Chapter 32

“Holy shit!” Luke yelped. He threw himself backwards and to the left, but the stranger just extended the lunge with another step and turned it into a sideways swing. Luke got the handle of his mace up just in time to block the attack, but it hit hard enough to push him back a step. He shoved back and broke the clash.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Luke shouted. He’d just risked his life to save this guy, somehow miraculously winning a fight they had no business even surviving, and now the asshole was trying to kill him! That was some next-level bullshit.

On the one hand, it wasn’t a very good attempt. The man was obviously exhausted and injured. Luke had been threatened by level 10 goblins that had more bite in their moves than this guy did right now. But on the other hand, Luke wasn’t really in much better shape. His injuries were superficial, mostly bruises and muscle soreness. His own chain of [Power Strikes] was hindering him more than any injuries the jumbo elemental had given him.

The stranger, now mentally tagged as McDickbag by Luke, didn’t bother to answer. Maybe it was the language barrier, or maybe he was just using all his processing power to try to murder the shit out of Luke. Either way, McDickbag pushed forward, his sword thrusting at Luke’s stomach with each step.

Luke cursed and swore as he gave ground, still not willing to engage McDickbag directly. Whatever misunderstanding was happening here, he’d rather figure out some way to communicate and clear it up than he would kill another human being. Monsters were one thing, even monsters like goblins. Murdering another human was something else.

McDickbag didn’t look like he was going to give Luke a choice. His attacks started coming faster, from a wider variety of angles, and hitting harder with each one. There was a glow coming off his exposed skin, faint at first, but with each passing second growing brighter and denser. As the glow grew stronger, so did McDickbag.

Luke could barely keep in front of him, even with [Twitch Reflexes] and [Unarmed Martialist] helping him dodge. McDickbag was also good enough with his sword that [Counter] was giving Luke basically nothing to work with.

The way Luke figured it, there were only two options: play his own trump card, or hold out long enough for this glowing spell to wear off. He had no idea what it was though, and it might last minutes or hours. He needed to end the fight, and do it decisively, before McDickbag overwhelmed him.

So Luke pulled the trigger on [Life Surge], even though he knew he’d feel like shit when he was done and he didn’t have any stockpiled food to recover with. Those were problems for Future-Luke to deal with. Present-Luke needed to avoid having a dozen new holes poked into him.

As soon as [Life Surge] hit, Luke’s speed shot up to match McDickbag’s. The air was filled with the sound of screeching metal as their weapons smacked against each other, and the ground was covered with splattered blood from where they landed hits. Any slices McDickbag landed disappeared moments later, and the hits Luke tagged him with, hits that should have crushed stone, barely even caused a grimace on the stranger’s face.

It was going to come down to whose trump skill gave out first. Luke knew [Life Surge] did not last long at all, and he’d activated it a minute after the glowing aura thing his opponent was using. He thought [Life Surge] probably gave him a slight edge in strength and speed, and of course regeneration was an awesome perk. Maybe McDickbag’s skill lasted longer as a trade off for granting less power.

Either way, [Life Surge] wasn’t allowing him to overpower the stranger. It just didn’t grant him the kind of power he needed, and he was seconds away from crashing. He fought desperately, hoping against hope to tag McDickbag with a decisive hit, something that would knock the man on his ass without killing him. That last part was optional at this point; Luke was desperate.

Then it happened. The glow winked out, and McDickbag’s speed slowed to a crawl. He didn’t look surprised at the change, only resigned. Luke saw his mouth moving, though no sounds came out. Whatever he was saying, whoever he was talking to, it wasn’t going to save him. Luke’s foot flashed up in a kick, courtesy of [Unarmed Martialist], that smashed McDickbag’s hand and sent his sword spinning through the air to hit the dirt ten feet away.

Before he could follow up, [Life Surge] gave out. Luke stumbled a step, tried to marshal his willpower to take that last swing, but couldn’t hold the weight of the mace. It tumbled out of his fingers and he dropped to his hands and knees. It had not been this bad the first time he used the skill, but then he supposed he hadn’t dropped [Power Strike] four times in a row right before he used it last time either.

McDickbag said something to him, not that Luke understood it. All he could do was stare at the dirt between his hands and pant. He saw the stranger’s feet stop in front of him, and his shadow raise its arm up. He’d picked his sword back up when Luke wasn’t looking.

“Shit. Shit! Move, damn it!”

But he wasn’t doing anything more strenuous than flopping on the ground. He should have used [Life Surge] to run like hell instead of fighting. His mind was running a million miles a second trying to find a way out, but his limbs were leaden masses that could barely support his body.

Time was up. He’d failed, hadn’t even made it a month, let alone traveled the length of Aros to find the God Machine and bring his family back. The very first human he’d ever met was going to kill him, after he’d beaten hundreds of monsters.

A deafening screech rolled over him, so loud that his whole body spasmed and he collapsed face-first into the dirt. In front of him, McDickbag’s shadow also flailed around, and a moment later, his feet disappeared from Luke’s view. A blast of air flattened him to the ground, and a startled, hoarse cry rang out from overhead.

Luke forced himself to roll onto his back. There, maybe thirty or forty feet in the air, the stranger was struggling in Red’s talons. The enormous hawk had grabbed him by the shoulders and was rapidly gaining altitude. McDickbag was punching the bird as hard as the awkward angle allowed, but Red was way too tough to be stopped by that.

And then the human was falling from maybe fifty or sixty feet up. A regular human back on Earth could survive that, albeit with a few broken bones. Here on Aros, fortified by stats, Luke doubted it would cause any real harm. But McDickbag was almost as exhausted as Luke himself, and he didn’t make that landing well.

He hit with a loud thump, lay still for a long moment, then groaned in pain. Luke would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so dire. If there was ever a time to get back on his feet, this was it. But he didn’t think he could do it, not even to save his own life.

“No, you stupid asshole. You can do it. Just get up and make it happen,” he told himself. It hurt, a lot, but he rolled onto his side and climbed to his knees. Nearby, McDickbag lay sprawled out on the ground, limbs twisted grotesquely. Luke crawled over to his mace, grabbed it in one hand, and stood on wobbly legs.

“I don’t know who you are, or what the fuck your problem with me is, but fuck you man. Fuck you with a cactus.”

Then he hobbled over, brought the mace up, and slammed it down on McDickbag’s face. Bones crunched and blood exploded outwards. A pair of dings sounded in Luke’s head, but he was too busy passing out to notice them.

* * *

The sun was starting to go down when his eyes opened. Luke was… surprisingly not as sore as he’d expected. Most of the exhaustion had come from [Life Surge], which patched up injuries as part of the skill, so other than the fact that he was out-of-his-mind hungry, he was in pretty good condition.

Then he rolled over and saw the corpse of the man who’d tried to kill him. Luke groaned and sat upright. “Good morning to you, fuck head,” he said to the corpse.

Then he just kind of stared at it for a bit and thought about what he’d done. He didn’t think he felt bad. It was self-defense. The man had been trying to kill him. Or maybe those were justifications. That fight had been over. He could have let McDickbag live.

On the other hand, with stats and who knew what skills involved, there was a legitimate possibility the stranger could have gotten back up and finished the job. Luke hadn’t considered that though. He’d just been pissed that somebody he’d tried to save had turned on him like that, and met lethal force in kind.

The cloak was ruined by the whole busted skull thing, but it had done a good job of keeping the armor relatively clean. McDickbag had been about the same size, maybe a bit thinner, but when Luke examined the armor, he discovered a lot of straps used for tightening and loosening it. It was a bit ghoulish to rob the dead, but well, he needed armor. That asshole didn’t.

So Luke stole it. He took the sword too, and the belt with a leather pouch on it full of gold coins. He didn’t feel bad about any of that. The only reason he didn’t take the man’s boots was that they wouldn’t fit him.

His looting finished, he finally turned to his notifications. It was a bit exciting to see what level that jumbo elemental had been. He was figuring it must be at least 50. He flipped through a dozen or so notifications of lesser elemental kills until he found it.

[You have assisted in slaying Goliath Earth Elemental (lvl 34). 620 XP awarded.]

After that was a more sobering notification.

[You have assisted in slaying Daranite Templar Human (lvl 23). 277 XP awarded.]
[Congratulations! You have reached level 20. 20 AP awarded for use.]

“Daranite Templar? Fuck, you had religion? Some sort of zealot? What was your problem with me though? We killed this fucking elemental together, which the system is totally lying about it being only level 34.”

“The system does not lie, Luke,” System said, appearing next to him.

Luke rolled his eyes and said, “It’s a joke. But since you’re here, can you tell me what language this guy was speaking.”

“Thalian,” System supplied immediately.

“And that’s a popular language? People speak that all over?”

“People speak it in Thalasa,” System said. “That is the closest human-claimed territory.”

“That’s not as reassuring as I’d like it to be. I’m going to have to figure out how to speak that. Is there a skill for that?”

“Indeed. It costs 5 AP.”

“Jesus, that’s expensive. Least I have the AP for it. I’ll come back to that later I guess. For now, I need some food.”

Luke started for the forest, intent on finding something and fully willing to eat it raw, damn the risks, if he didn’t see it soon enough. A caw brought his attention off to the side, where Red was perched on a rather large rock, four different dead animals piled up below it.

“Goddamn I love that bird,” Luke said. “Okay, some wood for a fire and we are in business.”