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Chapter 291: This is getting ridiculous
🕑 Added 2024-06-25 14:00:06 +0000 UTCPhuong stood panting at another door, waiting for his abilities to recharge. Then he activated Adrenaline and opened it.
Several more guards sat around a table, or lay on small cots. He’d heard them inside and knew it would be a vicious fight. It seemed the whole area was some kind of barracks. Every room was another fight, and already he dripped with blood. Not all of it his enemies'.
The world slowed as he activated his power, and he charged and slashed open the throat of the closest at the table, cutting another deep cut into the next from shoulder to gut before the room reacted.
Most of the guards here weren't wearing their armor. They rose up with knives and small swords, others grabbing spears from the wall.
They were decent fighters. To fight them so brazenly again and again would eventually mean a mistake and serious injury, and possibly Phuong's death. But he had to keep moving, to outrun the giant creature still following behind. He had to find the others.
He weaved another stun/blast at enhanced speed, smashing two spear-armed guards across the room. Then he made short work of two others armed with blades.
Their small swords didn't have enough reach, and their wielders didn't have enough speed to fight Phuong. They needed shields to have a chance, or a longer weapon like a spear. Phuong saved his other powers, relying on skill and speed to handle the rest.
In less than a minute the guards all lay dead or dying. Phuong was again untouched. He took slow, deep breaths, and closed his eyes.
"Move," he ordered himself, then jogged to the next door. He had nearly lost his frame of reference in the maze-like halls entirely. Everywhere just seemed like another passage to another door, or another crossroads.
After half a lifetime of fighting in jungles and urban sprawl, Phuong was legitimately lost.
As he ran through the corridors he saw flashes of his first battle, getting lost and too afraid to shout his position for fear of the enemy, and for fear of being shot by his own.
There had been so much gunfire. He couldn't tell where it came from, too green at the time to distinguish between his own people's weapons and the enemies. It was as if the sound was all around him, trapping him, suffocating him.
"If you get lost," said his first training officer, "stop moving. Climb a tree and wait. Don't go running like a fool through the jungle."
He'd eventually remembered and done as he was trained, and so he'd survived. But he couldn't stop now. Whether real or imagined, he heard that creature like the gunfire of his first battle, screeching and sliding itself across the stone.
He tried tricking it. He killed guards and dragged them to one hall then turned and fled down another. It followed correctly.
He built a mound of corpses clogging half the corridor, intending to fill the whole damn thing until he ran out of time. He thought maybe the thing might be confused, thinking it had found a wall or...who knew.
But it simply pushed through the bodies like a bulldozer, crushing flesh and bone, tossing corpses and barely slowing down.
Phuong kept running.
Down one long corridor he loosed power after power, weaving stuns and blasts again and again as he'd done so many times in practice, striking the thing a dozen times before they crossed the hall. It did almost nothing.
He'd been forced to run through the next room without fighting, stirring up another group of cultists who now chased him along with the creature.
His hands were shaking, his mind and muscles tiring. Still, he had seen no way to reach Mason without going back towards that blue wall. However far he went it seemed like the floor simply took him down another passage that led nowhere useful.
Eventually he found more stairs down, and paused.
It seemed the only way. Yet he knew at least Mason and maybe Rebecca (if that wall had been hers) were here on this floor. But for all he knew he had to go down to get around, and could possibly come up with a different set of stairs to reach the others. The idea exhausted him.
A stubborn, vaguely insane piece of him was tired of running from a stronger foe as he had done nearly all his time at war. He wanted to turn and face the thing, to show he was not afraid.
But you are afraid, he thought, angry at this truth. He thought he had been ready to die. And when he thought about this it was not the idea of dying that frightened him. It was the loss of this new life.
He had found a young woman and rekindled something he thought long dead. He had made friends and allies who needed him. And he had found a long-lost son who needed him, though the young man did not know Phuong was his father. He didn't want to die before he got the chance to tell him. To protect and teach him.
He gripped the handle of his sword and turned, wiping sweat from his eyes. What he wouldn't have given for a grenade.
But the blade would have to do. He needed a plan, however, some way to actually hurt the thing. Perhaps it had a weak spot—some kind of magical core that gave it life. He would move fast, faster than ever before, and hack until he found it.
Soul-Slice hadn’t worked well, but at least it had done something. He waited and tried to find calm, heart still quick when the thing finally arrived.
Phuong fought against his raging pulse, moving forward with a cry to bolster his courage.
His enemy didn't look impressed. It just screeched again and lumbered along, hunched and sliding bone against stone as it moved its enormous body through the corridor.
Phuong went straight in. He dodged its grasping hands and sliced at the thing's ribs and hips, scoring three slashes before falling back with a roll. He saw dust fly and maybe a tiny piece of bone chipped off the creature. But that was all.
It screeched and grabbed for him, and Phuong kept backing away, slashing its hands. He used Soul Slice and took off another chunk of finger. He weaved a stun/blast and knocked it back, darting in again for another two, three, four slashes on ribs and legs before darting back out.
This time he'd cut off enough of the mummy-like bandage to see nothing beneath but more bone.
It had no obvious 'heart'. No kind of magical gem or inner fire or mechanical parts. It was just a giant skeleton with no physical explanation for its movement, no obvious sign of weakness or vulnerability.
He'd try the skull next, he decided. But he would have to literally jump off the wall or the huge body of his enemy to reach it properly. After another re-charge of his stun, he decided.
Except he was at the stairs now and forced to descend. The animated skeleton shuffled along after him, mostly sliding itself, feet too large to fit on the steps.
His powers re-charged, and Phuong attacked.
He weaved a stun to keep the thing slow, sending another lance of energy before jumping off the wall with a two-handed strike at the creature's jaw.
He struck. And practically cheered as the bone snapped.
The skeletal face drooped as its head knocked back. As Phuong landed he considered making another leap to try and finish the job right there.
Something struck him hard from the side.
The giant had knocked him with a knee, and as he pulled back in a surprised daze it managed to wrap a hand around his leg. He screamed as it squeezed.
The other hand was coming and Phuong considered cutting off his own leg to free himself. But he knew the blood loss would kill him, and he still couldn't escape. He hacked at the fingers, the wrist, the forearm, roaring in trapped rage as the other hand reached for his upper body.
A purplish-blue light flared. The skeletal fingers expanded off his flesh, pressing as if against a huge, plastic bag. Phuong blinked in surprise. Then the hand holding his leg twitched and relaxed, clattering as it thumped to the ground.
Carl appeared beside them, his vicious blade having cut straight through the bone in a single swipe.
"Oh, that felt good. Hold him off, old man! I'll hide, er warp, er, look just don't get killed. I need a second!"
Phuong fought the hope lancing through his chest. He nodded and kicked his way free of the hand, weaving another stun for the giant and fearing he’d failed before the energy sizzled and struck.
The ape wavered and staggered slightly, but it didn't seem very concerned about the loss of its hand. It slid forward and seemed to shatter what must have been Alex's shield, swinging its handless bone like a club.
Energy sizzled as Phuong hit it with another desperate stun. As usual it didn't do much, but enough to knock the thing back for a moment, giving Phuong the time to slash at its knees several times and fall back again.
The skeleton screeched through its broken jaw, using the walls to help pull itself forward again. This time it stumbled.
Carl's glowing blade swiped and emerged like a laser in the dark, spraying bone dust as it sliced chunk after chunk of the creature's legs and back from the other side.
Like a surgeon, Carl ripped the skeleton's 'body' apart. All the while the giant came at Phuong without the slightest interest, reaching like some mindless automaton for its target as its frame lost more and more movement.
Finally, it collapsed to the ground, unable to move itself except by dragging with its remaining arm.
Carl walked up its back and spun his blade, giving Phuong a raised eyebrow as if to ask, 'Would you like the honors?'
Phuong shook his head and sagged to the floor, groaning at the pain in his leg.
"Just kill the bastard."
“Technically, it’s undead. So I’m not really killing so much as destroying. But…” Carl winced at Phuong’s stare. “Right. Killing now.”
Carl slashed his blade across the spine, needing a few swipes to sever the skeleton's skull.
Phuong half expected it to keep coming. But the body froze and finally behaved like a skeleton should, lying completely still on the floor. As it 'died', a humming sound grew in the dark hall, and a greenish 'circle' appeared beside it.
Alex and Carl picked their way over the dead skeleton and knelt next to Phuong, both men with grins
"Oh man, we saved your ass big time," Carl said with a slight fist pump. "You're calling me 'Glassassin' now. For like a month. At least."
Phuong put his head against the cool stone and let out a breath as Alex started to heal his leg a little. He pat his friend's hand in thanks and sighed.
"I need a prestige class. This is getting ridiculous."
