Chapter 25: Massacre... As Usual
It wasn’t a pack of wolves... It wasn’t a patrol of Orcs... The entire mouth of the cave seemed to literally detach from the stone.
"CREEEEE!"
A deafening ear-piercing chorus of high-pitched screeches echoed violently through the narrow ravine as a massive swarm of oversized, mutated creatures poured out of the dark and into the gray daylight.
They were Umbral Bats But they weren’t normal scavengers.
These were Tier 2 mutations, each boasting a terrifying, highly muscular six-foot wingspan.
Their leathery wings were tipped with jagged, bone-like spurs designed to slash, and their maws were completely unhinged revealing rows of needle-like fangs dripping with a highly corrosive black saliva.
There were dozens of them, blotting out the sky in a chaotic, swirling vortex of death.
"Contact!" Silas barked with his hand dropping instantly to the heavy mythril hilt of his greatsword. "Form up!"
But Aeliana didn’t hold a defensive line...
The overwhelming volume of the swarm.
The chaotic screeching... The sudden terrifying numbers pouring out of the dark... The unhealed trauma of the last century violently snapped her discipline right in half...
She didn’t see the mutated bats. She saw the endless, suffocating tide of monsters that had overrun her previous home.
She saw the crumbling walls giving way to a flood of teeth and claws... She saw the devastating failure that had plagued her nightmares, the screaming faces of soldiers she could not save, and the crushing weight of a territory reduced to ash...
"AHHH!"
Aeliana let out a devastatingly loud roar and launched herself directly into the center of the massive swarm.
"Aeliana, hold formation!" Silas ordered however she completely ignored his command.
Aeliana ran up at the nearest plunging monster, her borrowed linen robes snapping in the foul wind.
She fluidly side-stepped the beast’s sweeping, bone-spurred wing as her right hand already glowed with intense bluish-white light.
’Begone...’ Aeliana thought frantically.
CLANG!
The sound of steel-hard bone against her concentrated magic echoed around the gorge as her blade hit the leading bat’s extended wing joint.
She swung her glowing [Mana Blade] in wild, frantic, highly aggressive arcs.
The starlight weapon was incredibly lethal, effortlessly severing the thick leathery wings and cleanly decapitating the massive bats that dared to swoop too close.
Black, sizzling blood rained down onto the jagged rocks as she hacked her way deeper into the swirling mass of bodies.
The pale starlight illuminated the dark, wet walls of the ravine with every vicious swing, casting long shadows.
SLASH!
SKREEEEE!
A bat fell in half at her feet, its ruined torso twitching in the ash, but three more instantly took its place.
She was fighting like a cornered rabid animal.
Aeliana completely abandoned the elegant... highly refined... stamina-preserving footwork of her Royal Elven heritage.
She left her flanks entirely exposed to attack, burning through her physical stamina and her magical reserves with every wild strike.
She summoned an [Arcane Piercer] in her left hand without even aiming properly. The condensed starlight acted like a drill, boring a hole straight through the chest of a diving bat, but the recoil threw her off balance.
Her breathing grew incredibly ragged with her chest heaving as she tried to single-handedly eradicate the entire swarm in a desperate bid to rewrite her own tragic history.
’She’s suicidal,’ Silas thought with a sigh as he drew his dark-purple, Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade from its scabbard.
Above the frantic, blood-soaked Elf, one of the largest bats in the swarm recognized the highly erratic movement.
It possessed a cunning the lesser scavengers lacked. It didn’t swoop down to bite or slash with its claws.
It hovered twenty feet in the air, its massive, ribbed chest expanding violently as it sucked in a massive breath of the toxic, miasma-filled air.
The bat unhinged its jaw to a horrifying degree and it released a devastating, hyper-pressurized sonic screech directly at Aeliana.
The attack hit her with the physical force of a swinging boulder.
The invisible wave of extreme atmospheric pressure slammed directly into Aeliana’s skull with devastating, concussive intensity.
BAM!
Aeliana screamed.
Her glowing [Mana Blade] instantly shattered into a dozen dissipating sparks as she dropped heavily to one knee on the hard rock.
Her hands flew frantically to her pointed ears. The delicate capillaries in her nose violently ruptured under the sudden change in pressure, sending a thick stream of dark red blood pouring down her pale face and dripping onto her white robes.
’N... no...’
Her vision violently blurred, the gray sky began spinning in nauseating circles as the delicate equilibrium in her inner ear was entirely shattered.
Her wild offense instantly collapsed.
Seeing their prey heavily disoriented, bleeding, and kneeling in the mud, a second bat violently folded its massive wings.
It dove from the sky like a thrown javelin, accelerating to terrifying speeds.
It slammed heavily into Aeliana’s right side before she could even raise her arms to guard.
KRA-CRUNCH!
Its jagged, bone-tipped claws dug ruthlessly through her borrowed linen robes, tearing a brutal, horrific chunk of meat directly out of her pale shoulder.
"GAAAH!" Aeliana gasped in blinding agony, stumbling backward and crashing heavily against the jagged cliff wall.
She raised her trembling left hand, desperately attempting to manifest a [Royal Arcane Aegis] to block the incoming swarm from tearing her apart.
She commanded her core to build the defensive starlight barrier and she begged the magic in her blood to answer her call, willing the astral energy to form a shield.
Nothing happened...
A horrifying emptiness settled deep into her chest.
The frantic swinging of her blade and her earlier, highly destructive overkill had entirely drained her reserves dry.
Her interface flashed a highly critical, blaring red warning directly in her peripheral vision.
[Mana: 0 / 1200]
She was completely empty...
Above her, the largest bat folded its wings, entering a steep, lethal dive. Its jaws snapped open, revealing the endless rows of corrosive fangs, aiming directly for her exposed, violently bleeding throat.
Aeliana pressed her back hard against the cold stone of the cliff.
Her eyes were wide with pure terror.
Her breath hitched in her throat, tasting her own copper blood.
She stared death directly in the face for the second time in her life, fully realizing that her own desperate hubris and lack of discipline was about to get her killed.
’Pl-please no...’
SHING!
The terrifyingly sharp sound of heavy metal clearing leather echoed loudly through the chaotic ravine, completely cutting through the deafening screeches of the swarm.
Before the massive bat could even close the final ten feet of distance, Silas materialized directly in front of her.
"Fuck off."
Silas pivoted flawlessly on his iron-plated heel, dropping his center of gravity.
He brought the dark-purple metal of his Umbral-Forged Mythril Blade upward in a devastating diagonal arc.
The heavy mythril violently dismantled it.
SCHLUCK!
The blade effortlessly cleaved through the dense muscle, the thick fur, and the heavy bone.
The strike violently separated the creature’s ugly head and its entire right wing from its torso in a single, terrifyingly smooth motion.
A massive spray of black, highly corrosive blood rained down onto the rocks.
It completely missed Aeliana as Silas’s wide, armor-clad shoulders entirely blocked the fallout, protecting the kneeling Elf from the acid.
Silas didn’t stop... He didn’t even pause to check if the Elf behind him was breathing...
He stepped forward, pushing directly into the center of the remaining swirling swarm.
’If I let her get killed then Eluned won’t be happy...’
He ignited his Mythic Gold Core and flooded his spiritual pathways with roaring heat.
A blinding, unyielding, fiercely aggressive golden aura erupted violently from his skin as the golden light completely pushed back the suffocating shadows of the ravine and illuminated the surrounding area.
The air temperature violently spiked in a ten-foot radius around him.
The bats screeched in sudden blinding pain as the radiant heat scorched their highly sensitive eyes.
They attempted to swarm him from all sides, diving aggressively to crush the agonizing light.
However it was a total slaughter.
A massive bat dove directly for his exposed back, its bone-spurs extended to impale his spine. Silas didn’t even look over his shoulder. He ducked smoothly under the sweeping, razor-sharp claw, feeling the wind of the strike ruffle his dark hair.
CRUNCH!
He drove the heavy, solid mythril pommel of his greatsword directly backward into the bat’s descending skull.
The impact shattered the dense bone into a dozen fragments with a sickening sound. The beast crumpled instantly into the ash.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
Silas spun seamlessly on the wet rocks, his boots anchoring perfectly to the uneven terrain.
He brought his blade around, carving a massive horizontal path of golden destruction through the air.
The superheated edge turned the air around it into a shimmering haze of heat.
SHHHHK!
The dark-purple metal cleanly bisected three massive beasts simultaneously.
Their top halves separated entirely from their bottom halves, raining ruined organs and sizzling black blood onto the ground as they fell out of the sky in pieces.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
He didn’t waste a single ounce of momentum.
Silas used the heavy, pulling weight of his sword to physically drag his body from one target to the next, entirely dictating the flow and rhythm of the melee.
Another bat plunged toward his face with its jaws unhinged to bite his head off.
Silas stepped inside the creature’s guard, thrusting the glowing tip of his greatsword straight up through the monster’s lower jaw, piercing directly into its small, corrupted brain.
WHOOSH!
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
He ripped the blade free with a violent twist of his wrists, sidestepping a spray of highly corrosive acid.
Two more bats attempted a coordinated pincer maneuver, diving from the left and the right simultaneously to catch him in a crossfire.
Silas didn’t retreat a single inch... He lunged to the left, grabbing the first bat directly by its leathery wing with his free, armor-clad hand then he violently pulled the screeching beast forward, using it as a living shield to absorb the bone-spurred tackle of the second bat.
As the two monsters collided in a chaotic tangle of limbs and wings, Silas brought his greatsword down in a brutal, vertical execution strike that cleaved them both in half against the solid bedrock.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
He was a walking natural disaster.
The swarm desperately tried to overwhelm him with pure numbers, diving in waves of three and four, but they were throwing themselves into a meat grinder.
Silas stepped into a spinning sweep, the golden fire trailing from his blade like a cosmic ribbon.
He severed a wing, followed through with a reverse slash that took off a head, and finished the combination by kicking a massive bat directly in its chest, shattering its ribs before driving his sword down into its spine.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
His internal interface continued to rapid-fire a highly satisfying cascade of pristine blue text in the corner of his vision, counting the growing wealth of his slaughter.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
The largest bat, the one that had unleashed the devastating sonic attack upon Aeliana, finally realized the lesser scavengers were failing.
It circled high above the fray, waiting for Silas to overextend.
It folded its massive wings and entered a steep, terminal dive, aiming to impale the Sovereign with its heavy bone-spurs.
Silas didn’t try to dodge.
He bent his knees with his now gold eyes tracking the beast’s rapid descent.
At the exact moment the bat came within striking distance, Silas launched himself upward, meeting the massive predator in mid-air.
He drove the blazing mythril blade straight up into the center of the bat’s ribbed chest.
WHOOSH!
The superheated weapon completely bypassed the tough leathery hide.
It slid deep into the monster’s chest cavity, the immense heat from the Gold Core cooking the beast’s internal organs in a fraction of a second.
The bat shrieked a final, bubbling cry before Silas violently kicked it off his blade, sending the smoking carcass crashing into the dirt.
[Target Eliminated: Tier 2 Umbral Bat. +2 UP]
The few bats that somehow managed to survive the initial twenty seconds of his golden, unyielding assault finally realized a terrifying truth.
They weren’t hunting helpless prey... They had just agitated a monster far more terrifying and far more uncompromising than anything born in the rotting, miasma-choked depths of the Umbral Basin!
The remaining dozen creatures shrieked in primal terror.
They violently banked their leathery wings, desperately altering their trajectories mid-dive.
They scrambled over each other, fleeing back into the pitch-black, suffocating depths of the subterranean cavern as fast as their wings could carry them, completely abandoning their fallen pack members.
Silas stood entirely alone in the center of the jagged ravine.
He was completely surrounded by a thick, bleeding carpet of mutilated, twitching leathery corpses.
He slowly lowered his mythril blade.
The dark-purple metal was completely slick, dripping heavily with viscous, smoking black blood that hissed as it touched the wet rocks.
The roaring golden aura radiating from his tall body slowly, deliberately dimmed, pulling back under his skin.
Silas... didn’t celebrate the massive influx of Upgrade Points waiting in his system... He didn’t wipe the splattered black blood from his rugged cheek...
Silas slowly turned around.His boots crunched heavily against the dead rocks and the crushed bone of the fallen monsters.
His blue eyes locked entirely onto Aeliana.
The Royal Elven Arcanist was slumped heavily against the jagged cliff wall.
She was clutching her heavily bleeding, mangled shoulder with her good hand, trying desperately to stem the flow of bright red blood.
Her pristine silver hair was completely matted with dirt and gore, and her breath was coming in ragged desperate gasps that rattled in her chest.
The expression on Silas’s face as he looked down at her wasn’t one of warm concern... He didn’t look like a heroic savior rushing to comfort a maiden in distress...
He was looking at a soldier who had just deliberately broken ranks and jeopardized an operation.
Aeliana looked up, her silver eyes wide, exhausted, and brimming with unshed tears.
She expected a hand down... She expected the warm, comforting voice he had used with Eluned in the courtyard just twenty minutes prior... She wanted him to tell her she was safe now...
Instead, she met a gaze of terrifying frost.
Silas’s blue eyes were strictly cold.
There was no pity in his expression... There was no gentle coddling for a traumatized survivor who had lost her home...
"You are Level 15," Silas barked and Aeliana flinched violently, instinctively pulling her knees closer to her chest, trying to make herself smaller under his oppressive gaze.
"You are a Royal Elf," Silas continued, taking a slow deliberate step closer.
His tall, broad-shouldered frame entirely cast her in dark shadow, blocking out the gray light of the sky.
"Your race is defined by centuries of refined magical discipline and unparalleled grace yet you charge blindly into a dark cavern and swing a blade like a suicidal rookie fresh out of the mud. Why? Because the world feels incredibly unfair to you? Or do you want to die?"
