Killer Scythe

Killer Scythe is the signature battle weapon forged by Barnabas for Victor Dalton. It begins as a carefully commissioned instrument—intended to be impressive without relying on skull imagery—and becomes decisive in the destruction of Furibon, whose soul is dragged into the blade after Victor Dalton cuts off the lich’s head. Its later upgrade to Killer Scythe+ gives the weapon a twenty-five percent chance of inflicting critical hits, making it both a practical combat tool and a lasting repository of the victory over a powerful lich.

Commission and Forging

Victor Dalton first asks for the weapon while religious visitors are debating the meaning of a commandment and the possible rules of a communal Full Moon Orgy. Rather than joining their theology, he interrupts with a concrete request that Barnabas forge him a battle scythe: something “really cool,” but “not a scary one,” specifically without a skull motif. The request establishes the weapon’s unusual tonal balance. It is meant to project competence and style, not conventional horror, even though its eventual use will involve an undead sorcerer and a trapped soul.

Barnabas, introduced as a tall, lanky green troll with a tusked, piglike face, works in a fiery forge and is already associated with the destruction of the Woods of Gevaudan. His forging of the scythe therefore links the object to both craftsmanship and wartime labor. When Furibon kidnaps Victor Dalton and the conflict over the great hoard becomes open war, Barnabas produces a dragon-sized Ring of Elemental Resistance and the Killer Scythe, pouring into them stat boosts, magical protections, and the frustration of working overtime. The scythe is thus not merely purchased equipment: it is a purpose-built weapon prepared for the campaign against Furibon.

Use Against Furibon

Victor Dalton wields the Killer Scythe during the confrontation with Furibon. At first, Vainqueur Knightsbane is focused entirely on the lich, while Victor Dalton rides an undead abomination alongside Chocolatine. The weapon’s use is coordinated with the undead creature rather than presented as a simple duel. The abomination catches Furibon from behind in its jaws, shakes him like a dog with a mouse, and throws him toward Vainqueur Knightsbane; Victor Dalton then remains close enough to exploit the opening.

Furibon claims that brute strength cannot match his magical mastery and presents his apparent immortality as protection. He explains that his soul returns to a phylactery when his body is destroyed, allowing him to create a new body. Victor Dalton challenges that assumption by reasoning that the soul must still inhabit Furibon’s current body; otherwise, the lich could simply abandon the vessel instead of waiting for it to be destroyed. He invokes the Helheim Perk as part of this attempt to determine whether Furibon’s supposed immortality has a loophole.

Victor Dalton then combines Enhanced Teleportation with Teleportation and swings the Killer Scythe. The blade cuts off Furibon’s skeletal head, causing the lich’s bones to crumble immediately. A specter of black energy escapes from the remains and attempts to flee, but a dark force drags it into the scythe. The weapon reflects Furibon’s screaming face within its blade, making the victory materially visible: the lich is no longer merely defeated in the room but held inside the instrument that killed him. Victor Dalton’s subsequent remark that Furibon had made a poor choice of last words underscores the scene’s grimly comic reversal, while Chocolatine takes pleasure in the ghost’s silent screams.

Upgrade and Mechanical Power

After consuming the soul of a powerful lich, the Killer Scythe is upgraded into Killer Scythe+. The change is explicitly caused by the soul captured in the blade, so the weapon’s enhanced status is inseparable from Furibon’s defeat. Its new property is a twenty-five percent chance of inflicting critical hits, a substantial combat advantage that converts the supernatural aftermath of the execution into a measurable mechanical benefit.

The upgrade arrives alongside new class developments, including Mook Promotion and Necromancy II, and just before the warning that Victor Dalton has reached the level-30 class ceiling. The scythe therefore marks a moment of accelerated advancement. Victor Dalton recognizes that he has been unusually fortunate and believes that, at this rate, he can catch up to the Shining Knight. The weapon is part of that upward movement: its power is not abstract prestige but a concrete increase in the effectiveness of every future attack that triggers its critical-hit chance.

The Soul in the Blade

Killer Scythe also becomes the location from which Furibon continues to speak. Later, when Vainqueur Knightsbane is threatened by Brandon Maure’s superior weapon and apparent strategic advantage, Furibon’s soul taunts Victor Dalton from within the scythe. The lich insists that Victor Dalton can no longer take levels and predicts that everyone will die. Victor Dalton answers that Furibon can help, treating the captured enemy not as a finished relic but as a constrained resource whose knowledge or power may still be used.

This recurrence changes the meaning of the weapon. The scythe is at once a battlefield implement, a prison, and a channel for the defeated lich’s continued presence. Furibon’s physical destruction does not erase him from the narrative; instead, his soul remains bound to the object that killed him. The arrangement preserves the danger of his intelligence while reversing the original power relation. Furibon once threatened others through magic and immortality, but after the decapitation his voice reaches the world only from inside Victor Dalton’s weapon, under the control of the forces that defeated him.

Narrative Significance

The weapon’s history joins craftsmanship, combat, necromancy, and progression into one object. Its requested appearance resists the obvious skull imagery of a reaper weapon, yet its actual function becomes more disturbing than that decoration would have suggested: it severs a lich’s head, absorbs the escaping black soul, reflects the captive’s screaming face, and later carries his taunts. The contrast produces a recurring irony between Victor Dalton’s desire for a cool but non-scary scythe and the weapon’s unmistakably supernatural role.

Killer Scythe’s material agency is especially clear in the Furibon confrontation. Victor Dalton makes the decision to strike, but the blade itself determines the aftermath by drawing in the fleeing soul and preserving Furibon’s face within its surface. Its later upgrade records the absorbed soul as a permanent statistical advantage. The object consequently participates in the plot rather than remaining passive equipment: it helps end Furibon’s bodily threat, retains the lich as a continuing voice, and strengthens Victor Dalton at the exact point when his advancement is approaching its ceiling.

The scythe also casts a dark shadow over the later crisis surrounding Victor Dalton. When Vainqueur Knightsbane returns boasting that Brandon Maure is dead, the chief of staff cannot answer because Victor Dalton has been struck through the chest by an ice spike and left with empty white eyes. Killer Scythe is not identified as the cause of that injury, and the evidence does not make the weapon a universal protection. Its significance is more precise: it embodies the victory over Furibon and the power gained from that victory, while the later attack demonstrates that even a weapon capable of imprisoning a lich cannot remove every danger from Victor Dalton’s world.