Chapter 21 - Demon Rage

"Come on, you are kidding, right? Of course you can spare a couple of fruits, you have like a billion of them in your arms," I told Guen.

"I didn't just pick a billion because I could, dumbass. I did so because I needed that many fruits in the first place. Anyway, let's go and we can talk about it when we are not awfully close to death."

I agreed and we both carefully walked back towards the entrance, crouched and silent, until we got to another room, at which point there was no way he could see or hear us, especially since if he was still sitting next to the tree.

"But how did you manage to get all these fruits without the man noticing you?"

"Honestly, I was lucky. He got up and left because he heard some idiots fighting a giant spider way back, close to the start of the dungeon." She chuckled a bit, thinking about the whole situation.

"Well then, I guess you owe me some of that fruit you just picked up then," I said.

"Wait? You were the idiot that fought with the giant spider?" She burst into a big and loud laughter, almost like a lunatic. "Oh, I should have expected that," she said as she wiped out a tear from her eye.

"It was not just me, I had some..." no, they are not friends "...people with me, and one of them got poisoned. I need it to heal him!"

"Okay, that is one fruit," she said. "Why do you need two then, you greedy little shit?"

"The second one is for a woman in an orange dress, somewhere near here. She needs help. Her child was poisoned too."

Guen sighed, defeated.

"Ugh... fine... you can have the fruit... take this and let's go find the woman," she said and handed me one of the ormon fruits.

"Great! Follow me!"

I immediately started running towards the place the woman in the orange dress was earlier. I was glad I would be able to help. I would feel bad if I didn't.

A few minutes later, we finally reached the place where the woman was standing. She was still in the exact same place, in the exact same position, looking at exactly nothing.

I approached her to give her the fruit when I heard Guen say, "Wait, isn't she that..."

But she did not have time to finish her sentence before I walked up to the woman.

"Here you go. I found the fruit you wanted. You can cure your child now," I said as I offered her the fruit.

Again, just like the last time, the moment I started talking to her, she unfroze and got an overdramatic expression of happiness on her face.

"Oh dear hero! Thank you so much for the fruit! You are very kind! How could I ever repay you?"

"Oh, it's okay, don't worry about it. I could not let your child suffer," I said.

"Oh, dear hero! You are so kind! You are such a... FOOL!"

Suddenly, the woman's voice changed into a demonic screech. Her expression turned from a kind and thankful to a maleficent one. Her eyes turned completely white and her long, golden hair started floating in the air, as if she was submerged in water.

Golden juices ran down the woman's now hollow cheeks as she took a big bite out of the ormon fruit I just gave her and immediately, a human hand made its way out of the woman's stomach.

The hand stretched the hole wide open until it made enough space and eventually, an odd, disgusting being came out. It looked like a [Spider Fiend], except worse.

It had the body of a person, with a spinneret coming out of its tailbone, with eight sharp spider legs coming out from each side. Its head was the size of a person's, but that was were the similarities ended. It was a huge spider's head, with numerous eyes looking at us, its chelicerae moving fiercely, with saliva coming out of it and dropping to the floor.

Once it finally got out of its mother's stomach and stood up, I realized it was taller than me - more muscular, too. And it seemed like it wanted to 'play.'

Meanwhile, the mother of this creature no longer looked anything like her initial appearance. That was all a facade that was now removed and I could see the woman's demon's true form. A combination of red and black took place of its skin's previous color. It did not seem like the kind of creature that would indeed enjoy fruit.

"You fool! You stepped right into my trap, you low-life mortal! You have now unleashed my full potential and you shall suffer the cons—"

The demon's head got cut off and fell on the ground. Her life ended before she was able to even finish her sentence. The demon's body stood still for a few seconds before it finally lost its balance and fell on the ground, lifeless, with the demon's black blood flowing through and out of it.

Defeated [Spider Demon - Lvl. 8]!

Experience is awarded for defeating an enemy!

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Sorry. I don't do very well with demons," I said as I tried to wipe the blood off Illuminator's blade. I did not want anything related to demons on or near me.

The beast, the demon's 'child', immediately attacked me after seeing its 'mother' die in an instant. It should have ran instead. It would have been safer. Now it was left impaled by my sword's blade. I slashed upwards, splitting its torso and head in half.

Defeated [Spider Mutant - Lvl. 7]!

Experience is awarded for defeating an enemy!

Congratulations!

Learned New Ability: [Demon Rage - Aura - Lvl. 1]!

Congratulations!

You completed side quest: [The Lady In the Orange Dress]!

You gained 10 gold coins and exp points towards your next level!

Congratulations! You leveled up!

[Anthir - Lvl. 10] -> [Anthir - Lvl. 11]

Gained 6 Stat Points!

Available Stat Points: 6

So many notifications popped up all of a sudden and it took me a while to check all of them. Right as I finished checking the last one, I received one of Guen's usual hits on the back of my head.

"Oh, right," I said as I turned to face her. "I killed them both myself and you lost the chance for [Exp] - sorry," I said.

"That's not the point, idiot! That transformation was exactly the reason I told you not to give her the fruit! But no, you had to be a dumbass, as usual."

She gave me another hit on the head to calm herself down.

"I am not particularly fond of fighting, anyway. Which means you should be even more grateful I saved your ass back in the woods. By the way, why are your eyes red? Weren't they supposed to be some stupid combination? Green and yellow? No, blue and orange, I remembered."

"They do? That's odd. I just gained a new [Ability], some kind of aura. It might be due to that. Let me check what it says."

I focused on that new [Ability] I just gained, the [Demon Rage], until a small, blue, semi-transparent box of text appeared in front of me.

Demon Rage - Aura Effect

You are enraged. You seek blood, slaughter, vengeance and a merciless death to anybody that tries to get in your way. Especially demons. You gain 3x on all your stats while in [Demon Rage] but your bloodthirst makes you lose part of your sanity and your ability to distinguish friend from foe.

[Demon Rage] gets triggered when the user is experiencing intense negative emotions like anger, guilt, and sorrow.

The user's eyes turn red while [Demon Rage] is active and for a few minutes after the effect wears off.

I then proceeded to explain to Guen what I just read in the [Ability]'s description.

"Okay, so you get even dumber than before and your eyes become more normal, got it."

That damn bitch. She still doesn't miss a chance to mock me.

I decided I would spend my extra stat points later on. For now, we had to keep going towards the exit; we needed to get out fast.

"So..." I started saying awkwardly. "Regarding that ormon fruit—"

"I told you not to give it to her, you idiot!"

"You did, but how was I supposed to know this would happen? How did you know about this?"

"It was obvious! When you talked to her, didn't you feel that she acted weird?"

"She acted very weird," I responded.

"See? Even you realized that something was fishy. She was a side quest."

Now that she mentioned it, I did receive a notification about completing a 'side quest', but I had no idea what it actually meant. It gave me a nice amount of coins and [Exp], though, which I could not say 'no' to. I asked Guen for more information about these things.

"Side quests are what the phrase says. They are quests that you do on the side. Meaning, you may take a break from your main quest to do them, or do them at the same time as your main quest."

"Main quest? What is my main quest?" I asked. I had not heard anything about any main quests. Unless she was talking about my goal of killing the Demon King. That, yeah, I could accept it as my main quest.

"For you, specifically," she started explaining again, "your main quest is probably to try and get smarter, idiot. You probably don't have a main quest right now, but you can find lots of available quests in a guild."

"Oh, at the Peacemakers' inn!"

"Yeah, there too."

Our conversation was rudely interrupted by a few [Spider Fiend's Friends] which Guen was able to handle pretty easily by slicing their throats open and leaving them dead on the ground in a matter of mere seconds.

I took all the [Exp] from both completing the side quest and from killing the [Spider Demon] and the [Spider Mutant], so I let her get all the [Exp] from these ones. This should be enough to break even.

She leveled up too in the process, but she decided she would also sit down and allocate her points later on, so we kept going.

"You have wasted one ormon fruit so far," she said after a while of boring, silent walking. "What about the other one? Are you going to give it away to another dumb side quest, too?"

"No, this one will be put to good use for real for real. My friend—no, I mean, a random dude from the Peacemakers—needs it urgently. He got poisoned during the fight with the huge [Mini Boss] spider. His name is Jack."

Guen had come to expect a lot of weird things coming out of my mouth, and yet she was still surprised by that last sentence.

"Wait. You know Jack the Ripper? And not only that, but he is also your friend?"

"Not friend."

"And not only only that, but he also also got defeated in a battle against a [Mini Boss]? In this dungeon?"

"What do you mean Jack 'the Ripper'? I know him as just Jack - we met in jail."

"I wouldn't expect anything less from two idiots like the both of you," Guen said. "But I still can't believe Jack lost a battle."

"It was not that normal of a battle, but anyway. He got backstabed by the [Mini Boss] and got a whole lot of poison in his open wounds."

"So that's what you need the ormon fruit for," she said.

"Exactly. We have to hurry back to the Peacemakers - they don't have any ormon fruits left... Speaking of going back, isn't that the room just before the dungeon entrance?" I said and pointed at that room we entered with the pond and the bridge.

I started running towards it, not wanting to spend even an extra minute here if I could avoid it. The faster I got out, the faster I could get back to the City of Prosper and the faster Jack would be healed.

Guen picked up part of a broken stalagmite from the ground and threw it on my head in usual Guen fashion, forcing me to stop running and knocking me down.

"The entrance is not the only thing that is there, idiot!"

"What do you mean?" I asked as I was getting up.

"Look, it's the web idiot," she said and pointed straight forward. There was the webbed man sitting in front of the entrance. He probably noticed we were still here, despite telling us to leave, and was not going to accept this kind of disobedience. He was waiting for us to get back to the entrance so that he could do to us the same thing he did to his [Mini Boss] of a pet.

Well, there was only one way out and it was through and over him. No point in quailing.

"Do you have a plan?" I turned to Guen.

"Yeah, run around, grab his attention, and I can freely pass through the entrance gate. I'll call help, I promise I probably won't leave you here to die while I escape."

"Very funny," I said. "Now the real plan."

We discussed the few different approaches we could take. She gave me a brief explanation of her magic abilities and we decided on the best course of action.

I unsheathed my sword and gulped down. This was not the time to be afraid, nor the time to doubt my foulmouthed Elven companion. This was the time to fight.

As I clenched my sword's hilt and was ready to do my part of the plan, I heard a weird sound to my right. An odd noise, accompanied by a slight vibration. A [Spider Fiend]? I turned to my right and looked.

It was... the crippled guy.