Dren danced across the mountain of corpses as the last of the armored gorillas for the current wave tried to crush him. His body snapped to the side to avoid another barrage of flaming shit. Yet, it still splattered on him. His cloak was long since stored away to prevent it from being damaged. The sticky flaming shit blackened his armor as the leather smoldered in spots. With Dren off balance from avoiding the latest bombardment. The gorilla took the opening and lunged intent on smashing him into the pile of bodies. Dren twisted but couldn’t get completely out of the way. His eyes flashed bronze for only a moment, just long enough to slow the incoming fist. It passed so close the rough stone coating the limb made a rasping sound as it brushed against his armor. Snapping around he slammed his dagger into the elbow of the brute. The blade scraped as it slid between the joint of the monster's arm and then slashed out leaving them crippled.
As he moved to follow up, one of the serpent tailed monsters shifted from where it hide on the back of the larger ape. Three tails lashed out to bite down on his arm, shoulder, and chest. Dren felt their fangs barely pierce his armor and heard the system chime of three successful resists. Still, it caused him to hesitate. Which gave the gorilla time to shift back away from Dren’s follow up attack. Growling he lashed out with his empty off hand and grabbed the monkies tails before yanking it off the back of the huge ape. Spinning he swung the shrieking beast right into the path of more flaming shit bombs. They exploded on the ape causing it to howl in more anger than pain.
Continuing his arc he flung the ape into the moat. Sadly, it was so full of corpses the beast landed on a body instead of spikes. But it did bounce and then fell to be impaled while still burning. Dren couldn’t stop to watch if it really died. Instead, he dropped down into a crouch as the air ripped over his head. The wounded ape had swung their useless arm like a club in an attempt to rip his head off. At the same time, several globs of flame followed right after. With a faint pop, Dren disappeared to appear just half a meter to the side. More flames splattered him but he had avoided a direct hit. Still, his head started throbbing again. His mana pool was almost empty. Turning back on the ape he finally buried his dagger in the side of its throat, right in the gap of its armor. Twisting hard before slashing the knife outward. It scraped against hard stone as it exited flesh but blood gushed out. It would still take a few moments for the ape to bleed out, their health pool was staggering. But it would soon be dead.
Turning towards the flaming monsters he spotted the last one go down as an arrow caught it in the eye. With a few graceful steps, he danced across the mountain of corpses to avoid the last attacks from the dying gorilla. This wave was done, just in time. His vision was tunneling and his throat burned from panting Twelve hours straight of fighting had left Dren balancing right on the edge of both Mana and Stamina crashing. His health wasn’t much better, hovering at only about a third. He had heavily underestimated the intensity of the Monster Surge. Blowing through his resources by spamming out his Aura early on. But the monsters just seemed to come endlessly. Even chugging potions on cooldown hadn’t been enough. Before long he was simply out. Yet the monsters continued to come.
Endurance fighting was new to him. Before in dungeons, he had always been able to complete a fight by starting at full power and then resting before another. Even when he had cleared the Village of the Lost. It was easy enough to ambush the monsters one at a time. While fighting like this was a pain and a struggle. Being pushed to his limits had let him greatly improve his combat style while also increasing his efficiency of skill use.
Plopping right down on the mountain of corpses he activated all his restoration abilities. If they cleared a wave fast enough he could even get a few minutes to recuperate between them. Even better he had finally hit level five in all three which upgraded the skills to always provide a small boost to his resource regenerations. It wasn’t much, an increase of a few points per minute while in combat. But every little bit helped. Noise caused him to open his eyes and he frowned as the gates to the Haven were opening. Blinking he watched them open but refused to stand. Only the archer was still watching over this gate with him. All the others had gone to help defend the other gate. Things hadn’t been going as smoothly for them. He had even sent most of his exploding daggers with them. But at least they were holding.
To his surprise Kitty, the archer was leading others out the gate. Carts were being pulled behind them. “It's the twelve hour break. We get an hour before it starts up again.” The woman said as she sauntered towards him in the way only someone with exceptional agility could. Her archer’s cloak was gone showing she had a short messy mop of fiery red hair. Pale skin marred by a dusting of freckles and eyes such a vibrant green they seemed to shimmer like cut emeralds. She wore not the starting heavy cloth armor but a set of form fitting leather. It seemed soft and supple moving easily as it hugged her body. But Dren thought his slightly bulkier Clutch Mother armor was cooler. He wasn’t embarrassed by his primitive leather armor at all.
But at her words, he glanced to find there was now a timer counting down from an hour. There really was a break period. It seemed the system was more fair than he expected. People were already piling corpses into the carts to clear the small mountain from the bridgeway.
While corpses were scattered all around. Most had piled up into a half circle around the mouth of the bridge where Dren made his primary stand. It had gotten so high he could often drop down to avoid incoming shit bombs without even needing to duck. But he preferred to stay at the top to hold the high ground as the melee apes engaged.
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“Stop sitting in the way and come inside to rest.” Kitty said from the bottom of the mound while eying him oddly. With a shrug, he hopped down to land next to her. This close he realized she wasn’t any older than himself. She flashed him a small smile before turning around to walk back to the gate. Dren resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the girl's stupidity. Why come all the way out here just to walk back? She was having to sway and shift to avoid corpses while walking. It would have been easier just to call him back. But he followed after her.
Just inside the gate he sat down on a bench and started up his restoration abilities again. Kitty stood in front of him taking a long drink from a canteen. Then handed it over to Dren. “Drink.” Her eyes stayed on him with an intensity that he felt slightly unnerving but put the canteen to his lips. Her lips made a small O of surprise as his mask changed. The scaled leather seemed to meld with his flesh around his mouth leaving it exposed to drink. “Wait, you aren’t going to take your mask off?”
Dren paused his chugging of the water to consider that. He had honestly forgotten he was wearing the mask. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he took it off. Had he been eating while wearing his mask all this time? How had that worked? His fingers reached up and traced the mask around his mouth. With great effort, he kept the surprise from his face but just shrugged.
“I don’t need to.” He returned to gulping the cool water. There had been water stored in his mask before. But not much. Not nearly enough for the long intense fighting. Mouthful after mouthful the supply had been drained without hardly thinking about it.
Kitty just sighed and raised her arms over her head to twist them together while she arched her back as she stretched. Dren closed his eyes while guzzling the last of the water as he focused on restoring his pools. A loud sigh from Kitty made his brows twitch, he wished she would be quiet He was trying to focus on his recovery. Also, so many hours of constant monkey howling had left him with a headache not caused by low mana. There was another louder sigh of annoyance. Dren opened his eyes as he lowered the now empty bottle. The sighing archer still had her arms over her head stretching while looking sideways at him.
“What?” Dren asked.
Her eyes flashed slightly then she slapped her arms down at her side with an exasperated breath. “Nothing.” She snatched the bottle from him and then turned it upside down with an annoyed look. “Really. You drank it all?”
Dren started to frown at her angry tone. It was just water. He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to drink it all. Before he could think of a snappy response, her expression softened and she smiled. “Oh well. I guess you have to buy me a drink later then.” She flashed him a bright smile that grew a bit bigger before she added in an excited tone. “I’m over twenty one now. They can’t deny me!” She giggled and looked at him expectantly. When he just looked at her confused she let out an exasperated sigh. “I hit level twenty three. I’m over twenty one now. You know the drinking age before…” She stopped with a sigh and muttered something about “Always the dense ones.”
While she muttered Dren activated Identify and noticed she had indeed hit level twenty three archer. He also finally noticed she was a level twenty two Belly Dancer and he sneered in annoyance. ‘That damn profession again.’
But her question reminded him of something important. He had tons of system messages. Oddly enough he hadn’t felt his power increase during all the fighting. Opening his messages he glanced at ones about his restoration abilities ranking up. He was happy to see they had but that wasn’t very exciting. Neither was the message that his poison resistance had gone up as well. There was a new fire resistance even. Finally, he found what he was looking for. A level up message.
“Class evolution branches available. Please select a new branch or confirm the existing branch. Experience will remain stored for: 11 hours 14 minutes 32 seconds.”
That was new and Dren’s heart was pounding with excitement as he started to examine the new branches. But he was interrupted by snapping in his face. “Hey, I was talking to you.” Kitty snapped.
“What?” Dren snapped back.
“I said why haven’t you leveled up yet? You slaughtered so many monsters. Way more than I killed.” She asked while still leaning down to look him in the face. Dren shifted his head back, she was too close.
“I have to select skills at every level with my class. I don’t just get them automatically.” Dren lied.
“Every level?” She asked sounding impressed. “You get a skill EVERY level?”
“Yes.” Dren lied again. “Now let me level up.”
He turned back to his menus but heard her again muttering to herself. “Everyone with a penis from half my age to twice my age has hit on me in this village. Of course, I make a move on the one dunce in the entire apocalypse.”
Dren’s mind went blank for a second as he processed her words. Then intently focused on his evolution screen. Now was no time to get caught up in some madness with a native girl. ‘Wait what did she mean by make a move? When had she done that?” Dren shook his head pushing that thought back away and going back to his menu.
In the center of the screen was Assassin Level Twenty four. An arrow moved straight up from there to Assassin Level Twenty eight. From the starting point directly to the left, an arrow went to Beast Tamer Level four. Then another arrow went up and to the right at a forty five degree angle from the start to Profane Blade Level Two.
Dren blinked. Then focused on the menu as a whole instead of any single part. This was a trick he had learned to get more general information about something. His eyebrow went up in surprise as a tremendous amount of knowledge filled his mind.