First, I see the wreckage which took me a moment to realize was my house. Then, I screamed.
Then, I notice Number 1 and Number 2 lying in pools of blood besides Sara, with knives stuck in their bodies, causing me to scream again.
"Me- MeOOWWWWW!"
What the heck is this?! How did this even happen?!
Suddenly, there were some wood cracking sounds, and the center of the wreckage shook. It caught my attention and my gaze turned to it.
There, the wreckage, including pieces of wood, strands of silk, a shapely rock that I used as furniture, and other things or fragments of interesting things that I found in the forest and hoarded in my treehouse, rose up and fell down, as a tall and muscular lizardman crawled out of it.
...No, the lizardman is bleeding from the head and looks unconscious. The one pushing the wreckage up is the armored man carrying his body below him.
Hatred surges in my 3 hearts. I glare at them murderously.
It must be them. They are the ones who destroyed my house and murdered Number 1 and Number 2!
I must take revenge!
After getting out of the wreckage he armored man puts down the lizardman. Not paying attention to his surroundings, he reaches into his bag and after a short moment of rummaging, pulls out a small bottle of something.
He opened the mouth of the lizardman and directed the bottle towards-
"Meow! (Like I'd let you!)" I shouted, startled at the thing.
I'd have to be a complete foreigner to the fantasy genre if I couldn't tell what that is. In a situation where your comrade is badly hurt and you're still in enemy territory, if you take out something to feed them, high chances are that it is some kind of medicine! A potion or something.
Although I doubt I'd encounter some miracle medicine that can instantly and fully cure dire wounds, if that lizardman heals up even slightly, enough to re-enter the fight, then my subsequent battle will be more than twice as hard.
The armored man is also startled, by my shout. He stops his action and turns towards me, making me lose the element of surprise but also interrupting his action.
Vaulting Pierce!
That previous form fixing acceleration happens to my body again. Having happened a second time, I can tell now that it is no hallucination. This new skill of mine has something special.
Like a streak of faux kat, I shoot myself at my enemy.
My target, the armored man, however, is no slouch either. He quickly dropped the lizardman and the suspected potion to the wreckage, stood and pulled out his sword in a set of smooth motions.
The moment his sword was pulled out, it accelerated, from a moment of slowness and slight vagueness to a moment of high speed and precision.
CLANG!
Sparks flew as my spearing sword stab clashed with the edge of his'.
At this moment, I can see through his visor and into his eyes covered in shade, hard to make out, but I can see the surprise exhibited inside.
Likewise, having recognized it just now, I can tell that this guy's counter was the same or similar to my vaulting pierce, a special accelerated skill, causing me to be surprised to.
I bounce back after the clash, taking some distance with a backwards leap.
"▓▓ Faux kat, why are you here?! ▓▓"
I have no idea what he said, but it must be a question. His eyes started darting around, seemingly searching for something.
"Meyon!!!" The armor man screamed, despair in his voice as he caught sight of the corpse I left behind me.
A chance!
Precisely what I was aiming for as I dragged the corpse of their friend here, to provoke them and make them lose their minds, though somehow, I ended up being the one provoked first. That doesn't matter however. What matters is that I get my sword through their hearts!
Vaulting Pierce!
My body accelerated. My sword hand stabbed.
"Urgh!" Interrupted in his moment of emotional pain, the armored man was slower to react this time, despite it being the same frontal attack. Yet, he still manages to block, avoiding a wound but being forced to stagger backwards as his form is shaken.
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Whipping one limb to strike the ground, I propel the rest of my body to spin as I whack him on helmeted face with one tentacle, my titanium claws scratching against the metal surface.
"Oof!"
Then another as the armored man tilts, to which he blocks with a raised gauntlet before rolling to the ground.
"▓▓ You bastard! You killed Meyon! I'll murder you! ▓▓" With eyes turning bloodshot and tears welling up, he got up from the ground and charged at me.
This time, I can instinctively guess what he is saying. Well, you were killing my friends too!
In return, I dash straight at him with the same anger.
Right before we met again, the armored man stopped in place, spreading his legs wide and holding his sword in both hands, he adopted an unfamiliar, and even what looks to be an amateurish, stance.
But my danger sense suddenly flared.
The armored man accelerated as he swung his sword.
Chopping my sword hand down in the direction that danger was felt from, my body reacts before my mind.
Clang!
That was the beginning.
My danger sense flared again.
Clang!
And again.
Clang!
And again, and again, and again. Slashes came at me from every direction, in quick succession, not allowing time for me to properly breathe. It can aptly be described as a flurry of slashes, surely some other special skill, each attack clearly weaker in strength than his previous one but more than making up for it with the sheer number of strikes.
Soon, I found it hard to keep up, with no way to counterattack, relying greatly on my danger sense skill to survive.
A whirlwind was kicked up by the armored man's violent and speedy moves.
I blocked. I chopped to intercept. I retracted my tentacles and dodged. I rolled to dodge. I couldn't dodge and had to condense my soft titanium shell to take a hit, leaving a nonfatal white scar.
My concentration was pushed to it limits as I took on more and more damage and felt more pain. Soon, time started to slow down. While my body started to get exhausted, my intercepting chops became more accurate. I may be slower than my opponent, much slower in fact, but now, I am making much more efficient movements, as my rate of successful defenses increases.
20, 30, 40, 50... At some point, I couldn't count anymore. How many slashes has this armored man thrown?
Acquired skill, Chop, reached level 5.
Acquired skill, Endure, reaches level 5.
Level 5 must be some kind of watershed, for the system to notify me of it. This time around, no option to combine the successively leveled skills showed up. They're probably not compatible.
Exactly how much time has actually passed? It should be a short amount of time, but it felt longer than that.
The armored man was shocked.
He had already thrown over a hundred slashes, going even beyond his former record as he utilized his fiercest uncommon skill, probably having raised it a level in the process. Yet the damned faux kat is still alive!
What's even worse is that, where before it was taking some hits or scratches every few strikes, now it is deftly blocking or dodging each one. This accursed monster is growing in battle!
This makes no sense! It's just a small stage 1 monster with little sentience. Even if it's ranked near the top of countless stage 1 monsters, how can it be smart enough to grow in battle?!
It is we, the most intelligent species, that are the main characters of the world, not monsters!
This... is unfair!
At this rate, how can he, Jason, avenge Meyon?
At the same time, he also understood how Meyon was killed by this thing. It can't be understood with common sense. Any monster at the top of the rankings, no matter the stage, should not be taken lightly, and that was what they did when they took this quest.
Exhaustion creeped in, terribly so. This uncommon skill, Flurry Slashes, that he trained so hard to learn, is not a skill meant to be used for such a prolonged duration. Running out of air and choking up, his face turning bluish from lack of oxygen, he forcibly canceled the skill and leapt back to pant.
The faux kat stopped in place, taking quick deep breaths similar to him. It looked way too calm for his tastes.
My mind felt strangely calm, having calmed down while I perceived that time-slowed world. That world itself having just worn off as the danger decreased. But my body is in pain, scratches all over, some of them slightly seeping blue blood. Luckily, nothing got cut off.
My exhaustion is heavy, but from his posture and heavy breathing, I can see that my opponent's is worse, obviously having overdrawn himself.
That is why, despite being tired myself, once I realized that comparison, I spring back into action, not allowing him to recover, because once he does, I, who am more injured, will take disadvantage once again.
My eyes turn sharp as I glare.
"Meow! (Die!)"
Vaulting Pierce!
Bolting off the wreckage where I stood, I lunge at the armored man, sword hand first.
The armored man also uses his accelerated skill, the first one with the stronger slash. But both of us are noticeably slower than before, surely the effect of our exhaustion, yet still faster than we'd normally be.
Clang!
Our blades clash. Cracks spread in an instant. Both of them steel swords break!
They had done their duty, in the hand/tentacle of wielders with muscles much stronger than ordinary humans of my past life. It would not have been a surprise if they broke during that intense flurry. I should count my lucky eggs that they broke at the same time, that mine did not break first despite having been the one on defense, probably a courtesy of it being brand new.
Their shards flew before our eyes. Now I have a greater advantage, what with my body being a weapon by itself.
The armor man tries to pull out a knife strapped to his armor, but I extend my tentacle to snatch it, using this ordinary skill for the first time in battle, the action, though not accelerated, becoming defter than I expected.
Using my hard titanium head, I tackle the armored man to the ground. We both fall over.
An end to a fight doesn't always have to be grand and flashy.
Especially when both fighters are exhausted, can you really expect a grand conclusion?
On the wreckage-covered ground, I constrict his torso and elbows by stretching out my lower back tentacles, while stabbing down the knife with one other, and striking with the cup-like steel cover left from the broken sword hand worn on my stumped tentacle. I aim for spots covered in lesser armor.
It's become a mud fight without the mud.
"▓▓ Damn monster, get off of me! I'll kill you! I'll kill- ▓▓"
The armored man screamed something, as he struggled, rolled, and flopped like a fish, trying to shake me off, making my aim inaccurate, but it didn't matter in the end.
Soon, his helmet became bashed in with dents and the knife stuck into a side of his neck, through a gap in his armor, bleeding out red blood. I twist the small blade in, and the blood comes pouring out.
The armor man stops moving, stops struggling. Shaded under his helmet, his eyes glazed over.
"▓▓ Meyon... Micos... I'm sorry... ▓▓"
Killed stage 2 level 38 Human Warrior. Gain 1710 Exp. Level +1
...Huh?