The fight lasted less than two seconds. Skarsgard swung at me with a predictable strike to my head. Once he had actually started the swing, the club would have impacted against me within milliseconds. With Danger Sense, I knew the attack was coming long before his club moved. Skarsgard was not a skillful fighter. He must have fallen into the habit of relying on his size and strength to kill his enemies.
If I had been a level 5 Revenant, the attack would have been a problem for me. As a Dark Apostle, however, the attack was roughly akin to the harmless flailing of a screaming toddler.
Just before Skarsgard began his swing, I moved my body a few inches to the side and out of the club’s path. The club struck the ground hard, causing a plume of ash to fly into the air. Even with my vision slightly obscured, I still knew the angle of my attack. Skarsgard’s attack left him in a crouching position for a moment, leaving his chest about a foot away from my shoulder. My target was so close that I couldn’t possibly miss.
I hardened my hand with Battle Aura and struck Skarsgard’s chest with my hand in a claw shape. My hand crashed through the Deluvian’s skin, muscle, and ribs with ease. An instant later, my hand was wrenched free from his chest by a mixture of Skarsgard’s attempt to disengage and my forceful withdrawal of my hand.
Skarsgard recoiled from me and the large plume of ash. A large, deep wound had formed in the center of Skarsgard’s chest, and he was bleeding heavily.
“You’re faster than you look, little guy,” Skarsgard bellowed. It was clear from his tone of voice that he hadn’t even realized that he had been wounded yet. “But if that’s the best you can do…”
I stepped out of the plume of ash while looking at my hand with a disappointed expression. Smoke had started to rise from my hand as the clump of flesh I held in my grasp had started to evaporate. With a scowl of annoyance, I lightly tossed the destroyed remnants of Skarsgard’s heart on the ground.
I could have sworn I had gotten a firm grip on the Deluvian’s heart. The process of forcefully removing it from its natural location had compromised its structural integrity, apparently. I looked over at the several hundred Deluvians that had gathered in the town square and wondered if I would soon gain some more practice with that particular technique.
“Wh-wh-what?” Skarsgard burbled. Physical reality had finally caught up with him.
The large Deluvian fell to the ground. He put one hand on his heart and used the other hand to grasp at me pointlessly. If Skarsgard had the Rapid Healing Talent, he probably could have survived my attack.
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As Skarsgard was dying on the ground, I turned to the other higher-order Deluvians and said, “Does anybody else have a problem with me?”
To my surprise, a few higher-order Deluvians stepped forward. Whatever. I would just kill every Deluvian that raised a hand against me. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over killing a few sapient creatures in self-defense. They brought it on themselves.
“Do you need any help?” Dendrite asked.
“Of course not,” I chuckled. “The worst they could possibly do to me is make me feel bad for how one-sided the fight is.”
“If you say so,” Dendrite shrugged. “Here, catch.”
A black blur appeared in my vision, and I caught the metal object Dendrite had just tossed in my direction. It was the flanged mace that Dendrite had brought with him in the cargo plane.
“Thanks,” I said as the first Orc swung his sword at me. I easily avoided the attack and jogged past the creature. My eyes were set on the lower-order Deluvians that had congregated around the concrete stage.
A few dozen Goblins had moved forward and were now shooting at me. With shock, I realized that this was actually a problem for me. So many Goblins were targeting me with their rifles that Danger Sense was buzzing all over my body. Every time a Goblin would point a faltering muzzle at my chest, Danger Sense would warn that a potential attack could strike me anywhere in my upper body. Their uncertainty actually made them more effective against my defenses. The only thing I could do to defend against the Goblins was coat my whole body in Battle Aura. I could only imagine how much mana I was using.
I decided to deal with the Goblins first. My body flew past the higher-order Deluvians, and I was upon the Goblins in seconds. Over the course of about twenty seconds, my hands were a blur of motion. Every Goblin with a gun raised in my direction either caught a bullet in the chest or a mace to the skull.
Just as the last Goblin’s destroyed torso flew thirty feet into the air, Danger Sense warned me of a huge attack that would target my entire back. A moment later, I heard a crack of thunder. This time, however, I heard it from the inside.
Deafening doesn’t even begin to describe it. The conjured lightning bolt struck me and vaporized several nearby Goblins, but I was pretty sure that the greatest injury sustained was to my eardrums. All I could hear after the blast was a constant buzzing, and I didn’t think it would let up any time soon.
I turned toward the source of the lightning bolt. One of my Cervids was floating a few dozen feet in the air, suspended upon three crackling bolts of blue lightning. Within less than a second, I had closed the distance between myself and the Cervid.
I impacted against some invisible spherical barrier, and I was sent cartwheeling to the ground. Despite my attack, the Cervid remained in the air, completely unharmed.
Rage filled my body as my lips curled into a snarl. The other higher-order Deluvians had begun to circle around me as I activated Rapid Healing. The minor burns on my back disappeared, and my hearing returned.
Oh, they were going to pay. They had made me angry.