Crimson Eternal - Book 6 - Horsemen Intermission 2 (Patreon)

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Table of Contents

This intermission is a lot longer than the usual intermission, to the point of being almost the length of a regular chapter.

It also has a lot of lore and background information about War and Pestilence.

Click the following link for the second Horsemen Intermission:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yDqJdsQ_JqZJ5PjVXv3ltNbkKR0pPhYseo9w79IZS_I/edit?usp=sharing

Or you can read the unformatted version below:

Back at the Ruined Galaxy

Lucius Octavio.

Even before he officially became named the Horseman of War upon the entry of his planet into the System, he was already a warmonger. A king who had conquered a nation after rising up from a mere gladiator in an arena.

He fought his way up from a gladiator, to a soldier, to an officer, all the way up to a general. Then he led an army and took over a neighboring kingdom entirely before getting granted that very kingdom as a reward under the empire he served.

Just years after that, War began to notice his unusual constitution. That he would grow stronger while waging war. And that he would never get exhausted no matter how long he fought during a war.

So he fought more.

Every time the empire had a war, he would fight. And fight. And fight some more.

Conquering one kingdom after another. All the way until every single nation on that continent was unified under the empire’s control.

And when he didn’t have any other nations left to conquer, he moved overseas and began conquering nations on other continents. One after another.

Eventually conquering the entire planet under the name of the empire. Bringing his fame and glory to an absolute peak within his country.

Along with his power from all of the wars waged.

And by then, the empire could no longer handle him. So they gave him the throne in an attempt to keep him in line upon their previous emperor’s death without any successors.

All that did was leave him feeling bored as there were no longer any nations left to wage war with.

Until the invaders arrived.

Thus telling the tale of the initial formation of the Crimson Flag on the planet known today as the Scarlet Crucible.

Lucius went from one planet to another, conquering them without fail immediately after he found out about the outside universe. And since a Demon King had just recently appeared, no one had the time to search for the newly emerged Horseman of War.

It even gave him a perfect excuse to wage war with the forces of the Demon King at the time. Right under the noses of the Grands of the time.

Thanks to his power, skill, and a lot of luck, the Horseman of War, Lucius Octavio, has never genuinely struggled in his life. Not once.

Not until now, as he faces the Horseman of Pestilence who is gradually dissolving his most precious skill.

Lucius feels extreme panic at the sensation of the duel skill weakening.

It’s not weakening fast, and even at the rate it’s going, it’ll take months or years for it to be genuinely damaged, but it is still weakening. And Lucius cannot tolerate that.

His panic grows so overwhelming that he doesn’t even pay an ounce of attention to Aria when he briefly hears a report somewhere about her causing trouble on some mining planet he doesn’t give a shit about.

He just fights.

Desperately, as his power grows stronger from the various wars his war energy is breaking out across the universe.

All to protect his skill and his companion.

And for once in his life, he feels even the slightest bit of regret for deciding to jump into a battle unrelated to himself.

Victor von Lüneburg.

Nothing has ever mattered to the Horseman of Pestilence. Not since his own family turned him into a labrat due to his unique poisonous constitution. Not since he barely managed to get some breathing room between experiments on him by showcasing his own intelligence to them. And especially not when all that mattered to those around him was his ability to conduct science related to different types of pestilences.

The more he discovered and created, the less time he would be experimented on.

Eventually the experiments consumed his entire life. They became all he cared about.

Even when his experiments killed his entire family.

Even when his experiments started accidentally killing off the entire nation he was born in.

And even when his experiments led to an apocalypse within his own planet, bringing society itself to near destruction before invaders showed up. Only for them to find the planet nearly destroyed already.

It wasn’t until that point, when the System initialized him, that he realized he was growing stronger with his experiments. All because the System itself blatantly told him about it.

He still didn’t care.

He just experimented and developed more pestilences. Giving his entire being to the science.

At some point, his experiments began to leak out of Vest through the invaders. Trailing their way from one planet to another. Eventually leading his planet of Vest to be declared a hazard zone that no one is allowed to enter without specialized equipment.

Victor still didn’t care about any of that. He just stumbled on their portal one day after using several of them as experiments and decided he wanted to go research the pestilences of another planet.

So he walked through it and continued his experiments.

Because that was all that mattered.

He didn’t care about the walking test results making noise, nor did he care about the weapons aimed at him.

There was nothing more important to him than his experiments. That’s all that existed in his mind.

Until he got a certain skill from the System that gave him a strange serpent companion.

Even at that point, he didn’t care about it. He just thought of it as a quiet little assistant to help him with his experiments.

And he continued thinking that for centuries upon centuries.

Eventually, though, he began to connect the serpent in his mind to both himself and his experiments. Which led to the spark of some compassion towards the creature.

An emotion Victor was not used to at the time.

And now? After seeing that one bit of compassion that had grown so deeply over time in his heart snuffed out by the pest that bothers him more than anything else in the universe?

Victor feels another emotion he hasn’t felt in a long time.

Genuine, blazing, rage.

For the first time in as long as he can remember, everything about experiments and his pestilences completely vanish from his mind as he focuses solely on the Horseman of War. Trying as hard as he can to destroy everything that matters the most to him.

No matter what happens in the process.