Chapter 19.1 - You Have Failed
Joselin immediately changed from a look of contentment to one of terror and began to breathe rapidly.
Trey looked back - knowing the woman wouldn’t know what he said if he tried to speak... but he tried to make what he wanted clear by pulling her back down to the ground amidst the bushes. The shrubs would give her at least SOME cover, and just in case he threw his cloak over the prone girl’s figure. [English Dialect] "Stay."
Again he turned to look across the large body of dark water and saw the first of the three drakes bulldoze through three of the fleeing men, along with a single female dwarf. Cruel rows of long, razor teeth were visible across the mouth of the creature and two yellow, reptilian eyes were on either side of the sleek scaled face. It skidded to a landing on all four legs, roared, and snatched one of the nearby children with its jaws, killing the screaming child with a sickening crunch and then devouring the kid in a single, grotesque swallow.
That child must have been only four or five years old.
Trey could do nothing but keep running, hoping he'd make it to save at least some of them.
The screams were becoming louder and wails of despair filled his ears as the brutal, heartless attack on these helpless people continued. Without consciously thinking about it, he motioned to Talsh’Noc’Un and the huge blade flew by the hilt into his open right palm. The Earthborn man began to sprint around the edge of the lake as fast as he could, keeping an eye on the carnage unfolding out in front of him. He cursed himself for being so far away, for being reckless enough to leave the others alone like that when he’d KNOWN the culn had domesticated drakes, and continued along the water’s edge for another 30 seconds before arriving at the scene of the massacre.
Alas, hindsight is 20/20.
He’d moved fast, the extra speed points having made even more of an impact, but he was still too slow to save the nearest family of four as they were eaten - one by one. They had to watch their loved ones die terrifying, painful deaths, a fate that none should ever have to witness.
At first it had been just the mother, but when she was snatched up and impaled by numerous predatory teeth with a desperate scream of despair... her two daughters and husband had tried to rescue her. The husband had even gone as far as to try and grapple with the giant jaws of the beast in a heroic attempt to save the woman he loved while screaming out the name of his wife, sobbing and struggling as she was swallowed, only for him to be skewered by the culn rider’s spear. He was devoured by the culn’s draconic mount shortly afterwards. The two daughters had been throwing stones in a futile attempt to distract the monster, both were screaming and crying helplessly as their parents died before their eyes… but soon the two sisters joined their parents in the afterlife amidst the merciless laughter of the armored culn rider.
A firebolt caught the large drake in it’s left eye and it shrieked, bucking its culn rider to the ground while it shook its head rapidly to clear the flames away. A second later and the drake took off into the air, surprise and anger evident upon the continued shrieks of the beast as it circled back around.
“NAPOLEON BRAVE BRAVE!” shrieked the little imp while it shot out another firebolt at the fallen culn warrior. “NAPOLEON KILL CULN MAN!”
“Your minion Napoleon’s Firebolt spell has increased to level 6.” the mechanical voice of the All Spirit called out to him as Trey ran.
Napoleon was pretty good with the marksmanship of his magic, and while sprinting ahead, Trey noted that the tiny imp had also landed a clean hit on the ogre’s eye back in the ruined city too.
He was impressed.
The second firebolt clipped the warrior’s shoulder pauldron before it stood to a full 8 feet of height, flames singing the musculature underneath where the crevices in his armor didn’t completely cover.
The intimidating demon stood to look at the imp over his shoulder, a set grimace of annoyance set on his features between the slits in his helm. A set of steel plate armor adorned the angry foe, and whirling around to get a better look at the inferior imp that had dared attack him, he roared out a challenge of profanities.
The drake rider charged the imp with malice in his eyes. His spear had been thrown to impale one of the many victims littering the ground, so he unslung a giant warhammer from his back to use instead. The large weapon swung up in both hands and he lunged towards the fire wielding pest with the intent to crush it in one go.
However, that was not what happened.
The hammer never made it to the intended target as a brutal strike of Trey’s greatsword found its way through the warhammers’ handle, the plate armor, and ended up getting stuck halfway through the culn warrior’s body. Despite his ability to cut clean through the first layer of metal, as impressive as that was, the chestplate had still seriously blunted the attack
Nevertheless, Talsh’Noc’Un did its job.
Black and red lightning surged across the greatsword and throughout the warrior’s body while his feet braced along the hard ground. The culn man lurched in surprise and his eyes widened when they focused on the newcomer. The warrior almost toppled backwards despite his original forward momentum and with the huge sword still painfully lodged in his chest cavity. Blood ran from his mouth and across his heavy plate armor in streams of red, and he coughed up a spray of blood when he tried to speak just as his drake finally landed nearby with a rage-filled roar.
Trey angrily sneered. He ripped the sword out of the dead-man-walking with a strenuous yank, and the culn warrior didn’t even have time to scream before he was torn through with another swift downward strike - splitting his helmet and skull into two halves.
The culn’s drake rushed forward in response and took an angry snap at the Earthborn, missing Trey narrowly, and then beat its wings to throw sand up into his eyes.
“Damn it!” Trey recoiled, jumping backwards just briefly to avoid any attacks the creature tried while his eyesight was lacking. Seconds later the wind died down and he was able to see the drake climbing dozens of feet into the air for a height advantage.
But he wouldn’t let that happen.
Trey launched four smoldering black and red chaos chains at the drake in a rage. This fucking lizard was going to die!
The solidified chains of burning magic rapidly bloomed from various points in space and wrapped around Trey’s target, immediately stunting its efforts to fly further up and causing it to screech out in pain. It struggled futilely for another couple seconds, but ended up falling back towards the earth while it helplessly flailed.
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Trey was thankful he’d pooled those skill points into Chains of Chaos after just now realizing the drake couldn’t break the magic’s hold. The drake shrieked loudly as it continued to fall, fighting to keep itself flight-bound while it wildly flapped its wings, but it was soon being pulled at a high velocity back towards Trey.
The monster connected with the greatsword point-first, and Talsh’Noc’Un sank deep into the neck of the beast as Trey skidded backwards across the dirt under the impact. Black-red flames erupted to engulf the struggling, dying creature, and moments later the screeching and flailing stopped… with the smell of cooked lizard quickly reaching Trey’s nostrils.
Considering how intimidating these drakes looked, Trey was rather surprised that it died so fast. Then again, they were only the size of a horse or bear. If he’d plunged this monster of a sword into a bear’s chest cavity, he was rather certain it would have died just as fast.
“You have gained XP. Your Blades skill has gained 1 level. Your Chains of Chaos skill has gained 1 level.”
Trey was knocked off balance and sent sprawling sideways when a long spear plunged into the side of his left hip. He cried out in agony and saw 111 HP instantly drop from his health bar, halving his health with one go. He pulled out the spear with a strained and exaggerated yank, picking himself up only to see a firebolt race past him and slam into his assailant, flinging another culn from god-knows where onto his back with flames burning away his face.
Trey’s imp was putting in work, but where the hell had that guy come from? Taking another look at the man Napoleon had just nailed, he noticed this culn wasn't wearing the heavy armor that the riders were. Instead, this one had a rogue's outfit on. Thick leather adorned his body, and other than the spear he'd just used - he had rows of daggers on either side. This guy must have come from somewhere else, and was possibly even the one who'd tracked their party here and alerted the other culn to their whereabouts.
“You have gained the skill ‘Light Armor’. Congratulations, for more information please see your status page.”
The old leather pants were soaked with crimson blood and definitely ruined, but he had better things to do than concern himself with the state of his clothes. The bleeding icon had also appeared beneath Trey’s health bar and he winced as a surge of red liquid gushed out from his open wound. Trey glanced up to the two drakes and two culn riders that were now turning all of their attention onto him.
Trey winced, but recent memories of his cowardice spurred him to continue the fight. He was going to make them suffer before they died, even if he was going to go out with them.
Name: Bleska Drake
Race: Bleska Drake, Draconic
Class: N/A
Level: 16
HP: 461/502
MP: ???
SP: ???
DP: ???
Trey summoned two chaos balls and then two more, throwing out the spells as fast as he could. The explosions were devastating, ripping through the basic steel armor like a hot knife through butter. One culn rider immediately jarred upon impact and went limp, tearing apart with huge holes in his body before his shredded corpse fell off the drake to the ground. His drake mount caught splash damage from the two explosions of red and black mana, and it reeled back while making an odd yelping sound before it took flight. Pieces of its scaled blue flesh hung off the side of its face, one of its eyes being completely wasted, and it made tortured croaking noises on its path to flee.
The other surviving culn rider had managed to block the majority of the attacks with a barrier of his own mana, but had still caught one of the blasts to his right flank. He cried out in anger and the drake he rode roared as it reared back onto its hind legs in surprise. Another bolt of black-red electric flames collided to explode against a drake’s face, cleanly ripping pieces of bone and flesh off of the beast’s skull. The rider was thrown off the beast entirely, landing in the grass a dozen yards off.
Chaos ball was half the level of Napoleon’s firebolt, but it seemed to do much more damage… by a lot.
“You have gained XP. Your Chaos Ball skill has gained 1 level.”
Unfortunately for him though, Trey was down to almost no mana left. Having cast those chaos balls had reduced him to nearly nothing, and the chaos chains he’d produced earlier now vaporized as he didn’t have the mana to maintain them.
The remaining culn warrior was picking himself up off the ground now while Trey circled him with an intense grin, which was only amplified by Sithis. His symbiote was rather excited to participate in the killing, and kept a check on Trey’s surroundings while his host battled the enemy.
The purple-skinned warrior snarled and ripped off his damaged helm, still clutching his side where the explosion had injured him. Fragments of metal that’d been torn away from the armor were still lodged into the demon’s body, exposing an ugly wound. The sword attached to his side was drawn from its sheath and he stared Trey down with an intent to murder.
[Ancient Demon Dialect] “What manner of creature are you?” snarled the culn soldier, adjusting the grip on his longsword just as a firebolt blasted him in the face. He shrieked and fell back in complete surprise after forgetting all about the enemy imp.
Name: Culn Rider
Race: Culn, lesser Demon
Class: Dragoon
Level: 9
HP: 89/140
MP: 41/108
SP: ???
DP: ???
“Your identification skill has gained 1 level.”
Trey smirked at the cackling oblivion imp nearby and rushed the fallen soldier. He brought his greatsword up, then back down hard onto the demon’s blocking longsword. Trey’d expected Talsh’Noc’Un to slice through or break the weapon with the amount of power he put behind the hit after what he’d seen it do to the breastplate of the first guy, but to his surprise the smaller weapon blocked the blow. Despite this, it ended up breaking the soldier’s arm with a loud snapping sound; rendering the limb completely mangled.
The culn warrior painfully grunted and fell into a heap, clutching at his bad arm and trying to contain the agony while giving Trey a final defiant glare. It was a brave thing to do, looking death in the face like that… but his enemy held zero respect for it after seeing what they’d done to the innocent people trying to escape. Trey merely scoffed in disgust and tried again, this time beheading the demon with his downwards strike to silence the demon forever.
“You have gained XP.”
Trey’s right arm snapped forward in a knee-jerk reaction and caught the long dagger of the remaining culn rogue with a black, gauntlet-like claw. This had been that bastard who’d speared him! The anger mixed with pain upon realizing it, feeling that deep stabbing pain in his hip again, and reminding him that he still had a bleeding open wound.
He was beginning to feel light-headed from loss of blood.
Trey looked up at his attacker and saw surprise outline the features of the rogue’s face. His opponent couldn’t believe the way Trey’d reacted, and the way his jaw hung slightly ajar only emphasized his disbelief before Trey’s claws flung the weapon away.
He hadn’t seen the blow coming, but Sithis had. His symbiote had used ‘Aspect of the Devil: Claws’ to catch and block the sword’s attack, which made Trey wonder just how much of a punch these claws of his could take before being sliced through.
It… wasn’t something that he’d be wanting to take to a field test anytime soon though.
Before Trey knew what was happening, he saw his long black tail extend to a great length and arc back. It plunged forward, piercing through the culn’s neck where the armor was absent. The culn’s look of surprise turned to horror as he choked on his own blood, dropping to his knees and then onto his face as he continued to gag or cough.
Trey’s tail withdrew back to its normal length and he thanked Sithis internally for the good teamwork as the dying man clutched at his neck, only to have Trey ram his foot into his enemy’s windpipe with a sickening crack.
“You have gained XP.”