Chapter 44: Ch84. Test - 5 (Ties that bind - 3)
’Woah... That’s dope!’ Kurt thought, when he suddenly heard Evellyn’s voice behind him.
"KURT, BEHIND YOU!"
He moved almost by instinct, jumping as the air behind him swayed, as soon as he felt the magic working on him.
There was a Diwerevolf right behind him, but he could swear there was nothing behind him other than Evellyn even less than a second ago.
’These bastards are way faster than the Direwolves, shit!’
Kurt rolled in mid-air and one of the daggers slashed through the Direwolf’s head, and the beast tumbled forward, falling on its knees, dropping dead right after that.
[DIWEREWOLVES KILLED: 01/50]
[COLLEAGUES KILLED: 00/21]
’Okay, one down. Forty-nine to go...’ Kurt landed as Evellyn immediately shouted again.
"THREE ON YOUR NINE!"
He looked around and soon realized what his nine was.
There were three of those beasts approaching really fast from his right. Their maws open and slobbering, and their claws extended towards him.
He didn’t notice it with the first Direwolf, but Evellyn was evading the attacks of five of them.
She didn’t seem to have any combat ability or experience, but she was doing quite a good job at running away from them.
’But the problem is she’s going to get tired soon, if she keeps up like this...’
Kurt slit one of the beasts’ ankles, going right after the second one’s thigh, jumping to evade the claw strike of the last on and sticking the blade of his dagger into the last one’s neck.
[DIWEREWOLVES KILLED: 04/50]
[COLLEAGUES KILLED: 00/21]
After killing the third beast, he slit the throats of the remaining two, running straight to where Evellyn was.
The students inside the barrier all looked at how Kurt moved, and even though he had their help with boosting his strength and speed, they couldn’t help but think of how Kurt’s movements were way more fluid than a normal kid of his age.
Even an awakened kid wouldn’t have moves like those.
But when they stopped to pay attention to that, they heard the audible crack coming from above them.
Christina, Johan, and Caleb, the three of Evellyn’s friends who were keeping the barrier up were getting exhausted, and their mana was almost gone.
"Huh... Guys, A BIT OF HELP HERE?"
’Oh, shit...’ "HOLD ON A SECOND!"
Kurt ran with all his speed and punched one Diwerewolf on its ribs, and the beast flew like a rag doll, colliding against a tree that broke and fell down because of the beast’s massive size.
The other four beasts looked at Kurt like he was some kind of a monster, but didn’t have a single drop of fear in their eyes.
They all charged towards him, forgetting about Evellyn like she was nothing but a small appetizer and he was the real feast.
"DUCK!" Evellyn shouted.
And Kurt ducked at the same time that one of the Diwerewolves clawed at where his head was just a moment ago, and he immediately swung the blade at the beast’s wrist.
"ROLL TO YOUR LEFT!" And Kurt did as he was told, escaping by a hairsbreadth from being stomped, slashing towards the beast’s foot.
Evellyn told Kurt what to do almost one second before the beasts did anything, and Kurt evaded precisely and smoothly, just as if he already knew what was going to happen.
’Just as if she knew what was going to happen...’
And like that, the four beasts that were after Evellyn were taken down, like they were nothing but toys before Kurt’s blade.
[DIWEREWOLVES KILLED: 08/50]
[COLLEAGUES KILLED: 00/21]
’Yes! I can do it!’
He felt invincible with the buff he had received from Christina and Johan.
But before Kurt could take a single breather, him and Evellyn heard the sound of cracking and crashing.
Kurt looked turned around to look, and he saw fear and despair in the students’ faces.
Christina, Johan, and Caleb were on their knees, covering their heads with their hands, but one of their hands were still outstretched towards him and Evellyn.
The barrier keeping them and their classmates had been crashed into bits, and there were nothing more keeping them from the claws and fangs of the Diwerewolves.
There were ten of the bloodthirsty monsters over the students, and there was only Kurt to save them.
The boy didn’t think even once, he charged against the beasts as he heard Evellyn say in a hush
"There’s no time..."
’I’ll make time. I just don’t know how...’
He was halfway from the beasts when he felt his strength and speed waning.
[BUFF FROM EXTERNAL ABILITY – INCREASE – HAS ENDED]
"Oh, for f-"
"Did anyone called the cavalry?" Nikolai’s voice echoed from behind Kurt.
But in the blink of an eye, the Russian boy appeared ahead of Kurt, kicking one of the beasts’ head that was about to take a bite from Caleb.
Kurt felt a smile of relief sprout through his lips.
"What took you so long?" He heard himself asking.
"I had to see if you were truly trustworthy." Nikolai answered, performing nonchalance. "You know, son of Octavius Blake and all."
Did he really think that Kurt was a member of the New Dawn?
Kurt threw the thought away and kept running.
"Delilah, we’ll draw the beasts away and you refuel Evellyn’s friends tank, okay?" Kurt saw Nikolai shouting towards him.
But he heard a second voice, behind him, and understood what Nikolai meant.
The girl who went running inside the cave to tell Nikolai about the attack, Delilah, was already out, running towards the group of students.
"Sorry man, but I’ll have to steal your kills!" Kurt pressed on, feeling the fatigue build up, but pushing forward and resisting the pain on his limbs like nothing in the world.
[VIGOR HAS INCREASED BY 02]
The pain in Kurt’s legs and arms slightly decreased as he pushed harder to reach the beasts, and when he did, he focused everything he had on the sensations of the [MEMORY FRAGMENT] and jumped.
His strength was still par with the Diwerewolves resistance, and the moves he remembered his other version executing flowed through him like a second nature.
The strikes were faster than the blink of an eye, and even Nikolai didn’t keep up with them.
The next second, the Russian boy realized that the beasts all ceased to move.
And the next moment, all ten of them dropped dead onto the grass.
[DIWEREWOLVES KILLED: 18/50]
[COLLEAGUES KILLED: 00/21]
Kurt breathed heavily, his limbs aching like they were on fire.
He knew that there relying on the [MEMORY FRAGMENT] took a heavy toll on his body, but he wasn’t expecting it to hit him right in the middle of a crisis like that.
"KURT!" He heard Evellyn and Nikolai calling his name, but he couldn’t respond.
His lungs burned like they were on fire, his mouth was dry, and his legs became so weak that he fell on his knees.
Kurt’s whole world became an insurmountable universe of pain as he tried to focus his vision on his... Friends?
"Arf... Arf... Wa... Ter..."
That was the only word Kurt could utter through the pain he was feeling, but his mind was a rollercoaster of thoughts.
And the most critical of them was.
’But... Where are the other thirty-two beasts...?’
Suddenly, he felt his world getting clearer.
The strength came back to his limbs, and he felt someone put a canteen to his lips.
He drank as if his life depended on it, and little by little, as the seconds went by, he felt the pain being washed away from his body.
[EXTERNAL ABILITY – HIGH HEALING – HAS BEEN USED]
[ALL YOUR STATS HAVE RETURNED TO NORMAL]
[FATIGUE ELEMENT HAS BEEN REDUCED TO ZERO CONDITION]
[ALERT]
[OVERUSE OF THE – MEMORY FRAGMENT – MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO THE USER’S BODY]
’No shit...’ Kurt had been warned by his older version before he entered the [MEMORY FRAGMENT], that everything he would experience in his older version’s memories would be engraved in his mind, in his DNA.
And that because of it, he would be able to use some of the other Kurt’s proficiencies, to some extent.
However, just as the younger Kurt was able to understand the fundaments of [GHOST STEPS OF A THOUSAND FEET] inside the [HIDDEN ROOM], he became able to understand the fundaments of the older Kurt’s movements, and to improve the quality of his own movements as time passed by.
He didn’t expect the aftereffects of what the system called [OVERUSE] of the [MEMORY FRAGMENT] to be that intense.
But what he never expected was the beep that came after the warning.
[DUE TO EXCESSIVE AMOUNT OF DATA BEING ANALYZED, CALCULATIONS FOR BALANCING STATS MATCHING THAT OF THE – MEMORY FRAGMENT – HAVE TAKEN UNEXPECTEDLY LONG TO BE COMPLETED]
[3... 2... 1...]
[CALCULATIONS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED]
[STRENGTH INCREASED BY 20]
[AGILITY INCREASED BY 33]
[DEXTERITY INCREASED BY 32]
[PERCEPTION INCREASED BY 31]
[INTELLIGENCE INCREASED BY 31]
[VIGOR INCREASED BY 46]
[BY REACHING LEVEL 05, THE USER WILL UNLOCK HIS HIDDEN AWAKENING SKILL]
It was a lot to take in, but as Kurt took the time to recompose himself, pretending to be recovering from the aftereffects of the overuse of his extended motor capabilities, he read through the information given by the system, and with a sigh of relief, he got up, stretching out, looking at the girl in front of him.
It was Delilah.
She had short hair, and her complexion was that of a fighter, with dense muscles and almost square jaw.
However, she was very pretty with her brown eyes and soft skin.
She looked at him with a stern look on her face.
"First of all, you’re welcome. Second, I don’t know how you did that, but it was amazing! Thank you." She punched him friendly on the shoulder, frowning. "Bro, how are you so sturdy? Are you even our age?" She asked with her eyes wide.
"If you’re sixteen, then no. I’m fifteen, turning sixteen next year. And that’s not a thing we should discuss right now..."
Delilah was smiling towards him, but her smiled vanished as soon as he said those words.
"And why is that?" She muttered, displeased.
Kurt’s senses had been heightened and sharpened to an extent he didn’t think to be possible outside the [MEMORY FRAGMENT] or the [HIDDEN ROOM].
But as he listened to the sounds around the forest, he clenched his fists around his daggers and asked.
"How long can you keep on replenishing the three magic people in our group?"
Delilah frowned while Nikolai got up, and Evellyn’s eyes glowed golden again.
"I don’t know... With my remaining mana, maybe ten minutes. Why?"
Kurt grinned.
"No biggie. I’ll just need five. We have incoming right around us!"
Christina, Johan and Caleb gathered the wounded and scared students around them, casting their barrier.
"No need to buff me this time, focus on the barrier. Also, take Evellyn and Nikolai under the dome too, guys!" Kurt commanded, reassuring.
"But-" Evellyn was about to say, but Kurt looked at her with that grin on his face.
"Don’t worry. I won’t pass out this time."
He winked at her, and the next second, the other remaining Diwerewolves appeared.
And two of them had their claws inches from Kurt’s neck.
