Several monsters later Achak ran into a duo of dead monsters. It was normal outside of a miscellany for monsters to fight and kill each other. But not in a miscellany, something about these places usually saw even monsters considered to be bitter enemies work together. There were very few exceptions to this rule, and it usually meant an unnatural outside source had somehow invaded the miscellany.

Achak examined the corpses and the area trying to get a hint of what he was dealing with. Whatever it was it had ripped apart a Frongream and a Rompo without taking any damage. This did not bode well for Achak, he was easily able to deal with both monsters now but so was whatever killed them. Meaning, it was most likely something strong enough to pose a real threat.

After examining the area Achak spent time preparing several strong orbs. He loaded six orbs with the maximum essence possible and spread them in a hexagonal pattern above his head. After some rest and recovering his essence, he primed his Shock skill to the max and began moving forward again.

Several minutes of walking brought him to a small cave. In this cave he found his intruders. There were two of them, both a weird mix of reptile, dog, and rhino. They stood at least four feet tall at the shoulders, had thick armored scales like an armadillo lizard, with rhino-like horns, and moved more like dogs than reptiles. The names above their heads read Armored Drake (young).

“Well fuck me silly. The fucking difficulty just went up a few notches” whispered Achak. Drakes were essentially land dragons without wings. Luckily for him the armored type was supposed to be the weakest variant. Or at least had the least amount of offensive skills, relying almost entirely on its armored body. Unluckily, they were still land dragons and one alone could be considered a deadly boss level monster.

The Drakes were too busy eating to notice his silent approach. Achak hadn’t known what he would be up against and was moving slowly and stealthily to avoid giving himself away before getting a chance to assess the new threat. He was glad he did, running into Drakes with no warning was bound to get him killed. Even if they were young.

***

“Etu, was it?” Asked a gigantic man wearing full metal armor. He was in his mid-thirties, had dirty blonde hair, brown eyes, and white skin. “Interesting name,” he said as he extended his hand for a shake. “I’m Jimmy. Welcome to the team.”

“Thanks,” said Etu. He was not small by any means, six feet tall and built like a weight lifter, but next to Jimmy he was tiny. He had shoulder-long dreds that were a mix of red, yellow, and orange making it look like they were on fire. He was a young black man originally from what was once called the island nation of Jamaica before the fall. Such a place no longer existed, and neither did the United States of America, the land Jimmy was from. In fact, the world was now just a large melting pot of cultures, in both people and land, from before the fall.

No one was sure how it happened but while all of humanity fell into a slumber during the fall the world shifted dramatically, whole swaths of land were seemingly teleported to completely different areas thousands of miles from their original locations. People were also teleported splitting up families and friends scattering them to the four winds. The first two years after the fall were much more chaotic than they needed to be due to this.

Jimmy and his group were lucky to have found each other. They were all from the US and shared the same conservative views, quickly bonding together like a family after becoming galvanized in the second wave. The last few weeks they had been hunting for a sacrificial lamb, sort of speek, to make into a PK. They had been carefully trying to choose someone they didn’t know. A newcomer to the island a few days ago had been a promising prospect, but they’d lost him before they could finish the deed.

Etu was a level 12 third-wave galvanized, and a perfect target for several reasons. Mostly because he was what Jimmy would call a lazy galvanized, only went out hunting monsters a few times a week and didn’t put a lot of effort into leveling. Everything they had learned about him from his guild profile suggested that he had very little fighting prowess even though he was a fire-based galvanized.

Etu had answered an ad they’d put out for a new team member for the week and they were hoping to be done with him by the end of the day. Unfortunately, he had made it public knowledge that he was working with them and where they would be hunting. No matter, they would just build up his false sense of security during the week and strike at the end of their contract making it look like he simply hadn’t survived the miscellany raid they had planned.

***

Achak took a minute to steady himself and take stock. He was in a bad situation here, no matter what he would have to face the Drakes in order to complete the miscellany. This type of miscellany closed off the exit until the boss monster was defeated.

The problem was that these two Drakes alone were boss-level. Drakes were known for being invasive monsters, older Drakes would break into miscellanies with their young to provide them easy prey while they replaced the boss. Meaning he needed to defeat these two and a larger Drake at the end.

‘Hopefully, it’s just these two and a boss type… My shit luck just never gives out does it? Not even level ten yet and I have to deal with Drakes… Fuck!’ Achak thought frustrated while looking at his interface.

[Designation: Achak Health: 360/360 Essence: 40/46

Level: 6 (220/600)

Soul: Ancient

Race: Human

Genus: None

Species: None

Strength: 16

Constitution: 15

Endurance: 15

Agility: 20

Dexterity: 15

Awareness: 17

Wisdom: 24

Capacity: 24

Free Points: 4

Skills: Shock, Orb, Bolt]

Achak dumped his remaining four points into endurance figuring this might be a long fight and prepared himself for war.

Prepared as he was ever going to be, Achak stealthily attacked the closest Drake. He stayed near the entrance to the cave and willed two of his orbs over to the monster unleashing their deadly bolts. The lightning left small scorch marks on the thick scales quickly evaporating into mere sparks before dying out. Achak realized that he might as well be throwing rocks at it, this fight would require more direct combat and precise targeting.

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Both Drakes roared in outrage at the attack. They emitted a terrible sound, a mix of a lion’s roar and a hawk’s screech. The discordant sound disoriented Achak for a mere second, but that was all the time the Drakes needed to locate their target and strike. As fast as a racehorse the first Drake was on him. It scratched him with its horn gouging a large gash down his left forearm as he evaded a lethal tackle.

He sent his last four remaining orbs to strike at their faces in the hopes of blinding them for a few seconds. Achak had collected a trident from the last Frongream he’d faced earlier, he pulled it from where it was strapped to his back and jumped at the back of the first Drake as he passed it by. He struck the monster on the back of a large scale causing it to slide down and into its skin. With his Shock skill at maximum power he was able to barely penetrate the tough hide under the scales and hurt the beast.

Blood gushed from the monster’s wound, but also from Achaks arm delivering its own shock of pain as he struck. He screamed as he quickly jumped back evading a tail swipe to the face. The second Drake had somehow gotten behind Achak and caught him with its own tail strike. He stumbled forward, jumped to the side, and rolled away from both monsters barely avoiding a vicious bite from the first Drake.

The tail strike had left puncture wounds and large gashes down his back from the spiky and powerfully built tail. The Drakes quickly followed up with a combination of tail strikes and slashes. One swung its tail high and the other came in low with a claw swipe or bight, back and forth they alternated pushing Achak back forcing him to do nothing more than defend for a few seconds.

Desperate to break their momentum Achak used Shock and Bolt together sending a large bolt arcing down the trident as he slammed it down in front of him. A powerful wave of kinetic energy was released, pushing all of them back several feet. He threw one of his knives into the face of the first Drake enveloped in a Bolt. The knife hit the eye and was buried deep into its skull causing the monster to go into a rage as it bucked and kicked like a bull.

Achak screamed as the second Drake attacked from behind biting down on his left leg with its powerful jaws. It pulled him off his feet as it lunged back with half his calf and ankle in its deadly maw. He hit the ground with a grunt as he landed on his elbow. Had the first Drake’s rage and pain-induced gyrating not driven it in the other direction he would have surely lost his life in that moment.

He desperately grabbed the trident that he’d dropped next to himself and stabbed at the monster clamped onto his leg. He stabbed at its head with the butt of the weapon striking sturdy scales built to withstand blunt force damage. The Drake was unmovable like a stone as it began shaking its head from side to side like a dog playing with a toy.

Pain wracked Achak’s body from the sawing of the canines grinding on his bones and the blood loss from the other wounds he’d already sustained. Desperate and delirious he activated Shock and Bolt together again and stabbed the butt of the trident into the monster’s mouth. The skills exploded taking half of the monster’s head as well as his foot with it.

He screamed and swooned from the pain, his head hitting the ground hard as he nearly passed out. Maybe from shock or adrenaline, he quickly recovered propping himself up on his elbow and stabbing toward the first Drake as it recovered enough to charge him head-on. Instinctively he’d activated both skills again slamming the trident into the underbelly of the oncoming monster blowing its chest open and killing it.

Exhausted, all of his essence depleted, and bleeding out he turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Pain and cold shivers wracked his body as he lay there trying to figure out how he would make it through this. He was unable to concentrate as images and memories came unbidden playing havoc on his emotions.

‘Life is just always so unfair,’ he thought. He had fought so hard and long to become a galvanized and from the very moment he did he’d done nothing but run and fight for his life, not even given a moment to enjoy the little win. Unaware, he had been crying and cackling maniacally as he stared at the lichen on the ceiling lying there with one foot in the grave.

His mind cycled through shitty moments in life, how his mother suffered and died while giving birth to him. How he’d lost the only other people who cared for him at such a young age that he hadn’t even remembered it until he saw it in the vision during his galvanization.

He remembered how he was forced to intervene that day at the foster home to keep the younger boy from being beaten to death by the others. How the juvenile detention center he was sent to afterwads forced him to become something he wasn’t. While there he’d been forced to fight nearly every day, with the idiots that had something to prove, the bullies who wanted to feel some control over their own shitty lives, and even the guards that only seemed to come to work to take out their frustrations on the juvenile detainees.

Thoughts of the foster home he’d been sent to after his stay at the detention center crossed his mind. The place seemed like a loving home from the outside, but on the inside, it was everything but. The husband was a nightmare of a person, mistreating the wife and all of the children in the house too. Any little noice would set the man off in a stream of curses and vitriol.

There had been five children in the house at first, including himself. Three boys and two older teenage girls. The two other boys were younger twins, eight years old each, they were only there for a few days after his arrival before returning to their families. While there, one of the girls, a fifteen-year-old, had found her way into the boy’s room every night to fall asleep with the twins.

The boys had their own room with several twin beds and the girls did too. At first, he thought it weird that she would sleep with the two younger boys every night, but then he quickly understood why. She had been using them as protection from the foster father. Achak quickly noticed the leering stares and lustful looks in the man’s eyes whenever he looked at her. She was the younger of the two girls but her body had curves in all the right places while the other was flat by comparison.

The night the other two boys had left she’d crept into the room and fallen asleep on one of their beds like usual. Not long after the foster father had crept into the room after her, the moment he’d made for the girl Achak sat up and protested loudly. But the man was strong and quick on his feet and backhanded him hard, leaving him bloody and dizzy, and continued to beat on him till he was helpless. He was made to watch a terrible scene that night as the man forced himself on the girl in front of him.

A sudden rage overtook him at the memory, life was indeed unfair to good and weak people. He thought of the boy in the first foster home, he just wanted to mind his own business and live life. The girl in the last foster home, she just wanted to get through her teenage years and go to college. His mother, she just wanted to safely deliver her baby to the world.

Yes, life was unfair, but it was clear to him that it was that way mostly because other people made it so. He’d had to readjust the way he lived life all too often because of shitty people imposing their will on others, or the world simply throwing curve balls at him for no apparent reason. But no more… No, he would not die here today, he would make it out of this miserable place - And he would live his life on his terms alone. He would make his mother proud of the hell she endured to bring him to this world.

Achak reached within himself and found the hum of power diving into his soul realm again. In the temple, the rings of blue text had expanded to fit the width and length of the room hanging at the top of the columns. In the middle, three large orbs of lighting hovered above the throne. He felt different things from each orb. The red felt angry and vengeful, the black felt empty and cold, and the silver felt warm and comforting.

He laid his hands upon the silver orb allowing the lightning to play on the skin of his hands. He felt it then, this would heal him he need only will it so. He grabbed hold of a bolt of lightning as if it were a rope and pulled it to himself. It came loose from the orb and ran up his arm and into his chest, bringing with it a feeling of peace and tranquility. Achak opened his eyes in the real world and several new messages awaited him.