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Gray's Crucible
Chapter 3 [How high is that?]

Chapter 3 [How high is that?]

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     As Gray's equilibrium was broken he had begun to collapse, but when his danger sense had began shrieking at him his body tried to react and attempted to face the new threat.  The result was instead of collapsing on his face he landed on his ass, he was also fairly certain he had a really foolish look on his face.  These two factors when combined with his nakedness probably saved his life, as the Myrk simply walked past him obviously not even viewing him as a threat.  The one in the center even snorted at him in amusement as it passed by him.  

     These bastards considered the woman a bigger threat than him, much bigger; as to kill her they would have to turn their backs on him.  Irritation flashed through him as he forced himself up, if they were going to present their backs even if it was three on one he had a chance.  They were a bit bigger than him but they were still vaguely humanoid.  He was certain the gap in strength could not be too great between them.  Taking a half step backward he shifted his weight slightly and readied himself to leap out of the hole he was still in.

    From a standing position he estimated it would take a lot of his force to leap to ground level.  He was after all literally half buried; figuring jumping too high would be far preferable to falling again, and if he did it would be on his face this time, so he launched himself from the ground with all his might aiming to land in the vicinity of the center creature.

     Suddenly the world... shifted, wind ripped through his hair and whistled by his ears,  air blasted his eyes causing them to tear up.  He squinted, trying to understand what had happened.  Then he realized he was sailing through the air.  The vault out from the hole had launched him high, comically high.  By his own estimate he was at least thirty feet off the ground and only just now slowing down and topping out from his jump.  Considering he had been standing still and started below ground level he estimated his current altitude as 'What the fuck' high.

     As Gray's body reached the apex of his jump it somehow turned a revolution bringing the center creature back into his line of sight.  "Show off" he muttered under his breath as he lined up on the center enemy again.  His ascent had shifted him off target slightly and he estimated that only his left arm or leg would be able to reach his target as he landed.  He quickly decided on his arm, if something was going to be injured it should be his arm.  He was going to need his legs if he fought the other two, and his right arm was dominant anyway.  

     As soon as the decision was made his body began to act, his left arm drawing back above his head and swinging down with the momentum from his fall.  Wind assailed him again as he fell back toward the earth, the dumb look on his face was gone now in its place now a fierce  smile.

     

      A stone knocks his targets head back and stops it in its tracks.  Their eyes meet as Gray falls towards the creature and it looks up completely stunned.  Gray's smile widens further as fear enters the creatures eyes.  His lips peel back revealing his teeth as his left fist rams downward combined with the momentum from his fall smashing into the Myrk's nose.

     

      His fist slows as it meets resistance from the creatures face, before the bones give way under the massive pressure.  The poor creatures face begins to cave in.

     All the pressure applied to the face has to go somewhere and with a surprisingly loud   the creatures head bursts like an over-ripe watermelon hit by a sledge hammer.  Blood and brownish grey matter explode outward from whats left of the creatures crushed head splattering Gray's body with gore.  

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     The Myrk's head popped.  It made the sound and everything.    The sound replayed in her head involuntarily.  The demon had done something, Eri had no idea what.  But it had just killed a Myrk; it had done so barehanded and in a spectacularly brutal fashion.  This thing was far, far more dangerous than the Myrks.  With her terror blown away by the scene she had witnessed Eri did the only thing she knew to do when faced with a monster that crushed other monsters with its bare hands.  She spun around as quickly as she could and started sprinting.  

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     "Fucking ow!"  Gray muttered, his left hand hurt.  Nowhere near as much as expected though, agitating the broken finger had caused a great deal of pain.  But apart from that there seemed to be no damage from the fall or punching the thing at his feet.  It didn't make sense to him, a small rock broke a finger but the massive force of that last hit hadn't damaged him at all.  What the hell physics?  He forced himself to calm down, he still had two more problems to clear.  If he lived then he could think about it.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

   

     The woman who attacked him earlier spun around to flee and ran headlong and full tilt into a low hanging tree branch, hitting it so hard her legs actually continued forward even after her head and torso were stopped cold.  She then crashed to the ground on her back like a puppet with its strings cut.  That was really gonna hurt when she woke up.  A chuckle left his mouth, karma was apparently in full effect in this world.  Even if physics had gone on vacation.

    His thoughts returned to the remaining two monsters and he realized that they were still standing around 20 paces away from him, and hadn't moved at all since he had landed.  A closer look caused his chuckle to become full blown laughter, they were both standing there feet shoulder width apart, arms totally relaxed with their clubs resting on the ground staring at him with wide eyes and fully open mouths.  It was the most perfect definition of slack jawed he had ever encountered.  His laughter jogged them back to attention, and they picked up their clubs and begin rushing towards him.

     Two big logs were going to be swung at him, if a rock that weighed ten or so ounces broke a bone...  Well, better to not think about it.  He quickly scooped up the stone blade from the fallen Myrk surprised by how light it was, and lifted the blade vertically while placing his weight on his back foot in a defensive stance.  He would turn aside the first tree limb with the stone blade and then counter attack after dodging the second one.  

     The Myrk both arrived almost simultaneously, the attacks would be only a few seconds apart.  His blade was brought up to the downward swinging branch guiding it away from his body, and back toward the ground.  Moving the branch just enough so as to cause a miss.  Now stepping into the second monster's downward swing, and pivoting to avoid the damage he swung his own blade upward from the ground toward the second Myrk. 

     The attack caught the monster below its left armpit and carried through its shoulder, biting into its neck.  Unfortunately a loud crack was heard as the stone blade cracked and broke in the center.  Rendering it completely useless as a weapon.  At least the monster was down, thrashing and spewing blood around like a lawn sprinkler but not getting up.

     The remaining Myrk had recovered and was swinging wide in a horizontal ark this time, giving Gray the choice of catching it with his chest or diving out of the way.  He chose to dive, toward the fallen log the now stone dead second monster had dropped.  Snatching it up before standing and facing the last creature.  The two stared at each other a moment, and Gray couldn't help but start to grin again.  He had once played a fighting game with a prototype VR headset at an electronics show in Vegas in his old world, back then he was impressed.  This was so much better.  

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     The last Myrk stood before the naked man-thing.  Then the man-thing made a horrific face, the same face it had worn while its comrades head burst apart.  Fear blossomed inside the Myrk, and it reached the same conclusion the more tender man-thing had earlier.  This wasn't a food man-thing this was a bad man-thing, and it was time to flee.  But before it could even finish turning away it had already been hit by the man-things meat smasher and sent crashing into a tree.  Its vision faded to red and then faded to black.  The last thing it saw was the bad man-thing looked down at his now splintered meat smasher in surprise.  As it died its last thought was, what a scary naked man-thing.

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     Well dear readers, I hope your happy.  I'm totally late for work now.  Couldn't help it though.  The words just  wouldn't stop.  Also this ones a little shorter than I would like, but I didn't want to leave it hang again.  Anyway, please comment or if your shy just rate me.  Having so many views with little to no feedback is making me somewhat nervous.