Chapter 3 – Resolve

Lucca et al took the horns of the little baphomets, the most prized spoil, and soon after talked with the little girl party. He reported them about the fire towards Azlud and everybody grew alarmed, though they their party where being chased and they ran with all their might until the point of the previous fight, probably another herd of monsters already got into the town since long before.

After a short break they sprinted towards Azlud. The road had traces of blood here and there along the way but they didn’t saw as many corpses as before, it seems that the previous victims were the most unlucky ones.

Within the hour after that the group found two more groups of little baphomets, but since they held two to three times more people they were easily dispatched. Little baphomets by themselves aren’t really strong, the ones from before probably received demonic strength from their demon lord, but unless they had a special name they would lose this influence (blessing) since they were far from their lord.

At the end of this hour, they finally arrived at the town, while the gate was still standing, that didn’t mean much since there was a large hole at the side and monsters could easily go through.

With his fist clenched Lucca again utilized his mana and sprinted towards the hole, the other rapidly followed. What welcomed them was a massacre, there were dozens of corpses, the floor was dyed red with blood, scent of death assaulted their noses and houses burned.

“It seems they already assaulted the city”

“I wonder if there are still people alive”

“Look at the houses” – Robert pointed – “Despite the large volume of the fire, they still aren’t completely burned, it seems they fought here not long ago, while this town isn’t big, it can’t be simple wiped out within an hour or two”

Right at this moment, an explosion could be heard and everyone looked at that, it was only some distance away. Lucca rapidly dashed and climbed a big house that wasn’t burning and reported after looking at a bridge ahead.

“There’s a lot of demons ahead, they could easily outnumber 7 to 8 for each of us, although it’s not so bad since they are fighting on the bridge and the demons can’t use their superior numbers to attack them, it’s clearly they won’t last longer…”

Yes, although it wasn’t the worst situation it didn’t changed the fact that what Lucca saw was clearly the demons overpowering the humans and it was just a question of time until they fall and advance their rampage through the rest of the town.

*If we go to there we will easily be circled and die, if we don’t go they will rampage the rest of the town and this city will be pretty much history. Tsk! Those damn monsters… A surprise attack out of the blue, while Baphomet himself stayed in the gates of the capital, send such a force for this town… yet how come those simple monsters destroy the walls so easily and carnage this much within hours?* – Thought Lucca while checking his surroundings again, the dead could already be counted in the hundreds and that’s only the outskirt of the city.

Lucca looked again to his group and could see their hesitation. While Lucca wasn’t a rash person, he understood that he was always a ‘little’ more reckless than his peers, which could be attributed to his upbringing in the desert city and the point that he started going through adventuring (danger) when he was barely ten years old.

“Robert, lead them out of city and go south towards forest city”

“What about you, Lucca? Are you going there?”

“Hahaha, of course not. I’m not crazy enough to think I can just rush into a herd of monsters and kill them all by myself” – Shrugged Lucca while seeing Robert sigh while already moving towards the whole in the wall.

*Yet, looking again, what monster blasted the wall?* – Lucca pondered while switched his focus to the bridge again – *If they have a monster that strong, why are they still struggling to get past the bridge? * – The sounds of the bridge grow more frantic, Lucca could see the human side getting overpowered and being exhausted as the time went on, this stale mate would end soon.

*More importantly why there are so many different type of monsters together? They still haven’t totally overpowered humans yet, so they definitely don’t have high intellect, why are they together?*

Demons are monsters with dark mana, that’s the only difference to normal monsters, just because they are demons didn’t mean they were stronger than normal monsters. The strange thing is that were acting together against humans. This is something shouldn’t be happening, if the monsters were to be united under one command humanity would have been wiped ages ago. There are many perfect monsters (Monster/Demon Lords), yet they command only their kindred type monster and never got anywhere close of the downfall of the humans since they awakened mana.

While sighing on this rare event that shouldn’t exist, Lucca thought again what Ann said to him earlier, if he kept put in desert city his day wouldn’t be so frantic. He had been running and fighting since the beginning of the day, despite having breaks here and there the fatigue was accumulating. While he had good control with his Mana and didn’t easily waste, he was but a child and didn’t have a large mana pool, that was something would get with daily consuming their mana or consuming food that had great source of mana and take a part to its own.

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*It seems that I can fight at best for half hour if I were to keep balance and five minutes if I go out* – Clenching his fist he thought about the earlier fights with the little baphomets – *Even If I were to fight only against baphomets I could kill at maximum ten without the influence of their boss and that’s fighting one at time…*

Yet, despite the clearly disadvantage, he couldn’t just run away. Lucca was abandoned by his parents at early age and his family (orphanage) all had the same fate, he stood since young to help raise his family, he couldn’t bear to abandon the innocent people just to save himself.

“I’m sorry Ann…” – At this moment he stored his short swords and took a gray mace and a red potion. While grabbing the mace tightly with his left hand he drunk in one gulp the red potion.

Seconds after gulping the point, Lucca felt his blood boiling, his blood veins started popping a little and his eyes got a reddish color added. Those were the effects of the potion he just took, the Berserk Potion, with her one could easily keep fighting at maximum power.

This potion dulled the pain of the user, partially disabled the natural limiter humans have to not hurt their own body and cleared the user mind, despite the first two effects having enormous after effects, the third one was the most terrifying thing about this potion, it kept the user in a state of semi-awareness that made his unable to properly judge his surrounding and just fought based on the true nature of the user. All humans had monsters as their enemies, so almost everyone who drunk this potion would fight endlessly against them, but the problem was that some people had darkness within them and would lose their reason and act based on their darkest desires. This happened countless times and this potion came to be known as true nature potion, where one would lay bare his desires.

Lucca rushed through the left flank of the monsters and put all his weight down smashing the head or a nearby globin and there started his battle against countless monsters.

~~At the same time, somewhere else within Azlud~~

Explosions could be heard and bodies of monsters everywhere. There was a man who had a black hair and eyes, also a grey beard, which was proof of his age, he wore a white shirt with a black jacket and pants. One could easily found this type of guy anywhere near the kingdom, but there were three differences, the first, he was tall, easily surpassing two meters and had a well-toned body, contrary to his age, while yielding a giant hammer as big as hid body and an enormous kite shield, the second one was that he was fighting with an almost three stores tall Minotaur and the third being the most noteworthy, he had mana flying near him, like mini starts orbiting the old man (sun).

His movements were fast and precise, he was already battling for hours and had drawn the main force of the monsters away from the bridge, while wiping the great majority of those and keeping in check their leader, the perfect monster Minotaur. If he weren’t here the town would have been erased long ago.

“Minotaur, it seems our playtime is over” – Said the man while taking out his kite shield and started using his two hands to support the great hammer – “It seems that there was another person here to fight you demons, haha!”

“Shut up, human!” – The Minotaur waved his great axe towards the man

“You know this is useless and now I don’t have to worry about the town anymore, I can use all my energy to exterminate you!” – The man shouted and went dashing to meet the Minotaur axe.

A great wave of energy was sent from both weapons and the axe of the minotaur was deflected greatly making him open his whole right side, but the man had lost the great hammer which was blown away.

“What are you going to do now?! Die fucking human!”

The Minotaur was preparing to follow up while swinging his axe back, but at this time he saw the face of the short (from his perspective) human grinning. He had a bad feeling from that and rapidly moved his left arm to protect his chest, but it was too late.

The man had concentrated all his mana towards his right arm and it shined blue, red, yellow, green and so on, rapidly changing all the colors until it became silver and golden colored coating his whole arm, the silver part coating his whole arm and the golden part only his fist, like a spear the man raised his arm and swung it straight to the Minotaur chest, he moved rapidly and put his arm on the front, but that didn’t mean anything to the man fist.

The fist easily went through his arm and went to his chest, easily pierced that too, the minotaur and the man flew a few dozens of meters away thanks to that and the Minotaur fell lifeless on the ground, yet the hand didn’t stop until it met the ground. At that moment, within kilometers, one could feel the earth trembling wildly, which lasted for a few seconds.

The man stood up and looked his surroundings, the houses within hundreds of meters were destroyed, the bodies of the monsters were partially buried by the earth waves generated by the attack, it was nothing but destruction.

“That’s why I don’t like using the conduit, the supreme fist is too much, ha…” – Said the man while looking his surroundings and checking the mince that was supposed to be the Minotaur – “Still, I didn’t thought that there was a martyr in this little town.” – Wisped the man while looking towards the bridge where Lucca was fighting.