The Lost Butcher

Multiverse litrpg OC, delivered by crypti.

Main blog of crypti.

Sideblog: @no-winners-only-losers

Dossier | Description | Rules of Engagement | Fili's Drabbles

Fili lifted his eyebrows at the offer, eyes scanning up and down the attractive man as his skin... prickled at his approach. There was something going on with this man, but if Fili could tell that the man was wrapped up in some kind of power, he likely noticed something off about Fili, too.

The artifact was dead, somewhere shattered in the cosmos, the power drained from it.

It was simple. Discreet. Nothing but a pendant Dad left behind for them. In the estate, it was listed as nothing but a necklace that gave someone a bit of glamour. Made them look better.

Aiden inherited Dad's appraisal skill. In the first life, he saw Fili for the first time in years, came to his college and put the necklace around his neck, whispered to not be mad, to not yell at him, he had to do it, kissed Fili on the head, and left, just like that with a command to never take it off.

Fili wanted to know what Aiden was thinking when he left behind that pendant.

When he died the first time, the system notification popped up in front of him.

The Tear of Hyacinth

Activated.

He could barely make it out through the corruption on the floating screen. It was an anomaly, even back then. Not something that was meant to exist. He woke up in the past, with Butcher attached to him, a skill that allowed him to raise himself from a measly F-rank to far beyond S-rank, made S-ranks look petty men playing at being gods, unlimited potential just about to tip over, and all he could think was what was Aiden thinking, going in there and leaving that pendant with me? What were Mom and Dad thinking, leaving that thing behind for us?

All those years of silence, of resenting Aiden for abandoning him, were wiped away in a moment, and there was nothing but fervent desire to save him, keep him safe, secure, keep him alive. He had to live. He didn't get to send Fili back in time and leave him alone. He didn't get to sacrifice himself and leave Fili to carry the memories in the absence.

He didn't get to do that to Fili.

Selflessness.

Fili wasn't like Aiden. Aiden was full of rage, yes, but it was the rage of a compassionate person. It was the rage of someone that would die, over and over again, for the world and everyone that lived in it. It was that love that made him so angry.

Fili was not selfless.

He was like a dog with a bone. If you took it from him, it didn't matter what the fuck anyone thought, he was going to rip apart anyone who dared to take things from him.

When he discovered what the second Labyrinth strike force did, it was nothing but seething hatred. He had always found it suspicious that they survived when the first strike force had been wiped out.

Kill the most powerful one in the room, and the Labyrinth will go away for a decade, but will come back at ten times the strength.

It was a sacrifice. Aiden had been killed to buy ten years, ten years where they could never rise to the strength required to stop what was coming. Ten years to buy the apocalypse.

He had killed the game masters. Had killed half the damn strike force, too. He had yanked those system administrators out of their little hiding holes, and he had shown them just why he was the Butcher.

And the cosmos had condemned him for it.

How dare you save the world when it was meant to die.

Fine. Whatever. He had saved it. He had saved Aiden. Aiden was alive, and the pendant was gone, something that was never meant to exist, and Fili was never going to come home.

Aiden was alive, and the gates were closed, and that was all that mattered. The game was over. If he was punished for his hubris, well, he wasn't fucking sorry.

[closed starter for @infernalmere]

It was the quieter worlds that Fili hated the most. The ones where there was no carnage and mayhem, no gates spilling out monsters, no desperate survival and running from beasts and creatures that wanted him to be his next meal.

Quieter worlds where everything was neat and tidy, still with evil, still with the seedy underbelly, but where survival wasn't a matter of just blood and gore, but where danger was defined as who had the most money in a room...

He didn't like these worlds. They left him alone with his thoughts in a way that made him choke, crawling up like a tar pit, and his skill really unlocked at random. There was no timer, it just clicked on when it was good and ready. No countdown to stare at.

He'd been here about a month. Tenebralis had modern amenities, though the supernatural was so painfully present here, a sort of urban fantasy setting, and he'd gotten by. Traded in some gold bars, because gold was king in any world, gotten cash, and he was just... drifting, kind of. It was unclear when his skill would unlock, so he was considering picking up some kind of temp work just to keep his mind occupied. Bit difficult without documents in this world, but there was always someone willing to hire under the table, and he wasn't scared of hard labor.

Today, though, he'd left the hole-in-the-wall hotel he was holed up at and wandered the streets with Jester on his heels, the massive black dog an unnerving presence for onlookers in any universe, with eerie body language and a quietness and focus people didn't really like.

"You're staring like you miss it," said the street busker he'd stopped to listen to, and he was jerked out of his spiraling thoughts that had trailed into strange places at the sound of an acoustic guitar. "Am I wrong?"

"Ah..." he said in the bustle of the street, and swallowed on his tongue. "Sorry, didn't mean t--"

"Here," the busker said, and held out the guitar with its cherry-red leather strap, some of the stitching coming undone. "Give it a spin. You'll feel better."

The busker got up from his stool and gestured for Fili to sit, and Fili felt a twist in his gut as he stared down at the guitar thrust into his hand. It had been a long time since he plucked the strings.

"I'm rusty," he said, and sat down on the stool, slinging the strap over his head as Jester followed, laying down right at his side and propping his head on his massive paws. "Hope you don't mind."

He fiddled with the guitar for a moment, getting a feel for the tone and little quirks like string tension and the texture of the wood, and then he breathed out.

In the middle of the square, music began to play, centered on a young man with a few curly red fly-away strands sneaking out from under a dark slouchy beanie with a bump in the back from his bun. Scarred, callused hands danced over the strings with clinical precision, and he played the last song he remembered learning, Playing God by Polyphia. His green eyes fluttered shut, red eyelashes dusting over freckled cheeks as he played on muscle memory alone, and the song filled the square, drawing attention here and there at the odd sight of a petite man with a dog bigger than he was playing a guitar like he traded something you should never give away for the gift with a god.

He didn't like playing in public, but... It was nice. To touch the strings again.

molted lava and charred flesh

Your heart burned so fiercely that it burnt itself out, leaving horrible scars in its wake; scars inside your chest and on the hands of those who touched you, the hearts of anyone who got close enough to connect to yours. The person you are now is no longer recognizable, burnt up by your own anger and passion and love. The injuries can never be fully erased, but they can be soothed with time and trust and forgiveness.

[tagged by @demonsofoda]

When his parents first died, he didn't want to listen to any music with lyrics. This led to him discovering Polyphia, which is an instrumental metal core band that slowly moved into instrumental progressive rock. He got really obsessed with them, and that turned to him learning how to play guitar.

He's extremely skilled at it, even now, but you have to be liked a lot by him for him to play for you, much less tell you he knows how to play. He wrote his own music at one point, and can still remember the various songs he's learned. He's not much of a singer, though. Starting HRT changed his voice a lot, and he never bothered to figure out his new range and the intricacies of his voice, so he likely won't sing for you. (He's also very mad he went from a rich alto with a natural vibrato to a regular tenor. He always thought tenors were overrated.)

In high school, he was a theater kid, but on the techie side. He never liked being on stage. By the time he graduated, he was stage manager, and ran that shit like the navy and was mostly referred to as 'Backstage Bitch' (mostly affectionately). He never liked performing for people, as much as he loved music.

He acts pretty harsh, and he's jaded, but he's deeply afraid of being loved, because he's a deeply loyal person, and with everything he's lost, being loved is painful to him, because no matter what, just being loved is enough to convince him to stick around. And he doesn't want to stick around and lose everything again.

When he was a child, people envied him. The son of the S-ranked power couple. They praised him with greedy eyes, ingratiated themselves, mused on what he would awaken as, said he'd surely be a healer, "just like her mom." He was a source of envy, of pride, of desire. People looked at him and let honey drip off their tongues as they spoke about what heroes his mom and dad were, how lucky he was to be their daughter, and he learned to bite back his anger when they came home with bruises and blood soaked into their clothes.

His mom's hands always smelled faintly metallic, faintly sweet. A bit of a tang of ozone followed her, and he always wondered if people knew gods, no matter how benevolent, no matter how kind, how gentle, how gracious, always smelled of blood and lightning.

When they died, it was pity. Oh, you poor thing. But, you're better off than most. Look at what they left for you.

Yes, his college was covered. He would never have to worry about money. He would never have to rely on others. But, he wondered if people knew.

If they knew that being a child of heroes was never an enviable existence.

That was proven when it was revealed that the elusive daughter of the great late McKeoghs, was actually Fili McKeogh, freshly re-awakened as an S-rank, and, damningly, trans.

The fury from the masses could be tasted.

Mom and Dad were staunch Catholics. There was mass outcry about the disrespect to their memory, and he could feel the chains pulling him down into the abyss. The chains of their legacy, as if he had to live his entire life in their name, just because they died.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain, but your story doesn't stop when you're dead. It becomes a knife to hurt the people left behind.

In some ways, he was glad he was living in exile, banished from his home, because people would never forgive him for the imperfection. The mar on their perfect martyrs' legacy. The stain. S-rank, like a mockery, insult to injury, because why did he dare to be something so perverse, so sickening? A freak, a disgusting creature, someone they wanted so desperately to mock online, but could never say a damned thing to his face.

Keep it in the bedroom.

He was a predator because of his strength. At least, right up until it came out his private diagnosis at such a young age, something that had been kept deep under wraps, his autism, and then suddenly it was the trans cult is recruiting dangerous, mentally unstable people.

It was such a twist on the normal infantilization of transmascs. He couldn't help but laugh. Like he was some kind of brainwashed weapon. Like trans people somehow had the power to deploy a scary S-rank.

Disgusting.

The world had repulsed him in a lot of ways.

Maybe there were benefits to living in exile. He knew Aiden was sick of biting back his rage, too. It was terrible, to watch Aiden twist and turn, nowhere to direct his protective hatred, snapping at paparazzi and swallowing down his anger and desire to hunt down IP addresses and internet personalities with something to say.

He was probably just being dramatic when he said he lost everything he cared about. He still had the dogs, but only because they were with him when he left. Barely enough time to hop in his shadow and chase him down the rabbit hole. Loyal to a fault.

He supposed that was partially his own fault.

When he met them, he could see the intelligent gleam in their eyes. Hunger. He could see the hunger.

There were beast tamers, of course. He didn't have a skill like that, and they generally worked with babies brought to them. Trained 'em up, sent 'em out, got paid a boat load for their troubles. The pack wasn't like that. They were young, skinny, adolescent, sure, but they were wild, from a gate.

The ecosystem within a gate was a delicate thing. Sometimes, it felt like things were just shoved in there. Piled on top of each other, invasive species galore.

In his first life, he was an F-rank, and a college student studying ecology. F-ranks were no better than just. People. Really. He dropped out both times. There were more important things in life. Even if Aidan had dropped him like a hot potato the second he turned 18, paid for his college and lodging and didn't talk to him otherwise, acted like he didn't exist, didn't even know he was transitioning, he was still his brother.

He found out the second time around that was for his own protection. Not because Aidan was ashamed of him. Because he was protective, because he wanted his little sister safe. Would have been nice if he was a little less like Dad, though. Fucking hell. Communication, anyone?

In any case, a lot of dungeons felt like some apex predator had just been dropped in without a shred of care to destroy a fragile ecosystem.

The hounds' was like that. There were hounds there, all starving, and he had found them eating an orc, ripping apart the meat and sinew like they hadn't eaten in a month. When he showed up, they looked at him with haunted eyes. Mangy strays.

He had an artifact he picked up a while back and didn't know what to do with. Taming, three times.

He used it on them. Because, well, fuck. They were all trying to just survive, right? Their situation wasn't all that different from humanity's. Their home, destroyed for some entity's entertainment, for the love of the game, invaded and wrecked for no good reason. So. Give 'em something to eat.

He hadn't actually been ready for the responsibility.

But, man, they had been. Following him like this. People had been beyond confused he picked them as his companions, because at their base, they really weren't a good choice, but he ignored that. It wasn't about what they could do for him. Maybe he just wanted some company.

So, now, he had them. King, Prince, Jester, because he sucked at picking names, and they haunted his steps wherever he went. They had lasted through all of it, and they were tougher than they looked. Beasts were just like him in that they could level up. Not like people. And he had trained them hard to survive at his side, for all the good it did them.

He was just some weirdo now with three massive hounds he took everywhere with him, identical and scary looking, big as him, quiet, unnerving, stared at you and gave you the shivers. That was fine by him. He didn't need them to make people comfortable.

Maybe he spoiled them a bit too much, though, he thought as he stared in dismay at how low his own fried chicken had gotten when all three of them had their own.

"... Stop begging," he muttered, and popped another piece in his mouth, and the three of them all continued to just stare at him.

anyways, if you wanna yeet your muse at Fili, please DM me lol. bit demoralized right out the gate but i got a couple more OCs i was planning on making sideblogs for, so i'm just gonna uh. start working on that so the first couple are all set up. lol. onward we go.