And so it continued; I constantly bombarded the creature with attacks to keep the dumb brute’s attention. Unfortunately its attention span was about half a minute. Why can’t it be a little more interested in finding me? Sure, I’m grateful it’s about stupid as it can get; I mean I think it hasn’t even realised that I can create illusions yet, just that I’m really fast from the way it keeps looking at the surroundings in the hope to miraculous spot me. Of course, I stayed hidden.

I was rather unhappy with the sheer difference in strength between the creature and I; to be honest I prided myself in being highly skilled in combat amongst the human population, but it’s oh so very evident that I’m far from the top. Experienced heroes or those famous wizards with their tier 10 magic could wipe a best like this out after a few moves in all likelihood. How enviable. I enjoy my job, but being strong is also something that would be nice. Serenity gave me an edge, but there are limitations on her power, and so far nothing has been usable in direct confrontation, although I can’t say that her spells haven’t been useful at all.

I’d only been fighting for a few minutes and I was already feeling some mental strain from constantly being on guard as I launched my assaults; one mistake and I would be done for. It’s irritating that that stupid hero isn’t here to help, or at least offer support. I sighed in the darkness. Not that she’d be any help; wait a few months and sure she could probably take down the slobbering shadow in front of me, but now? No. Just my luck. Why do heroes even get given all that power? Shouldn’t the residents of this world be given it? I mean, it is our world. Heroes always end up making changes in society whenever they come, each enforcing some of their ideals with the power granted to them by the world… wait, could that be the reason? To change our society? But nothing’s wrong with it...

Oh, looks like the shadows let his guard down enough to launch my next attack. I took the opportunity to dart in and perform a wonderful manoeuvre where I gave the shadow a vertical, superficial gash in its back, followed by launching myself off of it back into the shadows with a flip. May as well do this in a flashy manner to prevent me losing interest. The shadow swung around when it realised it had been wounded, clearly enraged, if its frothing from the mouth was anything to go by. It didn’t really appear to feel much pain if any at all.

I was rather proud of my ability to cause pain with my attacks and here this thing wasn’t even flinching. This characteristic would be useful against an opponent who fought head on, certainly, but against myself with these guerrilla tactics, it was only playing to my advantage; can’t feel my attacks and can’t find me? It’s pretty much a guaranteed loss for the shadow. Although, granted I can’t exactly kill it with these wounds.

Serenity, want to chat? I’m pretty bored.

Can’t. I’m concentrating

I sighed. Looks like Serenity won’t be able to keep me occupied. Letting my mind wander for the next 24 hours seems the only way to go. Initially I was worried that I’d be especially tense all the time, but in reality it was only when I had to launch another assault, the rest of the time was just boring. Well, I can just go for it I suppose.

1 hour after start… That’s a quite a nice number of injuries on the shadow. To be specific that last one would be my 165th superficial wound I’ve inflicted. Kind of reminds me of that one day with chuckles. I came round with a bottle of wine I’d smuggled into the church, not that alcohol was illegal, just that it was frowned upon, and I’d laid two glasses out for us. Sometimes I liked to chat with chuckles. His mad delusions and ramblings were sometimes quite insightful. Wisdom in madn- happiness I guess. Anyway, that day was pretty fun; I decided to cover as much of chuckles’ body with incisions, and of course I let him enjoy some wine afterwards; just poured the stuff directly onto his wounds. The faster it enters the blood stream the better, right? Good times. We had good old laugh back then, unlike the shadow here, which was madly scrambling in a frenzy all over the place. It seemed to have gotten the gist that I was invisible, unfortunately. Now this meant moving around a bit in my breaks. Just another 23 hours or so.

6 hours after start… I was starting to get tired at this point, but luckily the amusing scene of the shadow slipping in its own pools of blood kept me awake and entertained. By now it was covered in so many wounds that barely any skin was left, but the damn thing still wasn’t in pain, in fact it was as energetic as ever, climbing up the walls with its talons, trying to find me. Well… I wasn’t on the walls, so once again I was left to my own devices. All I could do was reminisce, attack, and repeat. Serenity hadn’t said a word for ages and the little owl body of hers appeared to be in some sort of meditative state, with the eyes gazing blankly at nothing in particular, but still miraculously maintaining balance as I attacked the shadow. I tried waving my hand in front of her faces and got no response. Kind of reminded me of chuckles just before he started chuckling; no reaction whatsoever. He was pretty boring back in the day, but we all have our dark pasts, right?

12 hours after start… Yep, still at it… I’d started focusing on specific areas of the shadows to mince up, and one would be able to see strands of flesh hanging down from those areas and a slightly more concave shape of the wounds as I tried to dig out as much meat as possible with my rapier. Not the best weapon for the job but I was getting there. The stupid thing had started digging holes, as if I’d be hiding under the floor as it was when I first entered the cavern. I make fun of stupid beast, but in reality if it weren’t for its entertaining antics I would probably have fallen asleep from boredom long ago. I was also getting a pretty good work out; muscles starting to burn slightly. I’d definitely be sore after all of this. Ok! Next attack, let’s start with a nasty burn.

23 hours after start… So. Very. Close. The ragged and bleeding figure that still energetically dashed around the place, leaking blood and saliva by the litre was starting to become a bit of an old sight. It could only be so long before it ran out of creative things to do. On the brighter side, I’d nearly crippled its leg; got half way through one of the muscles, causing it to stumble quite a bit more. Only one more hour or so. I just don’t get the same rush from doing all of this damage when it doesn’t react with cries of pain, or you know, pained screeches. This entire scenario just felt incomplete.

I wonder what Hina’s up to. Did she get eaten by something or fall to her death. No, my luck isn’t good enough for something as unfortunate as that to happen to her. Speaking of Hina, is that her over there? Oh dear… it is. Why did the idiot come back?! She was just at the entrance, peeking her head in to the cavern. She actually fainted when she saw the big, bloody mess running about the place. Of course, as soon as the big, bloody mess saw Hina it sprinted at her with full speed. Serenity, you nearly finished?

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Few more moments

Well it’s a race against time for Hina, I’m not stepping in. I watched as the shadow ripped up debris as it hurtled towards Hina’s body. It was at this point that I noticed Hina had actually kept that big sack with her. Maybe she’s not as bad as I thought; I would’ve expected her to just throw it away somewhere… or is it because of some twisted hero-justice, not leaving anyone to die, thing… except me. Or did she think I could kill the monster here? Well she did come back… Oh well, let’s see if she survives. It would be a shame to see the heretic die though; she would’ve never made it to the pyre. It’s quite sad when you think about it.

Of course hero’s luck intervened and the muscle I’d half butchered, tore as it was closing in, sending the shadow face first into the floor at full speed. I could hear a few of its bones snap as it did. Of course, the determined fellow wasn’t giving up so easily, it dragged it’s partially broken body towards Hina with its limbs in a grotesque manner, but once again hero’s luck occurred.

Finished.

And with that it dropped powerlessly to the floor, succumbing to its injuries as its last vestibules of strength left it. It made a garbled gurgling as its life slowly faded away. I walked over and prodded it with my foot to see if it had died; even if it was still alive it couldn’t do me any harm now. Nope, dead. If this was a magical beast I’d be through the roof at this moment, but these damn shadows never have anything valuable on them. After they die, you cut them apart and what? Cracked magical crystals: worthless, now weakened body parts: worthless, equipment of adventurers they’d eaten: worthless; who would pay for a half melted steel dagger?

We actually benefitted quite a lot. You didn’t use more natural magical energy than I absorbed and refined, so your store has been filled quite well.

Well at least it wasn’t completely useless. Although I would’ve liked something of monetary value. Well, all I could do was hope that the large door that had ominously creaked open, as I looked the dead shadow over, had hidden something valuable behind it. I turned around to look into it and saw it was pitch black. Nothing could be seen inside. The doorway seemed to emanate an eerie aura, discouraging those who approach from entering. It was actually a little bit nauseating, but who cares? If I get something valuable, it will be well worth the upset stomach.

I left the fainted Hina to her own non-existent devices and walked over to the now opened area. I couldn’t take her along; she would most likely cause things to become problematic. If something comes along and eats her while I’m gone, then it can’t be said to be my fault; she somehow survived the past 24 hours, so she can survive a few moment more. It was also clearly evident from the bags under her eyes and gauntness in her face that she was thoroughly exhausted. Waking her up right now would just be cruel; so of course, I’ll be kind enough to allow her to continue resting, in that sprawled position, on that comfortable, stone floor.

I walked over to the door and entered. The first thing I felt was, strangely enough, a sense of familiarity. A relatively small room, a stone basin at the centre of that room and a chalice on the floor in front of it. The spitting image of the location where the revealing ceremony for the heroes occurred back in Sol city. Of course there was some minor differences. Like the all the stone in the area being a charcoal black and the liquid in the basin itself being a disgusting, oily looking black substance, in contrast to the crystal clear water that the heroes drank from. It was like some dark reflection of the revealing room.

So, a room to create another hero? I know other kingdoms have their own methods of creating heroes; some have similar methods to the kingdom of Sol, others invite their citizens to try and get chosen by some magical weapons or something like that and so on; I never really looked into it that often. This could be some kind of ancient way to create a hero? Well, no instructions anywhere, or anything to help me understand anything about the stuff here… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to imitate the heroes’ revealing ceremony… but back in Sol city, anyone native to this world died after drinking… but I really want to try… Should I test it out on the heretic first? If it works, she’d still be weak; can’t do anything without limbs after all.

After making up my mind, I returned to retrieve the elf. Once I re-entered the revealing room, I casually tossed her out of the bag, sending her rolling across the floor, causing her to let out a few grunts of pain. When she eventually lost momentum, she looked up at me with eyes devoid of hope. Without explanation I walked towards her, drawing the same knife I used to make sure she couldn’t escape. Despite not having any limbs left, she made an admirable attempt to escape with the stumps I left behind, her expression only revealing panic and terror, as they began to fill with tears.

“P-please” she stuttered as she desperately tried to crawl away. Please? Please make you drink this oily, black substance and see if you survive? Of course.

“No problem” I replied with a kind smile as I knelt down next to her and made a small incision, collecting some blood on the blade to drip into the chalice. After this I walked away, leaving the elf confused and trembling. I picked up the chalice and dripped the blood onto the chalice. As the blood was absorbed into the stone, as with the heroes’ chalices, inscriptions began to engrave themselves onto the stone. They were similar in structure to those on the cavern walls leading here, similar to that of the heroes’ inscriptions but also holding notable differences in the style. The inscriptions didn’t form a weapon but the outline of an elf. I scooped up some of the oily black liquid and observed as the inscriptions seemed to start jerking around oddly on the stone, emanating a mysterious aura, which I couldn’t place to any particular attribute, unlike the light attribute back in Sol city.

Afterwards, I returned to the still confused elf and forced the black liquid down her throat as she started gurgling and doing her best to spit it out. Couldn’t have that, so I held my hand over her mouth and nose after pouring the liquid down her throat to make sure she drank every last drop. The inscriptions jerkily travelled onto her body and she began to writhe in pain as they went onto and sank into her skin. After about a minute she stopped writhing and looked around in confusion. She appeared disoriented as though she had just woken up from a deep sleep.

“W-what did you do to me?” she asked, appearing slightly befuddled.

“Don’t know” I answered pleasantly, proceeding to stuff her back into the sack with the rest of her limbs.

Well… It didn’t kill her, so it shouldn’t kill me. My turn then.