Jason took his cape and flung it around himself while he tried to jump backward and up. His cape immediately went up in flames, but luckily he found himself above the cone of flames. Well, doggy it seems you don’t get to eat well-done Jason yet. Right as he was getting smug he felt something like lava grab his foot. Looking down he noticed that one of those skeletons had grabbed his foot and its empty fire eye sockets were staring holes directly into his soul.
Desiring this being of flesh and blood to join it in its eternal suffering the fiery skeleton dragged Jason down into the cone of flames that the death dog had emitted. The room was filled with screaming. It soon became a chorus of shrieks as the hundreds of skeletons joined in with Jason’s suffering. The flames only lasted a second with the fiery apparitions disappearing with it. When the flames cleared there stood Jason.
With only burnt shorts and half his cape left Jason wobbled as he stood. He had lost all his hair and his skin had turned black and cracked as if he had been covered in a shell of coal that someone had taken a hammer to. On his fingers and toes, the skin was entirely melted away with muscle sinew and bone showing. Any of the bones exposed were black and charred. He looked less like he was in the middle of a fight against an overgrown dog and more like he was just burnt at the stake for a few minutes.
Despite all of this Jason opened his eyes. He could still feel it. His immunity to pain had a limit and through this fire, Jason had found it. His body was numb but every slight breeze made the entire thing burn with pain. Even the movement of opening his eyes caused Jason enough pain that he blacked out for a split second before getting a hold of himself.
I can’t fight like this. I can’t even move. The death dog advanced. The boss was weakened but it wasn’t weak at all. It didn’t even take a second before the death dog was about to crush Jason’s head between its teeth. Jason’s body didn’t take his mind’s wishes into account. Jason might have lived on Earth for most of his life, but for months he did nothing but fight and kill. Specifically, he fought wolves which were strikingly similar to this death dog in combat.
As the death dog’s teeth came down towards Jason his body moved on instinct. Jason leaned backward causing his burnt skin and muscles to crack and start seeping blood, but he successfully avoided the dog’s teeth. Bringing his fists forward as hard as he could Jason slammed them into the right head’s eyeballs. Feeling the relatively squishy eyeballs burst as his fists of exposed bones hit them made Jason smile, which caused him to bleed even more this time around his mouth.
Jason finally getting his mind to take back control of his body forced himself to jump backward and away from the dog’s inevitable rampage. Sealing his aura skill as the dog got out of range Jason stumbled to the wall of the room. Jason’s body still had exposed bones and was completely charred with every movement causing skin and muscle to creak and bleed even more. Caleb didn’t seem too concerned about Jason as he was still firing his arrows at the now completely blind beast. Selene on the other hand immediately rushed to Jason’s side and started pouring their last five healing potions on him.
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She had taken the spatial pendant a while ago because she was in a better position to pull things out in battle. With the fifth healing potion she poured over his head they were officially out of healing potions. It wasn’t as if the healing potions gave immediate relief either. Potions worked from the innermost portion of the body to the outer which is why so often scars still appeared from wounds. Jason could feel the connections between his muscle and bone getting repaired slowly but surely. He could see the bones being healed back to their normal white just by looking at his hands and feet. He could also see muscle slowly growing back over those bones.
The death dog and Caleb were having their own little one on one battle as Selene took care of Jason. The dog was still for some inexplicable reason slowly weakening. More than a stamina loss would normally entail. His reactions were getting slower and his perception was getting lower. Those weren’t usually attributed to stamina loss.
Caleb had destroyed the eardrums of the dog with arrows so the dog was well and truly clueless. The only sense it had left to find the party was its sense of smell, but the entirety of the room smelled burnt and melted from the dog’s repeated uses of its breath attacks. At this point it was just running around trying to use its breath attack in any direction it could.
Walls were being scorched from hellish flames and the floor was being melted away by inky blackness. Jason due to his luck was completely spared even though he had collapsed on the ground by the walls. His heartbeat was faint and his breathing was shallow, but his body was healing itself over time. His bones were now completely fine and his muscles closest to the bones were also fine. His skin and the majority of his muscles were still completely charred and to Jason’s misfortune the healing potions had run out.
His health was the lowest it had ever been at three health points and the only thing that prevented him from being at zero and dead was Selene’s quick thinking with the health potions. As Jason was laying on the floor letting his body heal, Selene and Caleb were finishing the fight with the death dog.
Selene was still shooting poison at the dog, but because of her lack of mana potions she had to resort to shooting the weakest poison balls at it. The fight had become trivial now because the death dog was moving and reacting at the pace that a normal human child would. Selene and Caleb were injured and burnt in some places, but those wounds were because of the fire and acid that remained after the breath attacks not because of the breath attacks themselves.
Caleb had begun to shoot a few arrows and then take a few minutes break since his stamina couldn’t keep up anymore. Selene had started to take a lot fewer shots mainly focusing on aiming at already open wounds. After a few more minutes of this excruciatingly slow and unsteady fight, the death dog fell down. It was still alive, but it couldn’t move anymore. Completely at the mercy of its attackers, the dog laid there suffering. Selene had no more mana so she just sat down and started to rest letting her regenerations raise her stats slowly. Caleb seemed to want to take an arrow out and shoot once more, but physically couldn’t.
A minute later the fight ended. All four participants were bloodied and injured. One had been burnt alive only barely hanging onto his life, another physically couldn’t move his arms, the third had no mana or stamina left forcing her to recuperate before she could do anything, and the last had died after being laid low by poison. It hadn’t died because someone had attacked it, but because its already wounded body had quit. The fight ended with everyone resting. It had ended not with a fierce battle, but with a field of wounded fighters.
Jason would remember this battle as the first time he faced death as a warrior. He would also remember this battle as the one with the most disappointing ending. An ending not fit for warriors, but for weaklings.