CHAPTER 53

that incredible pain was now over, but everything was in complete darkness. Have I come to the end of another life? Ahh, it was a short life but fun. While I was brewing in self-pity. A ray of light appeared in the pitch black; it must be The ROB. He must be coming to take me back, and I even failed the mission he gave me.

Hahaha, I don't even know the mission yet; he said I'd find out when the time comes... wait a minute, how the hell did I die. I was meditating inside the training dimension, and suddenly I was pierced in the back with a spear and sword. How is this possible? While these thoughts were echoing in every corner of my mind, the light coming from the opposite direction was getting bigger and bigger, and suddenly everything was flooded with light, and I found myself in a white room.

Isn't this the training space? What's going on here? Why did I go back to the training space? Didn't I die? Suddenly, a great terror came over me; I couldn't understand what was happening. Just then, the spear that pierced me came to mind, and I started looking around like crazy. As I turned behind, a spear pierced my stomach and went out of my back. Damn, it hurts so bad.

Again! An excruciating pain started to vibrate through my body. I was paralyzed; I couldn't move, and my eyes couldn't focus. There was a humanoid silhouette in front of me, but I couldn't tell if it was human or something else because my eyes wouldn't focus, as if looking through frosted glass.

While trying to take painful breaths, anger started to rise inside me, and my strength started returning. With this anger, I tried to grab the silhouette before me, but I couldn't grab him because of the spear. Yet I lunged with all my might, and I could feel the spear continuing to advance through me.

I approached the silhouette and grabbed it by the arm. My eyes were starting to focus. Was this what they called the last burn before death? I could see clearly now, but I couldn't believe my eyes. He was the bandit leader I killed in the forest, turning me into skewered meat for the second time. Just then, another bandit swung his sword at my head, and everything went black again.

I was in this pitch-black darkness again, and a light was starting to approach from afar, but the terror and panic I was in did not decrease. On the contrary, it was increasing. Before I could understand what was happening, I again found myself in the white room. This time I immediately started looking around and saw bandits standing about 5 meters away; there were so many of them.

The leader, with a spear, quickly approached me and lunged. I panicked but managed to cast the Quersumby ( oakshield ) spell in time. I was covered in bark-like armor on both my arms, from my wrists to my shoulders, and I took my guard by crossing both arms in front of my chest. Just as the tip of the spear touched my right forearm, it felt like I was hit by a truck. This blow sent me flying several meters back; the strength difference was too significant.

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My heart kept beating like it would jump out of my chest, and there was a deep dent in the armor on my right arm. I drew the dagger from my belt and quickly approached the bandit as I deflected the spear with my right arm. I wanted to slit his throat immediately, but I noticed another bandit swinging his sword from my left side, so I had to step back while swinging the dagger. My dagger cut the bandit's throat, but it was superficial and didn't do any severe damage. Attacks were falling on me from all directions; I couldn't let them surround me.

So, I cast the sambrar (fog cloud) spell and tried to put distance between us, but they continued to attack without fear. It was obvious that they were attacking me blindly without seeing me. As I ran backward, my back hit a wall, and I had reached the end of the damn room. I couldn't stand here, or they would surround me.

I turned my heat sight skill on and observed the bandits, they were running around blindly and bumping into each other occasionally, but they were slowly adapting. I had managed to calm myself down a bit, but I still couldn't hear anything other than my heartbeat.

Meanwhile, I began to prepare two tegonden (earth shard) spells, and just then, one of the bandits noticed me and started coming toward me. I had to cancel one of the spells because it wouldn't be ready in time, so bad that mana was wasted.

As I canceled the spell, I immediately cast the letagon (snare) spell with my empty hand, the man tripped and fell. I plunged my dagger into his neck and took the sword from his hand. Meanwhile, I threw the now-ready tegonden (earth shard) to the two bandits in a line. One was dead, and the other had both of his legs mangled badly.

The moment I sent the tegonden (earth shard) spell, the wall of fog broke apart due to the spell's speed for a few seconds, causing four bandits to see me. They started to charge toward me, not in order like in the movies, but all four of them simultaneously. I used volhen keli (aspect of cat) and volhen gryves (the aspect of bear) buffs.

I currently have 7.3 str and 7.5 spd stats; my stats were higher than usual; I wonder if it had something to do with the fight or flight response. When the bandits were close, I cast letagon (snare) on the frontmost enemy; it tripped and fell to the ground, causing the other two bandits to trip over his body and fall.

While the other three were trying to stand up, I met the attacking bandit and rolled away from his left diagonal attack while simultaneously using my dagger to cut through the Achilles' tendon. The bandit fell to the ground, and he swung his sword wildly from where he fell.

So I had to take another step away from him and couldn't finish him off. Meanwhile, I turned to the fallen bandits; they had already stood up, so I ran at them, threw the dagger at the front bandit, and hit him right in the throat.

Before the two remaining bandits came to their senses, I approached them and used the jelmāz renigon (lightning touch) spell against them both. I had never used this spell before as it was only effective within 5 meters, but it was really deadly. The reason I used this spell was because I had calmed down a bit more and, thanks to that, realized how much mana I was wasting on level 2 spells.

I had only 25 mana, but six healthy and one injured enemy remained. At this moment, the bandit whose Achilles tendon I cut limped to his feet, but he could not put any weight on his leg. So, he started bouncing towards me.

"Are you kidding me!!" They acted like the wights in the stories Old Nan told the Stark children, monsters incapable of feeling fear or pain.

I took my dagger from the corpse in front of me and threw it at the bandit who was trying to bounce towards me right in the middle of his forehead.