Chapter 136: Numbers
Following the sounds of battle, Luke moved toward the front of the village.
A bad feeling coiled in his gut.
There was no doubt a dangerous presence had arrived, but even if it possessed magic, a beast was still, at its core, a creature of instinct.
It shouldn’t have been capable of coordinating something like this... not against someone who could decide the fate of the entire village.
Was there a human mind behind this ambush?
He didn’t have time to dwell on it. If he failed to stop this now, his own house would soon be targeted.
And if the son of the head chief was sacrificed, they would have no choice but to leave the village immediately.
Luke wanted to avoid that outcome at all costs.
So he chose to observe first... and act later.
He wasn’t a battle fanatic, nor was he loyal enough to this place to throw his life away blindly.
Observation came first.
"Oh, fuck."
...And the moment he saw it, every instinct screamed danger.
A massive creature, as tall as a two-storey building, loomed before the chief’s residence, locked in battle with the chief himself.
Luke watched as the tortoise gathered energy in its maw, clearly preparing to wipe out the chief and everyone behind him in a single attack.
His body tensed, ready to intercept—
But he didn’t need to.
An unfamiliar figure dropped from above, crashing onto the creature’s head and disrupting the attack, forcing it to recoil into its shell.
For a fleeting second, Luke wondered if the creature was weaker than it looked.
Then a beam shot out from within the shell, slamming into the man’s chest.
"That must’ve hurt..."
No normal human could survive that.
Luke had already sensed it. The man who attacked was no ordinary fighter either.
The chief followed up with a heavy counterstrike that shook the creature, but it wasn’t enough to stop it.
"What are those..."
He frowned as protrusions began to rise along the creature’s shell.
Moments later, they came alive.
And they charged straight at the chief.
He hadn’t noticed. Perhaps he was too focused on the larger threat.
Luke moved instantly.
With Magma Tooth in hand, he cleaved the first creature cleanly, its body collapsing before it even understood what happened.
The second met the same fate, his blade driving straight through its head.
The searing edge pierced its plant-like skull with ease, snuffing out its life in an instant.
"You..." He heard the bewildered voice of the chief as he stood on his flank, his dagger back in his hand after he impaled the third creature.
With a grin, Luke said, "Handle the big guy, I won’t let a single small fry touch anyone."
The man stared at him for a few seconds before his fingers tightened around the mace as he spoke, "I won’t let it destroy a single house." As those words faded, he launched into the air, his weapon held on top of his shoulder.
Luke went low and saw the creatures coming towards him.
Just then, the system notified,
[This is your first encounter with a real magical beast.]
[Quest: Hunt.]
Luke smirked. That’s exactly what he needed right now. A motivation.
He counted six coming at him from the left flank alone.
More were peeling off the shell before them.
He didn’t wait, he was standing a little too close to the house.
He rolled under the first swipe, came up inside its reach, and drove Magma Tooth through the base of its flower-head.
The blade connected and the burning edge did the rest.
The thing didn’t even twitch as it dropped, vines going limp all at once like cut puppet strings.
The second clawed at his back and caught only air as he stepped forward into the third, burying the dagger into its chest and dragging sideways.
Where the blade touched, fire followed. The wound didn’t bleed so much as smoulder, the plant matter blackening and curling inward.
He kicked it off the blade and turned.
Two more were already on him.
He ducked the first claw, took the second across his forearm and felt the sting but kept moving, pivoting around the closer one and drawing the blade across its vine-wrapped neck in a single arc.
It crumpled. He finished the other with a thrust through the eye socket of its blooming head, the petals shrivelling instantly from the heat.
Behind him, the ground shook.
BOOM.
Chief Baldon had landed on the tortoise’s back with both hands wrapped around his mace, the impact sending a visible crack spider-webbing across the upper left of the shell.
The creature lurched, massive legs scrambling against the earth, its head slamming into the side of the chief’s house hard enough to crack the wall.
Baldon was already moving before the dust settled, circling to its head, keeping its attention locked upward and away from the village behind him.
Luke had no time to watch further.
Three came from his right simultaneously, spread wide, trying to flank.
Smart for mindless creatures.
He let the leftmost one commit first, sidestepped its lunge and used its own momentum to steer it into the path of the middle one.
They collided in a tangle of vines. He dropped on top of them both, drove the dagger into the first, pulled it free, drove it into the second before either could recover.
The third clawed at his shoulder and drew blood this time.
He hissed through his teeth and spun, putting the blade through its midsection. It shrieked, a sound like tearing bark, and collapsed in a burning heap.
He straightened and looked up.
More.
At least a dozen more had separated from the shell and were fanning across the village perimeter. Some were drifting toward the houses on the outer edge.
"Like hell."
He moved at full speed, crossing the gap before the nearest cluster could scatter.
He hit them hard and fast, no pausing between kills, one fluid sequence of movement. Slash, burn, step, thrust, burn, pivot, draw.
The dagger’s heat meant he didn’t need to be precise, just connected. Anything it touched deeply enough stopped moving.
Four went down before the others registered he was among them.
Then they all turned on him at once.
Claws came from three directions. He took a hit across the ribs but that did nothing to stop him. He kept charging and burning because stopping meant letting his hunt escape, and that wasn’t acceptable.
"Gaah!" He drove the dagger an upward arc into the upper body of the creature.
It fell and he used its collapsing body as cover for a half second, repositioning behind it.
A distant crack split the air.
He glanced back instinctively.
The tortoise had begun pulling its head inward again, the familiar glow building at the back of its throat, casting everything in a pale orange light.
Baldon saw it first.
The chief threw himself forward and drove his mace directly into the creature’s throat before the shell could close, jamming the gap.
The glow sputtered. The tortoise thrashed, slamming Baldon sideways into the dirt with enough force to crater it.
He was back on his feet before the dust rose.
Blood on his temple. Expression frustrated. He grabbed the mace from the ground and drove it upward into the soft underside of the creature’s jaw with a strike that rocked its entire skull backward.
The glow died.
Luke turned back to his own problem.
Eleven left by his count, though more were still detaching from the shell at a steady crawl. Whatever the tortoise was, it seemed the things growing on it had no upper limit.
His arm ached. His ribs protested every sharp breath. The cut on his thigh was manageable but present. And now, he was realizing how tired his body was.
Nice.
He exhaled once and pushed the pain aside.
He changed approach, no longer waiting for them to come to him. He moved through them instead, threading between their positions, picking his angle so that each strike cleared one and left him already facing the next.
He kept low, kept tight, gave their claws as little to reach for as possible.
The burning dagger left a trail of smouldering bodies behind him as he worked through the cluster.
Six. Five. Four.
One managed to wrap a vine around his ankle and pull. He went down on one knee, drove the blade into the vine, and the burning edge severed it instantly. He was upright again before it finished recoiling.
Three. Two.
The last one lunged with both arms spread wide, trying to wrap him up rather than cut him.
He snickered and let go of the dagger.
Before the creature could wrap its arm around him, Luke held its upper head and pushed from either side using all the strength he has gathered over days.
**DHWAAP**
Its head exploded and sunk in, violet fluid splattering around and some on Luke.
Fuck ...he needed to take another bath.
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A/N:- I hope you liked the Chapter.