CH585

“Ather, you absolute bitch! What the hell are you doing?”

“Reclaiming my honour!” He yelled, throwing another spear and making it scream through the air as Ben did his best to dodge, but not well enough. He felt the bite of the blade slice through the side of his arm as it sailed past, just adding to the injuries that filled his body.

“Honour my ass! Can’t you see some slightly more pressing things going on right now?” Ben yelled back as the demigod pulled another spear from what appeared to be a very well-made spatial bag, telling him there was likely plenty more in there to spare.

Fuck, and I’m really not in the best condition to be handling this right now.

Ben had won fights before, but he always tried to make sure that things were heavily in his favour. When he’d last fought Ather he’d planned for days and when he’d repeatedly beaten the man who’d come looking to duel him in Stonewall a while ago, he’d known he was strong enough to handle it with relative ease. Not now though.

Ben hadn’t brought any weapons. He’d dropped the gun he’d made to capture the soul of the outsider after using all of his bullets and he hadn’t brought anything else with him since he was supposed to be on vacation, and that wasn’t even considering his current condition.

The last time he’d fought Ather, Ben’s attributes had been significantly lower and he hadn’t had a single awakened skill to his name at the time, but he also hadn’t been so beaten down. Everything he’d just done to survive left his body aching as he once more wished for a notification telling him he’d finally gained the pain resistance of his dreams and that wasn’t even considering his thoughts. He was being pulled by the sight of the hells in a way it seemed the demigod wasn’t and he was still feeling the after-effects of seeing both the outsider and the chaos. He hated the idea of having a fair fight but given his state, it wouldn’t even be that. He was at a disadvantage.

The only thing he felt he really had at the moment was his unnatural thought speed, going at its limit as he examined everything around him.

He’s staying back, is that because he knows about my deep connection and is worried about the range or is it because he’s being cautious of me? I did gut him before so that seems fairly possible but I wouldn’t doubt it if his daddy gave him a heads-up about my skills at all seeing as how I haven’t kept them particularly secret from the gods since I’ve been trying to use them to help. Absolutely regretting being so damn useful all the time, definitely going to have to up my prices. And besides that… Wait, what? WHAT? I MADE THAT SPEAR! WHO’S BEEN GIVING THIS FUCKER MY WORK?

Seeing the hallmarks of his own craftsmanship and enchanting on a weapon that was now being pointed at him very quickly made Ben resolve himself to find and murder the person who provided it to the demigod but did his best to hold back his anger as he instead focused on the subtle movements of the one before him, watching in slow motion to see both when the spear would be released and where it would end up, dodging out of the way by the skin of his teeth and only realizing a deeper problem the second he heard it hit something behind him.

As Ather reached to pull out another, Ben immediately jumped back, not to avoid an incoming strike but instead to see what the demigod had hit without making it obvious, with him just able to tell that the spear had sailed clean through one of the arms of a mage that was maintaining the ritual.

It wasn’t severed, that was a small mercy, but things could have just gone very badly. Ben already knew that killing that one in particular would destabilize the portal in a big way and he didn’t currently put it past Ather to start attacking them if Ben showed any hint of concern, so instead he didn’t. He smirked at the demigod, taunting him as he did.

“So, that’s all the son of a god of spears and war can pull off, huh?” He laughed. “The blood must run pretty thin, doesn’t it? Oh, who am I kidding, I’ve met Eneth, calling him a god is honestly an insult to the rest of them up there.”

“Filthy brick worshiper!” Eneth screamed, Ben’s small taunts getting under his skin in a way he hadn’t expected and affecting the aim of the next spear, with Ben needing a lot less effort to dodge it than the last.

“Brick? Excuse you, I get why you’d be jealous given your daddy’s a lizard bitch, but that’s no reason to badmouth his betters. My buddy is the ideal form of a cube, through and through. Not that you’d understand anything about ideals. Before I started robbing your church blind it was honestly the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen. Seriously, you guys owe me one for helping you get rid of that stuff, I really classed up the joint.”

The statement was met with more screaming as Ben carefully led Ather around, ensuring that no more of his attacks could hit the ritualists while at the same time being close enough for Ben to look into their minds, examining each of their parts in the spell to try and figure out how to disarm it as more ghosts only ever broke free.

Between that and watching the demigod to keep dodging his far too powerful attacks, all while dealing with the mental after-effects of what he’d witnessed over the course of that insane day, that left him only a bit of wiggle room to figure out how he wanted to approach the situation the second he got the portal under control, with there only being one real question to it. Should he murder Ather?

Although I don’t think this would count as murder, this is one hundred percent self-defense. I mean, sure, maybe it would look like murder if anyone could tell just how badly I want to do it but I really should measure the pros and cons before I give in. Con one, he represents a powerful fighting force. But I think I can safely ignore that since here I am, absolutely not a fighter managing to survive against him even when he has awakened skills. Sorry Ather, taking that point away. You should have trained more.

Nobody was there to point out to Ben that normal people wouldn’t be able to think or react in a way remotely close to how he could, making that point against Ather a bit less than relevant, so he went on in his judgment.

Con numero two. The gods might not like it. I can also safely ignore this point since I don’t particularly care what they do and don’t like. If Eneth’s mad then he should have raised his son better and if the other gods don’t like it then they should have made sure none of my equipment ended up in this asshole’s hands. Equipment he’s just throwing away! This tool one-hundred percent just tossed a lower ultra-rare spear into the infinite hells! God, I hate him so much!

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Okay, I think that’s it for cons, now on to pros. I don’t like him, I want him dead, and if killing him isn’t enough to get me to the third tier of sacrilege then I don’t know what will be. Okay, that settles that. Sorry Ather but the votes are in and you have to die.

That just became a question of how, but as he thought on the method of execution he would be forcing on the demigod, Ather screamed out again.

“Just die already you bastard!”

“It feels a little weird for you to be calling me a bastard when you were one-hundred percent conceived in a three-way,” Ben shot back, not giving anything the man said much thought before saying whatever the rudest thing to come to his minds ended up being.

And it seemed like it was working too, Ather only grew more and more enraged as Ben finally made it around the circle of mages and explored all of their minds, giving him both the solution as well as a new problem.

I need to kill two that are on opposite sides of the ring at the same time if I don’t want things to risk going horrifically wrong. All while I’m trying to not get killed by the idiot currently aiming for my life before I kill him in return. What the actual hell did I do to deserve this?

With Myriad keeping an eye on Thera, there was nobody to give him any smart replies to that rhetorical question, while Ather’s mood changed in that same instant.