Chapter 22 – Fire and mes (5)


    We rushed out of the relic room’s doors as fast as we were able, the ‘secrecy’ of the relic or whatever traditional security they practiced for it be damned.


    A guardsman was waiting for us outside, being supported by the other two who usually stood guard next to the relic room’s doors.


    “Huff, huff…”


    The guardsman was out of breath, clearly disheveled, panting as if he had run a great distance.


    “What happened?!”


    The chief spoke, and the guardsman did his best to exin the situation while trying to catch his breath.


    “The western walls… Monsters…”


    The guard gestured loosely towards the walls to our west and we followed his gesture with our eyes.


    It was some distance away, but a rising smoke was visible along with flickers of me.


    Judging from what I had seen of the others, it would take them at least ten minutes to get there by foot. Ten minutes was a long time for those who had never experiencedbat before to hold out.


    It was unlikely that many would be alive by the time reinforcements arrived from other areas of the vige.


    Saving the vige… It was what I had been called there for, after all.


    I took in a deep breath of air, the warm, humid atmosphere permeating my lungs as I prepared to try something new, a variation of the ?Strike? steps and the earthen spikes I had used to control my movement before.


    Lowering my bnce, I set myself into a sprinter-like stance and channeled the distinctly different feels of both the eruption and earth through my veins, cycling them until I felt an ufortable warmth build up in my body.


    Then…


    I released the energy through my legs and feet, channeling it at a sharp angle into the ground behind me.


    WHUMP!


    ***


    A faint, golden light clung to his skin, a shower of dirt exploded from the ground and he went shing off in a blur of motion.


    Puffs of more dirt went flying up into the air at irregr intervals, allowing anyone who was watching to track Aizen’s progress somewhat easily.


    The distance that would have taken an ordinary man ten or so minutes to run through took him less than sixty seconds.


    He arrived just as a terrible-looking monstrosity that was some demonic mix between a dog and a shark was charging at a woman huddled up against a wooden shack, doing her best to protect her child.


    Stomp, stomp, stomp.


    The shark-dog monster loped across the ground towards them, saliva dripping and flying from its mouth in anticipation of its meal.


    Then, just as it was preparing to make the final lunge, already imagining the tasty meat before it…


    TSSHHH


    It vanished into a puff of red mist, its bodypletely gone.


    The woman looked at the red mist with a puzzled expression for only a brief moment before thanking the Gold and turning back to make sure her child was ok.


    * * *


    Reaper Scans


    [Author – Farlight]


    [Proofreader – Harley]


    Join our discord for updates on releases! https://dsc.gg/reapeics


    * * *


    Let me tell you that monster guts do not taste good.


    I had heard adventurers describe them as tasting like chicken before, but that wasn’t a surprise when chicken was the default taste everyone used to describe something that they couldn’t quite ce.


    Monsters did not, in fact, taste anything like chicken.


    I became painfully aware of that fact after tumbling straight through some sort of walking shark-thing, bits of its meat and blood bing stuck in my mouth and washing over me.


    My momentum waspletely out of control at that point. Though I was already slowing, all I could do was try to direct my path of destruction with awkward iling.


    It was a miracle that I managed to avoid hurting anyone.


    My tumble continued for a few hundred paces more after I was bathed in the debris left behind by the monster who had never seen iting, finally halting when I crashed through one of the burning huts and came to a rest in a pile of wood debris as the burning structure caved in around me and filled my lungs with smoke.


    Cough, cough.


    I quickly got to my feet, pushing aside the burning lumber atop me with little effort, using my earth ability to avoid being burned, though I still received a few light singes.


    Though the sprint had started with a promising burst of speed and indeed had the intended effect of taking me to the section of the vige that was under attack in record time, I had lost control almost immediately, legs unable to keep up with the speed and momentum of my initial burst.


    My sprint had be a tumble that took me across thendscape, and it had been more like a rocketunch.


    The impact of my crash into the hut had caused a plume of wood and sparks tounch into the air.


    Good news: I had the attention of the monsters in the vige, who viewed me as a threat to be eliminated.


    Bad news: I had the attention of every monster in the vige.


    I heard their cries as they flocked to the sound and could see vigers running from where they had been cornered as the monsters forgot about them. It was like they could sense the power within me and wanted it for themselves.


    Unfortunately, I had not arrived soon enough to save everyone. I had known it was impossible from the start, but I had still held some hope.


    My eyes caught the signs of blood and destruction left behind by those who were less fortunate. The monsters had eaten them whole.


    The monsters were mostlyposed of the weird shark-dog things, like the one I hadpletely obliterated in my tumble.


    They rushed towards me. Some might have called it a pack, but the monsters had no coordination that one would expect of a pack or herd.


    Instead, drool spewed from their lopsided, toothy mouths as they rushed at me.


    I had already used one ?Strike? in my run to the vige, which should have left me with seventy-five mana.


    I said ‘should’ because no message had appeared with the use of the ?Strike? as I was used to. Perhaps it had something to do with the dungeon.


    Luckily, the earth was still being channeled through me, almost bing natural at that point—though, I still had to put a bit of conscious effort into it, as if I were forming my hand into a fist.


    Boom!


    Each swing of my gauntleted fist blew the monsters away. My STR and AGI were enough to smash through their flesh with every blow.


    Crunch!


    A skull caved in and lifeblood sttered across my face as I crushed one’s skull with a punch and sent it careening away into the ground, having hit it while it was mid-leap.


    The shark-dogs continued to throw themselves at me with reckless abandon, fear never visible for even a moment.


    There were probably seven of them in total, all left around me at various distances in a circle of destruction, where my punches had quite literally ripped them apart.


    ***


    The boy peeked out from underneath the loose wooden rubble he had hidden himself beneath in the chaos of the monster attack.


    One moment, he had been returning from picking fruits from some of the trees around the vige, and the next, the monsters had somehowunched themselves over the top of the wall and ovee the few defenders there before attacking the nearest section of the vige.


    Hardly older than fourteen, he had been on a simple delivery to distribute fruits around the vige. He felt selfish for feeling the way he did, but he was somewhat grateful that he and his family lived in a separate section of the vige.


    He had hidden himself away beneath the rubble of a shed that had copsed at the start of the attack, slipping under the wooden beams and peeking out at the carnage that urred around him.


    The boy watched the strange man barrel in out of nowhere in a blur of motion that left one of the buildings copsed in a pile of burning debris before emerging and obliterating the monsters that had already decimated the surroundings and ughtered the guards atop the walls.


    The man made it look effortless, his hands passing through the monsters as if they were made of paper.


    Bathed in a subtle golden glow, the man stood alone amidst the corpses of the monsters he had killed.


    To the boy, the man looked much like one of the figures of old that he had grown up hearing tales about–a warrior of gold.


    ***


    It was too easy. I wondered how the vigers could have been so defenseless in the face of those weak monsters. Had I been like that before, not long ago?


    In fact, I had been worse.


    I realized that all of the preparation and practice I had undergone with my cane way back then had been useless. I had been disillusioning myself into believing that I would have had some chance against an honest threat, imagining myself oveing it through sheer effort.


    It hadn’t been effort that saved me but mere chance, or whatever it was that had caused the Second System to awaken within my body.


    Standing there, I realized that the vige had no hope. The System was the only bnce in ce that allowed humanity and the other races to fight monsters. Without the System, we would have perished long ago.


    But weren’t most monsters created by that very System? For what purpose?


    I shook those questions from my mind. There was something I had to do first in order to save the vige. It had been hinted at the other night, but I was sure then.


    I was only one man. Though I found the monsters easy to defeat, I couldn’t be sure that there wouldn’t be stronger ones, nor could I protect the entire vige at once if theyunched a multi-pronged attack.


    Indeed, the relic, the very source of the protection of the vige and the thing that was failing them, would be my tool against the monsters and aid me in saving the vige.