Riding on a white stallion out of the outermost northern gate, I pulled my hat deeper, only nodding towards the guards shortly.
We were basically riding in the same tempo all of the others were walking as the street was incredibly congested with workers and even some adventurers. My horse, packed with all kinds of stuff was thus a large hindrance for most, which was why Hannah and I were given annoyed glances rather often at least until we were outside of the former slums.
Here, there were only farmers on their fields and occasionally lumberjacks going to the nearest forest.
As the street cleared a bit though, I pressed my heels into the stallion, spurring it a bit. Hannah quickly followed suit, reaching my side in no time.
“The newest reports indicate that there are more than two hundred demons in the north right now, just a day away from here. All the adventurers attempting to stop them have been eliminated, so the king ordered to evacuate all the villages on their way and ordered the army to defend the city walls.” She explained, looking at the few lumberjacks in amazement. Either they were all pretty darn brave, which neither of us believed, or they had no choice but to head out to earn money.
“So two became four, and four became twenty … and then two hundred demons?”
“Correct. The new ones also don’t seem to be necessarily native in the area they were first spotted in, which did puzzle the adventurers.”
“So its save to assume whoever created that ghoul is the second, horned person?” I asked and grabbed into my bag to get a rough painting of that person.
“Correct.” Hannah said, nodding eagerly.
“Rip him to pieces.” I growled and spurred my horse a little more.
“I’ll give my best.” She said, following right by my side. Twenty minutes later, we were already at the spot Hannah picked out on top of a large hill, surrounded an endless sea of meadows where animals grazed under the watchful gaze of their owners.
Binding our horses to the single tee on top of it, we let them graze as well while Hannah sat down, leaning against the tree and shielded her eyes from the sun with a hat.
Quietly, I climbed the tree and sat down on a sturdy bench, looking onto the compass while imagining Olivia. The needle pointed right at the last target I had in mind, back towards the city no matter what I did. Somehow her gift of illusion didn’t let me see where she really was, which also explained why I couldn’t catch her before using this method.
Well, we hopefully wouldn’t need that compass as Tom and Hannah both claimed these two will definitely pass by at this point. They stuck to the roads all the time anyway, which was obviously a taunt, but also made it insanely easy to set a trap.
The thing was, we didn’t know when they would come by exactly. We thought they would come the night after this one, but we didn’t know for sure. They could hurry, or let a bit more time pass after all.
So, we had no choice but to hang around there, talk to each other whenever Hannah was awake and enjoy the nice warm breeze. During first the night, Hannah even caught a rabbit which I seasoned with the herbs I could find and grilled it afterwards.
Truthfully, we had a nice time together, talking about this and that and even made some jokes about the reincarnated and their fight to save others. That was truly a hilarious time.
During the next day though, I could already spot the first demon, flying high above us and drawing circles in the sky. Nobody else was around us at this point as all the people either holed up in the city, or avoided the north.
I even waved towards the black bird, taunting it a little bit until it flew back north. It did come back sometime later, but flew right above our heads and scouted out the city before returning hours later. And then, the early nightfall came and Hannah and I dressed in more saintly stuff. For me, it was a short white dress, bound to my body tightly by a silvery light chest plate. It wasn’t very long either, only going halfway to my knees which gave me enough room to do everything I needed to. My whole outfit was perfected by a pair of light white boots. All in all, my outfit was more for show than for anything else.
Hannah though needed to make sure she didn’t die and donned her usual brownish black amour with several protectors all around her body. And then, we waited once more until we could finally she the silhouette of around five hundred humanoids appearing in the distant forest.
“Everything clear?” I answered and pointed towards them. She squinted her eyes a little until she finally saw what I did, minutes later.
“Crystal clear. Divide and conquer, like always.” She said, grinned happily and unsheathed her pitch black katana. She honestly looked quite heroic, just standing there while hundreds of demons approached us. They didn’t attack right away though, but rather encircled us and gave me enough time to stroll towards my horse and retrieve a sword made out entirely from an unknown gently glowing material a comet brought down to this planet … money really could buy you anything.
Well, it wasn’t that impressive as a weapon as it was only a bit sturdier than iron swords but it would be far more than enough to deprecate all of these demons who stood around us in a circle, waiting for two figures to approach us.
“Hi there!” I shouted loudly and waved happily.
“You are dead. I killed you.” Olivia said, not even bothering to hide her real figure. She stepped a bit closer to me than the other horned man, dressed in light, green armour from head to toe. The bow on his back showed right away what he was proficient in, but the daggers on his hip didn’t look as if they were just for show either.
“I feel pretty much alive though. In fact, I think you even healed my back pain …” I said, scratching my back with the tip of the glowing sword carefully.
“Stand back … she is no human.” The other person said in a deep voice and placed his hand on Olivia’s shoulder.
“And who do I have the pleasure talk to?” I asked with great interest and curtsied elegantly in front of them.
“My name does not matter to you.” He said, not even bothering to show a hint of friendliness on his scared face.
“How unfriendly. I guess you don’t care to explain from where these demons come?” I asked, tilting my head to the side a little.
“No.” Sadly, he flat out rejected my proposal, but asking him wasn’t the only way to get any information out of him.
“Then at least listen to my theory. That demon over there is a ghoul, then we have a few zombies, several orcs … wow, never seen that race before.” I said and pointed towards a large bitch black scorpion with red eyes, swinging its tail back and forth. “You created all of them on the way here, didn’t you?” I asked and noticed how his eyelids twitched a little. So I was indeed correct.
“And what if you were correct?” He asked, a knowing smile on his crooked lips.
“Nothing. I just wanted to know.” I said, not letting a single hint of my anger be visible.
“Olivia, let me handle these two on my own. You can go ahead and redeem yourself.” He said and pointed over to the city, a bit further begins us.
“Whatever.” She said, spat on the ground and walked around us in a circle and headed right towards the city afterwards.
“So how did you survive.” The archer asked us, slowly taking the bow on his back into his hands.
“You may call it a stroke of luck. Or you ma-“ As fast as the wind, he knocked a flaming arrow onto the string, pulled it and shot it right at my face. I only raised my eyebrow a bit disappointed as the arrow flew towards me.
A sudden gust of strong wind altered the trajectory a metre in front of me, letting it pass by my cheek without hurting me in any way.
“Two surprise attacks? Interesting.” I said a bit bored, made two steps back and waited a single second while listening to Hannah’s footsteps, approaching the archer fast, the demons running towards us and the tremor in the earth.
Then, a metre wide worm broke through the earth right in front of me, leaving me with no other choice but to stab my sword into it eagerly. Yellow liquid oozed out of the wound right away, only increasing in volume as I dragged the sword through its body, letting it exit through the right.
Stepping back from the mess, I threw the sword in the air, grabbed its pommel the other way around and stabbed backwards, right into the face of some swamp demon who was completely covered in algae.
“Disgusting …” I muttered, kicking a ghoul who was jumping at me from the side, flinging her into a group of other demons approaching me fast. Apparently, the archer was in command of all of them as none of them attacked Hannah who would be a harder target for them, but went straight for my head. Feeling a bit insulted by their behaviour, I stepped to the side, evading one thrust from the scorpion and grabbed a zombie by its neck. Kicking his legs, I let him fall to the ground where one of my many small traps sprung into action. A small undead mouse jumped into his open mouth and started doing what they could do best. To nibble in something. Stepping onto one of his legs and breaking it in the process, I ducked underneath another attack from the scorpion while slashing upwards, cutting off its deadly stinger right away which resulted in a new puddle of yellow blood.
“You guys are really easy, you know?” I asked, looking towards my next probable assailant which was one if these rhinos, charging straight at me through a horde of zombies, sending them flying everywhere.
Hannah had slaughtered more than a few as she saved Sofie, so they shouldn’t be a real problem for me either. The thing was that I refused to use my magic, which made it way harder for me than it should.
Their stats weren’t boosted by the system as they didn’t have the intelligence required to use it, but they were still far stronger than the average human, and vampire for that matter.
“Aaaand you are dead.” I said, right as the archer smashed into his side and the wind pushed then both further to the side. Followed up by a red lightning bolt, I could see how the rhino was incinerated while the archers glowing barrier around him cracked a little.
“Puh, that was close.” I commented dryly, already turning around to deprecate two ghouls and a zombie in one swoop.
“Give me a minute.” She said, her sword cracking with red electricity. Dashing through the hordes if demons protected by her magic, she killed everyone in her wake until she reached the archer who kept firing arrow after arrow at her.
None of them were useful in any way, except the last one who curved around her, heading straight to me. A bit bored, I grabbed the arrow out of the air right in front of my eyes easily.
“Oh.” I said as the arrow began to glow in a yellow light. I couldn’t sense mana like others did, so I was quite stupefied as the arrow emitted a yellow liquid, spilling over my fingers right away.
I didn’t know what it did, and had to focus on cutting apart those that got close to me, but after a minute or so, I stopped feeling my left hand. A bit puzzled, I jumped onto the tree, and looked down to find my skin running down my muscles, with them following shortly afterwards after having been transformed into some kind of goo. At the end, even my bones started falling to the ground, puzzling me completely.
I was sure there was no magic like this around anywhere. And I was even more sure as the goo on the ground started to live and wriggled around a little, sadly completely unfit for life as there wasn’t much of it. My hand was already healing rapidly and so , I jumped down into the horde of monsters once more and started cutting left and right while running through them.
Honestly, the worst bit was avoiding all the yellow blood spewing out of them. They were insanely easy to read and all way slower than I was, which made it hardly a challenge to slaughter them all. The only advantage they had were their numbers and their infectious blood which Hannah seemed to have realised right away. She merely set everyone on fire with her electricity and shielded herself by a bubble of wind around her.
She still had her hands full with the archer, firing volley after volley of elemental arrows at her until he finally settled on shooting stone arrows which went through her barrier thanks to their weight.
I couldn’t help her with that as I had no realistic chance of penetrating his glowing barrier with my sword anyways, and so I focused entirely on beheading as many of these small fry as I possibly could in a minute.
I got to one hundred sixty four. But then, something strange happened. I didn’t know what started it, but some of the demons I had killed for good mutated into some weird mass of flesh attaching themselves to their fallen comrades and living ones alike. These demons then in turn mutated as well, creating a wriggling mass of flesh, rolling over the battlefield towards each other.
They fused together while I stood there in utter amazement, finally being ignored by all the demons who headed straight for the monstrosity.
I honestly didn’t even know what to do against it with the puny sword against in my hand, especially not as it took shape of a lower body with two hundred metre high legs, shielded by stones which had grown out of its skin.
“That’s so unfair!” I shouted angrily, ran towards the thing and tried to stab my sword into it. It really was stone I was stabbing there, meaning I didn’t do much damage even if I pushed it in to the hilt. Stepping backwards a bit, I kept slashing at the still approaching demons and tried to stop them from joining up with the monstrosity. They sadly approached the thing from all sides, meaning I couldn’t stop its completion at all. Minutes later, as all the living demons had become his flesh, he stepped forwards once, taking up all the demons I had slain. Jumping a few times backwards, I tried to find any weak point at this one hundred fifty metre high colossus.
Maybe there were some at his joints higher up, but that would require me climbing that thing. And even then, I doubted my sword could do anything.
“Hey Hannah!” I shouted towards her as the colossus smashed both his fists onto the ground where I stood mere seconds ago. She didn’t react right away, but rather tried to contain the archer who used the small opening the trembling earth caused to escape her clutches and ran towards me. Dodging every arrow he shot at me with minimal movements, I slashed at him once, but wasn’t exactly surprised as he jumped above me into the palm of the colossus.
“What now?” Hannah asked, running towards me already.
Dodging a few more of his arrows and a stomp from the colossus, I managed to back of a little and seethed my sword.
“You can fly, right?” I asked, just as she fired a massive air bullet towards the archer, knocking every arrow off course.
“Its causing me nausea.” She admitted right away.
“Just once. He doesn’t have any way to manoeuvre in the air, does he?” I asked, ducking beneath three arrows armed straight at me.
“I don’t think so.” She said, dancing out of the way of four stone arrows aimed at different parts of her body.
“Okay. Defend me a little.” I said and continued to retreat from the colossus.
We didn’t have any chance against that thing, mostly because Hannah was ill fitted to fight it. Her sword wouldn’t do much, her wind too weak to penetrate and her electricity only numbed that thing, not even charring it at all as its flesh regenerated right afterwards.
And so, I had to admit that it was indeed time to change my approach drastically. Hopefully there wasn’t anyone around to witness it.
Concentrating on all the death around which was by no means little, I collected it into an invisible orb right in front of me. Only I could sense it in its purest form, not shaped by any spell whatsoever. And then, I let my soul emit more of it, supplying the ever smaller smaller ball if death with my very own being.
More and more flew out of the tip of my finger, creating an image of a black shimmering point for everyone to see. Supplying more and more of my very own essence into it, it grew in size over the next seconds while Hannah shielded me from the arrows exclusively fired at me.
And then, it compressed once more until
And then, it compressed once more until it gained a little bit of mass around which all the other elements behaved very oddly. I couldn’t feel the wight of my finger at all, and moving it through the air became hard, but at least time wasn’t affected for now. Before that happened though, I felt my nose running with blood and lost my hearing as my eardrums snapped.
“Get behind me!” I screamed, containing the
“Get behind me!” I screamed, containing the death in its purest form right on the tip of my index finger. Hannah didn’t dally around at all and jumped behind me, already sweating from feeling her very own death over and over again.
With my thumb pointing into the air and the rest of my fingers except my index finger curled into a fist, I pointed at the colossus and grinned wryly.
“Ban-“ Spewing up a mouthful of blood, I realised I wouldn’t be earning any style points that day and released the death from its shackles. Instantly, I could feel a ring of death emitting out of it vertically, cutting apart the ground in front of my feet and pushing all the air sideways, creating a storm that bent the trees in the kilometre far away forest easily.
That was a mistake from my part though as all of the power should go in one direction which was right where I pointed. Well, most of its energy worked as well.
Pushing everything in front of it, my black streak created a wave of air pressure hitting the colossus everywhere. He was directly pushed backwards, but before he fell over death already reached him, blasting away everything from his shoulders downwards. Its body exploded in gore, sending flesh and blood flying everywhere.
For kilometres, my ray flew onwards in a straight line carrying bits and pieces of this colossus, getting wider and wider as it flew through the clouds, creating a massive hole in them.
“Oops.” I mumbled quietly, still feeling how the ray carried onwards until it dissipated somewhere way above the clouds while all kinds of flesh fell onto the ground around me.
Well, that’s what I got for not trying this in the last hundred and fifty years as it was a pretty crude and easy way.
Shaking my head a little, I looked at the head of the colossus flying through the air, along with a smaller dot.
“At least I didn’t kill him…” I mumbled and felt the air pressure from behind me as Hannah jumped high into the air. Rubbing my ears a little and still not hearing anything, I sat down on the ground and spewed out the next round of blood.
Then, I noticed a bright flash above me which illuminated the sky for a bit and looked upwards. Hannah was really flying through the air in a straight line, heading right towards the archer who came flying downwards.
I doubted he was in any condition to fight which immediately proved true as Hannah flew past him and bisected him in two, right through his barrier. Hannah immediately stopped in the air, leaned backwards and flew after him, beheading the archer just before his corpse hit the ground in the forest to the north.
“Well, that was ea-“ Coughing violently, I spewed out even more of my blood and carefully looked at my soul. It was damaged. But it was far from the critical point.
Still, using so much energy at once wasn’t exactly healthy, and so, I closed my eyes and laid down in the grass a little to heal my wounds. A minute or so later, I could feel someone tapping my shoulders and sat up right again groggily. Opening my eyes, I looked at the flask right in front of me and grabbed it.
Happily, I drunk the best blood Tom could find on the black market and leaned back once more, feeling how this comforting pain slowly subsidised.
“One out of ten points. Terrible execution.” I commented wryly just after my right ear had healed.
“You might have gone a little overboard.” Hannah commented and pointed at the forest in the distance. A whole lot of trees were toppled, others had their leaves stripped of them but worst of all was the kilometre wide cut in the earth going in both directions.
“Fuck …” I said, looking at the deep hole in front of me with mixed feelings.
“Yeah … at least they are both dead now.” Nodding quietly, I stood up and rubbed my ears. “I hate to ask that … but is there any river or stream around?”
Riding on a white stallion out of the outermost northern gate, I pulled my hat deeper, only nodding towards the guards shortly.
We were basically riding in the same tempo all of the others were walking as the street was incredibly congested with workers and even some adventurers. My horse, packed with all kinds of stuff was thus a large hindrance for most, which was why Hannah and I were given annoyed glances rather often at least until we were outside of the former slums.
Here, there were only farmers on their fields and occasionally lumberjacks going to the nearest forest.
As the street cleared a bit though, I pressed my heels into the stallion, spurring it a bit. Hannah quickly followed suit, reaching my side in no time.
“The newest reports indicate that there are more than two hundred demons in the north right now, just a day away from here. All the adventurers attempting to stop them have been eliminated, so the king ordered to evacuate all the villages on their way and ordered the army to defend the city walls.” She explained, looking at the few lumberjacks in amazement. Either they were all pretty darn brave, which neither of us believed, or they had no choice but to head out to earn money.
“So two became four, and four became twenty … and then two hundred demons?”
“Correct. The new ones also don’t seem to be necessarily native in the area they were first spotted in, which did puzzle the adventurers.”
“So its save to assume whoever created that ghoul is the second, horned person?” I asked and grabbed into my bag to get a rough painting of that person.
“Correct.” Hannah said, nodding eagerly.
“Rip him to pieces.” I growled and spurred my horse a little more.
“I’ll give my best.” She said, following right by my side. Twenty minutes later, we were already at the spot Hannah picked out on top of a large hill, surrounded an endless sea of meadows where animals grazed under the watchful gaze of their owners.
Binding our horses to the single tee on top of it, we let them graze as well while Hannah sat down, leaning against the tree and shielded her eyes from the sun with a hat.
Quietly, I climbed the tree and sat down on a sturdy bench, looking onto the compass while imagining Olivia. The needle pointed right at the last target I had in mind, back towards the city no matter what I did. Somehow her gift of illusion didn’t let me see where she really was, which also explained why I couldn’t catch her before using this method.
Well, we hopefully wouldn’t need that compass as Tom and Hannah both claimed these two will definitely pass by at this point. They stuck to the roads all the time anyway, which was obviously a taunt, but also made it insanely easy to set a trap.
The thing was, we didn’t know when they would come by exactly. We thought they would come the night after this one, but we didn’t know for sure. They could hurry, or let a bit more time pass after all.
So, we had no choice but to hang around there, talk to each other whenever Hannah was awake and enjoy the nice warm breeze. During first the night, Hannah even caught a rabbit which I seasoned with the herbs I could find and grilled it afterwards.
Truthfully, we had a nice time together, talking about this and that and even made some jokes about the reincarnated and their fight to save others. That was truly a hilarious time.
During the next day though, I could already spot the first demon, flying high above us and drawing circles in the sky. Nobody else was around us at this point as all the people either holed up in the city, or avoided the north.
I even waved towards the black bird, taunting it a little bit until it flew back north. It did come back sometime later, but flew right above our heads and scouted out the city before returning hours later. And then, the early nightfall came and Hannah and I dressed in more saintly stuff. For me, it was a short white dress, bound to my body tightly by a silvery light chest plate. It wasn’t very long either, only going halfway to my knees which gave me enough room to do everything I needed to. My whole outfit was perfected by a pair of light white boots. All in all, my outfit was more for show than for anything else.
Hannah though needed to make sure she didn’t die and donned her usual brownish black amour with several protectors all around her body. And then, we waited once more until we could finally she the silhouette of around five hundred humanoids appearing in the distant forest.
“Everything clear?” I answered and pointed towards them. She squinted her eyes a little until she finally saw what I did, minutes later.
“Crystal clear. Divide and conquer, like always.” She said, grinned happily and unsheathed her pitch black katana. She honestly looked quite heroic, just standing there while hundreds of demons approached us. They didn’t attack right away though, but rather encircled us and gave me enough time to stroll towards my horse and retrieve a sword made out entirely from an unknown gently glowing material a comet brought down to this planet … money really could buy you anything.
Well, it wasn’t that impressive as a weapon as it was only a bit sturdier than iron swords but it would be far more than enough to deprecate all of these demons who stood around us in a circle, waiting for two figures to approach us.
“Hi there!” I shouted loudly and waved happily.
“You are dead. I killed you.” Olivia said, not even bothering to hide her real figure. She stepped a bit closer to me than the other horned man, dressed in light, green armour from head to toe. The bow on his back showed right away what he was proficient in, but the daggers on his hip didn’t look as if they were just for show either.
“I feel pretty much alive though. In fact, I think you even healed my back pain …” I said, scratching my back with the tip of the glowing sword carefully.
“Stand back … she is no human.” The other person said in a deep voice and placed his hand on Olivia’s shoulder.
“And who do I have the pleasure talk to?” I asked with great interest and curtsied elegantly in front of them.
“My name does not matter to you.” He said, not even bothering to show a hint of friendliness on his scared face.
“How unfriendly. I guess you don’t care to explain from where these demons come?” I asked, tilting my head to the side a little.
“No.” Sadly, he flat out rejected my proposal, but asking him wasn’t the only way to get any information out of him.
“Then at least listen to my theory. That demon over there is a ghoul, then we have a few zombies, several orcs … wow, never seen that race before.” I said and pointed towards a large bitch black scorpion with red eyes, swinging its tail back and forth. “You created all of them on the way here, didn’t you?” I asked and noticed how his eyelids twitched a little. So I was indeed correct.
“And what if you were correct?” He asked, a knowing smile on his crooked lips.
“Nothing. I just wanted to know.” I said, not letting a single hint of my anger be visible.
“Olivia, let me handle these two on my own. You can go ahead and redeem yourself.” He said and pointed over to the city, a bit further begins us.
“Whatever.” She said, spat on the ground and walked around us in a circle and headed right towards the city afterwards.
“So how did you survive.” The archer asked us, slowly taking the bow on his back into his hands.
“You may call it a stroke of luck. Or you ma-“ As fast as the wind, he knocked a flaming arrow onto the string, pulled it and shot it right at my face. I only raised my eyebrow a bit disappointed as the arrow flew towards me.
A sudden gust of strong wind altered the trajectory a metre in front of me, letting it pass by my cheek without hurting me in any way.
“Two surprise attacks? Interesting.” I said a bit bored, made two steps back and waited a single second while listening to Hannah’s footsteps, approaching the archer fast, the demons running towards us and the tremor in the earth.
Then, a metre wide worm broke through the earth right in front of me, leaving me with no other choice but to stab my sword into it eagerly. Yellow liquid oozed out of the wound right away, only increasing in volume as I dragged the sword through its body, letting it exit through the right.
Stepping back from the mess, I threw the sword in the air, grabbed its pommel the other way around and stabbed backwards, right into the face of some swamp demon who was completely covered in algae.
“Disgusting …” I muttered, kicking a ghoul who was jumping at me from the side, flinging her into a group of other demons approaching me fast. Apparently, the archer was in command of all of them as none of them attacked Hannah who would be a harder target for them, but went straight for my head. Feeling a bit insulted by their behaviour, I stepped to the side, evading one thrust from the scorpion and grabbed a zombie by its neck. Kicking his legs, I let him fall to the ground where one of my many small traps sprung into action. A small undead mouse jumped into his open mouth and started doing what they could do best. To nibble in something. Stepping onto one of his legs and breaking it in the process, I ducked underneath another attack from the scorpion while slashing upwards, cutting off its deadly stinger right away which resulted in a new puddle of yellow blood.
“You guys are really easy, you know?” I asked, looking towards my next probable assailant which was one if these rhinos, charging straight at me through a horde of zombies, sending them flying everywhere.
Hannah had slaughtered more than a few as she saved Sofie, so they shouldn’t be a real problem for me either. The thing was that I refused to use my magic, which made it way harder for me than it should.
Their stats weren’t boosted by the system as they didn’t have the intelligence required to use it, but they were still far stronger than the average human, and vampire for that matter.
“Aaaand you are dead.” I said, right as the archer smashed into his side and the wind pushed then both further to the side. Followed up by a red lightning bolt, I could see how the rhino was incinerated while the archers glowing barrier around him cracked a little.
“Puh, that was close.” I commented dryly, already turning around to deprecate two ghouls and a zombie in one swoop.
“Give me a minute.” She said, her sword cracking with red electricity. Dashing through the hordes if demons protected by her magic, she killed everyone in her wake until she reached the archer who kept firing arrow after arrow at her.
None of them were useful in any way, except the last one who curved around her, heading straight to me. A bit bored, I grabbed the arrow out of the air right in front of my eyes easily.
“Oh.” I said as the arrow began to glow in a yellow light. I couldn’t sense mana like others did, so I was quite stupefied as the arrow emitted a yellow liquid, spilling over my fingers right away.
I didn’t know what it did, and had to focus on cutting apart those that got close to me, but after a minute or so, I stopped feeling my left hand. A bit puzzled, I jumped onto the tree, and looked down to find my skin running down my muscles, with them following shortly afterwards after having been transformed into some kind of goo. At the end, even my bones started falling to the ground, puzzling me completely.
I was sure there was no magic like this around anywhere. And I was even more sure as the goo on the ground started to live and wriggled around a little, sadly completely unfit for life as there wasn’t much of it. My hand was already healing rapidly and so , I jumped down into the horde of monsters once more and started cutting left and right while running through them.
Honestly, the worst bit was avoiding all the yellow blood spewing out of them. They were insanely easy to read and all way slower than I was, which made it hardly a challenge to slaughter them all. The only advantage they had were their numbers and their infectious blood which Hannah seemed to have realised right away. She merely set everyone on fire with her electricity and shielded herself by a bubble of wind around her.
She still had her hands full with the archer, firing volley after volley of elemental arrows at her until he finally settled on shooting stone arrows which went through her barrier thanks to their weight.
I couldn’t help her with that as I had no realistic chance of penetrating his glowing barrier with my sword anyways, and so I focused entirely on beheading as many of these small fry as I possibly could in a minute.
I got to one hundred sixty four. But then, something strange happened. I didn’t know what started it, but some of the demons I had killed for good mutated into some weird mass of flesh attaching themselves to their fallen comrades and living ones alike. These demons then in turn mutated as well, creating a wriggling mass of flesh, rolling over the battlefield towards each other.
They fused together while I stood there in utter amazement, finally being ignored by all the demons who headed straight for the monstrosity.
I honestly didn’t even know what to do against it with the puny sword against in my hand, especially not as it took shape of a lower body with two hundred metre high legs, shielded by stones which had grown out of its skin.
“That’s so unfair!” I shouted angrily, ran towards the thing and tried to stab my sword into it. It really was stone I was stabbing there, meaning I didn’t do much damage even if I pushed it in to the hilt. Stepping backwards a bit, I kept slashing at the still approaching demons and tried to stop them from joining up with the monstrosity. They sadly approached the thing from all sides, meaning I couldn’t stop its completion at all. Minutes later, as all the living demons had become his flesh, he stepped forwards once, taking up all the demons I had slain. Jumping a few times backwards, I tried to find any weak point at this one hundred fifty metre high colossus.
Maybe there were some at his joints higher up, but that would require me climbing that thing. And even then, I doubted my sword could do anything.
“Hey Hannah!” I shouted towards her as the colossus smashed both his fists onto the ground where I stood mere seconds ago. She didn’t react right away, but rather tried to contain the archer who used the small opening the trembling earth caused to escape her clutches and ran towards me. Dodging every arrow he shot at me with minimal movements, I slashed at him once, but wasn’t exactly surprised as he jumped above me into the palm of the colossus.
“What now?” Hannah asked, running towards me already.
Dodging a few more of his arrows and a stomp from the colossus, I managed to back of a little and seethed my sword.
“You can fly, right?” I asked, just as she fired a massive air bullet towards the archer, knocking every arrow off course.
“Its causing me nausea.” She admitted right away.
“Just once. He doesn’t have any way to manoeuvre in the air, does he?” I asked, ducking beneath three arrows armed straight at me.
“I don’t think so.” She said, dancing out of the way of four stone arrows aimed at different parts of her body.
“Okay. Defend me a little.” I said and continued to retreat from the colossus.
We didn’t have any chance against that thing, mostly because Hannah was ill fitted to fight it. Her sword wouldn’t do much, her wind too weak to penetrate and her electricity only numbed that thing, not even charring it at all as its flesh regenerated right afterwards.
And so, I had to admit that it was indeed time to change my approach drastically. Hopefully there wasn’t anyone around to witness it.
Concentrating on all the death around which was by no means little, I collected it into an invisible orb right in front of me. Only I could sense it in its purest form, not shaped by any spell whatsoever. And then, I let my soul emit more of it, supplying the ever smaller smaller ball if death with my very own being.
More and more flew out of the tip of my finger, creating an image of a black shimmering point for everyone to see. Supplying more and more of my very own essence into it, it grew in size over the next seconds while Hannah shielded me from the arrows exclusively fired at me.
And then, it compressed once more until
And then, it compressed once more until it gained a little bit of mass around which all the other elements behaved very oddly. I couldn’t feel the wight of my finger at all, and moving it through the air became hard, but at least time wasn’t affected for now. Before that happened though, I felt my nose running with blood and lost my hearing as my eardrums snapped.
“Get behind me!” I screamed, containing the
“Get behind me!” I screamed, containing the death in its purest form right on the tip of my index finger. Hannah didn’t dally around at all and jumped behind me, already sweating from feeling her very own death over and over again.
With my thumb pointing into the air and the rest of my fingers except my index finger curled into a fist, I pointed at the colossus and grinned wryly.
“Ban-“ Spewing up a mouthful of blood, I realised I wouldn’t be earning any style points that day and released the death from its shackles. Instantly, I could feel a ring of death emitting out of it vertically, cutting apart the ground in front of my feet and pushing all the air sideways, creating a storm that bent the trees in the kilometre far away forest easily.
That was a mistake from my part though as all of the power should go in one direction which was right where I pointed. Well, most of its energy worked as well.
Pushing everything in front of it, my black streak created a wave of air pressure hitting the colossus everywhere. He was directly pushed backwards, but before he fell over death already reached him, blasting away everything from his shoulders downwards. Its body exploded in gore, sending flesh and blood flying everywhere.
For kilometres, my ray flew onwards in a straight line carrying bits and pieces of this colossus, getting wider and wider as it flew through the clouds, creating a massive hole in them.
“Oops.” I mumbled quietly, still feeling how the ray carried onwards until it dissipated somewhere way above the clouds while all kinds of flesh fell onto the ground around me.
Well, that’s what I got for not trying this in the last hundred and fifty years as it was a pretty crude and easy way.
Shaking my head a little, I looked at the head of the colossus flying through the air, along with a smaller dot.
“At least I didn’t kill him…” I mumbled and felt the air pressure from behind me as Hannah jumped high into the air. Rubbing my ears a little and still not hearing anything, I sat down on the ground and spewed out the next round of blood.
Then, I noticed a bright flash above me which illuminated the sky for a bit and looked upwards. Hannah was really flying through the air in a straight line, heading right towards the archer who came flying downwards.
I doubted he was in any condition to fight which immediately proved true as Hannah flew past him and bisected him in two, right through his barrier. Hannah immediately stopped in the air, leaned backwards and flew after him, beheading the archer just before his corpse hit the ground in the forest to the north.
“Well, that was ea-“ Coughing violently, I spewed out even more of my blood and carefully looked at my soul. It was damaged. But it was far from the critical point.
Still, using so much energy at once wasn’t exactly healthy, and so, I closed my eyes and laid down in the grass a little to heal my wounds. A minute or so later, I could feel someone tapping my shoulders and sat up right again groggily. Opening my eyes, I looked at the flask right in front of me and grabbed it.
Happily, I drunk the best blood Tom could find on the black market and leaned back once more, feeling how this comforting pain slowly subsidised.
“One out of ten points. Terrible execution.” I commented wryly just after my right ear had healed.
“You might have gone a little overboard.” Hannah commented and pointed at the forest in the distance. A whole lot of trees were toppled, others had their leaves stripped of them but worst of all was the kilometre wide cut in the earth going in both directions.
“Fuck …” I said, looking at the deep hole in front of me with mixed feelings.
“Yeah … at least they are both dead now.” Nodding quietly, I stood up and rubbed my ears. “I hate to ask that … but is there any river or stream around?”
