He struck wildly without thought, tasting sweet respite every time a blow landed. If possible, he would have mauled each and every body he'd struck down but instead there was a never-ending supply of fresh blood for him to taste. While the punches he threw fell short of what his sword could have done in the time, they still hit hard enough to break bones, several of them.
It was only after a few seconds of flailing about in the wind that he finally regained some control, using his bruised hand to rub the blood off his visor. Several bodies surrounded him, none of the Aliens dead but not that far off either. Feeding the pain away with a fresh injection of anger, he gnashed his teeth as he leaned down to pick up his sword.
His armour had one large crack at the hip and several smaller cracks throughout. If angled well, an enemy strike could now easily penetrate his armour and injure him directly. His sword was still in good condition though, and he still had his dagger hidden away by his waist. As for his shield, he had no clue where he'd dropped it.
With murder in his eyes, he looked around for the masked Zelaro. He found his target less than 10 metres away from him, the mask lying cracked on the ground, a severed head right next to it. By it stood Serb, his bronze fur burning blue. Soaked in venom, Stanis dashed towards the body, bulldozing through any who stood in his way. The second he reached it, he began mauling away at the defenceless body, building the steps to euphoria one strike at a time.
Eventually, after a few moments had passed, he peaked and screamed, his voice cutting through the volume of the entire battlefield. He then stood haunted over the body lifelessly. It was only when Serb began to harshly curse that he came back to his senses.
He followed Serb's gaze and looked over the hill, towards the mountain in the distance. Cresting the hill were Titans. The Titans were 6 metres tall with bright purple skin, and curved, rhino-like horns on their temples. They were all bare without the slightest of protection, and due to this, Stanis could see the sweat dribbling down the Titan's bodies as they charged towards the battlefield. They were, however, armed with weapons mid-way between spears and harpoons. And the worst of the matter was their numbers, the hill now a purple, shaking monster.
Stanis surveyed the state of the current battle before making the call.
"RETREAT!" he roared, fiercely waving his arms back. Plenty of people had begun doing this far before he had even called out, but the majority who were still stuck in the heat of battle felt their hearts lighten as they heard the command. Doing all they could to knock their enemies down, they turned around and joined the stampede back, flattening the ground to a pulp on the way.
The Zelaro were left behind, and unluckily found themselves in front of the coming charge. They didn't try to run but instead stood their ground, after all, they knew how the Titans wouldn't let go of any prey whatsoever.
Ignoring the bolt-less thunder behind him, Stanis sped up and was soon at the front of the army. Focusing what little energy he had into his knees, he leapt over Moonshine's enhanced wall and landed on the other side. His body was still injured and bleeding, and Stanis found himself instantly rushing towards the market-place in search of some kind of healing kit. He had no mana left to cast Light healing as the masked Zelaro had sucked him dry of it, and almost his life as well.
It was as he was running with blurred vision and a desperate heart that he bumped into a wall-of-a-person. He found himself flying backwards onto his arse and growled loudly as he ploughed into the ground. Whipping his head up, he glared, before switching it to a stare filled with bloodlust as he realised who it was.
Pete, on the other hand, looked at Stanis with a calm expression. Skint stood next to him with his palm covering his face, and Bear seemed as if he'd given up all hope in Pete.
"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU?" Stanis demanded, shooting missiles of spit as he shouted.
"Calm, drink this," Pete said while handing him a bottle. "It'll hasten your recovery, although you'll feel shit soon after,"
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Stanis continued staring at Pete with venom clear in his eyes. Pete was the second strongest person he knew, hand in hand with Serb, and yet he hadn't even been at the battle. In fact, he'd mysteriously gone missing a while back.
"Look, you're going to want to drink that and hurry to finish the fight with the Titans," Pete explained. "After all, there's something far more dangerous following behind,"
"What is it?" Stanis spat, before taking a sniff of the liquid, and then swigging it down.
Pete shook his head in response and simultaneously ignored the anger that was bubbling over Stanis. "You'll only act stupid if you knew. Just finish the ones up front and you'll see," he said.
Stanis then squinted his eyes and looked between the three. Several questions cycled through his head but only one rose over his anger.
"Are those…?" He didn't have to finish the sentence as all three nodded solemnly.
"But they're no longer a threat, bawss," Skint said, "No longer if wat Pete said was the truth,"
It was as he finished that Stanis felt the effect of the alcohol in his stomach. In fact, it wasn't actually alcohol at all, instead an impure version of mana-water. Gritting his teeth as the pain kicked in, Stanis then released the tension and wheezed heavily, before finally getting up.
Without a word, the trio began to move towards the wall, followed on by Stanis who was still struggling with the impure mana-water. It was only once he had climbed the wall that he allowed himself a rest. Next to him, he could hear ear-shattering booms which turned into whistles, before finally ending as explosions far, far away.
It was a while later that Stanis escaped from his spluttering coughs. His mana-pool was full again, but at the same time, he knew that the pain he had just experienced was only a part of the total punishment that would soon come his way, after all, impure mana-water was still impure mana water.
Pushing the guards out of the way, Stanis leaned across the wall and looked at the new battlefield. The traps around the village had momentarily worked to slow down the Titans before the purple-skinned demons had used their sheer numbers to run them down. Stanis could see that the previously clean battlefield was now just as muddy and bloody as the last one. Despite only a few minutes having passed, corpses already covered the ground. Further away from the village, the corpses were of the Titans, usually crushed by cannonballs or pierced through by the collateral. On the other hand, directly below the walls, most of the corpses were human, obviously people who hadn't retreated in time.
Looking down the wall-way, Stanis noticed Serb, Orena and other powerhouses standing still. The only people currently fighting were the cannon users and people with magic projectiles, the most deadly of the bunch being Sil and Moonshine who rained barrage after barrage onto the Titans.
After a few minutes had passed, the gateway that separated the village from the Titans finally broke. Following this were roars and screams from both sides as the humans and Jaguars rushed to push the Titans back out. Stanis was about to join the excitement when he felt his heart burst. He collapsed onto the ground and felt his breath leaving his lungs, his hands struggling to even rise.
The trio, who had been quite far away on the wall, was next to him in the next second.
"You sure this is a good idea, baws?" Skint asked. He squatted next to Pete, while Bear stood by in an intimidating manner, scaring away anyone who came too close.
"Best chance we got, besides it's too late now," Pete answered. "You only have doubts cuz you haven't seen it. There's no way the two of them could survive side-by-side, and if I were to choose between them, I'd choose good ol' Stanny dog any day. The only problem is that he's not strong enough to do so. All we're doing is helpin' him out, that's it," Pete said as he poured noxious chemical after chemical onto Stanis's body.
The smell and sight quickly caught the attention of everyone on the wall, although Bear's glare quickly set them looking the other way. The only people who would have interrupted them were too enthralled in the fight to notice Stanis's body changing.
When a timeless amount of time had passed, Stanis awoke with another roar. It seemed the whole battlefield had quietened under his roar, and in fact, it had, as the Titans had collectively stopped their bloodthirsty rampages and looked up. His heart was beating far too fast to think and so he found himself frantically looking around for the trio, who, coincidently, was nowhere to be seen. The impurity in the mana-water hadn't just been dirt, instead something had been hidden in it. Unable to control the energy in his body anymore, Stanis leapt from the wall and instantly cut down a Titan. It melted like butter under his touch and yet he found himself unable to enjoy the sensation, the energy in his body demanding more sacrifices like an ancient, nefarious God.
It was as he indiscriminately cut through friend and foe that a loud noise in the distance attracted his attention. Soon after he had come down, the Titans and villagers had begun retreating. Both sides had seen, with varied emotions, that he was far too volatile to live long, the energies in his body far too unstable. The Titans, however, found themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place as they stopped dead in their tracks.
The corpses they had left behind during the charge were crawling up onto their feet…