“Fuck you!” I shouted at him.
The sword left the scabbard, with the sound of the metal within scraping the obsidian glass, and my blade cleaved the air in a beautiful arc where his upper torso and arm were. I sidestepped his dismembered body which fell towards me, and he hammered against the debris behind where I’d stood. He groaned in pain, but didn’t cry out. I turned towards him, aware that I was leaving myself open to the bandits at my back. Then I raised my sword with both hands, the edge trembling at the strain of my grievous wound.
“What are you waiting for!? Kill the bitch!” Red Rian suddenly yelled, clutching the stump his left arm had become, the remains lying limply next to him.
An arrow hammered into my back, square in the middle of my metal cuirass, somehow not damaging my cape, but making me stumble sideways. I hadn’t seen any bow-wielding bandits, but as I quickly took in my surroundings, I saw that several more of the Red Runners had come to the aid of their leader, presumably from the other buildings. There were less of the slate-grey bastards amongst the newcomers I noted.
I immediately slipped into the barn, slamming the door behind me, and, in a movement, which I felt was not my own, one-handedly pulled open my inventory and clicked ‘Use’ on my only potion. The ‘Potent Healing Potion’ appeared in my hand, as I felt the impact of arrows slamming into the barn’s façade and heard the bandits outside run for the door that I held shut with my back.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to hold the door for long, I quickly backed away, downing the contents of the flask after pulling free the cork stopper. I’d just emptied the flask, when I slipped over something on the floor of the dark barn. Light fell from holes in the roof and the windows at each end of the building, and, when I looked down, I saw that I’d fallen over the body of a young woman who’d been torn apart, as if she’d been attacked by rabid wolves.
As the barn door was wrenched open, the new influx of light revealed the interior in full, showing me that the young woman was just one amongst a dozen people who’d been brutalised by the bandit leader and his slate-grey monstrosities. Even without the many teeth marks, it didn’t take a genius to see that they’d been eating the corpses, possibly while they were still alive, based on the gut-wrenching expressions of horror and agony that remained fixed on them.
The first of several bandits emerged into the barn and I threw the empty flask at an incoming bandit, shattering it against his face. The glass went everywhere and some even imbedded itself in his forehead and eyes.
My grievous injury was all but a memory now, though the phantom of its pain still clung to where the potion had perfectly knitted shut the wound. The healing effect had been instantaneous and the aftertaste of dirt-flavoured soup clung to back of my throat. The black faded from the corners of my eyes, just in time for me to flourish my blade through the air, cleanly cutting through the throat of the bandit with glass all over this face. I turned the movement into another, spun, and cleaved a guy from shoulder to hip, his body falling cleanly in two. I pushed on, determined to reach Red Rian outside.
Two went for me at once, and I one-handed my blade, stabbing it into the right-most one, while using my left hand to grab the other’s wrist, twisting it and using his own knife to pierce him through the eye, the blade hammering itself through his skull when he collapsed face-first. I returned my blade to the sheath swiftly, and let another Quick Draw fly, cleaving across four more bandits, sending blood and gore everywhere. The smell of death that built up around me was repulsive, but my nose was already numb to it from before I even entered the barn.
Soon I saw none of the attackers, as my vision was focused only on the bandit leader outside who was hurrying away, a make-shift bandage already around his stump. My body worked on its own from then on, going through steps it felt like I’d done a thousand times before. I couldn’t remember anything from my past lives, but it seemed that my muscles did. It was as if the memory wipe following every death of mine had failed to erase the knowledge trapped within my body. As this stored-up knowledge escaped, it allowed me to execute moves I hadn’t even thought of, with such efficiency that it slowed the drain of my stamina to a bare trickle, allowing me to continue without pausing for air.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I was the sickle and they were the wheat, patiently waiting for harvest. I left such a devastation behind me that soon those bandits fortunate enough to be at the back of the pushing mob, decided to turn tail and run. Those stubborn enough to stay behind met their end on my black edge, which was an unstoppable force that neither armour, flesh, nor bone could withstand. The blade cut with every pass, severed with each flourish, and existed solely as an extension of me, created only for this purpose: my Dance of Death.
When all was silent and what remained around me were nothing but severed limbs, still bodies, and blood gushing across the earth and grass, that was when I stopped and took in what I’d done.
I’d like to pretend that I simply turned around and left, all cool and calm, but I didn’t. I looked on in horror at the destruction I’d wrought, and with shuddering convulsions emptied my stomach again-and-again, until only mucus and bile came out.
Stumbling like a weakling, I made my way outside the barn full of corpses, and saw several white wisps floating above the dead, one even hovering near the severed limb of Red Rian. As I instinctively passed my hand through the one nearest to me, a tooltip appeared and said, ‘Red Runner Baldric’, it further stated that it was a leather chestpiece, but I already liked what I had, besides, it hadn’t done much to help the man whose body I looted it from. I picked it up nonetheless, figuring I could sell it later. Besides the baldric, I also found a short-bow, and a worn iron dagger, which I picked up as well.
I went over to the wisp above Red Rian’s severed arm, which lay near the barn door, and when I stuck my hand through it, a different, more elaborate tooltip appeared:
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‘Red Rian’s Fang’
-Melee Weapon-
Dagger > Dual-Wielded
“A wolf has its claws, Red Rian has his Fangs. The blade of this dagger is permanently stained from all the blood it has drunk in the possession of the Bandit Lord.”
Trait(s):
‘Blooddrinker’
Equip
Discard
Weight: 0.8 kilos
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‘Red Rian’s Fang’ it said. It was specifically stated as a weapon of the type, ‘Dual-Wielded Dagger’, which likely meant it could only be used dual-wielded with another blade, just like how Red Rian had used it. Its weight was less than my ‘Passing Breeze’, but not by much. The item art featured a plain, large-bladed dagger, with a worn wooden hilt, and no crossguard. It was a weapon for cutting and stabbing, nothing else.
The blade was a dull iron-grey, but had a disturbing red hue, as if it had consumed enough blood to permanently stain it. Unlikely my katana, the dagger had just one trait, likely because it was one of the first special items in this World. ‘Blooddrinker’ it was called. I clicked on the description of the trait, and it read: “Inflicts heavy bleed damage.”[1]
After reading its flavour text, I frowned at the word use. There was nothing lordly about a murderer like that. Well, at least I could probably sell his weapon and the other items I’d picked up, and hopefully solve my current money problem. The thought of having to rely on a stranger again didn’t sit well with me.
I looked around, seeing no living soul within the area, and knew that Red Rian had made good on his escape. I had no idea where to go from here, but figured that maybe Captain Tabian, whom the army Quartermaster had mentioned, might be worth paying a visit.
As I headed for the exit to the farmstead, denoted by the ruined gate, it felt as if my feet were dragging slightly, and I instinctively consulted my ‘Statistics’ screen. Sure enough, all of the items I’d picked up had increased my ‘Equipment Weight’ to 9.5 kg and as a result my ‘Stamina’ was now at seventy percent, with my ‘Movement Speed’ lowered to modest. I realised that I had to be careful with how much stuff I looted, since I had no way of knowing whether I might be attacked on the road, and having an increased inventory weight carried with it too many demerits for my careless fighting style.
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[1] That certainly explained why after just one hit I’d become a human fountain…