First creature reached me in seconds, and I barely had enough time to avoid its jaws and limbs.

As I dodged, I tried to counter, but my hits were repelled. I sharply felt the difference between the techniques trained in modern-day safe environment and the real combat. I kept doing too many extra movements, moving and attacking in earnest caused the loss of rhythm and most of the damage to my weapon likely came from faults in my attack angles.

But as my opponents were reduced to only two, I was coping rather well. Although I got flustered sometimes and had to wave my poleaxe frantically to ward off some close calls, I was slowly getting better. To sense my surroundings around me accurately was an advantage on the level of being unfair.

At one point, when I tried to circle one of the creatures, I gripped the shaft of  my weapon too hard, and felt it to begin to crack. Crap, I was getting too excited while fighting. I had no need for adrenaline in my new body now, so my old conditioned adrenaline-calmness seemed to be gone too.

Instinctively, I sent my energy (I had given up calling it Qi, as it felt cheesy to me, and I never cared much about Eastern practices) into the poleaxe through my palms. I could not explain, why it felt like a good idea, but it felt logical, like using hands to hold something. And it actually resulted in a pleasant surprise.

The spike I previously managed to form from my energy was just around d half a meter in length. But as I forced the energy into the poleaxe, it moved along the fibers of the wood, filling the cracks and gaps between the wood fibers, covering the whole length of the 1.5 meters.

It swallowed the metal parts, directly fusing into the steel and repaired microscopical cracks and other damages and faults. As the flow advanced, it penetrated the wood, transforming the dry wood cells, assimilating them and forming new uniform structure throughout whole poleaxe.

I noticed how my weapon slowly turned dark red, as if covered in blood vessels that expanded and finally enveloped the entirety of it. A lot of energy had rushed out of me, supplied by my spiritual side outside of material dimension, put I felt it was close to a quarter of my reserves.

The process was actually rather fast, but the fascinating process and the sheer amount of my power it consumed was distracting enough that I suffered a long lacerating blow across the unprotected part of my leg. That pissed me off, so I dropped the poleaxe, jumped and punched the creature who got a hit on me.

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My fist, which I had put all my strength into, connected with the lower jaw. And as I added the power from hips and waist, my fist simply pulverized the jaw and continued into the head until my hand was fully stretched out. I grabbed a handful of innards I could feel, and ripped out everything I grasped.

With a loud “Woosh” my hand exited the wound, and another jet of pressurized purple gas came out straight at me. That got me bathed in a nasty cocktail of jellylike mucous, body bits and other gore of unknown structure and composition. The creature dropped on spot.

“Fuck it inside Cthulhu’s ass!” - cursed I at such a development. Sometimes one just had to go creative. Or explode, in frustration. Anyway, I had never studied in Holy Mary’s Monastery of Virgin Maidens to shy away from occasional swearing.

Now I was totally pissed off. Just a few seconds ago I only had a slightly damaged shoulder, but now I had not just a cut leg, but I was also fully covered in goo. At least it was so cold that it did not smell, as chemical reactions for volatile components were slowed down to their minimum.

I turned towards the last of the creatures. It seemed to feel my full hostility, as it started to retreat. Not planning to let it off, in case it decided to call friends and follow me, I quickly found my poleaxe on the ground. I picked it up and threw it like a frisbee or boomerang with my whole, pen-up anger-fuelled strength..

With a “Swish” the poleaxe spun through the air and simply cut and smashed the creature into two uneven pieces.

As it died, I felt something. It was faint, and I noticed it most likely because I was focused on one enemy and did not have to spare my attention on other creatures.

My energy, drained by axe was restored to some extent! I found a way to get the energy from the outside! Discovering that, I shook my fist at the ceiling excitedly - I had gotten rid of one of my worries about the energy supply. As much as I could deduce, I could drain some energy from the enemies I killed.

That was an awesome ability, pity the drained amount was minuscule. And I doubt I received any at the boost at the beginning, when my “mana tank” was still full. Oh, I actually used most of the lost energy to inject it into my poleaxe, where was it?

Remembering what my last throw had done with the last creature, I ran over to find my weapon. Not finding it around the body, I moved through the fog towards the opposite wall.

There, deeply buried into the stone, was my poleaxe. And it retained its new, dark crimson, colour.

I had assumed that as I let go of it, the energy that I injected into it would dissipate. It had happened so to the spikes that I had created previously. And when I threw it, I had fully expected the poleaxe to be crushed into a wreck.

Meh, did I, by any chance, create an artifact?