Chapter 66

The effects of the first [Life Surge] hadn’t hit Luke too hard. He’d been tired, but it turned out the effects of regular, full meals did a lot to mitigate the insane amounts of hunger it generated. Having less to heal also reduced the drawbacks. But if he used it again so quickly, there was going to be hell to pay afterward.

Luke could still move, so he held off on that strategy. Killing Myla and then collapsing next to her body where the rest of the church templars could find him wasn’t a winning move. He had enough of a lead to wait out a seven-minute debuff timer. All he had to do was survive against Myla without her shooting any more darts into him.

“Fuck,” Luke said.

The dart shot out of the end of the blow gun, and Luke’s arm snapped up. It shouldn’t have been possible, but perception let him see it, and between agility and [Twitch Reflexes], he was quick enough to block it. The dart ricocheted off the mace and stuck into a tree. Myla’s eyes widened in surprise as she tracked its path.

“How many more you got?” he said. “What if you can’t hit me with another one?”

“More than enough,” she told him, fishing another dart out.

He hated to admit it, but deflecting that shot had been as much luck as it was skill. He could barely feel the mace in his hand now, and his muscles didn’t want to respond when he told them to move. If he gave Myla the time to take another shot at him, there was a very real chance that she’d hit him.

So he charged her. It was an awkward, stiff-legged gait, but it ate up the distance in a second and he timed it perfectly so that he made impact in that moment between loading the dart and bringing the blow gun up to her mouth. That way, she couldn’t just stick him with it when he got close.

That didn’t stop her from pulling a knife to stab him instead, but Luke was counting on that. His right foot slammed down a full two feet in front of her, arresting all his momentum and preventing him from impaling himself on the blade. She leaned into the thrust, perhaps intent on delivering the venomous payload coating the blade, and Luke’s mace whipped around, fully infused with a [Power Strike], to crack into her elbow.

Myla screamed as the bones snapped and the joint was crushed. The knife went flying off into a nearby bush, but rather than scramble to get away or chase it down, she raised the blow gun back up to her lips and fired from close range. The dart shot out and sunk into Luke’s chest.

[Condition: Poison- Night Stalker’s Venom (10M19S)]

The mace tumbled out of Luke’s hand as another dose of paralytic hit him. It was all he could do to stay upright with that one sticking in him. He weakly raised a hand to paw at the dart, trying to pull it out and failing. It started getting harder to breathe, and he felt dizzy.

“The poison can affect your heart if it’s injected too close,” Myla said, panting while she spoke. She cradled her ruined arm close to her stomach, and the blowgun was sitting in the dirt between them. “I didn’t want to kill you, but if the alternative is letting you go…”

“Fuck… you…” Luke gasped out. It wasn’t like she had an altruistic motive in taking him alive. Idly, he wondered if she had some sort of antivenom in that bag that would reverse the poison. He didn’t suppose it mattered though. He was out of options. The only thing left was to get himself into a position where he could hit her with explosive force as soon as he triggered [Life Surge]. He’d find out if the aftereffects were going to kill him soon enough.

He let himself drop to one knee, but kept his foot under him, ready to push him upwards into the most brutal uppercut he could manage. Myla watched him drop, her face expressionless. At least she wasn’t enjoying it, though it might have been easier for him if she was. He could have hated her for the sadism of it all then.

[Life Surge] shot through him, shocking his body into motion and burning away the remaining poison. Luke sprang up, his feet leading the way, and caught the church woman in the chest, right under the bandoleer of throwing knives. He hit her so hard they both went into the air. She flew away and landed flat on her back, and he ended up spinning in place once to bleed off some momentum before he landed back on his feet.

Something broke inside Myla when he hit her. He didn’t know what, but she was coughing up blood. That didn’t stop her from scrambling back to her feet, and Luke found himself idly wondering exactly how much stamina she had. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to get back up from a hit like that.

He sprinted forward, intent on finishing the fight before his skill gave out. If she was still standing when that happened, it was over. There was no way he was going to still be on his feet. One way or another, it was going to be decided in the next half a minute.

But Myla didn’t meet his charge. She didn’t even pull one of the throwing knives to attack him. Instead, she spent a fraction of a second examining him, just long enough for him to take two steps in her direction, and then she turned and fled.

He chased after her, but it was more for appearances than because he had any hope of actually catching her. Even if he did, by the time he was within arm’s reach, it was likely that all he’d accomplish was passing out at her feet. So he rattled some branches, stomped around, and made some noise while she ran.

And then he let her go. No doubt she’d be back, probably with some new poison that he wouldn’t see coming until it was too late. Maybe she’d have reinforcements again. He’d need to do some serious leveling very quickly if he wanted to survive the next encounter.

He opened his pack, saw that most of the food had been crushed in the various scuffles he’d been in over the last hour or so, shrugged, and started gobbling it down as fast as he could. [Life Surge]gave out a few seconds into gorging himself, and the wave of vertigo that followed it almost knocked him back off his feet again.

Luke was honestly just happy that he didn’t pass out. He’d really been expecting it to drop him on his ass, and then he’d probably wake up in a cell somewhere. Or maybe he wouldn’t wake up. Ever. But that didn’t happen, so he went through all the food he’d purchased in a few minutes, and when it was gone, he felt a little bit better, not really good, but better.

Before he left, he scooped up the blowgun and stuck it in his bag. There was no sense in leaving it behind, after all. If was small and easy enough to carry, and might be worth something. Then, after securing his mace back in its spot on his harness, he started wearily trudging through the woods, one foot in front of the other, utterly spent and too tired to even watch for predators. Red could have landed on his head at that point and he wouldn’t have realized until he felt the talons sink in.

Day faded into night, and Luke curled up in some giant burrow he found. An animal had dug it out under a mass of gnarled old tree roots, but it didn’t smell like anything had lived there for a long time. If it did, well, tough shit. He was borrowing it for the night.

* * *

His stomach woke him up, no surprise there. Luke almost wished something had tried to come into the burrow overnight while he recovered, just so he wouldn’t have to go hunting in the morning. He was starving, but there was nothing left in his backpack to eat.

Before he set out, Luke took a minute to center himself and make sure he had his priorities in order. His most immediate need was sustenance, not because he couldn’t handle an empty belly, but because [Life Surge] was his trump card. It had saved his ass multiple times, usually in literal life and death moments. He needed to be able to use it without worrying about passing out after. That meant food, and lots of it.

Once he was back in fighting shape, his next priority was to start moving north and find some monsters in need of a good smiting along the way. If it was just him and Myla in an open field with no tricks, he thought he could take her, but he knew that wasn’t how it would happen. It would be him shitting his guts out after she poisoned his lunch and her garroting him from where she’d been waiting on top of the outhouse.

So he needed more stamina to resist her next poisoning attempt, and more perception to keep track of her. Strength and agility were probably fine as they were, unless she brought along friends. Running had worked well the first time, but they might lay a better trap for him. He was well aware that if he hadn’t been able to shrug off that poison, they’d have had him dead to rights in the bakery.

More AP for higher stats was a must, but Luke was honestly considering holding it to buy a rank up for [Life Surge] instead. It was insanely expensive at 100 AP for the rank 2 version, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that it would be worth it. The question was whether or not he could afford to sit on close to five levels worth of AP while he saved up.

That was a decision he could put off for a little while at least, since he was a bit over 4000 XP short of leveling up, and he wasn’t sure where he’d find the monsters he needed to cover that. He knew where some were if he was willing to go in the wrong direction, but Zea was heading north, and she was expecting him in Landston. If he knew exactly where that was, he might have considered going on an expedition back towards the mountains, but knowing him, he’d likely get lost in the woods and he wasn’t about to get onto the roads.

Though once he thought about it, he realized he did have an easy way to make sure he could get back to Landston. “System,” he said. “Can you tell me which direction Landston is from here?”

“Certainly, Luke. It is approximately forty-three miles in that direction,” System said, appearing in front of him and pointing past Luke’s left shoulder.

“Perfect. Okay, I need something to eat, and while I’m looking for that, I want to ask you about some skills.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Well, for starters, is there such a thing as a poison resistance skill? Because that would be really fucking handy to have right about now.”

“There are, yes. There are actually quite a few of them, though they are statistically almost never purchased with AP. The rare individuals who acquire them generally do so naturally, by being exposed to the poison repeatedly.”

“Why not?” Luke said. “Deliberately exposing yourself to poisons seems like a great way to die.”

“I can only speculate, but I believe it is because while the resistances are individually cheap, there are a great many of them, one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, to be precise.”

“What the fuck? Why are there so many?”

“One for each type of poison,” System explained.

“Damnit, so if you don’t know what kind of poison you’re dealing with, it’s pretty useless.”

“An increase to your stamina may serve you better if you are expecting to be poisoned, but are unsure of what kind of poison you’ll be subjected to,” System said.

“Great. Okay, so that’s off the table. Let’s talk about combat skills designed for fighting large groups of opponents, and maybe some stuff that works at range. I’ve been having problems dealing with people who have crossbows lately.”

“Indeed. Let me start with a few defensive options that you may find useful…”