Chapter 601: At least you have a pretty flower necklace

[Title gained: Ender of the Endless. You have slain the immortal avatar of the Endless God. All nature affinity gods rewarded. Patron god rewarded. Multiple bonuses against undead.]

[Title gained: Kingslayer. You have slain a player patron with the system rank of King. Player killer aura enhanced. Patron options modified. +2 all statistics.]

Mason staggered towards the remaining eastern warriors with Jeong’s head in his bloody hand. He watched the system text scroll, warning him that the ‘Holy City’ was now without a patron and he must claim it soon as a conqueror, or make all its settlements a ‘free for all’.

He stared the paralyzed looking players down as he wheezed for breath and swayed on his feet. They dropped to their knees, or held up their hands, or backed away shouting for peace or mercy. They were lucky he was wounded, because he still wasn’t sure if he’d offer either.

Transformation was working, but not on the wounds from Jeong’s blade. He saw blood bubbling out of his chest, and swept himself with Hunter’s Mark.

The first stab had been through a lung, and maybe grazed his heart. The second had pierced his lower intestine. For a normal man, both wounds meant death without a lot of help.

For Mason, it was nothing, except he wasn’t healing. If anything the wounds seemed to be getting worse. Like they were magically infected with something that was still attacking him, creeping through his flesh.

He stood there trying to breathe as his people came running. He tried to look through the many flashing icons. Apex Predator had either given up trying to find some solution or found something extreme. He realized he had a prompt he had to agree to.

[Affinity suggested: Undead. Do you accept?]

He winced at the thought, but he’d done it way back in the Greenblood Guild when some kind of zombies were trying to infect him, and he’d stood in a terrible aura that drained life. It hadn’t been pleasant, but he’d been able to turn back. He accepted the prompt, and closed his eyes as the warmth and life seemed to drain out of his body.

“Get ‘em all tied up or somethin’!” Becky was yelling. “Y’all put your shit down or die, right now! I ain’t fuckin’ around!”

Mason heard cheering from his players. He didn’t know if they’d all survived, and seriously doubted it, but they’d won decisively. He wanted to turn to them and tell them how well they’d done. But he couldn’t seem to find his balance. He staggered and dropped to a knee.

“Mason!” Demi was beside him with a handful of others. She was the only one who looked concerned.

“Don’t worry, the prick always heals,” Carl said, dropping down to meet his eyes with a grin. “You figure if we move fast, all our people will be OK, kid? I bet the bastard kept ‘em alive, just in case. Need a minute?”

Mason took another wheezing breath and shrugged, not sure what to say. He scanned himself again and saw the affinity change wasn’t working, the ‘dead’ flesh still damaged and not healing, the effect of Jeong’s weapon still trying to destroy him. He turned it off, feeling the pain shiver back through his body, the blood flowing again.

His powers were trying. They just weren’t succeeding.

“Something’s wrong. He’s not healing,” Demi said, sounding more panicked now. “We need magic. Alex! Or potions. I don’t know. Stop fucking around, he’s not healing!”

There was a lot of commotion around him after that. People were shouting questions. They were popping potions and dousing them on his wounds, or getting him to open up and swallow them down. Alex tried to heal him but soon looked frustrated.

“He’s too strong. And there’s something….” He shrugged helplessly.

Chinua’s support tried next and shook his head like a mechanic over a ruined engine. Demi tried, and more plants were growing all over his body, but stayed well away from the pierced holes from Jeong’s blade.

“What the fuck was that sword?” she said, raking her hands through her long hair. “Try and identify it. Maybe we can break it or…I don’t know!” She gestured at the dead emperor’s body, and Carl and few others ran over to investigate. Mason weaved and tried to stay upright. He smiled and met Demi’s beautiful green eyes.

“You’re not dying,” she said, fighting a sob. “We can fix it. You’ve been hurt so much worse. This is nothing.”

A piece of him knew it wasn’t true. That suffering and death wasn’t always flashy, or obvious. Sometimes it was the little things killed a man because they were just harder to fight.

“If I can be of any assistance…” said one of Jeong’s wizards. Maybe the Swede.

Becky was over there screaming crazy shit like ‘you think we trust you, you fuckin’ snake? Don’t you touch him!’.

Mason thought it was probably worth a try, but the truth was, he was too tired to care. He lay down and heard more panicked voices. More shouts for help and new ideas.

“The seed”, he said, thinking of the divine artifact sitting useless in Nassau.

If he could just feywalk back he could maybe use that. Though he didn’t know how to use it and hadn’t ever found the time. And he was stuck in a damn city, with just a few trees he’d made with magic. He seriously doubted they’d work to enter the fey. He’d used up his teleporter beacon, so that was out. And Nassau was so very far…

“What seed?” he heard a woman’s voice say. “What God damn seed? Mason? Mason!”

People were shouting. Panicking. He didn’t blame them. He thought about what would happen without him. Humanity was losing its two most powerful players—people it should have had defending it when the real threat came—when the demonic gods came to destroy the world.

Such a waste. Such a stupid, useless waste.

Would they go back to squabbling until a new ‘chief killer’ emerged? Probably. If Blake was alive, maybe he could sort them out. He tried to hope so.

‘Try more potion! Alex? Alex can’t you do something? Please try.’

It was nice to be loved when you were dying. People working hard to save you. That was something. Better than ‘good riddance’, or ‘thank God he’s finally dead’. You never knew how people really felt, not until the moment arrived.

Mason groaned and lay on his back, looking up at the beautiful blue sky. Fucking roboGod and his fake but real world. It was almost ridiculous he’d lasted so long. The amount of bullshit of the past few months. He’d been eaten by like three giant horrible things. Bathed in acid more times than he could count. Poisoned. Broken. Buried alive.

“Should have died,” he managed to say, “in the first tree.”

Carl was leaning over him and gripped his hand. His women were still panicking and crying in the back. It looked like Chinua was doing everything he could to keep Becky from smashing people. His ‘chancellor’ grinned with watery eyes.

“Me too,” he said. “But you found me. Saved my ass.”

“Had to. Looked…ridiculous,” Mason said, which made Carl snort. Alex and Phuong came too, looking him over with professional assessment and shrugs when he gave them a questioning glance.

“We’ll take care of them, Patron,” Phuong said, voice steel. “I promise you.”

Mason knew they would, and was comforted by the thought. Even if they failed, and they all died in the ‘doom’, at least they’d be together.

This fucking thing, he thought, only wishing he’d somehow had the chance to make their alien invader somehow pay a price.

Streak came to him last, the wolf returned to its animal form as it lay down beside him. He smiled and put a hand through his friend’s fur, no need to speak. They tried Shared Pain, but he knew it wouldn’t work.

Insane to think that the wolf might be some creation of the same thing that destroyed humanity. A fictional being he loved and trusted with his life. What a strange and fucked up universe.

“Let me go,” Demi said, and the men let her closer now that she seemed calm. She took Mason’s other hand, and he gave her a smile. “Stop trying to comfort me, damnit,” she said. “Just fight. You said you wouldn’t leave me alone again.”

He saw the men just about pull her away, but he shook his head. He could feel the helpless rage floating off her. The love and disbelief and already forming grief. He followed the floating blooms of her emotions with his eyes, the world fading as he lost his breath.

He tried not to think of Haley or the others. The unborn children he’d never meet or raise. He’d made more orphans, just like him. It pissed him off until he decided it wasn’t true. They’d have a family, a real one, and not just the kindness of strangers. His pack would take care of them. Right until the end.

There are worse ways to die, he thought. He’d survived a whole bunch of them.

“Please, Alex,” Demi said, voice breaking now. “There has to be something. Something else you can do.”

The Belarusian met Mason’s eyes with a respectful nod, both men knowing there wasn’t. Then he took his great tree necklace, and put it around Mason’s neck.

As usual with the man, you could never tell if he was making some kind of joke. But for some reason Mason found it hilarious, and wished he’d had enough breath to laugh.

You might be dying, he sort of heard the man say, but at least you have a pretty flower necklace.

He went to blink but closed his eyes, and hoped for an afterlife like his dreams. A peaceful cave, a warm fire. And definitely no fucking gods made by his synthetic overlord. Though a fey plane full of half-naked nymphs would be nice.