B2 Chapter 43: Familiar Territory

There was no time left to lose. I followed the direction that Tanver Vhar had pointed in and found the headless statue with the two crossed swords. I ran past it and tried to keep in a straight line, which is harder than it sounds in a jungle. There was nothing to use as a guide except the sun, which I kept over my left shoulder.

Eventually, the sound of fighting could be heard. I slowed down and approached carefully. Moving quietly through the foliage. Metal on claw clashed together. Over and over again. Keeping low, I got closer until I saw who it was.

Sebastian swung his axe wildly at the unarmed Shrikon. He seemed manic, almost desperate. The blood on his clothes told me he’d already suffered injuries. The Shrikon avoided his attacks with a smooth, casual grace that suggested this was too easy for him.

The fight wasn’t over yet though, so I remained where I was. Content to watch while I allocated the stat points I’d received from killing my own hunter.

I put the first half of the stat points I’d gained into my Strength stat and received a new notification.

*DING!* You have gained [Cardinal Arm Fortification (Uncommon)] – This is a passive improvement to your Cardinal Arm ability that reinforces its armor and allows you to wield your full strength without risk of injury.

Very nice. It had clearly responded to when I used it to punch the statue, and having even a small piece of armor gives me more options for future fights.

The remaining points went into Dexterity, which also gave me a message.

*DING!* You have gained [Blood Leash (Rare)] – You’ve been firm, but now it's time to be flexible. This ability allows you to create chains of blood to grab or restrain your foes.

Okay, this is a big one. So far, all of my blood summon constructs could only go from a rigid solid to liquid. Before, it was only sticks and blades, but now with this new flexibility I’d have a lot more mobility in how I approached things.

Meanwhile, the fight wasn’t going so well. The Shrikon was still toying with Sebastian and had sliced twice across his left cheek. The cuts were shallow and designed to wear him down and when Sebastian overextended on a swing; the fishman struck with a fist to the jaw. While dazed, the Shrikon then snatched the axe right out of his hand.

The fishman took a few steps back and twirled his new weapon to get a sense of its weight. Sebastian spat some blood to the side and pulled a different single-headed axe out of his inventory. It looked similar to the other one except that this new one featured a longer, dark wooden handle.

The pair resumed fighting, but Sebastian never gained the upper hand. He was constantly on the backfoot, retreating until he snagged his feet on a tree root. He tripped and fell backwards, which caused the Shrikon to say something in triumph.

Well, there’s my cue.

I walked out of the bushes and whistled.

Startled, the Shrikon whirled around. His eyes went from me to Sebastian on the floor, as if weighing his options. On the one hand, he had the person he was meant to be hunting. Somebody who was already battered and bloody. Weak and ready to be finished off. On the other hand, I looked fresh as a daisy, and he couldn’t be sure that turning his back on me for even a second was a safe choice.

I summoned a ball of Shrikon blood to help him decide.

“Do you recognize this? It’s your friend’s blood,” I said. “Or maybe it was your brothers?”

The Shrikon screeched and charged at me with the axe raised. I stood there and waited. As he started his swing, I activated Cardinal Arm. The blood gauntlet formed and my hand snapped out to catch the axe's head.

The Shrikon looked at the axe in confusion. The swing should’ve cut my hand in half or at least broken a few bones.

I smiled. The new fortification to the Cardinal Arm armor made it twice as tough as before. I’d have to test it some other ways later, but this was a very pleasing development.

He tried to wrench the axe free, but my grip was absolute. It wasn’t going anywhere. But when the fishman heard Sebastian climb to his feet, he started to worry. Now his eyes darted between us, in a panicked state, before he let go of the axe and fled.

He didn’t make it very far.

I used Blood Leash and red blood tinged with dark green shot out of my bracer like a whip and wrapped itself around the Shrikon’s neck. I mentally gave the whip a razor’s edge and his head parted from his body.

Oh yeah, I could get used to this.

*DING!* You have slain [Shrikon Footman (common)] Level 65 – Experience Points and Currency Acquired.

*DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 66 – Experience Acquired.

I took the blood from its body while Sebastian retrieved his axe.

“You know, there’s something about this whole situation that feels familiar,” I said to him.

“Yeah, you stole my kill. Again,” he glowered.

“Nope, that’s not it. I think it was me saving your life again.”

“You didn’t have to kill him. He was supposed to be mine, and he was running away. I could’ve handled it.”

“Well, next time when one of them is fleeing, I’ll let you throw one of those baby axes at him.”

He arched one eyebrow. “Baby axes?”

“Yeah… the what are they called?” I asked myself as I struggled for the word until I found it. “Hatchets?”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe I got saved by a guy who calls them baby axes.”

“Yeah, but you knew exactly what I meant when I called them that, so the name is justified. But as much as I’d love to keep debating this, we should get moving.”

He looked annoyed. He had just pulled out a health potion and interrupted him. “What? Why?”

Another Shrikon screech went up somewhere in the jungle.

“Because four of them are now coming to hunt us! Come on, multitask. Drink and run!”

I grabbed his arm and pulled him along. He practically choked on the potion as he kept up with me, but I had to make sure he matched my speed. Even for me, the Shrikon were incredibly fast and four were simply too many for the two of us to handle. However, the good news was that If he was on the island, then there might be others. Finding other team members might be the only thing that gives us a shot at surviving this hunt.

We stayed close together, rushing through the trees until we heard a squawking call from up ahead. We froze. The call was close. Too close.

Before we could do anything and a second responding call came from our right. Two different groups were closing in on us.

The calls continued like they were using them to hone in on each other. There was nowhere for us to go. We hid ourselves as best as we could in a thick bush and waited.

Soon, two pairs of webbed feet walked by us. I tensed like a coiled spring, ready to lash out.

One Shrikon growled something at the other, and they began a conversation. It made me curious, so I slipped on the translation ring that Tanver Vhar had given to me. Suddenly, their words transformed into a guttural form of English.

“You saw the readings,” one of them said. “They’re around here somewhere.”

“It’s supposed to give a precise location. Is it broken?” asked the other.

“No, the tracking signal of one collar is interfering with another. It’s another reason why we separated all of them. Two or more collars in close proximity distorts the signal.”

The other one cursed. “This is what happens when you buy cheap Helix crap!” he spat.

“Maybe we should wait for others and team up like our prey did?”

The other one snorted. “And let them steal our kill? No, keep looking. The signal distortion isn’t that bad. They’re hiding around here somewhere.”

I threw a glance at Sebastian, and he nodded. He’d been here since this floor had opened up and understood them, too. Our best chance was to fight now while there were only two of them and while we still had the element of surprise.

We were about to strike when the other two showed up.

Damn it, now it would be four versus two, and I wasn’t sure if Sebastian could even handle one of them. I also knew that I’d gotten lucky with my kills thus far. Fighting three at once was just asking to die.

I tried to think of a new plan when Sebastian tapped me on the arm and pointed at the sky. In the distance, a gust of flame kept shooting up.

It had caught the Shrikon’s attention as well. “What is that?” one of them asked.

“It’s Shanker territory. It’s off limits to us and besides, the tracker says they’re within a two hundred meters of us. They’re here somewhere. Keep looking.”

Off limits? That sounded promising. Plus, Shanker monkeys were something I was already familiar at handling.

I gestured towards the fire and mimed making a distraction and then running with my fingers. Sebastian nodded and waited for my move.

While the Shrikon were still searching, we burst forth out of the bushes. I used Heart of Darkness to throw blobs of shadow at the faces of the two to my left. It blinded them and they clawed at the shadow, desperate but unable to remove it. The shadow would fade in a minute, so we had to move fast.

Meanwhile, Sebastian used some kind of foot stomp ability. The ground around the other Shrikon exploded, and they fell injured, but probably not out of the fight for long.

With our distraction out of the way, we dashed towards the fire. But we were so busy running and checking behind us that we didn’t notice the pit that had been hidden with a net of leaves.

I fell into it first. Falling a hundred feet and landing directly on the sharpened stone spikes. I screamed as they stabbed into me. There was one in each of my legs, one in my left arm, and two in my torso. One of them had just missed my heart, but I was bleeding out fast.

In between my pained cries, I could feel myself going into shock. No, I had to heal. I have to stay conscious. A blood whip went out to try and slice through the spikes, but it just bounced off. The stone was too tough and my limbs were immobilized. The only way I was getting out of this was with help.

Meanwhile, Sebastian had remarkably seen me fall first and managed to slow down enough that, as he slid into the pit, he grabbed onto the edge. He hung there for a moment until he heard Shrikon footsteps. The spikes were only in the middle of the pit, so he slid down the wall to hide.

He came over to me and I’d never felt so relieved to see him. I tried to thank him, but it came out as a garbled moan.

He reached up, but instead of lifting me off, he clamped his hand around my mouth.

Mentally, I cursed his name, but I was in too much pain to struggle much and I couldn’t fight back. All of my blood was going to keeping me alive. My wounds trying to close up around the spikes and then widening and bleeding again. It was agony, but with Sebastian there, it was a silent one.

The Shrikon came nearby and then moved further away. They hadn’t discovered the pit. It was the smallest of blessing but one that we took gladly.

We heard them murmur amongst themselves about how signal had gotten even worse and then they moved away.

Once he was sure that they’d gone, Sebastian whispered, “bite down on this.”

Of all the things in his inventory, the bastard pulled out a hatchet and pushed it into my mouth. I bit down hard while Sebastian got in between the spikes and under me. I screamed as he pushed the first leg off and then the other. Even with the healing, I nearly blacked out. My throat raw from screaming. When it came time for my torso, only a pained whimper escaped me. I’d run out of energy for anything else.

Once I was free, he had to carry me over to the wall and set me down. A health potion was shoved into my face, and I swallowed every drop.

“Now we’re even,” he said.

Yeah, I guess we were. I finished the potion, and he was shocked when he realized it wasn’t enough to fix the gaping hole in my gut. Stronger healing was needed and I couldn’t afford to be stingy. I reached for my cache and drained it entirely of everything except the Shrikon blood.

After a minute, all of my wounds had healed, and I was good as new.

Sebastian was stunned. “How the hell did you recover so easily?” he asked.

“It wasn’t easy,” I replied before looking for a way out of this damn pit. It had been incredibly expensive to heal myself to that extent. I now had no red healing blood left at all and the Shrikon blood was practically worse than a healing potion. Any damage I accrued now was permanent until I found more red blood.

At first, the pit didn’t seem too high. We were far stronger than a human could ever be, so climbing it shouldn’t have been too difficult. But as I tried to find a purchase on the wall, I found I was unable to. My hands just kept sliding off and the same thing happened when I tried to stab in the wall with a blade.

“There,” Sebastian pointed.

Further up the wall was some kind of magical marking. I groaned in annoyance. This wasn’t just a pit but a magically enchanted one that prevented people from climbing out.

The next thing I tried was jumping. With my enhanced strength and dexterity, I had a vertical leap that was well beyond even the greatest human athlete from before the System’s arrival. I leapt out, coming up about halfway.

“I could try throwing you up there?” he suggested.

I immediately nixed that idea in case I fell back onto the spikes. That was a fall that I wouldn’t survive a second time.

There was no way out. We were trapped here.