30.

I got lost in the frenzy of violence. The heat suffused my body, a cocoon of rage and endorphins as my spear bit and shred. The bugs died with every thrust, my heart jackhammering my ribs as a smile tore its way free to stretch my face. Here, finally, I was free. A spider leapt from ten feet away, sailing through the air with its legs spread wide and its fangs dripping as it started to fall toward me. Everything was moving so slow, every action so apparent.

My shield crashed into it, swatting it out of the air as if the two two hundred pound spider was nothing more than a pesky fly. Its body crashed into the earth, soft mud spraying up as it lay there stunned. I rose up onto my tiptoes and towered above it, a god looking down upon its subjects, my wrath inarticulate, a scream of violent rhapsody. A single thrust, spearing through its plump, soft, yielding core. More blood gushed out, drunk thirstily by the parched earth.

I pushed forward, my sworn blades behind me, struggling to keep up even with their higher stats. A frenzy of movements and another spider died, spear and shield working together to destroy the weak creatures. Alerts were appearing sporadically, alerting me to levels I was gaining as I continued to push toward the keep. Sticky webbing clung to me, threatening to trip me. I pulled and tugged, the strands snapping with a grunt of effort. Nothing could stop me, I would reign over all of these mewling, screaming insects.

The keep wasn’t far now, rising up to consume my view. Dozens of the scrabbling spiders still stood between me and the door, but it mattered not. The wasps buzzing overhead finally split, two diving down toward me while the last flitted away to the other side. A challenge! I spun, a dervish of destruction as I cleared space around me. My feet kicked, spear bit, and shield punched until, moments later, I stood alone. Four feet all around me, nothing but the bloody mud as I sank into a crouch, shield angled upward with my spear resting on the rim.

The first wasp broke away, fleeing further afield, while the second angled harder, to fall upon me like a bolt of insectoid rage. It was long, six feet of wiry carapace, wide mandibles that glistened like an oil slick, a two foot long stinger coming from its tail end, its jointed body a half arc as its wings buzzed. The air churned from the beat of the wings, as it turned in the air, stinger leading the way like a lance.

CRACK! Wood splintered, the long stinger shearing straight through my shield as if it had been butter. We crashed together into the soft mud, its body resting atop of me, its stinger buried in my side. My blood was mixing into the mud. Rage blossomed at that thought. I surged upward, my spear forgotten as I grabbed at it with my free hand. Its carapace was smooth, heat emanating from its body like a furnace, my hand scrabbled for purchase, while its mandibles snapped at me, digging into the dirt above my head.

My legs bent at a ninety degree angle, then pressing upward in an explosive movement I used the leverage to toss it over my head. Its stinger ripped as it tore free, more pain and blood as the wasp struggled to get its long segmented legs underneath it as I rose. Red obscured my vision, every beat of my heart caused my sight to ripple. The heat of kill energy was lost to the heat of anger, that berserk state I had fought the warden in so close to triggering. To wrench away control, to tip me over into a state of pure psychotic wrath.

I let it.

Strobes of thought and vision. My fist hammering at it, knuckles breaking as we rolled in the mud. Pain as the stinger lanced my calf, me wedging a broken spear into an eye, yellow pus burning my face and throat as the wasp screamed. Mandibles clamping on my now ruined left arm, bones breaking as I straightened my fingers to ram them through one of its bulbous eyes. Its weight falling lifelessly on me, its heat already fading as I struggled to toss it free.

Miguel running, blood streaming down his face, his arm limp to his side. Crashing into the second wasp. More blood and pain. Blood, so much blood, drowning in the burning salty liquid. A second wasp, laying broken at my feet, wounds decorating its side from where something had torn into it. Long gouges of scooped carapace, blood boiling in puddles, steam wafting off of them.

Pain. All consuming pain.

Something cool being forced down my throat. The red haze faded away. The pain followed it. Numbness smothered me. In some ways it was worse than the pain. Clarity of thought came back, memories tainted by the rage emerged. I had killed the second monster, but how? Armed with nothing more than my hands I had pierced it, my hands digging into its side and ripping it apart from the inside. What the hell had I done?

“He’s coming to!” a voice claimed above me. I couldn’t see who it was, my vision hazy and my hearing muffled.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“He’s alive!” They didn’t have to sound so surprised. How badly was I hurt? More cold liquid poured down my throat. It had to be healing a draught.

Liquid splashed across my face, a rough cloth wiping at me with little care. That helped clear my vision. Miguel leaned over me, his face a mask of concern. Shit, it must be bad if I had managed to make the teenager express sympathy.

Skill Forged: Enraged

Stats Used: All

I looked at the hovering notification. That was interesting. I didn’t know you could make a skill. If my accumulated wounds hadn’t turned me into ground hamburger I was sure that the skill overuse would be crushing me right now. Could we now forge skills because we had unlocked the mana stat? Would I be able to create better skills than one that used every single one of my stats?

“Hey, Billy, ummm…just stay calm right now. You’re a bit of a mess and you need to let the healing draught take care of you.” Miguel twisted around to look at someone beyond my limited view.

“You saved my life, Billy. That fucking wasp had me. I couldn’t hurt it. And…and then you were just there. A fucking mad man, Billy, you just started ripping it apart. I’ve never seen anything like that. Thank you. Thank you.” Miguel was thanking me, but there was fear in his eyes. I didn’t mind the fear, I just wanted to know what I had done.

Miguel tilted my head up and fed me a third healing draught. I could feel things twitching in me, bones twisting and sliding back to where they belonged. Feeling bones snap back into position but having no other sensation associated with it was weird. Like missing a step on the stairs, your stomach in your throat. Was not a fan.

Luke peered down at me,bending over from his waist to meet my eyes. His own emerald eyes were calm and collected. I was fairly certain the man was at least a borderline sociopath.

“You were mildly impressive.” Luke turned and left. I was glad I could at least mildly impress him. That was an accomplishment. I was in shock.

“You were like a madman. Just like a berserker. They were stabbing and cutting you and you just…like…fucked em up,” Miguel kept up his narration of how I had been so cool. By being a pincushion.

Congratulations, you have leveled (x7)

Not bad at all. Level twenty-one. Fuck it. I was tired of being batted around like a soccer ball. I opened the stat sheet and started assigning points.

Lvl. 21

Perception: 10

Intelligence: 12

Strength: 15

Constitution: 20

Vitality: 10

Endurance: 10

Dexterity: 10

Mana: 10

Free Points: 0

Power rushed through me. Soft flesh hardened, bones became like titanium rods, muscles knit and regrew into thick masses. My eyesight and hearing expanded, the world around me opening up to my senses. Lightning traced my veins in a primordial fire as I found myself leaping into the air as the rest of my body knitted itself back together. Such strength! Such life! It was the greatest high I ever had. It was shotgunning a can of redbull after a full night’s sleep while falling out of an airplane. A howl of delight clung to the back of my throat, pleading to be released.

“Wow there, Billy! You’re glowing!” Miguel cried out next to me. I looked down at him then at my own hand. There was a white glow emanating from my skin. The healing draught interacting with the infusion of stat points? Who cared. I dismissed the glow and looked around. In my enraged state I had managed to get away from the keep tower. Standing only inches from a dissected red wasp, I could see where my hands had shoved into the bug. Looking at said hands, I could see the remains of the chitin underneath the few nails I still had. Then I watched as those missing nails regrew. Trippy.

“I used up the points, Miguel. I feel like a god,” I whispered to the boy while still scanning the grounds.

Luke was walking away, heading toward the keep. The remnants of the mountain squad clung around in a wide circle, a few faces missing. I would have to carve time away in the future to let the others mourn. Another errant thought, so easily organized and dismissed. The intelligence stat was powerful in its aid of my processing speed. The perception increase was the hardest to control. I could hear Miguel’s heartbeat, thump thump, thump thump, a steady rhythm in the young man's chest.

“Should I do it too?” Miguel whispered to me, looking around.

“No, keep earning levels like we were. My leveling speed is going to crater after this and I won’t be able to use mana hearts to gain stat points anymore. We can still use them for you. I want to talk to Bobby and Agatha and Olivia before any more of us use our points. Our new friends might have some new ideas to think about before we invest too much. For now, just stick next to me and I’ll keep you safe.”

“Alright. We should go and claim the keep before Luke does.”

“Why? I own the faction. Let him do our work for us. Arrange our dead away from this mess. We’ll give them to the furnace to power the keep after we give them a proper send off.” I really just wanted their infused weapons and armor. Who gave a shit about the rotting sacks of meat that they had called bodies. They were dead and it was better to dispose of the corpses quickly rather than have them linger and potentially spread some type of disease.

Speaking of disease, just how much shit had been in my wounds before they had closed? Would I need to worry about infection with the increase of my vitality and constitution? As always, the neverending stream of questions bounced around in my skull. I just wanted a few weeks to experiment, to live with the new stats and see what they could do. How much could I squat now? I had doubled my strength stat and was nearly triple in constitution. Could I squat a thousand pounds? Would it be easy? Frustration ran through me and I had to take a few deep breaths to calm myself. The increase in processing power could be a double edged sword, I was already seeing. Too many thoughts to control, it would take some time to get accustomed to it.

Luke had turned and was looking at me with a puzzled expression. He was outside of my perception to feel his strength. There was no pressure at all emanating off of him, so he shouldn’t be able to perceive my own sudden surge of strength. Unless his own perception was higher than mine. It would make sense if his senses were higher, he spent much of his time in front of everyone fighting. He would need every edge he could get. Shit, he definitely felt my allocation of stats then. A problem for another day.