiery portals. Next, brownish red robes and shimmering wands came into sight.
Orc Fire Shamans.
What else?
They probably hadn’t appreciated him chopping their dead sister’s head off like a detachable souvenir.
“I’m ready,” Kane whispered as his lips curled into a devilish grin. “I’m always ready.”
2
With a powerful flap of his large, leathery wings, Kane flew straight up in the air just as multiple green-glowing fireballs impacted the spot he had occupied. Dry bushes cracked and popped when hungry flames devoured them in a roaring inferno.
Kane ignored the frustrated screams that came from the Fire Shamans and focused on ascending high enough to buy himself some time to overview the situation.
The burning portals closed behind the beastly humanoids, and they spread out around the environment. Two slipped behind a cluster of still intact trees, while another one bolted for a large crack in the dilapidated fortress’ broken brick wall – and the last shaman stepped straight into the most open part of the area, unafraid and proud to show it.
Like the dead orc he found, these were all female, all level 29, and all possessed less than 5% Blight.
Peculiar.
Something didn’t add up. The near complete lack of Blight made it almost seem like they were some kind of divine beings only camouflaged as orcs. But it just seemed too far-fetched – which begged the question: Why the hell were they here?
His train of thought got cut short as more emerald fireballs swooshed toward him. By flapping his wings in an alternating, staccato fashion, he performed a U-turn and dodged them by the skin of his teeth.
This calls for a diversion.
He selected a Blight Leech-exclusive skill – Mirror of Horrors.
***
Name : Mirror of Horrors
Type : Active
HP Consumed : 0
MP Consumed : 52
