It took him minutes to make his decision. Mercy was not a tenant or demand from Mannis; it was often abhorred when practiced on other races. Power and knowledge were both virtues that should be sought in equal measure. While he could gain some power from killing the residents of the larder, he would gain more from the Driders' ritual library.
Vergil's next order of business was assigning stat points. Unused stat points wouldn't benefit him in a fight. Rituals weren't immediate, even if Exia could make them seem like cheap power-ups. Exia worked his body like his own ritual room, empowering him far beyond what most adventurers had available.
His four stat points immediately went to the ritual of the sparrow. After enduring multiple rituals, he learned to feel where the rituals were most concentrated. In this case, his joints were worked over while he chased Zo and Mary, pretending the rituals didn't bother him. If he fell behind, he would surely get lost and possibly die once the armored man burned the palace down.
Like with any opponent, he thought about the best way to fight the armored man from what the guy's strengths seemed to be. In some circumstances, they might be weaknesses.
The armored man wasn't anyone of note; his techniques were sloppy, footing pathetic, and he took too many hits. It was like an engineer put on a powered suit and expected to be a hero. There was a difference between a user and a creator. An AI like Exia helped, but the suit didn't seem to have such an addition. Instead, it relied on its high performance and barrier to tank attacks while recharging on weak enemies. It would lose if their rituals were equal against a single opponent that knew what they were doing.
A dragon would stomp the armored guy into the ground. It wouldn't be close, barrier, or not one hit, and it would be over. Vergil didn't see any weapons on the suit, so the guy had no chance of damaging something like a dragon. With that in mind, Vergil went down the list of things the armor would abjectly lose against until he fell to the drider queen. The drider queen was considered a powerful monster with numerous rituals granting it many strengths and abilities. In addition, they spawned small monsters that assisted them in battle or for free labor.
"Turn right here," Zo said.
Vergil jumped and smacked into Mary's big centaur butt.
"Are you stuck?" Vergil asked.
"Another word, and I will buck. Dark holes give me dark thoughts to bolt. I need a cattle prod, something to give me a jolt." Mary said.
Vergil pressed against her round ass while moving her from side to side. When something was stuck, applying pressure to varying angles could help or get her stuck worse. Mary's legs started kicking, and her big butt shot into the wider tunnel. Zo scrambled out of the way with silk wrapped around her hands tied to Mary's waist. It was clearly a team effort.
"We make tunnels narrow in some places to delay and trap invaders. I didn't think Mary's rear was so thick."
"Good food did the trick," Mary said happily.
Vergil slapped her big ass, and the centaur reared up and kicked. He dodged with more speed than he had before. "Impressive, you weren't so quick before."
"I'm conserving stamina," Vergil said.
"You don't trust them. But she's leading you to her family library, where we will get all kinds of rituals. We will find things no human eyes have seen. Do you understand how valuable this is? Make friends with the centaur beyond the life debt, and you can make trades to gain rituals only available to Golites." Exia said.
"The same with Zo; she might be able to get in other silk palaces," Vergil said.
A boom shook the silk palace, followed by a terrible shriek. Zo gripped her head and turned down another tunnel. The second they passed through the threshold male drider charged in after them. Vergil stabbed his spear through the neck of a male drider and took the monster's spear. Then, armed with two spears, he stabbed and fought, walking backward using Mary's rear to keep in contact with the group.
"That confirms it the queen is dead. Anarchy will ensue the males won't take no for an answer, and the queen can no longer control them." Exia said.
Vergil understood that wasn't good. He felt his spear stab through the abdomen of two male driders before the tip snapped on the last one's carapace. The second spear was used defensively with short stabs to keep the other driders away. His short stabs might have worked if the male driders acted like pain-feeling creatures.
He heard the male driders roar and trample over each other to die on his spear. Then, a sharp spider's leg stabbed forward and pierced his shoulder. Blood poured down his shirt while the leg seemed to remain frozen, piercing his shoulder and scraping against his bones. Vergil stared at the crimson staining of his shirt.
The moment passed when the leg pulled free with muscle attacked to barbs.
More legs stabbed into him, digging into his stomach through his guts. Mary and Zo took off down the tunnel while the male driders stabbed him repeatedly.
For the first time since getting Exia, he felt his calm break. His blood and guts flowed down his body from barbed drider legs. Vergil's strength left him, and he needed anything to help him survive.
"If you want to survive, you need skill points. I can use them for you, but only you can take them." Exia said.
Vergil reached out and grabbed the leg of a drider and pulled. The limb came free. He should have died; the pain of rituals swept through him. The spider leg made an adequate spear; he shoved it through the head of the nearest drider.
Energy was in the air, a heated desire from the male driders to rape the females. He saw 20 wrapping a female drider's legs in web before taking turns with her. While they were each only a quarter the size of the females, their numbers made the size difference moot.
He threw the leg-spinning like a disk decapitating a male drider. Vergil threw a punch and felt his fist dig into a drider's abdomen. He gripped its spine and pulled, separating man from spider. The bounty grew greater with each sacrifice, and the more brutal the kill, the greater the bounty.
Vergil shouldn't have looked at himself; he could fight with some self-preservation when he didn't see. Ritual after ritual swept through his body, inflicting pain to his mind equal to his body. Long guts stretched in winding bloody ropes hanging from his tears in his stomach while a hammer beat at his brain. Massive ugly wounds covered his body from the repeated stab by driders. He felt like the toy a dog dragged the stuffing out of. His blood no longer flowed, but the nanites kept him alive, feeding off the power from his bounties. They were like the barrier the armored man used worse; he was a candle burning from both ends. Rituals were used while the nanites burned bounty to keep him alive.
Fortunately, there was an answer. Vergil only needed to kill to replenish what was lost. The more he killed, the better off he would be. All he needed to do was to stop thinking and use his body.
Rituals were completed one after the other.
Boar 5/5
Ox 5/5
Sparrow 5/5
Troll 3/5
Bounty was needed if he wanted to live and recover. The room ceiling where the driders raped the female wasn't too high, only 30ft covered with stalactites. Vergil picked his guts up and pushed them back into his stomach before ripping off the remnants of his shirt and tying it over the wound. He felt the alien itching sensation of his body stitching itself back together. Exia facilitated the use of stat points to keep his body going. There wasn't a drop of blood left in him, but somehow he hadn't gone brain-dead.
He jumped, held his guts in as his feet touched a nearby wall, and jumped again.
Fear of the pain of getting stabbed didn't bother the male driders, nor did they bother to pay attention to him. He landed hard, snapping the spine of the nearest drider before reaching out and pinching the flesh of the nearest one. Blood guts and organs tore away as he ripped the nearest monster apart while the female screamed. The others dog-piled him while he punched, kicked, and bit. The last two troll rituals finished one after the other while he fought.
Vergil gripped a drider's head and crushed the monster's skull. A solid blow shattered another's ribs. One threw itself on its back and flung sticky webs. Meat shields were used against the tactic. Spider legs made excellent weapons bludgeoning and piercing. When the mass of them caught on to one tactic, he switched. It was a learning experience, tactics he read about were finally implemented. Little anecdotes he half-remembered were practiced on the fly. Blood and guts covered his once fine brown boots. A kick to a drider's gut coated them red. His baptism of blood, an animal race for survival, kept him alive. Vergil let his body move and guided it was thought until only the weeping female drider remained.
Slowly he came to his senses.
He felt his body healing, but his heart wasn't beating. That worried him something fierce. Vergil never knew how much he would miss the sound of his heartbeat until it was gone.
"I can't restart your heart without far more bounty. So kill more until I have enough energy to restart your heart." Exia said.
He shot down the passageway faster than before. Stopping only to kill a lone male drider too wounded to continue. They were breadcrumbs Mary left for him by the lance wounds. Tiny cauterized burns from her lance's light enchantment let him know she was alive.
Vergil wasn't sure how much time had passed between when he was wounded and when he entered the passageways. He saw a room filled with glowing symbols stitched to pillars of thread. Each glowed with its own light brighter than any other place in the palace he had seen. One pillar stretched to the ceiling with sections burned away; the burns were old.
Processing new rituals…
Preparing to restart heart…
He ran through the library, listening to the sound of scrambling legs as he charged for the noise. The adrenaline pushed his body harder and faster than before as a sudden shock restarted his heart. He felt the beat and ran faster.
Male driders, 50 in number, were wearing Mary and Zo down while chasing them through the library. Fifty male drider moved in a swarm while the two monster girls fought and ran.
Vergil slammed into the nearest drider like a bulldozer ran it down and punched its head into mush. He continued his offensive. The exile crushed the driders with his bear hands punching through soft human skin and ripping out spines. Blood and guts exploded; his wounds resembled vehicle manslaughter more than fights.
In his vision, tiny emblems appeared whenever he spotted a rune while Exia worked out the rituals from them. While there were only 8 pillars, including the burnt one. A few scratches removed key information from many pillars leaving only two complete. He would have needed to trade with the queen if he wanted the good stuff. The armored man ensured Vergil would be limited to the two complete pillars.
It was unlikely Zo had the information; she didn't seem the type to orchestrate the rituals herself.
He focused on killing. The driders gained a measure of self-preservation and died. His fists were harder than 20lbs hammers, hit like 5 charging bulls, and were quick as sparrows in flight. Vergil ripped a leg off of one and stabbed another. When one fell, he used it as a stepping stone.
After his heart stopped, Vergil thought it had been the end until Exia saved him. But he wasn't sure if Exia could save him a second time. So he fought more aggressively than ever. After the last one fell. Vergil heard clapping of all things.
"Take a bow and maybe a spin. You deserve some acclaim before I burn you to death." The armored man raised a hand, and a ball of fire appeared in front of the man's palm. Vergil watched him look at Mary and Zo. "It is a shame you came here to save them. You would have made an excellent ally. When Mannis judges, you tell him Magnus sent you."
The fireball shot forth and rapidly expanded.