The world erupted. No longer was it simply a gathering; a slow approach that would eventually reach us. The herald in the skies ordered death and we were ready to obey. An assault on us commenced. Thundering of hooves and paws combined with the screech of eagles and the rumble of golems and the volcanic bellows of the Boss all bore down atop us.
Only one being within this melee was still against the edict provided by the skies. Only one being still sought a way to fight strategically.
“We’ll focus on the same place along the ring and force ourselves out of this encirclement,” Grendel commanded. “We regroup and find a suitable chokepoint to force them into. We can still get out of this.”
“You know you are much too slow for that, Grendel,” I replied with a satisfied chuckle. “In fact, you’re already out of time.”
The rabbits appeared first. Their white bodies bounded through the trees at full speed. Their antlers were lowered to strike us with hundreds of dull spears.
Grendel wound his arm all the way back in anticipation of the first charge. The first rabbit reached him right when his arm shot forward like a battering ram. In one second, the monster was there, in the next, it was like a firework stuffed with meat. Blood and viscera splattered in every different direction before turning into black mist.
But, I could not watch Grendel for long. Now, it was my turn to take on a pair of rabbits that charged into me. I took a long step forward, dropping my body and as low as possible. My punch grazed against the ground before snapping up right below the rabbit’s chin and directly into its skull. A red geyser sprayed from the rabbit that landed as black smoke.
The other rabbit struck against my scales. It felt like getting hit with an entire pitching machine of baseballs at once. But, it seemed to do very little damage to me. I gripped the rabbit around the horns. I lifted it up before slamming it on the ground. I stomped on it three times in quick succession. Three crunching noises shot from under my feet before black smoke wafted up between my toes.
All the while, I took more charges from the rabbits. I felt my scales continue to be battered by the dull strikes. I gripped one of the rabbits and sunk my teeth in it to recover what they had taken from me.
However, to my surprise, a hawk swooped down and took it from my mouth. Only a single bite’s worth of damage was able to be recovered.
The twanging sound of a bowstring releasing cut through the air. A large arrow rocketed through the trees, my heart the target. Taking a note from the hawk’s book, I lifted a nearby rabbit and swung it in the path of the arrow. Fortunately, the rabbit survived the attack long enough for me to be the finishing blow. I rotated the rabbit and swung it like a bat at a swooping hawk. The bird smashed into the ground, dazed.
I sunk my teeth into the rabbit while I jumped up and stomped down on the hawk. But, in the same amount of time. I was hit by another rabbit, swiped angrily by a different hawk, and took a grazing shot across the arm by a centaur’s arrow.
Everywhere that I looked, there was an enemy, something programmed to want to kill me without any sense of self-preservation. It didn’t matter how violently I killed their comrades or how cruelly I treated their bodies. They would keep coming in waves upon waves, trying desperately to take as much of my health as possible. If they couldn’t take my health, they’d take my mana.
They wanted us dead, even if there wasn’t a single living creature left in the Dungeon that could enjoy it.
But, as much as I was losing health and mana, I was gaining something else. Something far more valuable and long-lasting than whatever transient pain the world could inflict upon me.
XP.
Each time I killed an enemy, I threw the XP directly into my [Hoard]. Each kill gave me several stat points at a time. My health went down, but my health bar only got bigger. My mana was being rapidly expended, but my available mana kept increasing. My punches hit harder, they went faster.
I was able to react better to the attacks to avoid damage. A charge could be sidestepped, A dive-bomb could be ducked, and an arrow could be deflected.
But, that did not stop the damage from piling on. It just let me race against it more fairly. The rabbits were rapid and numerous, the hawks were fast and took advantage of blind spots, and the centaurs were organized.
Once some space cleared up from the overwhelming amount of rabbits that had died, the centaurs began to charge from the trees while others continued to offer supporting fire.
Now that I saw them closely, their upper torsos were not human. They appeared to belong to an ape-like proto-human you’d see described as the missing link. Their arms were far longer and their muscles more defined than that of a human.
Some burst through the trees with swords brandished high over their heads. Arrows shot out from behind them to curve around their allies and strike us directly.
That was not their only trick.
I swung low and smashed into the weak horse legs, snapping them like Popsicle sticks and bringing them crashing through the battlefield. Rope nets draped over me like I was the prized fish in the river. I swung my tail to get out as quickly as possible, but more and more nets draped overhead. Horns bludgeoned me, claws sliced me, arrows pierced me, and swords slashed me.
I opened my palms, allowing a large ring of burning tar to land atop me. The creatures screeched a bit, but dutifully allowed themselves to be melted all for the sake of bringing me down with them. Their lives fed my stats that increased my health that increased my armor and caused me to take less damage.
Soon, I’d be impervious to all damage. I’d become a juggernaut that would smash through this realm and break right through to the next. I could crush Senior Brother, Charles, Wrath, and any other fucker that wanted to come at me.
Just fight me more, die to me more. Give me the gifts that I need to ascend ever higher.
image [https://i.imgur.com/FEO6Rj2.jpeg]
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Notice
You have reached the maximum deposit for your hoard (500,000XP). Level Up or advance regions to raise stat cap.
“What?”
image [https://i.imgur.com/RLJULY6.jpeg]
Message
What? Did you expect that I was going to give you infinite stats because you ate a few people?
Then, I went airborne. A speeding train made out of stone collided with my tar effigy to send me on an overdue visit with the sky. Through the burning nets and black tar, I could see that the golems had finally arrived upon our position.
Below, I could see that Grendel now absorbed the full wrath of the beasts below. His body was covered in innumerable cuts and breaks and welts that rapidly healed as soon as they formed. But, like a statue, he was unable to free himself from the assault without building speed. From the beginning, his runway was short and he was never able to build momentum.
He smashed a golem clean in half before another slammed into his back. His form remained sturdy as he strained to lift the fist from him. All the while, arrows poured in from every angle.
The hawks tore at me while I tried to flounder out of my restraints like a dolphin in a fishing net. My broken claws scrabbled against the mana-reinforced twine and only managed to snap a few strands at a time.
I twisted my body and rubbed my scales against my bindings in a frantic attempt to free myself before slamming against the ground that was growing ever-closer.
While Grendel tried to hold them off and I plummeted towards the ground, the boss grew ever closer. A forest fire followed it along the path and thick smoke began to encroach on the battlefield. My eyes narrowed to try to keep my vision steady as I continued my tumble.
The boss stomped and I heard the world crack beneath me. Trees creaked and toppled over with loud crashing sounds. Fissures formed in the ground that swallowed many of the creatures that swarmed there. Huge plumes of dust sprung from the ground and choked out the ground entirely.
I saw bright flashes through the smoke and dust as massive fires erupted from the ground. I curled up in a ball and allowed the oppressive heat like the Kowal’s forges to pass over me. The birds that clung to me disintegrated and my own health bar took a significant blow.
Fortunately, the magical nets that bound me burned away and freed my body. My wings stretched out with a satisfying stretch like I had just stood up from a cross country flight in a tiny airline seat reserved for people that only have a hundred dollars in their bank account. But, my sense of up and down was affected by the smoke and the rapid spins that I had just engaged in. I could no longer see the sky and I could no longer see the ground.
I chose a direction and charged forward with a few flaps of my wings. Through the dust and ash, I could see the silhouette of a golem. My arm pulled back and I released a strong punch at full speed directly into its center of mass.
The golem turned to mulch and fell away, showing me my landing strip. My feet dug into a slice of land between two large fissures. I crashed into a centaur and knocked it on its side atop of a rabbit. My teeth sunk into it and bit until it turned into shadows.
“I punched it in half in one hit,” I said to myself as I clenched my fist and smiled. It was likely exclusively due to the immense number of stats that [Hoard] provided me, but it made me wonder what I’d be capable of if I managed to use the Grand Master’s mana-infused martial arts.
“Ishmael!” I heard Grendel’s voice break through the combat.
I whipped my head around and felt a furnace bake against my scales. The towering form of the boss separated Grendel from me.
Heat seeped from the ground and burnt the bottom of my feet. Flickering, uneven light spewed from the fissures that began to shake around me surrounded me. A pair of massive arms rose in the air like rocky cranes. Slowly, the moved towards the ground
I took to the air right before a torrent of fire erupted from the ground like the air from an organ pipe. It chased me into the sky, scorching any of the birds that tried to target me.
Two orbs of fire pierced through the smoke to stare at me. A bus-sized fist sprung from the blackness to slam me. Another fist rose to strike even higher than the first.
“Daring me to come closer, are you?” I asked with a laugh.
I obliged the challenge, plummeting towards the boss with as much speed as I could generate from this distance. I saw its solid stone head and holes that belched internal fire. I cranked my arm behind me with reckless abandon, but, still somehow following the instructions that Grendel laid out for me. My eyes were opened wide with anticipation, not wanting to miss a moment.
My body felt good. My mind felt good. My soul felt good. If this was the Grand Master’s doing, if he was the hand that guided me to this perfect situation, I wished to compliment him. And, much like my Senior Brother, I felt compelled not to disappoint.
Heat boiled inside my arm. I looked over to see steam billowing out from under my scales. Glowing red started to form at the edges of the scales. For a moment, I thought the boss had placed some sort of ability within my arm. However, I quickly realized that it wasn’t causing me any pain. Contrarily, it felt even better than usual, like someone shoved a canister of nitrous oxide in my arm and kicked the valve off.
I swung my arm with full force. My knuckles touched rock and a sphere of light formed around the contact point. It spread out, engulfing the entirety of my right arm and a large portion of the golem’s head.
With a boom that temporarily deafened me, a ripping gale blew from the impact point and swept down to the ground. The smoke and dust that covered the battlefield disappeared, showing the damage done to the world in the fullest clarity.
Laid up against a fallen tree, Grendel looked skywards at the attack. His jaw went slack and he seemed to begin bellowing something that couldn’t reach my ears.
All of the energy that was stored in my arm went off at once. My arm was vaporized in an instant. Only a steaming shoulder was left from the attacking limb. But, that sacrifice was not for nothing. A hole the size of a semi-truck formed in the boss’ head and traveled the length of the body all the way into the earth.
The boss shuddered and groaned, magma belching from the hole that struck directly through its core and took its life in a single blow. Black wisps began to float off its body as the hulking beast turned into smoke to join the rest of the defeated creatures of the Dungeon.
I floated down towards Grendel, my arm bubbling like a cauldron full of slime to try to replenish my missing limb. It wouldn't hold. I burned through too much mana.
“I finally put magic into my punch,” I said with a smile.
A look of awe-stricken horror was plastered on Grendel’s face. Like the men who created the atomic bomb, he watched the ruinous remains of the Dungeon with a feeling of uncertainty held in the wrinkles of his face. Someone of my level was not meant to produce this and he had handed over the keys of obliteration to someone who would only grow stronger.
“So, that’s why you were sent,” Grendel murmured to himself. “You are someone who can take on the Master once you hone your ability more.”
I didn’t tell Grendel that the revelation did not come from him, it came from higher up. The Grand Master that had said a single word to me and imparted wisdom beyond what I could imagine.
“The Master cannot know that this is your potential,” Grendel said. “If he knows that you have the ability to surpass him, he may disregard the intentions of the Grand Master and have you destroyed.”
“That wasn’t good enough?”
“No,” Grendel replied quickly enough to annoy me. “You need more levels, more abilities, more time to understand how the Master fights before you can try to take him on. We need to give you assignments to keep the two of you apart.”
“You’re going to put me to work?”
“In a word, yes. Keeping you away from him while also improving your skills without him being able to watch you closely. It is our best chance at getting you the required experience to take him on.”
My frustration at the assertion mixed with a sense of excitement. It wouldn’t be fun if it was so easy that I could bulk stats and beat him to death. It must be at least this difficult to make it all worthwhile.
“Then, should I not return to the school? If I avoid him, he will have no way of knowing.”
“No, you will have to meet with him. He’ll be able to detect that you have used the Grand Master’s mana. You just have to downplay to what degree you’ve been blessed.”