Chương 24: Stupid Knife

Ch. 24: Stupid Knife 95% sanity. I couldn't tell if there was much difference with my mental faculties. There was a sharp tugging on my brain but that was likely from the psychic attack before. The staircase to the next floor was in front of me. Likely there was another trap somewhere and to avoid tripping it I used cloudstep. I traveled up the staircase exactly one inch above the steps.

I made it to the top where, unbeknownst to me, I avoided a false tile that would have shot me full of poison darts from the walls.

I approached a door and got my punching arm ready but then the door opened on its own." What is your name?" It was a feminine voice. I looked around me for where it could be coming from. My eye clocked a spider web in the corner of the room. The spider was as big as my fist and instead of its normal thorax, it had an eye on its back. The actual tangles of the web formed a mouth and repeated the statement.

"What is your name?"

"Drake," I said, "You're Anubis, I take it?"

"Anubis?" She asked, "If you'd like, Drake. You can call me Anubis. I wonder if you could even pronounce my name with your human lips."

"Pleasure to meet you," I said.

"You only have one more floor to go before you meet me. Are you excited?" I laughed and said, "I am! Wait, why don't you just meet me down here, then?"

"Do you often make meetings with the flies and gnats that enter your home? No, You'll have to prove yourself to me before my counsel. You'll have to defeat my four personal guards, known as the Kothac Guard." I peered into the doorway. They all stood at least 9 feet tall. They wore heavy pointed black armor and I could not see their faces behind the helmets. A blue flame emitted between the creases and dark parts of the armor. As if they were spectres trapped in the black metal.

Each one brandished a different weapon as they waited patiently for me.

"They're tough, huh?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," The webs spoke, "They are each the trapped soul of a forgotten country's greatest warrior."

"All I have to do is kill these four guys and I get to have…

'counsel' with you?"

"Yes. That is all you have to do. But remember-""I'mma make sure those countries stay forgotten!" I bucked it inside. I had taken note of what she said. That these were wraiths and not creatures with bodies. Sorry, Bloodsucker. I thought, Noone wants you to taste an enemy's blood more than me. I checked my mana stores. 45%. Wraiths were basically impossible for me to kill when I was an NPC. You needed a cursed weapon, combat magic, or a weapon that did radiant damage.

My ass had to make like Shaggy and Scooby when I encountered them in the past. Now, though? Now I had options. One swung its mace over its head. The mace had the same blue fire emanating off of it. It tossed the flail toward me. I leapt over it and stomped on it. Then I grabbed the chain and pulled. It yanked the beastly force toward me, causing it to fall forward. The wraith's buddy moved in to defend. He attacked me with his cleaver. I lifted my foot and kicked the cleaver so that his strike missed me.

Then I lifted my foot and smashed it down on his left bracer. The connection between the bracer and the wraith was broken and the metal clanged against the ground. One of the wraiths with a shield approached me. The one with the flail had gotten up and grabbed the flail's chain. He yanked, I flipped over but rolled backward into a back handspring and launched both of my feet at the one with the shield. He rushed to defend.

I boosted him back a couple of feet, then I grabbed my knife from my holster and stabbed the shield wraith in the gap of his armor. The fire flashed red, indicating that my stab had worked. But suddenly a new dialogue popped up from Bloodsucker. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. No blood.

"Yeah, I knnnnooooow!" The psychic blade pierced my mind again. Instead of felling the shield wraith, I dropped to the floor and gripped my head. In the part of my vision that wasn't blurry, I saw the three wraiths with weapons attack me. I jumped on my feet and shot up, then used one's helmet to kick myself to the other side of the room, away from the crowd. Sanity, 85%.

"It was only 5% last time!" I yelled. The shield wraith tossed his shield like a frisbee. I placed my hands up and snatched it out of the air. These are some good weapons, I thought.

"I'm not giving this back!" I yelled at the wraith. The shield disappeared in my hand and reappeared in his.

"Aw, nuts." It felt like I was a little buzzed. Like the edges were duller around me but for the most part I was still me. Although the idea of starting a movie podcast with my friends had never appealed to me more. As the shield and flail wraiths attacked me, I leapt and ran along the air above the trajectory of the blades. I jumped and grabbed the horns of the cleaver wraiths' helmet and yanked. The helmet clanged loudly as it landed on the far side of the room.

I grabbed the chest plate and said, "Firebreath" I blew fire into the heart of the wraith, enveloping it and killing it. The armor dropped into an empty husk. Congrats! You killed a Dreadknight! 750 exp points!

"And I did it without your help, Bloodsucker!" I felt the air change as the axe dropped onto my back. I grabbed my knife and placed it behind me, parrying the axe's blow. You're very welcome. I pivoted and slammed my foot into the armor's knee cap. It disconnected the wraith's control of the leg and the wraith fell to his knee. I kicked the axe out of the way next and as it attempted to reconjure it, I kicked its bracer too. The shield wraith slammed me off its buddy and I fell sideways.

The flail wraith attacked me next. The wraith slammed into my chest and punctured my skin. I grabbed the chain again and pulled myself toward him. I kicked his torso and grabbed his helmet just like I did his buddy. It came off and I poured firebreath into the armor once more. I need more versatile combat magic going forward Congrats! You killed a Dreadknight! 750 exp points! Two left. There were two wraiths left. The shield and the axe. The shield wraith was already injured.

The shield wraith slammed into me once again, knocking me backward. The axe wraith connected his leg and arm again and they both reached into the husks of their buddy's armor. The took out a tiny blue flame and crushed it. Suddenly the shield guy conjured a flail and the axe guy conjured a cleaver. Hardly fair. I jumped at them to attack, but everytime I thought I found an opening, one of the other weapons would strike me again. I jumped up and tried running along the sky.

I dove down but the shield guy flailed me while in the air and then the axe guy brought his cleaver down on me. I cloudformed a shield and blocked that particularly nasty strike. I kicked the cleaver out of the way but when I did, he still had his other weapon to attack me. I cloudformed a thick coat of cloud on my shoulder. The axe dug into it and I grabbed the handle and twisted it out of the specter's grip. Before I could plunge his own weapon into him, he erased it from my possession and back into his.

"Goddamn it." Half out of instinct, half out of understanding that was the only way out, I reached for the blade in my holster and jabbed it into the wraith's shoulder. The blue flame flashed orange, signifying that I had done damage. No blood. I reached out to stab again, this time quelling the spirit. The armor's husk fell to nothingness. Still no blood. I looked up at the flail and shield wraith. There was no way in.

I attacked him as quickly as I could but as I'd used the blade twice and drew no blood, the psychic strike on me felt twice as damaging. I gripped my head, I screamed in pain. I felt blood drip down my cheek as it leaked from my eyes. I fell to the ground in front of the shield wraith. The shield wraith holstered his flail. Sanity: 65% I was weary. I watched the wraith approach me as if in a dream. The edges of my vision were blurrier and there was a warble to the visuals and audio I received.

I'd lost over a third of my sanity and suddenly time shares felt like an economically feasible way to get into real estate.

"Stupid knife," I muttered. The wraith lifted his shield with two hands high above his head, pointed side facing me. What little sanity I had focused on my mana bar. 35%. That was just a little over what I needed. There was one spell that I had left in my arsenal that could fix me. The issue was the spell cost ⅓ of my mana. As the shield's pointed bottom raced toward my heart, I uttered my last spell." Blessings."