Leo had the strangest dream. He was comfortably lying on a soft ground somewhere in the Greenland, deep asleep and suddenly, in the darkness of the night, one after another the ugly greenlanders began to show up. They seemed to be harmless and only watched him sleep while talking to each other in soft voices.
Soon it became rather crowded and Leo could already count more than a dozen locals and, judging from the muffled footsteps, even more seemed to be on their way. It was rather bizarre to observe the greenlanders so close, in fact Leo couldn’t discern much except for their small eyes that for some reason were creepily shining in the dark. They seemed to be waiting for someone or something even though no one else was coming, but as it turned out a while later it was for the sky, or rather – the fog to get brighter. From the looks of it, if the Greenland wasn’t covered in a thick fog, one could currently witness a sunrise.
‘Damn it!’ Leo coursed to himself, ‘Why can’t I wash someone pretty in my dreams? Why all this nonsense?’
But soon the dream turned into a nightmare.
Apparently it was the moment everyone was waiting for and as if under a command thirty or so greenlanders jumped on Leo at the same time and began to bite him. If one could define the small ones chewing on person’s legs or hands ‘cute’, then this was anything but that. The bites were painful and the damn locals were actually trying to tear off pieces of flesh.
If Leo hadn’t gone thought the body refinement and afterwards crossed three more cultivation stages, most likely he would’ve been torn to pieces within a heartbeat, but now while trying to rip him apart few of the attackers even lost their teeth. It was a small victory for the victim, but getting eaten alive was not only painful physically, it seriously hurt his pride as well.
‘F*ck this!’ Leo decided to use the new technique in the dream and the next moment a couple attackers passed out electrocuted with heavy oral burns and smoke coming from their mouths.
Unfortunately the rest, seeing that the early morning breakfast decided to resist, growled in anger and sunk their teeth deep in Leo’s flesh, leaving bleeding wounds all over his body. He tried to release the lightning infused Qi through every skin cell in order to electrocute all the attackers at the same time, but either his Qi control lacked or the available amount of Qi was not enough, but his actions only seemed to anger the greenladers more.
‘Get the f*ck off me!’ Leo finally couldn’t take it and while jumping to his feet grabbed the Cleaver that lie besides him.
Attackers clearly didn’t expect he would resist this much and most jumped off in surprise, but that was all he needed. With a wide swing Leo cleaved at least five or six greenlanders in halves and then smacked the weapon’s flat side on another guy’s head making the upper body explode. At the sight of their own getting brutally murdered attackers froze in shock and that allowed Leo to pull a couple more off him and immediately smack them dead with the oversized weapon.
When the rest eventually reacted and attacked in a chaotic wave, the real massacre began. Leo disliked the little, ugly locals from the fist time they met and now could finally went his anger. Within the span of two breaths he cleaned up the whole battlefield while trying to kill the greenlanders as brutally as possible, although usually it only meant to make their heads explode hitting them with the flat side of the weapon.
Surprisingly no one even managed to escape, although a couple tried and soon Leo stood alone in the middle of the field, slightly out of breath, bleeding all over. There was one last unconscious guy still dangling at his neck who apparently got electrocuted earlier, but didn’t fall off because the sharp teeth were actually drilled in Leo’s collarbone. Leo tore him off in disgust, but almost fainted from the pain right after.
‘What the …’ He wanted to curse, but suddenly everything began to register in his brain.
The pain, his own blood, the corpses scattered around – it was all real! Probably because of the poisonous fog that made everyone pass out during the night he perceived the reality as a dream or a hallucination even though he was seriously wounded.
‘Oh no …’ Leo looked down at himself and his feet grew cold from the sight.
While being injured in a dream was unpleasant, it was a whole another matter if one had such injuries in the real life. Currently there was no spot on his body that had no deep bite marks on it and what shocked the youth even more was that all of the wounds bled rivers of blood.
‘F*ck, f*ck, f*ck …’ He kept cursing to himself and dropped the Cleaver while grabbing one healing elixir after another from his amulet.
After he chugged down at least ten, he took a handful of blood pills Jack supplied him with in secret before the departure and hurriedly began to bandage himself.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Daaaamn, Jack! … I love you, buddy!” He whispered realizing his older friend actually prepared a reasonable first aide kit for the road.
Of course, Leo was out of bandages before he properly managed to wrap the last spots – both hands, but he didn’t bother and tore all pieces of clothing he had in the amulet. It was already fully bright when he finished and even though the work has been done in a rush, at least he didn’t seem to bleed as heavily.
One could not consume too much healing medicine at once, at least not effectively, but after one more time observing his own condition Leo quickly drank few more healing elixirs and swallowed the rest of the blood pills he had. That allowed him to finally calm down a little and apparently with the first shock gone the real pain arrived.
Truth to be said, this was not the first time he was in excruciating pain, in fact, this didn’t even come close to the torture from the heavenly lightning he experienced in the past. And strangely enough this thought managed to calm him down even more.
Then Leo had another observation – for some reason the greenlanders didn’t bite off his face or the little Leo! Obviously he was not complaining, but it still felt weird. Be as it may, he survived the ordeal and it didn’t matter what the lady Evelyn thought – he was going back today. It didn’t matter he had a wagon of antidotes – if the greenlanders kept coming after him every night, there was no way he would have the chance to use even a tenth of those.
With a sigh Leo got up, picked up the Cleaver, looked at his bloodied weapon and began to lovingly clean it. No matter what one thought, the Shaw family had given him a great gift. Not only this thing saved his life by forcefully strengthening his body, it surely looked god damn cool when he smacked the little bastards to death!
“F*ck you, bitches!” Leo cursed and angrily kicked one of the severed heads and it instantly exploded.
It did bring the sense of satisfaction, but this time Leo completely ignored it. When the brain matter splattered in the surroundings, something slightly shiny flew out as well.
“Oh, god!” Leo was completely stunned after picking the small, round thing up.
This was a beast core! A rank three beast core!
Leo rubbed it few times against the torn clothing to clean it up, but no matter how one looked at it – it was a beast core. The greenlanders were not a native tribe! They were beasts! The members of expedition f*cking tried to befriend a pack of carnivorous beasts! Just how stupid were they?
The first impulse was to rush towards the teleportation platform, but somehow Leo suppressed it and began to gather the cores. Back in the Sacred Order’s Alchemy division he could, unofficially of course, exchange the beast cores for spirit stones and he didn’t want to let the unique opportunity to slip by. Sooner or later Leo intended to return to the Golden city and this time he wouldn’t be a complete pauper. Obviously, he would be the poorest person there, but at least he could buy a snack or teleport around the city few times, right?
With a little bit of effort Leo managed to gather six rank four beast cores and eighteen rank three. Clearly there were more attackers, but unfortunately he either stepped on their cores pressing them in the soft soil or they were lost otherwise. Be as it may, it was not a lot, but not bad for a start.
When Leo got to the teleportation platform, the fog was still bright. The idea of marking the trees was actually rather good and he noted to use this option in the future.
As it turned out, both sacks of the spirit stones he hid few days ago were still there, indicating the group of four didn’t desert, but were killed by the beasts. Leo wasn’t really close to anyone from the expedition group, but it still made him sad. Unfortunately it was already too late.
He buried one of the sacks again in case the remaining group decided to return, but before he began to prepare the platform to go back home, he froze in realization. Whom was he kidding?! After the last night it would be a wonder if even half of the people were left! And if they were, why no one rushed here?
Cursing to himself, Leo darted back towards the greenlander beast hill. Right, he didn’t care for them, but they were people! He just couldn’t let them get eaten by the ugly beasts just because he was lazy! Yes, he was badly injured, but the beasts were weak even though the hill was packed with them. He clearly remembered how his father stomped the rank three and four crabs into oblivion, annihilating hundreds and now he had the chance to save someone by doing the same.
On the way he drank few healing elixirs, just in case. He didn’t need to preserve those, because he intended to immediately return to the Aurora realm anyway with or without the other survivors.
Unfortunately as it turns out it was without. When Leo arrived at the hill, instead of the campsite he saw a horror-site. The whole place was littered with contents of the backpacks the expedition members arrived with as well as the body parts of the owners. It looked like this time the whole pack had left the hill and feasted on the flesh of the remaining seven people.
Clearly the feast had gone on for quite some time, because most of the beasts held only bloody bones and happily chewed on them. But the moment Leo arrived, all – big all small gawked at him in shock.
Obviously he didn’t intend to negotiate peacefully and ran in at full speed. Since even the strongest of the beasts were only rank four, they never saw him coming and the moment Leo began to massacre everyone, for a span of three – four breaths no one even moved.
But then the hell broke loose. The greenlanders began the wildly growl, howl and even squeak. It was as if someone had gathered all the animals in the world and ordered them to behave as loud as they could, and to Leo’s ears it felt that the thick fog couldn’t even muffle a sound. In addition, besides the small one who tried to escape towards the tunnels in panic, the whole pack madly dashed at the intruder, clearly intending to overwhelm with numbers.
Probably because the beasts were so weak and so numerous, Leo had the time of his life. Yes, now and then someone managed to bite him, but it was only superficial and he moved around the battlefield so fast the beast wave couldn’t even follow.
In all honesty Leo could swear he hadn’t killed so many beasts in his whole life as during this incident that he more and more began to perceive as a training exercise. He began to regulate his breathing, followed the proper footwork while allowing the Cleaver to fulfill the role of a meat grinder.
In the end those who could escaped and once again Leo stood in the middle of the battlefield alone, covered in blood – but almost none of it was his. He did consider an option to attempt to flatten the hill the damned beasts hid under, but decided against it, because if he got stuck or buried in the soft soil, he might never get out again.
With the adrenaline subsiding the pain returned – both physical and mental. It was painful to see his fellow humans turned into food, but there was nothing he could do about it. With a sigh he began to gather the cores again along with the scattered alchemy supplies, but suddenly froze in fright. Only now he realized the fog was getting darker. There was no way he could make it back to the teleportation platform before the darkness fell!