The sound that he heard was a drumming sound. It echoed throughout the caves and it sounded like a pattern. Four heavy drum beats followed by a light beat/
Rena was having some trouble breathing as the sand attacked her every second it could from the inside. Hika was also getting tired of hauling Rena’s body behind Rune.
The trio moved towards the sound and they walked for several minutes before they reached a large set of double doors. They were engraved with pictures that looked like the tortoise person that he had killed several minutes before.
He wasn’t eager to kill many of them, but he wouldn’t hesitate to do so if they attacked him or if they were in his way. Also, his goal was enough power to take out anything in his way, then, his highest goal, he would watch anime when it came out.
He used his skill, [Ethereal], to pop his head through the door and he saw them. Hundreds of them. Tortoise people with different metal clothes on their bodies and were each of adult size. They walked about a village that seemed to be extremely primitive with the most inventive thing being the metal clothes that were extremely shabby.
There were caves all about where they likely all lived and they each carried weapons of wood and metal. They seemed to snap at each other like snapping turtles, but that also seemed like the way they communicated.
Rune hadn’t gotten any skills or magic from the tortoise person he brutally murdered and then absorbed. He was also stil level 30, but now his stats were:
Endurance Mobility Strength
(2502)62,500 (2362)55,696 (2242)50,176
His base stats were getting extremely hard to increase now, but he was now a cheat among cheat characters with all his skills, magic, and stats. He drew his back through to his side of the door as his minute was close to up and he stood up straight.
Looking back at the two, he saw that Rena and Hika weren’t in great shape and he sighed. Then he fireman carried both of them and hooked the shield back on his gauntlet. He turned around and started to walk.
Unfortunately, fate didn’t want him to leave unharmed. The door opened behind him and he turned his head. Three of those tortoise beings appeared in the doorway and they saw him carrying the two.
They unhooked their greatswords from their back and held them in their hands as they readeid their combat stances. They stood with their legs apart and the blade point pointed behind them and towards the ground. They each reached towards a pocket on their pants and took out muzzles while roaring at him.
Behind them and through the doors, Rune could see the entire village turn their heads as the three beings roared. Rune sighed once more and set the shield on the sand and set the two down on it. They watched, tired, as Rune pretended to crack his neck and knuckles as he couldn’t as Cursed Armor. He stepped forward and drew a special set of equipment.
Two new gauntlets appeared from the air and he donned them over his current gauntlets that were as thin and small as regular hands. The new gauntlets were sharper and had several blades on the sides of them which he could slice people.
The gauntlets were made of Black Dragon scales fused with mana and orichalum. This combination made his gauntlets drip acid that could become deadlier than hydrochloric acid or something more simple, like chloroform. The acid wouldn’t affect him, but it would affect anyone or anything else.
The durability of the gauntlets added onto the auto repair enchantment made his gauntlets almost invincible. Even so, he couldn’t use it all the time due to the acid affect coming from his fingers and blades on the gauntlet.
On the tops of the gauntlets, there were small bucklers that were only made of orichalum, but were still extremely durable. In between each joint, there was chainmail covered by a black cloth material. There were also rings connected to each gauntlet finger and chains to connect those rings to part of the gauntlet’s top and under the bucklers.
Those chains on the rings could detach from the buckler end and, at the end of it, there were small blades that were shaped like mini kunai. The chains could also extend or shorten due to the user’s will.
He took a step forwards and one of the tortoise people snorted. Then it charged at him and swung overhand. Rune stepped closer to it and easily caught the swinging blade. He closed his fists further and cracks appeared where the tips of his fingers touched the blade. When he closed his grasp further as the tortoise person tried to wrench it free, the blade shattered.
Rune took the large chunk of sword that had broken off, grabbed the being, and took it as a hostage with the broken blade against its neck. It struggled in his grasp and took a strange and peculiar option.
It stabbed itself in the chest and blood spewed from its mouth. Then it pulled out the rest of the sword and tried to stab itself again. Before it did so, Rune stabbed the broken blade through its neck and made a small hole in which the spinal column was seen. He didn’t want the being to kill itself if he could take the experience points for killing it.
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He promptly threw aside the broken blade and reached for a grasp of the white bones. He plucked it from the body as if he was picking up a pen and ripped it from its position. He absorbed it and chucked the body at the two others.
Rena and Hika were still watching, albeit lazily, and were gazing at the strange tortoise beings as if they were exotic goods. They looked between Rune and the two other things and were cheering Rune on in their heads as they were much too tired to talk.
One of the beings cut the body in half and Rune cringed as he saw this. He wasn’t sure why it did that to, what was probably, its buddy. He noticed that it was also stupid as the small intestines wrapped around the creature’s throat and it struggled to get it off. In the end, it raised the sword to its throat and was about to cut it off when Rune stopped him.
Ruen specifically used killing it as his way of stopping the experience points from being lost. In such a situation, Rune thrust out his hand and stabbed its face with his gauntlet. Immediately, it started to smoke and it tried to shriek, but couldn’t while the muzzle was on.
Soon enough, the face was just a puddle that mixed in with the sand and its friend just watched as it died a slow, agonizingly painful death.
Then Rune threw a punch and the last one’s head was blown to smithereens as the impact dislocated its head completely, ground up the face and head, and mashed up the remaining bits to create brain fluid, blood, and skull chunks flying everywhere with the muzzle just being annihilated. Rune absorbed the remainders of the three bodies and turned his sights on the village. Luckily, there were no children in the mix as these tortoise people lived for centuries before reproducing and, even then, the children became adults by 20 years old, but Rune had no way of knowing that.
Rune thrust his hand just a bit short of a nearby tortoise person and the chains of his gauntlets thrust out as they disconnected from the gauntlet and reconnected with the being’s heart, lungs, and ribcage. It tried to speak as blood dribbled down its chin and Rune pulled the previously thrust hand back.
The chains shortened as well and the being’s eyes rolled up into their head. The entire chest was mangled as its heart rest, still beating for a moment, in Ruen hand before he crushed it and absorbed the remaining juices. He absorbed the rest of it and moved on.
Hika scootched up the two of their seat, still on the shield, closer into the village’s cavern. They could see stalactites hanging from the ceiling hundreds of meters above them. There were no buildings, but tables and holes in the walls.
The tables held many metal clothes and weapons on them and each hole in the wall housed at least one table. In those houses, there were strange furry skins and crops. Far from them, on the opposite side of the village, were strange trees that had baskets underneath them. Within those baskets contained such strange fruit that looked large and plump with a blue color.
If one stood near the fruit, they would be able to smell the sweetness hanging in the air. Of course, thanks to Rune, the air everywhere else was full of the iron from the slaughter.
Blood leaked from every crevice in the room as he smashed each one of their heads in them and found easier ways to eliminate their bones and internal organs. It looked like a feast for devils who ate flesh and drank blood. That devil that took it all in was Rune who decided it would be a waste to not take everything of value in the village after he murdered every last one.
He was basically an invader who raided a village, stole all their stuff, and murdered the rest of them indiscriminately. Some even snapped their maws to try and communicate with him to no avail. It was ants before a shoe in which every last ant was smushed into the ground.
Somehow, Rune was feeling really good after that event and he turned to Hika who was wide eyed and Rena who was coughing in her sleep. They watched every brutal murder and him stealing their fruits, their clothes, and their weapons as if he was as greedy as a dragon. To be honest, he was far greedier than any dragon save for Fafnir who only existed in one branch of the world tree Yggdrasil.
Unfortunately for Rune, he couldn’t kill Fafnir due to the fact that the nine realms were only connected to Earth or Midgard. However, he did not feel the need to do so as he completely forgot about most of Earth’s mythology and how it turned out to be true.
Back to the present, everyone except the group of three were dead. Rune had decided to also test his railgun that he pumped full of enchantments. This made it so powerful that it literally made a hole several dozens of meters in the ceiling after disintegrating four of the tortoise people.
Since he still wanted their remains, he stopped using it after the first shot and tested his gauntlet some more. The rest of the tortoise people who weren’t wearing the muzzles were much weaker than those with them. The ones wearing the muzzles were likely the warriors of the group.
At some point, the door reopened when he was still clearing out the group and a group of ten muzzled beings stepped through. Rena was still on Hika’s lap, asleep, and Hika and on the shield in a cave without anything or anyone else in it.
Inside the small caves like the one Hika and Rena were in, there was not even one speck of calamity sand and it seemed safe. They rested in the cave for about half an hour before Rune stopped killing and stealing.
The ten warriors came into the room and drew their weapons. Rune made short work of them and he barreled towards them at amazing speeds and broke the sound barrier with every stride.
The first one could see an evil, red glint in his left eye as Rune got in its personally space and moved his hand upwards. The muzzle of the being helped Rune by keeping the whole head together while it spun off the neck and whirled around in the air with blood pouring from the beheading wound.
Rune quickly spun 270 to his right and back handed one into another. The first one’s head exploded and the one that was hit by the body had its bones decimated so much that every bone in their chest broke in at least five places each. The chunks of beone pierced the internal organs and absolutely pulverized the lungs.
It started to have trouble breath and, after every breath, it coughed up blood as it trickled from out of the muzzle. Its eyes were looking around frantically as it tried to live, but all it could manage was its body trembling about as it finally trained its eyes on Rune.
It watched as the other seven warriors were killed in a brutal, one sided assault. He snapped their necks with ease as he also crushed their skulls. For two of them, he thrust his hand through their heart and pulled them out before their bodies started to smoke and the muffled screams echoes throughout the cavern village.
When Rune was done with them, he turned to the last one who was slowly dying. Rune pulled out a magnum and leveled it with the last survivor’s head. If he could right now, he would be smiling, but he couldn’t. Instead, he just pulled the trigger.