Author Frank Morin
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Ch 31 - I Choose to Slap a Werewolf
🕑 Added 2024-10-10 18:45:43 +0000 UTCI woke up with a groan, and memories snapped back, making me twitch with remembered pain. Zombies! And they had shot me with a blast that felt like a Taser on steroids.
Blinking my eyes open, I sat up, staring around wildly. My heart fell into my boots. I was sitting on a rough wooden plank, about 3 feet wide, my wrists and ankles shackled with chains to heavy bolts sunk into the thick wood.
Four men carried the plank. None of them made any move to acknowledge I was awake. None of them spoke. As my gaze swept over them, my blood chilled and a deepening sense of dread crept down my spine like a spider made of ice.
They were corpses. Corpses that walked and carried me on silent shoulders. More zombies. My skin crawled as I looked into half-rotted faces, some with missing eyes, all with chunks of flesh gone, revealing faded white bone underneath.
They all wore rough shirts and trousers, and a couple wore straw hats. The description had said they were undead sailors. They dressed like it, and Identify informed me they were all level 35.
How? This was bad. Very bad. That Mammoth Lion had seemed like certain death at level 30. These zombies were even stronger. I was so dead.
I forced myself to not think about my inevitable death. I was so screwed, but as my mind whirled, I studied the zombies closer. It looked like our Earth legends about zombies got a surprising amount of detail right. Did we have more alien encounters than I’d imagined, or was Cyrus tailoring some monsters to our expectations?
The random thought didn’t help. Glancing farther, I spotted half a dozen more undead sailors marching in front of the 4 carrying me, with just as many trailing. Several of them carried lanterns as they followed a faint path through the thick forest.
It was night. I’d been out for hours.
Stupid zombies! They’d wasted at least half a day of time I couldn’t afford to waste. I could have hopped back to stage 1 by now on my one good leg.
Right. As if I would have made it back. That stupid lion had most likely sealed my fate by dragging me up here to stage 2. Everything was so strong. I was like a child dropped onto a battlefield against tanks.
Even if I miraculously figured out how to break free and make a run for it, I doubted I could quick-hop my way past a dozen zombies with stun guns.
The image of me doing an unending sequence of one-legged backflips and somersaults through the forest, dodging a barrage of stun blasts from pursuing zombies flashed through my mind. I now knew I could do gymnastic flips like that, but I doubted my luck would hold out for long.
The image helped push back my growing panic, though. I was breathing too fast, my pulse racing, my thoughts whirling, but I took a deep breath.
One step at a time.
I wasn’t dead yet, and they hadn’t eaten me, or infected me. At least, I didn’t think I’d been infected. I scanned my stats, and my health and mana bars looked mostly good. A little image of a person now appeared beside them, with its right leg glowing orange. I had no notifications, so apparently Cyrus didn’t see getting captured by undead sailors a memorable achievement. At least not one deserving of reward.
Okay, so the zombies weren’t planning to eat me right away. I could work with that. They were a lot more intelligent than most zombie movies suggested. I had to find a weakness to leverage.
Most carried rifle-looking weapons a lot sleeker than that first shotgun-style stun gun, although I did see a couple more of those. The zombies held the weapons at a low ready position and only then did I realize the entire group looked nervous, constantly scanning the darkness. If they were alive, they would have probably been muttering about monsters.
Their lanterns were some kind of magical glowing constructs that provided pretty good light, but didn’t seem to push the shadows back far enough. Couldn’t zombies see in the dark? For some reason, I felt like they should. Still, anything that could make level-35 undead monsters nervous was nothing I wanted anything to do with.
One of the zombies in the lead suddenly stopped and lifted his lantern high. He shouted, his voice like fingernails clawing down a blackboard. “Werewolves!”
“Jurgen’s fist,” I swore softly to myself as the zombies all raised weapons.
Wait, Zombies could talk?
The 4 holding my prison plank stepped away, dropping me to the ground with a crash to reach for their own sidearms. By the time I hit the ground, shadows exploded out of the darkness on all sides. They flashed into the light, moving so fast I barely caught glimpses of black fur, red eyes, and flashing fangs.
Five giant wolves tore into the zombies in a terrifyingly coordinated attack. I expected to see the zombies explode into meaty chunks under the onslaught, but they were tougher than they looked. Some zombies did go down with werewolves ripping them apart, but others clubbed werewolves out of the air or shot them with energy weapons that sizzled fur and seared flesh.
I cowered on my plank as battle raged all around. I should not be in this area. Every monster was way too strong. One weird thought floated up through the haze of fear and dread.
So, laser blasters are real. There is technology in the multiverse.
I needed guns like that, but I doubted I’d live long enough to even touch one. My gaze settled on one werewolf ripping the arms off of a zombie and Identify kicked in.
“Waterlogged Werewolf. Level 32. Uncommon. These nocturnal hunters rule the night and hunger for anything with a heart to rip out. They especially hate zombies, who are not only false prey, but who compete against them for dominion of this stage. Will regenerate from even mortal wounds as long as their energy reserves hold out.”
“Not encouraging,” I muttered, scanning the snarling werewolves. They ranged from level 30 to level 38, with one monster all the way up at level 45. Why they were labeled as waterlogged was a question Identify didn’t answer.
The zombies fought hard, and they might have had a chance if they weren’t fighting werewolves. Again, our Earth legends proved terrifyingly accurate as the werewolves quickly regenerated even from wounds that should have been fatal. They attacked the undead over and over, heedless of wounds, whittling down the sailors’ ranks one at a time.
The werewolves didn’t have limitless regeneration, though. With inhuman discipline, the zombies focused their energy weapons on one werewolf after another, ripping it apart so many times, even its incredible regeneration ability broke down. The air filled with the stench of burning fur, charred meat, and the rot of ripped open long-dead corpses.
I silently urged the zombies on. I’d take my chances with zombies over werewolves any day. My luck hadn’t recovered yet, though. The sailors didn’t quite make it.
Within a shockingly short amount of time, the strongest werewolf, the level 45 leader of the pack, ripped the head off the final undead sailor. All the other werewolves were dead, but 1 werewolf was more than enough to kill a level-2 human.
The area was littered with bodies and body parts, splattered with overlapping sheets of crimson and black blood. The lanterns, tossed aside in the wild fight, illuminated the ghastly scene in a patchwork of shadows that only highlighted the horror of it. My stomach roiled and threatened to hurl everything I’d eaten in the past day, but the sight of death prowling toward me pushed everything else aside.
The werewolf limped as blood dripped from a dozen wounds. Its regeneration had slowed, but hadn’t stopped. It would recover in seconds, but didn’t look like it planned to wait before feeding. I bet I knew how it renewed its energy pools, and that did not bode well for me.
Why did all the legends about werewolves and their miraculous healing have to be true? Why couldn’t the truth be more like their teeth were really made out of cotton candy?
The wolf growled low with the promise of violent death. Its claws were dripping with black zombie blood, its teeth showing chunks of flesh as it peeled its lips back in a snarl. The reek of blood and death seemed to intensify, but the forest had fallen completely silent except for the clicking of the wolf’s claws as it advanced.
“I don’t think so,” I growled back, forcing anger to replace my terror. I was so out of my league, with a bum leg and an insanely low level. I couldn’t even swing my blade with my hands shackled, but I wouldn’t just lie down and die.
So I pulled a tier-1 mana crystal from my inventory and popped it into my mouth. Cyrus had warned me to use caution with those. They contained 10 times the energy of a tier-0 mana crystal, but I was way beyond the point of holding anything back.
Energy exploded through me like I’d swallowed a bomb. My muscles swelled and I yanked my arms and legs at the same time. The chains didn’t snap or the shackles break, but the bolts tore free of the wood, leaving me with short lengths of chain hanging from every limb.
Well, 3 of my limbs. My injured leg twitched under the jolt of power, but the healing was far from complete, and I lacked control over it. That left one leg tethered to the plank.
The werewolf pounced as soon as I moved, but I triggered Energy Ward. As the huge monster barreled in, I rolled to the side. It might be badly injured, but the insanely powerful beast still moved like a blur of black death. It slammed into my defensive aura, and I was the one that got pushed out of the way.
Good thing too, because jaws that could rip me to shreds in a heartbeat crashed closed right next to my shoulder, and powerful claws raked at my chest. I lifted my arms, taking the claws across my jacket and bracers. They left deep gouges in the leather, but did not rip through this time.
The monster crashed to the ground right next to me and its wet-dog, rancid-meat scent made me gag. I dropped Soulrend into my hand and stabbed at the werewolf’s eye.
It ducked, so I only slashed through one of its long ears. The ear flopped against its head and the wolf howled right in my face, so loud my ears would have burst if I was still a tier-0 human. It snapped at me, but I was already rolling back. The force of its muzzle slamming against my shoulder sent me sprawling.
Then my right leg snapped me to a halt so hard I nearly got whiplash. The short chain was taught, still anchoring my leg to the plank, which the werewolf was standing on.
I desperately rolled back to my knees just in time to catch a slashing claw across the chest. It came in so hard, my aura couldn’t deflect it, even though it drained a full 10 points from my mana.
The huge paw raked through the chains of my upraised left hand, shattering links, but I managed to avoid getting slashed open. The impact still slammed be back so hard against my last shackle that my ankle audibly snapped.
Thankfully, the pain was just a distant ache through the still-severed spiritual connection to the limb. I rebounded back toward the werewolf like a nightmare version of those balls attached to paddles with a rubber band. I managed to slash wildly at one of its forelegs as I crashed to the ground beside the wolf. I scored a weak hit and the monster stumbled.
“That’s how it feels!” I shouted. I didn’t know if it could heal from the spiritual damage any easier than I could, but that might distract it for a second.
Snarling, the werewolf rose over me. I don’t know if it was trying for intimidation, or something, but I wasn’t about to miss such a good opening. I plunged Soulrend into the monster’s chest.
“Yes!” I couldn’t believe I’d killed it.
I should know better than to celebrate early. The werewolf convulsed, but rolled onto its back and raked out with its other foreleg. The move caught me totally by surprise and the powerful paw caught me on the chest.
Long claws ripped through my jacket despite my aura’s best efforts and flung me across the clearing. The iron restraint tore through my shackled ankle, leaving my boot and half my foot stuck to the plank.
That time I felt the pain like a searing jolt of agony, and I lost my grip on Soulrend. The precious sword tumbled away as I bounced across the battlefield, smashing through ripped pieces of undead sailors and savaged wolves. I snatched for an energy rifle but missed, then tried to tuck into an acrobatic flip to land on my feet.
Dummy. My right leg still didn’t work, and that foot and ankle were a crushed heap of mangled flesh and bone. I bounced off an undead sailor’s ribcage, then slammed to the ground with a painful impact right next to the corpse of one of the fallen werewolves. It had not reverted to human form like 2 of the others already had.
My chest screamed with pain. Had those claws cut through ribs? Everything else ached from the crazy tumble. I panted with exhaustion and panic and overwhelming pain. I was so far out of my depth, it was a miracle I’d survived those first seconds.
I didn’t want to die, but I was at the end of my rope. The last werewolf limped after me, red-eyed gaze locked on me, fangs dripping with hunger to rip out my heart.
“Why don’t you just die?” I shouted, then coughed and groaned as my ribs protested.
In response, the werewolf broke into a loping run, speeding up with each step, its wounds fading as it healed everything. At the same second, my temporary burst of strength and clarity from the mana crystal wore out and I sagged against the ground, totally exhausted.
I could barely move and definitely couldn’t fight the death machine hurtling toward me. It would kill me in seconds.
No.
I refused to die like that.
Meeting the charging werewolf’s gaze, I reached behind me, slapped one weak hand onto the shoulder of the dead werewolf, and triggered Harvest.
