His pants were soaked in blood all the way to the knees. Every step he took, his boots undertoned with a squishy sound. His shoulders felt heavy and his mind overstrained. Just slugging himself forwards felt like an unwinnable battle, like running a marathon and realizing on mile 18 that he hadn’t actually trained for it,

The truth was though, that a marathon would’ve been a mere joke compared to what Marcel had just gone through. By his best estimates he had just spent the last six hours in a continuous battle against the largest kobold swarm he had seen so far.

Marcel had stopped counting somewhere after hitting the high three digits. His mana had been exhausted over an hour ago and he had only been dragging along by relying on his pure trident work.

Sneaking along the cave side that made up their outer den had been worth it. Over the last few days the swarms had been getting more and more numerous, but the one today had just been over the top.

All he could think of now was dragging himself somewhat away from the kobold city, in the hopes of catching a few hours of uninterrupted sleep to get himself up to speed. The further away from the den, the better. That single thought was implemented in his mind and kept him going.

Sadly it didn’t come to pass. Only a few cave chambers after his latest slaughter, a faint rustling brought Marcel to stop in his tracks. He gripped his trident tighter. His fingers protesting, and his underarms cramping. He ignored it.

There was scraping on stone behind him. Marcel spun around and thrust his trident forward. A low squeal was heard as his weapon sank into soft flesh. His eyes fell onto one kobold impaled on the largest spike of his trident. Its blood ran down the shaft, mixing with the dried and crusted lifeblood of his brethren.

His a quick jerk and a twist of his hand Marcel pushed the trident a little deeper and retrieved it in the same movement. That left the kobold collapsing on the floor with a medium sized hole in its chest. Just enough for Marcel to be sure it wouldn’t get up again.

Over the last days and weeks Marcel had learned how to kill these monsters as efficiently as possible. Tricks like this were so deep ingrained into his muscle memory that he could do them in his sleep by now. Which sometimes, he needed to do.

Another group of snarling reptiles stood behind their fallen comrade. Marcel gave them a quick headcount. Nine. Nine more. He groaned inwardly. There was nothing he wanted to do more than finally getting his rest. Usually nine were no problem, but with his current condition even that could prove fatal.

He was out of mana, therefore unable to activate and rely on his skills. He couldn’t take this fight too lightly. Just letting one of them get too close could be his last mistake.

Still he couldn’t run. Not without running the risks of these kobolds alerting even more of their kind. Thankfully the decision was taken from him a moment afterwards, when the first of the snarling beasts threw itself at him.

Marcel was ready. He widened his stance, lowered his base. The thing charged at him. Marcel fainted a thrust. The beast threw itself to the side, its maw widening into a satisfied snarl. Evading Marcel's attack had not opened a direct path to his unprotected body for him. A zone for it to sink in its teeth.

At least that’s what the kobold thought. Marcel had enough experience in fighting kobolds by now to know how to trick and trap them the best. Just as the beast wanted to get into a leap at Marcel, he swung his weapon around, using the whole weight of his wide stance and thundering the backside of his weapon into the monster's head. An audible crunch was heard as the kobolds head caved inwards under the attack.

Marcel wasted no time, he pushed forwards and was in the midst of his enemies before they knew what was happening. His attacks were lightning quick and two of the kobolds fell in quick succession to clean sweeps. His attack upon a third was too slow thought,and the beast managed to escape with only a small gash over its torso.

Marcel almost cursed. That mistake wouldn’t have happened under normal circumstances, but he could feel the stiffness in his muscles. The lactic acid slowed him down.

Still, three were down for the count. Only seven left.

The kobolds exploded upon Marcel from all sides. A pair came from the left, another from the right. They had realized the danger he represented now, and changed tactics.

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This was something Marcel had seen before though. He met the pair attacking from his right. He sidestepped one of the kobolds leaps at the last second, placing himself behind his attackers.

His trident darted out like a snake, leaving two wounds in the other kobolds back. Then Marcel spun around and placed a solid kick to the head of the kobold he had just evaded.

A sharp pain erupted in his left leg. Pressure built that almost made Marcel stumble. It quickly vanished when Marcel rammed one of the smaller spikes of his tridents between the kobolds eyes though.

A quick glance confirmed that the headkicked kobold wasn’t moving anymore. Neither was the one with the pierced back. So four more to go.

Marcel threw himself to the ground and rolled to the side when a snarl erupted over him. A moment later one of the half a meter tall reptiles landed where he just stood, its claws buried dangerously into the ground.

Still crouched down Marcel impaled it with a quick thrust of his trident. When the beast fell over Marcel didn’t have enough power left though, and his weapon fell from his grip.

He had no time to go after it as the remaining three kobolds rushed him at once. Marcel ducked and weaved. He sidestepped and strategically placed his assailants in each other's way. Only using his fists and shins he finished them off. In the end he had to resort to letting his opponents land some strikes on him. Without the range advantage, kobolds proved frustratingly nimble and almost impossible to pin down.

After letting the last one land a nasty scratch on his forearm, Marcel hit it with a devastating knee to the face. It collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

That made ten.

Marcel was left panting. Scratches and bite marks painted a picture of violence all over his body. If in his old world he had walked into a hospital looking like this, he reckoned they would’ve sent him down straight towards the morgue. But the rules in this world worked differently, and his body was able to take decidedly more punishment than should be normal.

He slowly stumbled and retrieved his trident, before collapsing at the end of the cave. He had no more energy to walk away further, and as soon as the adrenaline left him fell into a deep sleep.

When Marcel awoke he had no idea how much time had passed. It was a common occurrence really these days, and, Marcel believed firmly, one of the things that contributed most to his growing insanity.

He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it in the beginning, but there was no denying that he was drifting a little too far away from a healthy functioning mind. His days were constantly spent in darkness and the dim air of the caves. In the beginnings he had relied on his lumistones to lighten his ways, but since his Perception had increased to a level where he was able to navigate through these caverns even in utter darkness, he had stopped using them. They just made him unnecessarily easy to spot.

Since then his hours had been spent in pure darkness, which was already a bad foundation for his mental health. But his activities didn’t help. They were mainly walking, and fighting. There wasn’t much time for anything in between, as fighting started to take up more and more space of his day.

Since his decision to venture further inwards along the cave system, the number of encounters increased. But that was exactly according to Marcel's plan. He needed to kill as many of the kobolds as he could for his plan to work.

He could feel the toll the constant violence had on his psyche though. It was like every kobold he killed added a tiny bit of more weight upon his conscience. Stacking and stacking, until one day all Marcel could do was burst under the heaviness.

All this he observed with growing unease, but at the same time his plan continued to develop in exactly the fashion he wanted it.

Marcel watched the giant pillar of fire streaming upwards. The whole cave system was hulled in furious bright light. By now Marcel didn’t have to force calmness over himself anymore. He didn’t need to grip the edges so tight that he ripped his skin. His instincts weren’t screaming at him to run as hard and fast away as he could anymore.

He wasn’t sure when it had happened. But somewhere along the lines he had lost his fear. First it had started to fade. From a primal panic driving him to run for his life, to a mere mild discomfort, and now to nothing.

Marcel attributed it to a mixture of two things. For one, he had watched the spectacle happening dozens of times by now. It was almost familiar. But more importantly, he had also made some great leaps in Strength.

It was hard to accurately say how strong the dragon was. Definitely still leagues above him. But Marcel had managed to shorten the gap somewhat. Perhaps he was still nothing but a mouse compared to this terrifying being, but he wasn’t an ant anymore. And mice didn’t possess the same capability for terror.

It wasn’t just him that had changed though.

Marcel watched the kobolds trickle towards their master. Like one unison mass they moved, their rattling and shrieking becoming like a soldier's song. They were ready to meet their fate as fodder, grateful almost.

And as such the dragon teared into them, feasting upon hundreds of them at a time. The change Marcel was noticing was imperceptible almost. So very slight that at the beginning he had to sort of convince himself of it more than anything.

But now it slowly became apparent. The mass of kobolds that streamed towards the dragon no longer covered all of the cave floors and crawled along like the canyon itself had turned into a single moving organism. No, now there were holes in the masses. Spots through which the stone floor was glinting at Marcel. Patches of thinning.

His plan was working.