Chapter 27 - Kill

Author's note:
A few small edits. The name of Jaren has been changed to Gareth.

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The area where they were was mostly open ground. Just between the foothills—which were now swallowed by the swarm—and the beginning of the forest. Mostly flat, rocky, and sparsely populated by trees. On this open stretch, Erik had decided to face them both. He hoped that if he could use the swarm to his advantage, he could hold them off at bay.

What do I do now? Erik thought in desperation. Maybe I can lower their guards and stall for time.

The two slowly advanced towards him.

"Don't come any closer!" He cried out with a frightened expression.

The hatchet in front of him was held high but visibly shaking.

The two before him shared a look of disgust. They seem to relax just a bit. But they still proceeded cautiously because of the swarm that was just behind Erik.

The scarred warrior took the lead. Since they had him surrounded and outnumbered, they took their time. She came from his left while the man came from the right. They probed first with a few unhurried attacks that he was just barely managing to evade and dodge even those.

Gareth was too injured to actually attack with any lethality, mainly supporting the female warrior. He also seemed to be struggling with essence exhaustion. But he wasn't to be underestimated.

Erik started accumulating bruises and minor injuries. And it wasn't long before the tempo of the fight increased.

He swiped towards Gareth's chest, but the man crouched down and got inside his guard and then proceeded to punch him right in the gut. He doubled over and just barely rolled to the left and out of the way as the older man tried to decapitate him.

With effort, he got up and was just in time for the female warrior to come from the front with her axe. Erik dodged, but it left his back exposed. And she took advantage of the opening. Moving behind him and very close to the edge of the swarm, her axe ravaged his back, making him scream loudly.

He rolled away and just barely got up while gritting his teeth.

Before anything else happened, there was a loud roar and a lot of screaming.

"EEEEEERIK! HEEEELP!" a boy's scream came from a distance.

All three of them turned and saw that Endur was running in their direction, coming from the southwest. He was followed by the red-haired female warrior, and even further back behind them, chasing with mad fury and spit flying everywhere, was a Mischief.

Somehow, the boy had survived unscathed, extremely frightened, with messy hair and a crazy look in his eyes, but unscathed nonetheless.

The woman, however, already bore a number of wounds. But she still looked like she could run and fight.

Both of them were ahead, but the Nilgrim was catching up. In a dozen heartbeats, all three newcomers would join them.

Erik's gaze quickly switched back to the scarred warrior, who was now half an arm's length from the swarm.

"Grab her and drag her up the mountain!" he shouted while pointing to her.

Her head snapped in his direction, and for a moment, she stared at him as if he had lost his mind. She must have thought so, based on his earlier pitiful display. However, a moment later, something dawned on her as her eyes widened—but it was too late.

Pale-white, skeletal hands emerged from the living sea of death, grasping hold of her and dragging her into it. Before she could even attempt to resist, she was submerged in the swarm.

Only a bloodied arm emerged from the sea of insects for a brief moment. The countless mosquitos covering it burst as they lost the embrace of the haze.

But it was not enough.

She was then completely submerged again and vanished from their sight. Only her deathly scream rang out—and that too only for a few heartbeats before going quiet.

That should be enough.

"Come back and attack him!" Erik shouted.

Gareth was staring wide-eyed. He was struggling to keep up with the fast pace of the events. But the warrior had been living in this nightmarish place for a long time, and he quickly adapted, changing his stance to meet the new foes.

Erik threw a glance back towards their camp, hoping that there was help coming, but it looked deathly quiet over there. He refocused on the older man despite his injured and tired state. It would take time to bring him down. And they had a much more dangerous foe to fight.

Just then, Endur ran past them and kept on going north, occasionally looking over his shoulder.

The female warrior reached Gareth and stood back to back with him. One facing the Draugr, while the other facing the Nilgrim.

"Dodge!" she shouted.

The Nilgrim, which also had a number of wounds, had been fixated on chasing the boy and the female warrior and ignored Erik, diving straight for her.

Both of them evaded its attack and focused all their attention on the bigger threat.

Erik couldn't run away. He still needed the water at their camp. And the other two would not let him leave peacefully.

"Attack the Nilgrim," Erik ordered, and his minions obeyed.

All of them focused on the new threat.

That, however, did not mean that they were on the same team.

What followed was complete mayhem. While they were trying to kill the Mischief, they were also trying to kill each other.

One of the Draugr was quickly lost to a brutal blow to the skull from Gareth.

And as the older man was distracted by that, Erik tried to dispatch him, but received a savage kick in the chest from the female warrior.

That, however, left her exposed as the Mischief jumped forward and bit into her foot—crushing it in its mouth.

She screamed at the top of her lungs.

One of the Undead stabbed a bone in the Nilgrim's hind legs, but it received a tail whip in return, shattering a large part of its rib cage and sending it flying backwards.

Gareth came forth and slammed his axe into the neck of the Nilgrim. The abomination let go of the foot and bellowed. It was mortally wounded but still not dead. The older man was about to finish it off, but the creature swiped its claws at him, forcing him back.

The female warrior stumbled backwards and lost her balance.

"Kill her!" Erik shouted.

The last Undead switched targets and was about to stab its bone through her eye when the Nilgrim rammed into it with its head, crushing its left arm and hurling it backwards.

The monster finally reached the prey it was aiming for and proceeded to rip her throat out—killing the female warrior on the spot before anything else happened.

Seeing the opportunity, Erik struck it as hard as he could on its back and ordered his minions to switch targets as well.

Gareth was on its other side and struck the abomination, too.

The creature only managed to react partly and rammed into Erik, sending him stumbling back towards the swarm.

He managed to stop himself in time, but his left arm was submerged all the way to the elbow into the sea of mosquitos.

Immediately, he felt the sting of multiple insects. In fright, he pulled it back and a multitude of the infernal bugs with it. Like the others, the moment they were no longer covered by the haze, they explored into a gory mess of sludge and Erik's blood.

His arm was now black and red all over. But worst of all, nearly all of his essence was absorbed along with a lot of his blood. The dizziness intensified, even stronger than before.

He turned his gaze back to the fight to see his minion who was sent flying earlier by the tail whip coming from the side. It stabbed its bone right into the wound on the creature's neck. It was driven deep and right into the brain of the abomination.

And finally, the Nilgrim was killed.

Erik felt the familiar invigorating sensation and the new Kill Rune forming on his forearm. A slight amount of clarity returned with that.

And he did not pause as he shouted, "Kill him!"

The older man, despite breathing heavily, was already focused on the Undead. He swung for its head, but his aim was off, and his axe cleaved through its right shoulder, shattering most the ribs on its right side.

Erik did not stand idle either.

During this time, he reached the older man and was about to attack, but was forced to dodge by a surprise attack. He ducked low and managed to embed his axe into the man's left calf—all the way to the bone.

Gareth stumbled but used the momentum to knee Erik in the face, breaking his nose and making him see stars.

At that moment, the other Undead arrived and stabbed him in the hip.

Bleeding profusely and utterly exhausted, the man still reacted, swinging his axe and shattering its skull.

However, the final Draugr that he had almost dispatched earlier jumped onto his back. And as Erik's sight cleared, he and Gareth's eyes met. Then the Undead drove the sharp bone in its skeletal hand into the man's neck.

It pierced right through and came out of the other side, dripping in blood.

Gareth's mouth moved a few times, but only blood seeped out of it.

The light slowly faded from his gaze. He was dead.

"It's over," Erik breathed out.

He stumbled a few steps to give himself some distance from the swarm and collapsed on his knees.

Breathing heavily, he looked around. The clearing was covered in blood, guts, and corpses. The boy stood some distance away, still with a look frozen somewhere between awe and complete terror.

Erik sighed heavily. He wanted to lie down and sleep for days. And also take a bath. It had been days since he did, and his dive into the lake with its polluted water did not really count as one.

As he was about to get up and figure out what to do, he felt the invigorating sensation of his Talent Runes becoming more saturated. But he also felt something else.

Surprised, he looked down and saw two new Blood Runes. Aside from a Kill Rune he received for Gareth, there was another. Focusing on the new one, knowledge gently surfaced in his mind.

...Blessing:...