Chapter 75 - Trolls Massacre
Time slowed down for Bryn. He saw the wind blowing in the branches and leaves; looking at the incoming creatures, Bryn noticed the troll's hand growing as its claws reflected a bit of the sunlight.
Is this how it'll end? I don't want to die. A tear formed in Bryn's eye, rolling down his pale face as the sides of his mouth moved upwards. Closing his eyes, he could see the events of his past life before him, followed by the experience he had ever since coming to this world. Freya, Sylas, Eamon, Kwame, the caravan, Gabriel, Michelle, and the others at the village all offuscated the bad. The more the image of their faces formed and grew in intensity, the bigger his frustration.
Ever since the memory lane started, only a portion of a second had passed. The nearest troll still had a couple of steps it needed to take before reaching him. Looking back at the creatures, his heart became more vigorous. The beat echoed through his entire body and mind, breaking his concentration on his memories. Searching inside his body, he felt a beat stronger than usual. It was strong enough that his chest felt small, as if the heart was trying to escape its cage.
This is not where I die! The heartbeat was so strong this time that he heard his heart responding to his desire to keep fighting. The trembling on both legs stopped. Bryn's temperature dropped a few degrees before his core resonated with his heart. With each beat, the mana inside Bryn's core pulsed. Radiating through his entire body, his blood, muscles, tendons, and bones reacted to the mana, absorbing and circling it all around.
Bryn stood up, straightening his body and facing the incoming creatures. In Bryn's eyes, both were moving slower than before. He felt as if everything happened in a slow-mo effect. They were running, noises came from around him, the mana flowed around the area, and everything felt different.
He could sense a surge in energy coming from every fiber of his being. The air around him dispersed, and a bit of vapor was generated from the fluctuating mana.
Suddenly, a usual ring sounded in his mind.
– Skill Acquired –
Magical Body Activation LVL. 1 (1%)
– Skill Description –
Magical Body Activation LVL. 1 (3%)
All statuses gain a 20% bonus per skill level. Doubles the mana consumption from the magical body when active.
He could feel his capabilities increasing by the second. The amount of mana his body craved grew; it felt like an insatiable thirst had overtaken his cells. He focused on delivering the mana as best he could using his technique. Still, there needed to be more time to study himself. Now a yard away, his first target swang its right arm as it jumped toward the faun. Bryn added all his unassigned points on intelligence and agility. His mind was working on overdrive, and he felt lighter with every status point added, hitting the staggering 54 points without bonuses or blessings.
Looking at the claw coming his way, Bryn's right hand took Akusashi away from its sheath. He held the blade backward as his body tilted slightly to the left. The rushing claw passed inches away from his face. His hair and fur waved by the wind from the claw's speed, but his face remained calm.
"Because of you, I grew stronger," he said softly to the troll right before his body twisted. He finished the evasion maneuver that allowed him to accumulate momentum as his right hand returned, lodging Akusashi at the troll's right ribcage. Instantly, the troll roared in pain as the frost spread at an incredible rate through his body. The creature jumped away from Bryn instinctively, but its speed was far from enough.
Bryn followed its direction; he held his blase again, removing it from the beast's cheek. The resistance of the troll was remarkable; even with the additional bonuses, not even half of his body had been frozen. Desperation poured out of the creature's expression. It tried running toward the one in the distance as Bryn started to form a pressured water sphere as giant as the frozen region in the troll's body. The sphere burst on impact, and the frozen portion of the troll's body exploded into tiny specs of frozen flesh. The scene was a mixture of horrifying and marvelous; a third of the creature had disappeared, leaving the remains to drop lifeless, but the explosion forced the iced particles everywhere, reflecting the sunlight in different directions and causing the area to glow as if each spec of ice was a star in the sky.
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- Level UP ! -
Level 34 -> Level 35 (18%)
Gained 9 status points
The last warrior troll rushing at Bryn had lost any resemblance of conscience. Rage had taken over its body completely. The movements became sloppier and even more telegraphed than before. Bryn evaded every attempt from the troll, whether lowering his body, jumping, or side-stepping; he was untouchable in the creature's eyes. Having lost all fear of death from the trolls, Bryn stored Akusashi and raised his fists.
What is the point of a magical body if you don't test it? Bryn thought as he activated Bryn's Inferno once again, this time on himself and not on any weapon.
Whenever the troll missed an attack, Bryn would counter with a few punches aimed at the region where humans had their vital organs. Wherever the punches land, frostbite takes a toll on the troll's body. If the opening were big enough, Bryn would sidekick the frozen areas, breaking some of the frozen parts from the troll and freezing the layer below. With its spirit broken and the main tendons destroyed by Bryn, the troll knelled. Both arms fell to the sides as Bryn looked up at its dead eyes.
Realeafing his fear and frustration, Bryn landed a sequence of punches at the troll's face, slowly freezing its head. Forming a frozen top, the body remained in the same position as Bryn walked to the side. The scene before him was nothing like before their conflict; the forest had been destroyed, and the two other remains were displayed for anyone to see. Bryn understood that warfare was as much physical as it was psychological. He looked at the last remaining enemy as he used his thumb to slice his throat.
The creature had no idea what it meant, but the next movement erased any doubt. Bryn jumped, and in a 360-degree motion in the air, his right hoove stroked the frozen head perfectly centered. The shards fell to the sides as the headless body dropped to the ground. Bryn then smiled as he started to walk toward the beast. A few steps were taken slowly, and soon, he increased his speed incrementally until he was running at top speed.
At that moment, the small faun looked like a maniacal giant. Looking at the young thing in the eyes, the troll saw only death. The cruelty that had happened with all the previous ones had taken the tool on its body and mind. It assumed defeat even before Bryn arrived to decapitate it with Akusashi.
As the last troll dropped, Bryn's breath increased, and he allowed his body to fall to the ground. As adrenaline passed, he started to feel his own body. The pain increased by leaps and bounds in mere seconds. He screamed as much as he could as he began to cry. Looking at the sky, his vision was watery from the crying. He rose akusashi to his vision. It was now surrounded by a blue sky, a few clouds, and the canopy of the remaining trees. He pulled Akusashi to his chest, remembering the help he got from it and those in his mind previously.
I can't rely on you forever, Bryn thought as he got up, his eyes and nose still dripping. He used what remained from his shirt to clean his face as he looked toward the troll's nest. He could listen to the massive number of creatures coming from that direction; none of them caused a disturbance in the mana flow as the troll variations he had just fought. Still, their numbers were in the hundreds. His body was still in pain; Bryn closed his eyes and started to breathe, focusing mana on his eyes and mana sense. A black-and-white picture of the incoming creatures formed in his mind. The distance he could perceive had grown by leaps and bounds from both the leveling and the additional boost from activating his magical body. Bryn noticed that his additional intelligence compensated for the mana consumption by letting it active. Mana capacity and generation were the only things he found impossible to train, only increasing directly with his intelligence status.
His proficiency with everything else outgrew his leveling with training. Once a threatening force, the incoming army looked like Catle coming to the slaughter. With magical body activation on, he generated more manda than demanded, allowing him to use it full-time. The number of enemies and the increased strength provoked a sinister smile on his face.
I still don't know if this world is real, and I don't see what others would think. Still, whoever played an RPG or an FPS dreamed of testing it. As Bryn thought about it, his mind visualized a Gatling gun, the barrels spinning, each bullet feeding the gun's chamber, the ammo belt allowing the machine to work as fast as possible, each bullet exploding forward, gaining spin to maintain the intended direction.
As the spikes gained spin, the spell remained before him, forming the vertices of an equilateral hexagon. The form started to rotate clockwise when the first spike was shot. The spell was still flying towards the targets when the second one was sent at them. Whenever a spike reached the twelve o'clock position, Bryn would release it, forming a new spell sixty degrees clockwise. The idea previously had been good, but it demanded weak spells to be a constant.
Faster! He thought, increasing the spells shot every second.
The moment the first spell found its target, the body of the young trolls had no chance of resisting them. The mana Bryn had used to create each ice drill was enough to cruise through the body of at least four of them before losing all momentum or crashing in pieces. Looking at the scene, he reduced the mana for each portion of the combination spell, allowing him to create weaker individual ice bullets and increase the discharge rate. The change caused his mana reserves to drop at a noticeable rate.
"Partial success, I guess," Bryn said, looking at the devastated corpses of dozens of trolls to all sides. The first wave of spells had scared a few of the creatures, but the survivors started to disperse as the second round of weaker bullets arrived. He spent the remaining day hunting every beast that evaded him, and at night, he decided to rest.
A few moments earlier, Jonas sensed Bryn's movements around the nest. The moment Bryn woke up all the creatures, Jonas readied himself for an intervention but soon realized he had it under control. It was unexpected that one of the trolls at the nest already used Magic since that was one of the requisites for the combat trolls of an older nest. The one at the region seemed interesting in that regard.
Jonas kept watching with mana sense Bryn's tactics and his use of terrain, weapon, magic, and strategy. Everything seemed under control until the magic troll sent the boulders flying. From Jonas's point of view, it would be the first time seeing Bryn in action with significant risk involved. Jonas's skin paled from a distance as he saw the kid's color obfuscate everything else in the area, his core started to shine almost as bright as the sun for an instant.
Jonas rose to his feet without realizing, squinting his eyes aimed at Bryn. He instantly called Gabriel as he watched the unfolding events. His mouth could not believe what he was explaining to his general commander.