“Nowww theeeeeen, let’s explain the rules, shall we!”
“…”
He snapped his fingers at our silence, and the next instant a giant blueish gate appeared in the sky.
“Iiiiiif, you manage to defeat eveeeery single monster without any casualties, I’ll go away!”
“Is that all?”
The game seemed too easy. Even though we were expecting a lot of monsters, we were strong enough to not die. You’re telling me that if neither of us 3 died he’d just go away? It was too hard to believe.
“What’s the catch?”
I tried sounding as calm as possible, although his creepy mana still hunted me down.
“Caaatch? There’s no such thiinggg… oh! But I did forget to mention something…”
Our eyes widened once again as we could feel his tone change, and we heard the sadistic enjoyment he was feeling for his next words.
“This barrier… decreases 50% of all stats to any human in it.”
“You bastard! How are we supposed to fight while having half of all of our abilities sealed?!”
“How, you ask? I’m fairly sure you already noticed the monsters disappearing for the past month, so you should know that they are a lot weaker than you individually, no? I just made it a fair fight.”
In what world was that fair? But we had no choice but to comply. Clearing up my throat, I looked back at the 2 of them again and we all 3 agreed to his game.
“Alright, bring it on.”
He didn’t add a single word, then snapped his fingers once more and the game began. Around 150 goblins were the first to come out.
“Aldric, Isolde you know what to do!”
I charged towards them as Aldric started reducing their numbers, and Isolde boosted both of us in speed and strength.
Just kill the monsters, don’t think about anything else. You’re weaker than normal, but they’ve been weak to begin with!
As the distance between me and the goblins was now minimal, the real thing started. All of them had a bunch of short swords, but it didn’t matter. Dodging the first goblin’s swing, I decapitated him with my next single slash, following him around 10 more goblins were close enough for me to actually kill them.
They're surrounding me, huh?
Goblins usually weren’t smart enough to even do something as simple as this, so perhaps they’ve received some kind of training from that guy. But it didn’t matter. The first one charged me from the back, but I jumped over him then quickly turned around and stabbed him in his back. Following him the rest started charging me all at once, but it wasn’t a problem. While dodging their attacks and killing them with close to no effort, Aldric was reducing the numbers of the goblins that weren’t focusing on me, and with Isolde’s help, in a matter of 5 minutes the first horde of monsters was cleared.
“Wooooowwww!! Amazing! Amazing! You 3 became so strong!!”
Became? Why did he sound as if he knew us?! Something about it didn’t seem right. I had a terrible gut feeling about it, but I didn’t question it.
“Thanks. I take it that this wasn’t the only part of the game though, right?”
“Of course, that was only round one. Buuuuuttt! Since you did so great, I’ll be nice enough to give you 5 minutes of rest!! Aren’t I amazing? I know, I know! I’m so kind!”
This guy… was crazy. Not having any other choice other than taking his advice, I sat on the ground. Though they weren’t strong, and it didn’t take effort to kill them, my stamina had also been halved. This was an undeniably needed rest.
“What do you think about him?”
Using mana communication I asked Isolde and Aldric.
“There isn’t much to think about. This guy is crazy no matter how you look at it, but he’s also undoubtedly strong. We need to play along and not get on his bad side.”
“I agree with Aldric… this person just doesn’t seem like something we can manage ourselves… maybe I should go cal-“
“No. Not yet.”
I understood her point of view, and frankly speaking even I would’ve liked for Maia to be here, but unless we were completely in a crisis and not in fighting conditions, we weren’t going to call her yet.
“I see, sorry dear…”
“It’s fine, we need to focus on this game now, so let’s forget about it.”
After the 5 minutes passed, the dude didn’t waste a single second in reminding us while clapping his hands in a seemingly cheerful way.
“Alright, alright! Resting time’s done! Get ready for round 2!”
All 3 of us let out a sigh while getting up from the ground, and we once again prepared ourselves for battle.
“Round 2 will have a sliiight increase in enemies, but you don’t mind, riiighhht???”
This guy sure loved being weird, huh? But regardless we played along acting relatively nice.
“Of course, we’re ready! What’s round 2 gonna he like?”
“I’m soooo glad to see that at least one of you is as exciteeed as me!! For that, I’ll make it easier for you guys. This will be the last round!”
Is this guy for real?! Is he actually going to end it after just 2 rounds?
It was way too good of an opportunity to skip, we didn’t have a choice but to comply.
“Thank you sooooo muchhhh!!! You don’t know how much this means to us!!”
“You’re welcome, you’re welcome! Now then.”
Chills went down my spine as he switched his voice’s tone again. It went back to… that sadistic tone he had earlier?!
“Let’s begin.”
He snapped his finger and not only did the first gate become larger, but a few more appeared. Monsters immediately started falling from them, and in a matter of seconds, a full army of what seemed to be way more than 1000 was in front of us, waiting for his orders.
“W-what’s the meaning of this?! You bastard! There’s way more than 1000 here!”
“Well, where would the fun be if it was only a mere thousand? Plus, even with all of your stats halved you 3 are still individually stronger than anyone here, I’d say this is fair… don’t you think?”
This bastard! But we have no choice…
At that moment I knew what needed to be done. Using mana communication, I gave my orders as quickly as possible.
“Isolde. If any of us are out of fighting conditions, don’t heal us. Healing magic would take too long and too much of your energy. If that guy gets up from his chair, or if any of us are out of fighting conditions, go and get Maia. You can probably break a small hole in his barrier, at least enough for you to get out.”
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
I could see it on her face that she was very hesitant, but I knew my wife. It only took her a few moments to get the resolve she needed.
“Alright. I got it”
I then ended the mana communication, and shouted out loud.
“Alright, let’s go!”
It was truly an idiotic idea. Charging in an army that seemed to be around 5000 in numbers with just 2 supports from the back was something that no one would usually even think of doing, but that wasn’t me. While charging ahead, I stopped holding back and got serious. There’s a constant mana flow inside every living being’s blood. derived from their mana stomach. The amount of density of the mana flowing In your blood system, determines your durability. Putting it shortly, if your opponent's basic swing didn’t have enough strength to bypass your base defense, you wouldn’t even get scratched. Doing it while charging at an entire army was definitely a bit troublesome, but I was ready. Focusing about 15% of my mana in defense, then strengthening my blade and infusing it with mana permanently, overall brought my current available mana resource down to about 60%. I used 10% more to boost all of my physical stats including speed, and by that point, I had finally reached them.
“Aghhhhh!”
With a furious battle rawr, I started mindlessly cutting anything that was near me. While using my rig jt hand to keep slashing, I took a goblin’s cadaver in my left hand and threw it towards another large group of monsters, sending them all back a few meters, and without needing my signal, Aldric released a fire magic infused arrow, that burned them away. We definitely had the upper hand, but at this point it had been 10 minutes of constant slashing, and using my mana and I was getting tired. Aldric was in the back clearing up any monsters that didn’t charge towards me, which unfortunately or not weren’t many. But even he was getting tired.
How many have we killed so far? I lost count after 200. My arms, legs and mind are all getting tired… Aldric and Isolde too, I’m sure they won’t last much longer… is this the end for us?
I wanted to keep my hope up, I wanted to keep convincing myself that we were going to win… but it just didn’t seem to be the case. I kept mindlessly cutting and killing, not even feeling my own body, just moving on pure instinct. There was nothing in my head, I had given up any thoughts in exchange of a state in which I became an automatic killing machine, but was it worth it? The answer to that came to me very soon. Among the nothingness in my mind, there was a single thing, no. A few people came in without any warning or reason. Isolde, Aldric, Lyanna, Lara… and my Kids!
What is wrong with me! If I give up and die here, how am I supposed… to see my kids again?!
I shouted again even louder than before, gritted my teeth and pushed forward even harder. I wasn’t going to lose. So what if all of my stats were halved? So what if we were completely outnumbered? None of it mattered. What kind of father would I be, if I died there and left my kids alone? But… reality isn’t always how we want it to be.
S-Shit!
I broke my flow, and missed one sword swing, which completely got rid of any balance I had previously, making me stumble on my feet. I didn’t fall, but it didn’t matter… At the same time, 5 orcs came together and punched me simultaneously. There was simply no way I could react in time. I focused my mana on defense, and took the hit fully. The impact sent me flying, so much that I ended up not only breaking and bypassing the village’s walls which were about 400 meters behind the point of impact, but even went across a few houses, and ended up arriving almost half of the 1 kilometer wide village’s middle area.
“Bartholomew!”
“Dear!”
I could hear both Aldric and Isolde scream as they rushed towards me. Even while focusing all of my mana I had left at disposal in defense, I still had some broken bones, and probably some internal bleeding as well. It didn’t seem like I was going to make it. As they both quickly approached me, I could feel my consciousness slowly fading, as my hearing went silent, and my muscles went sore…
“Dear! Dear! Dear!!”
No. I couldn’t allow myself to die, not here, not now! I quickly reopened my eyes and Isolde was already healing me. Apparently Aldric was also trying to use healing magic, and although he never did it before, he managed to increase Isolde’s healing speed ever so slightly, enough for me to get on my feet again.
“Didn’t I tell you… to not waste time healing us?”
“As if I’d let my husband die like that!”
But our small wholesome interaction was quickly interrupted. Not by Aldric. Nor was it intentionally interrupted for that matter. Screams. Loud screams of despair and pain. We didn’t realize it right away, but when they left the back lines and came to help me… the monsters got in!
“Aldric! Isolde! Let’s go!”
I shouted as hard as my lungs could possibly allow me to, and this time with new resolve, I was ready. We didn’t manage to prevent villagers from dying, and as much as it pained me, I could do nothing but try and kill those monsters as fast as possible.
“W-we did it…”
About half an hour later, we managed to defeat all the monsters, and most of the villagers survived… It was almost unreal. I fell to the ground in exhaustion as the guy approached all 3 of us while slowly walking and entering the village. A few houses were burning here and there, and most of the village was inevitably destroyed, but at least, the 2nd out of this game was…
“Failed.”
I looked at him in disbelief. What did he just say? Failed? But none of us is dead?!
“I’m sorry… I must’ve heard you wrong… did you say that we f-“
“You failed.”
“W-what are you talking about?! You said all we needed to win the game was to have no casualties among us 3!”
He stopped walking about 15 meters away from us, he then removed his cloak, and all of our eyes widened again in terror, and we all felt a single common thing. We all felt as if we were seeing the embodiment of death in front of us. Dark blue hair, green and blue eyes… and 2 horns. No half human race could ever have horns. There was only a single race that had them. The dragons. But among them, only a few had a human form, and those were… The Dragon King Vorathar, The Dragon Queen Aurelia, The Dragon Princess Selene… and the Dragon Prince Alduin!?
“W-why are you here?!”
“Hmm, you’d be surprised to hear how many people don’t actually recognize any of us even though no one besides us has these horns. you’re actually quite the smart one, I’ll give you that. But to answer your question, Mhh let me think. I guess you could say that I'm the one in charge of all the political matters regarding the other continents and this kind of? Since your kings are scum and all… so I was appointed to take care of silencing you, but as you probably know I had to make it seem natural, bla bla bla… it’s way too annoying you know? So I made it into a game!”
His mood changed so ridiculously fast that I couldn't keep up. Throughout that entire thing his mood went from casual, to annoyed to composed once again and finally back to excited… This guy’s personality was a mess.
“But to explain why you lost the game, it’s very simple.”
He crouched as he pointed towards our left, most houses were destroyed, and there wasn’t really much there… until we looked closer and more accurately at where he was pointing, and at that point the realization hit me.
“Oh? Seems like you finally realized, didn’t you? That’s right. I’ve never once said you’ll win as long as you don’t have casualties among you. I meant every single human in this barrier.”
None of us could say anything. We were all completely out of hope. But that was exactly why both me and Aldric started smiling at the same time as we got up.
“Isolde, you know what to do.”
She then started running as fast as she could. Alduin probably knew what this was all about, since he intentionally opened a gap for her. He then got on his feet again, and started grinning before talking.
“I see! I see! Well done humans! Since I’m nice, I’ll allow you to use any kind of energy you have left to try and resist! Will you be able to hold on long enough for your kid to come and save you?! Come on! Come on! Come on! Give me all that you got!”
My whole body was numb. My vision was getting hazy. I could feel my muscles and bones crying, begging me to stop, but that wasn’t an option. I’m sure Aldric was in a similar state, and that’s exactly why he was my best friend. Even though we were both as good as walking cadavers, neither of us was going to give up.
“You better not die before Maia comes”
“Look who’s talking, you can barely hold your bow.”
We’re we going crazy? Perhaps. Considering our current situation the normal person would’ve just given up. But we were still trying to fight in our conditions. We were stupid, no idiots even. But that’s exactly why… we were able to fight!
“Alright… let’s go!”
Alduin got in a battle stance, and as soon as I gave my signal, it was on sight. I charged forward with my blade, pulling out strength I didn’t even know I had to move as fast as I possibly could. My first swing was directed towards his left arm, or so he thought. When he dodged my first slash, with a single movement I had already turned my whole body around and slashed again… but of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. He effortlessly blocked it with one hand, after all he was the son of The Dragon King.
“Good! Good! That movement of yours was so strange that I’m sure it would've gotten you the victory in a fight against anyone!… besides me. That is”
A punch came straight to my stomach, sending me outside the village a few meters ahead. It was hard to even stay conscious at that point, but I had to. I couldn’t call myself a father if I died before I could at least see my Daughter once more, even if it’s while she saves my pathetic self. I managed to land on my feet, and charged right as I landed, and at the same time Aldric had let go of his bow and started charging towards him simultaneously. When we both were close enough, I also dropped my sword, and it was going down, man to man, hand to hand… well, I guess it was more like 2 men to man, but that wasn’t the point. I charged my punch to his right, while Aldric took his left, and as expected, he caught both of our attacks with his hands, but that was just the beginning. It developed into a full 2 versus 1 hand to hand combat fight, which got us all over the place. Destroying some of the few intact houses, destroying shops, walls, whatever was in our way as we kept engaging in it was getting destroyed.
“You 2 are amazing! How do you keep fighting at this level when you’re in such bad conditions?!”
“Quit the empty praise… you’re not… getting… any damage!”
I was completely out of breath, so much that I felt as if my heart would collapse any second from not being able to keep up with all the blood that was needed in my veins for me to keep moving, but I used whatever mana I had to strengthen it alongside my lungs, and kept going.
“Even then! You’re still amazing, truly amazing! At this rate you might even get the upper hand… just kidding.”
We were back to where it all started, more or less, 300 meters in front of the main gate, when he probably got sick of it. Our fight had been going on for about half an hour at this point, so he decided to end it. First he kicked me aside, then face palmed Aldric and slammed him to the ground hard enough for him to get knocked out. I charged right away, but he effortlessly kicked me again, hard enough to fly enough to get back inside the village. I was done for. I couldn’t move a single muscle. He didn’t however come and kill either of us. He raised his arm and pointed with a finger somewhere in the village towards my right, so his left in that case, then a blue and green mixed light started appearing at the top of his finger. I knew what it was.
It can’t be… an energy blast?!
“Correct.”
As if reading my mind, he replied with a devilish smile as he fired it, not towards me nor Aldric. I knew what it was aimed at though, because during our clash… a bunch of the rest of the surviving villagers retreated and hid there.
“Nooooo!!”
I tried to move my body, but it was pointless. It was clear that he held back in that blast, since its radius seemed to be only about 5 meters wide, but at its point of impact… It caused an explosion. I could see and smell the blood rain falling, and a bunch of… fragments of people’s bodies flying. He slowly walked up to me, then got behind me and kicked me with just enough force to get to where Aldric was.
“Well, you 2 have been able to hold on for long enough. You’re lucky. In more than 1 way that is.”
“W-what are you talking about?”
“You’re lucky that you didn’t waste my gracefulness. I would've decapitated both of you without any games.”
“Grace?! What the fuck are you talking about?! You’ve done nothing for us!”
“Oh but I did… about 20 years ago.”
Both mine and Aldric’s eyes widened once again, as we finally connected the pieces.
“It’s exactly as you think. The one who Destroyed the Duke’s mansion… was me.”
He then slowly walked to me, and picked me up with 1 arm by my throat, lifting me up effortlessly.
“Stand proud… but I guess you can’t, so this will do. You’ve exceeded my expectations! I’ll make your death as quick as possible, as yet another act of gracefulness.”
I see… so it really is over for us, huh?
Instead of getting angry, I was relieved. Relieved that it was finally over, and I could finally rest in peace. Most of all relieved that my kids weren’t here to see me in such a pathetic state. But I was also sorrowful.
I’m sorry for leaving you alone with 4 kids… Isolde. I’m sorry for not being able to protect your husband, and my brother… Lyanna. I’m sorry for not spending more time with you, Nala, Rune. I’m sorry for not being able to see you grow more, Maia… and I’m sorry, for not supporting you enough… Cael.
Alduin started to crush my throat, and I had closed my eyes accepting it… but it was at that moment that I had heard a voice. It was a boy, from the voice he didn’t seem to be older than 7 or 8… I reopened my eyes, and tilted my head to my right where he was, and I finally heard, and saw him properly. Tears started going down on my face as Alduin released the grip on my throat, making me fall on the ground, but it didn’t matter. I was feeling many things. extreme remorse for giving up, extreme shame, extreme proudness, extreme happiness… and extreme relief!
“So you really did… come before her, huh? You should've just gone and hid with the others… my dear and stupid son.”
At that moment, my consciousness faded away, but I knew… that everything would be fine from now on, so I passed out peacefully, not knowing if I'd ever wake up again, but even if I didn’t… I would've been fine with it.