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Bk 3 Ch. 22 Final Night
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 21:24:04 +0000 UTC22.
Santi followed behind Duncan as the two men left the false safety of the others. Only Chloe would have been of any help and she was laid up with her arm ravaged and her energy exhausted from the fight. Santi quietly pulled another mana potion out of the pockets of his torn up pants and sipped it down slowly. The cool mint taste had become a raging, icy, fire that ravaged his throat.
It did stir his mana though and he could feel himself regenerating slightly faster than he had been. He was still in rough shape when it came to a pure casting standpoint, but then again, he hadn’t been purely relying on his mage skills since this initialization had started.
The morph weapon on his wrist was a limp wire that radiated happiness. It had drank deeply tonight, consuming blood and potential in equal measure as they cut their way through the horde of monsters and mutated animals that had fought their way through the slaughter happening on the outskirts. Even as they walked closer to the edge of the ruined downtown, Santi could hear the fighting.
Animal screams of pain and rage and the thunderous boom of high ranking monsters locking horns with one another. All over the power that Santi was claiming for himself. It was a heady feeling, that they wanted what he had. His chest puffed out and his tired body found a bit of energy to get him to walk with the hint of the old spring in his step.
Santi couldn’t tell if it was the curse, feeding him a bit of energy as it felt the carnage all around him. Or his own ego, small and battered as it had been, rising to the occasion. Between the slight boost and the mana potion he almost felt human again.
They made it to the edge of the downtown region, Duncan not saying a word as he began to meld into the shadows off on the side. Santi instantly alerted as the assassin began to do his thing, Santi’s instincts not allowing him to relax as the killer tried to hide.
“Where you going?” Santi spat out as the morph blade became his trusted saber.
“I’m not exactly a stand in front of someone and punch them in the face type of fighter. I do my best work quietly and unseen. You’ll have to stand there and keep their attention.”
“So I stand here and get punched in the face?”
“If you’re slow, then yes.”
“I’m going to kill you. Can’t wait.” Duncan looked towards Santi and smiled viciously.
“The minute Mercy is dropped, you and me are going to war again.”
“Promises, promises,” Santi taunted back as his heart began to beat harder.
“They’re coming down the road right now. You hold their attention, I’ll finish them off.” With that, Duncan completely disappeared from sight and Santi’s other senses. Santi wanted to bite back a curse as Duncan dipped, but he let the words stream out anyway.
“Getting sick of dickheads always disappearing like that.” Santi looked toward the edge of the town and waited. Duncan had been right, it didn’t take long before the cursed Acolytes came out of the dark. Six figures, drenched in blood, some limping, walked slowly toward him. Santi stood straight and unafraid as the curse in his body stirred, resonating with the more powerful curses that the Acolytes had.
“Brother!” the lead shouted, his voice a thunderous boom across the night. He swaggered forward, half a stumble as if he was drunk. The pale light of the stars showed him dripping wetly as he lifted a heavy spiked maul to his shoulder. Santi ignored the attempt at fraternity and simply raised his saber to shoulder level, aimed at the cursed Acolyte.
“So be it, you will not be the first who has met their end at my hand. I will crush you and take the Pillar for myself.”
Cursed Barbarian lvl. 44
(Blood Thirst)
“Oh, fuck, he’s kinda high leveled,” Santi muttered to himself even as the man lunged into action. His powerful stats allowed him to move in nothing more than a blur, the spiked cudgel hissing through the air as he directed it toward him. Santi swung his saber and met the cudgel in a blast of force. The cudgel didn’t yield, steel scraped on whatever it was the morph blade was as Santi was forced back.
A System granted weapon then. High quality, but not a growth weapon like the morph blade. A hazy red aura appeared over the man and his blows picked up speed, Santi struggling to match the man’s physical stats. An aura skill, or an enhancing skill, nothing that he wanted to match in pure physical stats.
Santi jumped backward and allowed the cudgel to sail by him, to crack asphalt into powder in a spray of chunks. He reversed his momentum and lunged upward, knee leading the way as his knee hit the barbarian’s chin. Bone cracked and the barbarian staggered backward while Santi was forced to catch a long spear strike with his saber, turning the broad head away from his ribs as the second of the cursed came at him.
Cursed Spearmen lvl. 41
(Blood Thirst)
“Fuck off, I’m busy!” Santi snarled at the spearmen, irritated that his duel had been interrupted. He slashed three times as fast as he could while the barbarian was still reeling from having his jaw broken.
The spear holder was able to catch each blow, speeding up as his spear tip caught the morph blade and shoved them to the side like nothing. He was rapidly reaching the levels where even his titles wouldn’t let him compete directly physically with physical fighters. It was why he had spells.
[Crosscurrent-Orb] detonated in a massive explosion, tossing the barbarian backward even before the barbarian could get close to him again. Santi dropped to a crouch as a skill activated, a cool blue light surrounding the spear as it suddenly triple thrust over his head fast enough that after images were left behind.
The saber lengthened and cut across the leading quadriceps of the spearman’s leg, parting flesh like paper. The lean spearman smiled and howled in a mix of pain and pleasure, stumbling as his leg collapsed underneath him. Santi leapt backward as two more of the cursed came chasing after him. A burst of fire rolling over him, kept at bay only by his [Air Current], the flames flicking at the edge of his skin.
“Anytime Duncan,” Santi spat, dodging a rock that was hurled at him, air cracking as the golden glowing rock flashed by.
Four Acolyte warriors were homed in on him, their skills flashing and burning as Santi pushed himself to the fullest of his abilities to simply stay alive. His morph blade was an amorphous blur, changing to meet every attack as Santi ran backwards, circling around to keep the four fighters from overwhelming him.
Santi nearly missed Duncan entering the fight. The assassin simply stepped into being, his knife tearing apart a throat in silence, skills at play. The furthest cursed warrior, some type of healer, died without making a sound. The others were too lost in their own battle to notice the least of them dying.
Santi stabbed down and caught the barbarian’s foot, splitting the foot in half as he twisted and ducked to dodge a spear strike. Flame spitted the air around him, burning at the spearman as the fire mage began to act wild. There was chaos in the air, joy in the fight, the thrill of death being only a misstep away. Even as blood began to soak their clothes as Santi cut them, they were growing more and more wild.
A laugh started to rattle around in Santi’s chest as he ducked and slashed, severing a few fingers from the barbarians off hand. The bigger man simply roared, never slowing as more and more skills came out to contest Santi.
Duncan killed the next one, an archer who was dancing around the edges of the fight, not lost to the siren’s call of his curse. A shadow clone emerged from one side, causing the archer to jerk away and fire his bow into the shadow. The shadow fell apart even as the archer’s lunge carried him onto Duncan's knife. None of Santi’s opponents noticed the second death.
He pushed off hard, taking a grazing wound along his ribs from the spear user as he crossed the distance toward the rock thrower. The long lanky woman’s eyes widened in surprise as Santi cut apart a wall of flame, emerging from the other side slightly singed. He speared her through the chest, cracking apart ribs like they were dry branches as she died without making a sound.
He kicked her limp body away, his body straining as he was forced to spin and knock aside the next cudgel blow. The spiked cudgel hit and tore into the ground while the spear user lunged, crossing more ground than possible as he used another skill.
[Gust] pushed the spear away from him and the spearman flew past in a blur. Santi redoubled his attack on the barbarian, slicing away skin and slivers of cudgel with every blow as the fire mage circled around them, trying to get a clean shot on him. Santi stuck close to the barbarian, using his weapon’s superiority to keep the huge man from overwhelming him.
He spun the blade around into a shield, swatting the cudgel away, and turning into a knife to slash along the barbarian’s arm. Blood was spilling, filling the air with its iron scent, warm on his skin as he kept cutting and slicing, tearing apart the barbarian as power surged through his body.
Heat exploded over him, his senses hardly reacting in time as he cast [Air Shield] to stop the fireball from consuming him. The barbarian wasn’t as lucky. His skin blackened and burned away, hair disintegrating even as he screamed, cudgel going from blue-black to red-orange.
Santi leapt away from the barbarian and toward the maniacally grinning mage. The man was lost in the madness of the fight, fire streaming off his fists in waves as he lifted his hand to punch at Santi. Santi cut the man’s hands off, the morph blade not bothered at all by the fire magic.
He reversed the strike and relieved the mage of his head. Santi looked back in time to watch Duncan appear to finish off the barbarian with a single strike. The spearman was running back toward him as fast as possible, but Santi had his feet set and his heart was sure. He moved with ease, stepping forward and toward the man as the spear flashed past him. Santi sliced hard, taking the man’s head without hesitation.
As fast as it had started it was over. He had killed three of them and Duncan had claimed three. The levels were waiting for him, ready to claim his new stat points in a moment.
“We’re done here. You’re fairly effective. Pity I’m going to have to kill you.” Duncan was down the street from him, not willing to be within striking range of Santi. Santi couldn’t blame him.
“Go now, or we can finish what we started weeks ago. When I’ve gathered my people, then we can discuss finishing Mercy.”
“And how will I know?”
“You’ll be spying on me, like you always do.”
“See ya around then, Santiago. Try not to die till I can kill you.”
