Surviving as a Broken Hero

My attack had nearly blown the creature in half, and the other demons eyed their fallen comrade for only a moment before charging me with their weapons as I continued to run through the small cavern, doing my best to stay within the larger troops of glowing mushrooms.

I wasn’t sure how many of them there were, but more were filing into the cavern by the second, their weapons as mismatched as their uniforms. Some held spears, some swords, some bows.

Notably, and thankfully, I didn’t spot any mages at a glance.

It was surprisingly easy, at first, to blow through the demons as if I were simply plucking weeds from a garden.

I was able to keep my mana at full, as their attacks were easy to read even in the dim, sickly glow of the mushrooms, and their weapons held no notable properties.

The most difficult part, of course, was the archers, and even they proved to have shoddy aim as I moved in an erratic zig-zag pattern through the cavern.

And the slaughter continued, each slain demon notably granting me bits of experience that raised some questions in my mind.

{{+15 Exp!}}

‘What?’

I was being given experience for the Second System?

Being given experience for killing the demons made sense, although sometimes there were quests that gave a certain amount of experience in one lump sum at the end, but why was it suddenly granting Second System experience instead of experience for the primary System?

An arrow scraped past my shoulder as I was lost in thought, still mowing down the demons.

I didn’t know how long it was or how many hits it took, but eventually, the enemies began to subside.

At that point, the cavern had grown visibly darker because of the mushrooms that had been destroyed and kicked up during the battle, and I was finding my enemies mostly by their faint silhouettes against the glowing mushrooms in the darkness.

Thump!

As the last of the demons were giving a valiant final effort, the cavern shook momentarily as something large slammed into the passage the demons had come from.

Thump!

The cavern shook again, and bits of stone shook and shone faintly, dark lines running through the stone visible against the dull light coming from within that almost seemed like a flashlight shining through a thin membrane.

Thump!

Pieces of the wall shook free and flew from the shining wall, the light only growing in intensity as whatever was causing it on the opposite side increased its efforts.

By that point, the last demon that I could see had been killed, and I moved to a point distant from the glowing wall, keeping any mushrooms in front of me so as not to give myself away in the darkness.

Boom!

The stone passage shook and exploded outward, raining fragments of itself across the cavern as the passage increased in size almost fivefold and a hulking figure stepped through.

‘A minotaur?’

The creature had a bull-like head, a massive set of horns, and hooved feet to match. It was the spitting image of a minotaur from the legends.

Behind it, glowing faintly, another demon stood with a magic staff still emanating light from the vestiges of its stone-destroying spell.

Krylla finally moved.

Standing before the passage and slaughtering the demons as they came worked well against the archers and fighters, but her strategy was riskier in the face of magic, which could be utilized in all sorts of ways against a stationary target.

Of course, running wasn’t an option. The tunnel she had chosen was the narrowest one on the pathway to the Relic, and if she backed away there, it would only get more difficult for her if the demons attacked in great numbers again.

The biggest problem for her was the mage, which she made a quick decision to get rid of.

Even without her buffs from standing still, she could still deal with standard archers and fighters easily enough, especially those that the demons seemed to have.

She rushed through the passageway, her massive figure having to hunch over briefly to make it through as she ran at the demon mage, who stood still in front of her as if waiting for something.

‘Something feels wrong…’

Her mind and experience told her to back away, but she continued her charge anyway, ignoring the faint message her instincts were sending her.

The passageway shook for a moment from something far distance, and the mage’s figure blurred and vanished just as she swung her axe through it.

With her echo sight, though, the vanishing act didn’t mean much, she sensed him reappear farther back up the tunnel, an echo reverberating from him as something pulled itself from the ground where he had been standing.

It was a bull-headed monster with horns, bigger than her, with a red gleam in its eyes and huffs of heated vapor coming from its nose.

She swung her axe down at it without a second thought and it turned its head in an unnaturally quick motion, catching her axe on the side of one of its horns and deflecting it away even while she was mid-swing.

It tried to gore her with another swing of its head while she was off-balance, but she used her high strength to stop the momentum of the swing, feet skidding on the stone, and pulled back at the last moment.

The minotaur had fully emerged by then and lunged at Krylla, attempting to wrap her in its huge arms and gore her to death.

She stepped back again, bumping into the wall, before using another skill.

[[Strength of the Earth

Channels the power of the earth for a surge of strength that persists so long as both of the user’s feet remain on the ground.

Effects: x2 Strength]]

It was a simple buff, but it was enough for her to be able to grab one of the minotaur’s horns with one hand and the minotaur’s shoulder with the other, fingers digging into its muscles as she forcibly heaved it aside and sent it tumbling into the passage wall.

Shik!

A searing pain pierced through her abdomen as she tried to catch her breath and she looked down to see an icicle impaled through her stomach.

The mage had struck her with the spell in the moment that she had let her guard down.

Krylla made a move to go for the mage but soon had to turn to deal with the minotaur as it charged her again.

Her «Strength of the Earth» skill was still on cooldown, and there wasn’t room to dodge, so she held out her axe across her body to block it.

The minotaur barreled into her, and the pain in her stomach only increased when one of its horns dug into her side and wreaked havoc on her organs as the minotaur shook its head rapidly.

Still clinging to her strength, Krylla let out a scream and brought the axe blade over and into the back of the minotaur’s neck while it pinned her to the wall and gored her with its horns.

The minotaur collapsed, body lifeless, and Krylla tossed the axe with the last of her strength as she felt another projectile whizzing towards her in the darkness.

Clack!

The axe cleaved the icicle clean in two in mid-air and continued on to effortlessly bisect the demon mage.

…

The tunnel was quiet after that, and it was all Krylla could do to hold her stomach in with one hand and brace against the wall for support with the other while she hobbled back to the Relic, hoping that Aizen was faring better than she had.

***

The minotaur immediately charged through the field of glowing mushrooms at me. I wasn’t sure how it had seen me, but I guessed that it had some form of low-light vision.

Thankfully, it was easy enough to slip to the side the moment before it would have impaled me into the wall. The minotaur slammed into the wall, struggling for a moment before it pulled itself free. I made sure to keep an eye on it as I rushed at the priority target: the mage.

The mage lifted its staff and channeled another spell. Just when I thought I had rushed across the cavern and heard the heavy footfalls of the minotaur rushing across at me again, the mage vanished into thin air.

With no target left in front of me and the minotaur only a second away from goring me, I used a «Strike» with my foot against the ground to launch myself up into the air.

[[Mana: 75/100]]

At the apex of my leap, I searched for the mage again but had no luck in finding them.

I landed behind the minotaur as it slammed into the wall again, taking a moment to punch it in where its kidneys should have been with my gauntleted hand, taking a gamble to see if my punches could damage it through its thick muscle and hide.

Thud.

It felt almost like striking a wall, but it must have caused some pain, as the minotaur let out a bellow of rage and whipped its head around with a speed that caught me off guard.

I must have caught some glimpse of it that I didn’t remember because the earth shifted at the last moment from my hand to my head, and the blow that would have killed me instead sent me flipping through the cavern and rolling through a small troop of the mushrooms.

The world felt blurry after that, my mind disoriented from what was very likely a concussion.

My vision was swimming, and my mind was in a bleary sort of half-conscious state as I reached for my senses, trying to regain my bearings as quickly as possible.

What came first was my echo sight. I slipped into the trance-like state required for it surprisingly easily at that moment, probably from the half-conscious state I was already in, and registered a projectile about to hit me just in time to use «Walk it Off».

[[Mana: 50/100]]

A dull pain registered through my bleary world and a shard of something cold splintered off of me.

I shut my eyes fully then, feeling the minotaur charging at me again, fully embracing the feel of my echo sight and letting my regular vision go.

The mage was standing near the opposite end of the cavern behind me. I could feel him and the sounds he made as he shuffled around to cast another spell—the minotaur’s steps were causing huge shockwaves of ‘sight’ through the cavern as well, only aiding me further.

I didn’t have the time to endlessly chase the mage while the minotaur charged at me. I would make a mistake or tire at some point against two enemies. I had to end it.

Counting down the steps until the minotaur would hit me, I waited, fist clenched and ready.

Thump, Thump, Thump!

«Strike»!, «Strike»!

[[Mana: 0/100]]

I used «Strike» simultaneously on my back foot and my fist as I also surged energy through myself, my control over it easier than ever, and blew it through my fist and leg as well, letting the energy blow out through my foot in a general blast while I focused on the «Eruption» on my fist, channeling it into a piercing blast.

The minotaur’s horn collided with my fist.