In the Goblin's hand flickered to life a dainty flame, which within seconds rapidly grew into a fire-bolt. Despite the pain he was in, Stanis forced himself to hare towards his fallen spear, which he picked up as he placed his sword back around his waist.
Stanis had already used Scout and Sense a few times, but he had only scouted short distances. This meant that he had 9 mana left, 3 disposable mana considering the fact that he always wanted Layman’s Rush ready to use, which took 6 mana. Thus in the split second he had, Stanis used the remaining mana he had to activate Scout and Sense.
Having activated it multiple times already, he was now used to the sensation and didn’t lose control of his body. Instead the image of his surroundings appeared in his head, showing him that there was a Goblin armed to the teeth running towards him, clearly a cut above the Goblins he had already killed.
Realising the predicament he would be in if that Goblin reached here and joined the Mage, Stanis threw caution to the wind and shot forwards.
Instead of being flustered, the Mage watched him sprint with squinted eyes, the fire-bolt in its hand now fully grown. It was when he was only a metre away from the Mage that it released the spell, the fire-bolt shooting towards Stanis’s chest at point-blank range.
Having no way to dodge, Stanis chose to take one more with his left arm as he shielded his chest, all the while piercing forwards with his spear.
The fire-bolt struck true, his left arm now burning with agony, while his spear didn’t even hit as the Mage merely side-stepped the attack. Stanis felt anger build up alongside the pain, gritting his teeth as he saw the contemptuous look on the Mage’s face. His anger quickly overshadowed all other emotions as he went in for another strike, this time using both arms to thrust the spear forwards with greater momentum.
This time the Mage didn’t even dodge, instead a bright, blue light exploded out of its hand. In the next second, Stanis found his spear frozen within his hand, which was also frozen alongside the rest of his body.
His whole body was covered with frost, his anger rapidly dissipating as the cold bit into his flesh. The Goblin Mage stepped past the frozen spear and used its whole body to drive its elbow into Stanis’s face, causing him to stumble backwards in pain, before tripping over his frozen legs.
It was lucky that he had his coat on as Stanis could feel the warmth coming back, his body trying its utmost to counter these dangerous conditions. Stiffly, Stanis tilted his head up, only to see another flame sprout within the sneering Mage’s hand. Both fear and anger surged inside of him, his arm pushing against the pain and numbness as he gripped onto the spear, before whipping its butt across the Mage’s bare legs.
The Goblin’s expression turned to a mixture of pain and surprise as it realised that Stanis was already moving, albeit slowly, but the fireball within its hand didn’t stop growing. This danger caused Stanis’s body to heat up further, his motions now faster and smoother as he managed to bring himself up to his feet. Not forgetting the foe who had frozen him in the first place, Stanis threw the spear towards the Mage.
In truth, the spear didn’t have much power behind it as Stanis’s actions were still affected by the frost, but it had enough to cause harm. The spear pierced the Goblin’s thigh, the spearhead tearing through skin into the flesh. The shock and pain caused the Mage’s aim to go off, the fire-bolt he just released shooting towards Stanis’s chest instead of his head.
So far Stanis had always used his left arm to take the fire-bolt shots, but not this time as the fire-bolt smashed into Stanis’s chest, throwing him off his feet as he fell onto his back, the pain so unbearable that tears rushed out like a broken dam. Stanis wasn’t even able to roar or scream in pain as he struggled to catch his breath, his body violently shaking in response to the pain. If the fire-bolts to his left arm had been like a dull pain after stubbing one’s toe, this was like the sharp pain following someone scorching raw flesh.
If Stanis wasn’t completely out of it by now, he would have noticed that the armoured Sentry he had prior sensed running here had just arrived.
“KYLN, WHAT ARRE YOU DOIN? CAN YU NOT SEEE THAT HOMANS ATTACKING THE CAAMP?” screamed out the Sentry, struggling between keeping his anger down and catching his breath.
“No worries, ha-ha! I doubt the Humans will break the crystal. Instead look what I just caught!”
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The Sentry’s anger quickly dissipated and instead turned into confusion as he looked towards the downed Stanis. “Whot? It just ‘nother Homan.”
Kyln responded with a cold and stern voice, “You FOOL! Can you not see the darkness coming off his body? I don’t know which one but this Human managed to ally himself with one of the Dark races…”
The Sentry completed Kyln’s sentence, its eyes now sparkling, “The Mastars will raward us!”
The menacing smile returned to Kyln’s face. He then began chanting. A few seconds later, the stab wound across his thigh was gone.
“Now give me your sword so I can cut this shit up, my mana has run dry.” Commanded Kyln towards his subordinate, who immediately followed as it handed its short-sword over without any complaints. In fact why would it complain? It was sure to get a reward when Kyln passed this Homan to one of the Mastars.
As the whole conversation had been going on, Stanis had been struggling to keep his mind awake. His body had teetered between unconscious and consciousness after the final fire-bolt had struck, however the time Kyln had used to heal himself had given Stanis’s body enough time to recover. He hadn’t managed to catch a single word of what had been said so far as his body had been in shock, but he did manage to come back to reality in time to hear Kyln say he was going to cut Stanis up.
That was enough for his mind to return to the fight or flight mind-set as adrenaline coursed through his blood, allowing him to think up ways to respond to his imminent death despite the mind-tearing pain. The only thing Stanis could think of while in this pain was his ace, Layman’s Rush. He didn’t have the mental power to think of anything safer than his double-edged sword.
Kyln was just above him as his Stanis roared with all his heart, causing Kyln to subconsciously recoil backwards in response. Stanis used this time to take out his sword, before activating Layman’s Rush.
The acute pain was gone.
The noise within his head was gone.
It was just pure euphoria; he felt like a God.
Stanis shot to his feet as he swung his sword towards Kyln, who reacted slowly due to the surprise of his downed prey jumping back up. However, he wasn’t shocked enough to be senseless as he instead brought his sword down to meet Stanis’s.
The swords clashed, a clear metallic sound resonating in the environment. However, Stanis wasn’t done as he continued pushing downwards on his sword as he felt no pain, causing Kyln’s hand to bend backwards under stress.
In fact it bent so quickly that Kyln didn’t even have the choice of dropping the sword, instead his hand bent back so much that his wrist simply snapped. But Kyln was beyond experienced at fighting as his mind set priorities within nanoseconds, deciding that the Human in front of him had become far too much of a threat to be worth fighting.
And thus Kyln shot his other hand forwards, in an attempt to make Stanis recoil under the thought that Kyln was sneak-attacking him. It was Kyln’s bad luck as the blood-craving Stanis gave zero shits about danger, ignoring the empty hand and instead springing forwards while sweeping his sword across Kyln’s face.
The sentry, who had been relaxed and happy two seconds ago, didn’t even have time to reach Kyln as Stanis sword shot to the air once more, before chopping down in force, causing a deep gash to open across Kyln’s green head.
Feeling his anger and bloodlust nowhere near sated, Stanis then bolted towards the Sentry. The Sentry had thick leather armour, and a thick shield. It flustered to grab its knife as it saw the prey turned predator bare his teeth towards it.
Now three seconds into Layman’s Rush, Stanis only had two seconds left as he swung below the Sentry’s knife, chopping its hand clean off.
The Sentry, realising his odds, immediately bashed his leather shield into Stanis’ face before turning tail. Feeling no pain from the strike to his head, Stanis thundered behind the fleeing Sentry before managing to swipe his blade down the its back during the final second.
Within the next second he was no longer a God, nor a blood hungry Demon as he felt weakness overcome his body. The pain came back to life, whether it be from the burning wounds or from the shield to the face which now stunned him. What followed was a struggle to keep his consciousness as he once again teetered by the boundary, collapsing onto the ground within one second, the next waking up to harrowing pain.
The Sentry, who now had a rip across its back, lay on the ground fearing imminent death. However it quickly found out that this wasn’t the case. Well, it was still going to eventually die due to how large and deep the rip across its back was, but the reaper was no longer an imminent guest as its personal reaper had collapsed just behind it.
Even it didn’t know what came over it; it knew it would die soon, but it also felt a fearsome anger overcome its pain and so the Sentry crawled towards Stanis. After a bit of time, it reached Stanis and began banging Stanis’s head with its remaining hand.
It was to be noted that Stanis was already frightened every time he woke up, the pain so high that he couldn’t even remember how he got here. When he felt something drive his head further into the ground, the numbing pain induced fear turned into fearful self-defence. He wasn’t angry as he crawled onto the Sentry, nor was he when he began biting the dying Goblin.
He wasn’t even angry minutes later when the Goblin stopped moving, rather he was so fearful for his life that he felt the compulsion to continue attacking the bloody corpse…