Chapter 91 - 90: Knowledge in the Ash

Chapter 91: Chapter 90: Knowledge in the Ash The days continued, and Lumberling chose to take on another contract while continuing to gather information. This time, the Duskspire Legion accepted another monster elimination missions, targeting roaming packs of wolves and bands of gnolls. The wind howled across an open plain as the squad came to a sudden halt. In the distance, where there should’ve been farmland and a thriving city, stood blackened stone and smoke-curled ruin. "Is that... a city?" Rogar asked, his voice low with disbelief. "No," Aren murmured. "It was a city." They approached slowly. The walls were partially collapsed, scorched beyond recognition. Gates torn open. Houses, if they could still be called that, stood like skeletons, timber warped and brittle with ash. Not a single roof remained. Just chimneys jutting like gravestones. The stench hit them next. Burned flesh. Soot. Wet rot. Golden eagles circled above but found nothing to track. "No monsters," Skitz said, scanning the streets with a frown. "This was no beast attack." Lumberling didn’t speak. His eyes moved from corpse to corpse, charred silhouettes frozen in their last moments. A mother curled over a child. A man slumped against a doorway, blade still clutched in his melted hand. "A purge," he said quietly. "Systematic. Controlled." Trask crouched beside a scorched guard tower. "Swords didn’t do this." "No," Lumberling said. "Something else." Flames that ignored walls. Precision that struck without siege. An edge that wasn’t forged in any smithy. His thoughts drifted, mages. But he said nothing. Lumberling stood before a scorched doorway where a child’s silhouette had been burned into the stone, small hands raised, as if shielding from fire that cared nothing for mercy. He didn’t speak. No one did. Behind him, Skitz finally muttered, voice barely audible. "This wasn’t just war... this was a message." Aren’s jaw tensed. Gorrak looked away. Rogar knelt briefly by a collapsed windowsill, running his fingers across what looked like melted glass. He grunted. "Not even fire behaves like this." Trask stood in still silence, eyes fixed on a curled skeleton near the well. Lumberling exhaled, the stench of ash and flesh thick in his nose. His fingers brushed the hilt of his spear, not for combat, but for grounding. "If this was done with precision... who ordered it?" He scanned the remains, blackened stone, ruin without looters, no signs of siege engines. No survivors. Only decisions. And fire. "Is this what awaits every city that doesn’t kneel?" He turned to the others, voice quiet. "We move." No one argued. ..... They split into small groups to search the remains. Most homes were empty, whatever hadn’t been burned had been taken. But then, behind a half-collapsed estate bearing a noble crest on its iron gate, Gorrak called out. "Found something." The room they entered had once been a study. The walls were blackened, shelves collapsed into piles of ash and splinters. But beneath a stone desk, protected by its weight, lay a single book. Its cover was scorched on the edges, but the spine was intact, bound in hardened hide reinforced with a thin lacquered weave. Lumberling knelt beside it. "Skill manual," he confirmed, brushing ash from the title. The letters were partially burned, but the rest was readable: Shield Bash – Defensive Stagger Technique He turned the pages carefully. They were crisp, marked with diagrams and instructions. Aren raised a brow. "How did it survive this?" "Binding’s reinforced," Lumberling said. "Military-grade. Probably noble issue." They took nothing else. By dusk, they rode from the burned city, shadows long behind them. No words were spoken. But everyone in the Legion felt the shift. ..... That night, around a low fire in the hills, Lumberling turned the manual over in his hands again. The flames danced across its cover, casting flickers of gold across the blackened edges. Skitz stirred the stew pot beside him. "Think it belonged to the lord of that place?" "Or someone under him," Lumberling replied. "But either way... it’s useful." He looked at the others, Aren sharpening his spear, Rogar watching the horizon, Trask meditating in stillness. "We need more of these." Rogar blinked. "Skill manuals?" Lumberling nodded. "We’ve been growing strong with instinct and training alone. But if we want to keep climbing... we need more paths." Aren looked up. "You’re thinking library. Arsenal of techniques." "Exactly," Lumberling said. "From now on, it’s not just coin and contracts. We collect skill manuals. Raid old cities, trade if we have to, buy when we can afford it. Even scraps. Anything." Skitz grinned. "Add ’ink hunter’ to the job title. Got it." Trask finally opened his eyes. "Knowledge is a weapon." "More than that," Lumberling said softly, his gaze distant. "It’s the only weapon that doesn’t dull with use." He tucked the manual carefully into a satchel lined with oilcloth. "We gather skills," he said. "And we build something no noble army has ever dreamed of, soldiers that think, learn, and evolve." No one argued. Because they all knew, it wasn’t just monsters they’d be fighting soon. It would be men. Knights. And maybe even mages. And when that time came, raw power wouldn’t be enough. They would need every edge they could find. ..... The Duskspire Legion marched beneath a clouded sky, boots silent over leaf-strewn soil. The scent of pine mixed with the faint, iron tinge of blood, a warning carried on the wind. Lumberling halted as one of the golden eagles shrieked overhead, circling tightly. "They’re close," Skitz muttered, narrowing his eyes toward the ridge. "Too close." Aren raised a hand, signaling the elite squads to fan out silently. Trask unslung his swords, his tail twitching with anticipation. Moments later, the first howl split the air. It wasn’t one wolf. It was dozens. From the treeline ahead, shadows burst forth, furred bodies, eyes glowing, fangs bared. The wolves moved as one, a rolling tide of muscle and teeth. And at their center, towering above the rest, padded the Alpha Dire Wolf. Its black fur was streaked with gray, its eyes crimson and intelligent. Scarred from old battles, its presence alone sent a wave of pressure rolling across the field. "They’re organized," Aren growled, tightening his grip on his spear. "Good," Lumberling replied. "It’ll make them easier to kill." The wolves came in waves, but the Duskspire Legion met them with brutal efficiency. Gorrak’s hammer roared through the pack with crater-splitting weight, his strikes sending bodies flying like sacks of meat. Blood misted from every impact. His breath was calm. His rhythm, unbreakable. Rogar moved like wind, his twin-headed spear slicing through fur and fang. Trask whirled like a storm, blades flashing in vicious arcs, holding the right flank with savage precision. He didn’t dance, he tore through the field like a living blade. His swords sang as they cleaved through fur and sinew, each motion efficient, each kill a punctuation mark in his silent fury. Aren called out positions with clarity, his spear dancing in his grip, each thrust pinning a wolf to the dirt. Skitz ghosted between bodies, a blur in the periphery, eyes unreadable, daggers whispering through throats. The wolves never saw him until it was too late, their growls cut short mid-snarl. But it was Lumberling who carved through the heart of the pack. Where others moved with instinct, he fought with direction, each pivot was planned, each strike clean. (You have devoured the Wolf’s essence. 10 essence absorbed.) (You have devoured the Wolf’s essence...) (You have devoured the Wolf’s essence...) He fought ahead of the formation, his spear a blur, each motion refined, stripped of excess, distilled to lethality. One wolf lunged; he ducked and skewered it through the ribs. Another snapped from behind, but his spear spun backward, impaling it through the throat. Then the Alpha charged. A blur of black and red fury, it lunged toward him with claws extended. Lumberling planted his spear, anchoring it into the earth, and twisted at the last second, sending the beast crashing past him with a howl of pain. He gave it no chance to recover, driving his spear downward in a final, decisive thrust. A surge of essence welled in his chest, raw, ready. Essence Devour. Purple threads unraveled from his body, reaching out to the dead Alpha. The energy poured into him like smoke drawn into flame. Power stirred. But he didn’t keep it all. He turned toward Aren, who stood panting with a shallow cut across his shoulder. Another thread snapped outward, Essence Weave. Aren’s body tensed as the transferred energy surged into his core. His eyes flared with light, the ground around him cracking slightly as his aura spiked. "Damn," he muttered, breath sharp. "Every time you do that, it feels like I’m being struck by lightning." "You’re still standing," Lumberling said flatly. "Means you can handle more." Skitz chuckled from the edge of the formation, wiping blood from his blade. "Now I’m starting to get jealous." Lumberling didn’t respond. His eyes were already scanning the battlefield. No more wolves moved. Only the wind stirred now, rustling blood-soaked grass and broken bodies. The pack had been destroyed. The Alpha lay still, impaled through the skull. ... In the weeks that followed, Lumberling did not rest. He trained relentlessly in the open yard of their base. The training yard echoed with grunts and thuds as soldiers clashed with practice shields. The sun hung low, casting long shadows across the scarred dirt. A thick stack of parchment manuals lay open on a wooden bench nearby, their covers crudely copied from the original, the burned edges mimicked in charcoal for effect, as if the soldiers believed it gave the skill more weight. "Shield up! Feet wide!" Rogar barked, striding past a line of recruits. An elite kobold braced himself. His arms shook as he lifted a round shield nearly half his size. A beat later, a hobgoblin slammed into him with a mock charge. The elite kobold stumbled, then remembered. He pivoted his weight, twisted his core, and thrust his shield forward with a sharp shout. BOOM. The impact wasn’t clean, but the hobgoblin staggered a step back, blinking. "Better," Rogar grunted. "That’s the idea. Use their momentum against them. Redirect. Stagger." Nearby, Aren stood with a few of the more seasoned fighters, replicating the manual’s diagrams with chalk on a slateboard. "Step forward, not back," he reminded them. "The technique is useless if you retreat. Meet the charge. Anchor your weight." Gorrak watched from a distance, arms crossed. "Only one in five’s doing it right," he muttered. "That’s still one more than yesterday," Skitz replied, lounging in the shade. Across the yard, Lumberling observed in silence, spear resting at his side. His eyes weren’t on the best soldiers, but on the ones struggling, grinding, adjusting their stance after every mistake. He nodded slightly. Progress. Knowledge, passed not as legend, but as manual, was catching fire. The next day. Morning and dusk, rain or shine, Lumberling’s spear sliced through the air like it was carving the path ahead. Each movement honed his technique, refining the Spearheart Doctrine, a skill not just of muscle, but of breath, rhythm, and control. He sparred with Skitz in rapid bouts that left the air humming from their clashes. Aren pushed him with disciplined strikes, matching pace for pace. Rogar brought brute power. Gorrak fought like a siege engine. Trask moved like a wraith. And Lumberling met them all. Sometimes alone. Sometimes all at once. Bruises darkened his ribs. Cuts lined his arms. But he welcomed them. They were reminders. He wasn’t finished yet. He never would be. And every time his spear struck true, every time his body moved faster than instinct, a thought echoed in his mind: ’War is coming. And I must be sharper than its edge.’ ..... Later that week, they reached the region where gnoll sightings had been reported. The stench hit them first, wet fur, blood, and something acrid like rot and sulfur. The gnolls came at dusk, their silhouettes jagged and hunched, more than fifty of them scattered across a rocky ridge. Their guttural laughter echoed between stone walls, teeth bared, claws twitching, weapons stolen from raided caravans gleaming in the dying light. A horn blew once, sharp and low. Lumberling raised his spear, voice calm but iron-edged. "Crush them." The Duskspire Legion surged forward. It was a blooded brawl. The gnolls fought with manic ferocity, wielding rusted axes and jagged spears. But they had no discipline. No formation. Only the promise of blood and meat. And Duskspire gave them neither. Aren moved with cold discipline. His spear never wavered, thrusts slipped between ribs, cracked collarbones, pierced throats. He didn’t roar. He didn’t taunt. He just ended threats. Gorrak slammed into the line like a siege ram. He broke one gnoll’s weapon, then its leg, then its skull, all in three steps. He kept moving, a walking avalanche of muscle and iron. Trask darted between brawlers, his twin swords dancing in arcs of red. Rogar’s spear churned through the chaos like a threshing blade through wheat. He fought low, vicious, breaking knees and spines before finishing with a downward thrust that cracked stone beneath dead weight. Skitz moved through the chaos like a wraith, slipping behind snarling beasts and opening throats without a whisper. Another raised its axe and fell with a split spine. He moved like death had been invited, and he came to honor the invitation. In the center, Lumberling’s strikes no longer flowed, they detonated. His spear cut through bone like it knew the shape of fear. When the Alpha lunged again, he didn’t parry. He simply dropped low, drove upward, and impaled its skull through the palate. From the ones he felled, he absorbed half of their essence. The rest, he wove outward, channeling it into Aren without hesitation. By nightfall, the field was theirs. The bodies of the gnolls smoldered on pyres. No essence left behind, nothing useful. Still, it was another threat removed from the region. Skitz cleaned his blade with torn cloth. "They fought harder than I thought." "They didn’t fight. They swarmed," Rogar muttered, kicking aside a severed limb. Lumberling stood still. "Remember how they died," he said. "It’s how we’ll be tested next." ..... Around the campfire that night, Skitz leaned back against a saddlebag, sharpening his dagger. "We’re not top dogs yet," he muttered. "But we’re past the scrap-heap mercs." Aren nodded. "Most companies barely have one Knight Page. Maybe a Knight Apprentice if they’re lucky." "And most of them are glorified caravan guards," Rogar added, smirking. "They wouldn’t last ten minutes in the Ridge." Lumberling listened in silence for a while, then spoke. "We’re not elite," he said. "Not yet. There are companies led by True Knights. Knight One stages and above. Dozens of pages under them. We haven’t seen them... but they’re out there." He looked around at his squad, Aren with his silent focus, Gorrak with his monstrous strength, Skitz coiled like a blade waiting to strike. "Still... two Quasi-Knights. Four Knight Page level. Dozens trained under our banner. We’re no longer nameless." Skitz chuckled. "No. We’re Duskspire."