Chương 17: Demonic Portals

I arrived at the edge of the forest once again. My Mana was full. My mind fresh. I decided against luring the monsters out and hunting them down one by one. I would take them both. I was here to challenge myself and grow. I stepped out from the forest and began walking towards my two opponents. After a few minutes, the Bear Demon turned towards me. A second later the wolf one did too. They didn't budge, however. I continued walking towards them. There was no need to waste my Mana to move in fast.

Both Demons grunted at me threateningly, then the bear one roared into the air. It sounded like rumbling thunder, causing me to wince slightly. Taking that as a sign of weakness, the Bear dashed towards me. I activated my mana and sidestepped the Demon's swipe. I countered with a mana-infused strike to the liver. Before the Wolf Demon could reach me, I hit the Bear with a second strike to the ribs, and retreated. I circled around the Demons, not letting them surround me. It was similar to the Goblin fight.

But now I had the memories of an expert Martial Artist with me and my experience with Mana Manipulation. Each time the Demons would close the distance, I would counter with a strike, either to the liver, spleen, or ribs. A broken rib cage, after all, was not a nice experience. My counters got to a point where the demons just stopped coming in, locking us into a stalemate. At least that was what they thought. My mana flared and traveled down to my legs.

I could feel the insane speed increase and dashed forward towards the Bear Demon. The monster attacked with a straight. I ducked underneath the strike and delivered a lethal, lightning-fast low kick against its shin. It cracked. The Demon stumbled backward. I followed up with another low kick towards the same spot. The leg broke and the Demon fell on its butt. Its neck was now at the height of my head. My Mana-infused leg struck out another time like a snake that had found its prey.

My shin whipped across the Demon's neck, and with a grueling crunch, it bent sideways. The Bear Demon died instantly. The Wolf Demon, however, was upon me to avenge its comrade. It roared and swiped at me. Luckily, my previous attacks had injured it enough for it not to be able to run at full speed. I dodged, if barely, to the side, and returned with a strike to the ribs. It barely did anything. Fuck. I could feel the strain on my body.

The exhaustion already began to set in, and I was weaker and slower than before. Worse of all, my Mana was running low. My meager stats began to show up. Without Mana, I was nothing. I struck the Demon again. It hit back. This time, the attack landed, and I was flung across the barren lands and flopped across the ground multiple times. It hurt. My arm was numb. I could feel blood running down my lips, and breathing was hard. Blocking took most of my Mana.

The Demon was upon me again as it grinned like a wild beast, throwing a wild haymaker meant to take off my head in one go and splatter my brain mass all across the plain clearing around us. I wouldn't go out like this. Not again. Not as a failure. I gritted my teeth and threw myself to the side, barely escaping the strike. Landing hurt, but I was up on my feet again—quick. The fight wasn't done yet. But instead of dodging, I went in, despite my instincts telling me otherwise. It was the right decision.

At the same time I stepped closer, the Demon threw a strike; it was pure coincidence, but I slipped right under it. And I retaliated with a much more devastating strike. I drained every inch of my body of Mana and gathered it all at one point—my fist. My knuckles connected with the Demon's liver, and it burst instantly. It didn't end there. The force of the strike and mana traveled further into the Demon's body, scrambling all of the immediate organs near the liver. I turned and ran.

I didn't look back to see whether the Demon had died or would die. I guessed it would bleed out, but I wasn't going to let it kill me while it was on its last legs. That would be a shitty way to go. I hid in the forest and clutched my ribs and arm. They hurt like hell. I don't think they were broken, more like numb from the sheer force I had received. With my breath ragged, I just sat there, my back against a tree. It wasn't until 30 minutes later that a notification confirmed my guess.

You have killed [Wolf Demon - Level 11] I dismissed the notification. There was nothing to celebrate. I fought and injured myself like an idiot. I knew the wounds would take a long time to heal. My constitution was too low for my natural regeneration to do anything great. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I blamed myself for being dumb. Yet I also didn't regret it.

The grin on my face had never vanished since the beginning of the fight, and the endorphins were still running crazy. I loved this shit. I stayed in the forest for hours. I recovered my Mana and made sure to heal at least a little. Once that was done, I left it again. I still had the portal to destroy. I walked past both corpses and arrived in front of the giant structure. It hummed slightly. I realized one thing—I had no idea how to destroy a portal.

I just stared at the thing for a few minutes, trying to come up with a smart answer. I didn't. I infused my fist with Mana and struck the edge of the portal. It shook slightly. I repeated the process three times. Cracks formed on the thing. Great. After the 12th time, the portal crumbled into dozens of pieces, and the blue swirling entrance disappeared into nothingness. I checked my objectives. First Objective: 1/3 Second Objective: 3/25 Great. Now it was time to get to the next portal.

Problem: I didn't know where it was. The second problem was that I was still hurt. I could move but not truly fight. I would have to recover. So, I went back towards where I came from, not the forest I had killed the Hog Demon inside but the obelisk that had brought me here. I arrived a few hours later. Hungry and thirsty, but my arm and ribs felt much better. The obelisk was still firmly planted in the ground, with its bottom half sunken in deeply. The maw was wide open, as if ready to devour me for a second time.

I turned to my right, ready to head towards the place I had first reviewed Timothy's memories, before I froze dead in my tracks. There was a second obelisk; it too was sunk deep into the ground and with its maw open. I didn't have time to think before I heard steps from behind me, followed by a haughty voice.

"Oh, look who we have here?"

"Isn't that Timothy? I guess they really dislike sending you to this place." I turned around and spotted a young man in martial robes walking side by side with a beautiful woman of the same age, followed by a group of people in similar clothing. They were dragging a dead deer behind them while laughing and joking.

"They do," I simply answered. I remembered them, or rather Timothy did. Still, his feelings of hatred and anger didn't affect me in the slightest, and I was able to keep my cool easily.

"I bet they do," Max, the leader of the group, sneered.

"You shouldn't have offended the young master. Now, instead of being able to gather merit points, you are stuck here until you die a dog's death. Fuck off with your Martial genius. It won't do you shit here, and as I am seeing, you are already injured. Pathetic. Just die." His words didn't bother me at all. I just greedily stared at the deer as my stomach grumbled. The group passed me, and the woman next to Max giggled as she heard the sound of my stomach.

"Don't concern yourself with him, princess," Max said in a soft voice.

"He is just a dog that is hungry."

"Sucking up to her the same way you did to the young master?" I said.

"You–" Max exploded, but the woman whom he called princess held him back. The rest of the group just shot me cold looks.

"Don't let a dog control you like that," she giggled again, before switching to a slurred voice.

"Come, no need to concern yourself with him. I will help you appease your anger." They left promptly, with Max having a little more pep in his steps. I didn't really care about them and was ready to leave them alone when a line of text formed in front of my vision. Third Objective added. Kill whoever set you up. I grinned. I followed them stealthily, making use of my first Simulation experience.

They arrived at a spot with far fewer trees than in the rest of the forest and began setting up a campfire and tents they pulled out of some kind of spatial device. I left them alone after I made sure to remember where their camp would be. Darkness was approaching us, and I was still hurt and hungry. I left and found myself something to eat: a mixture of different herbs, berries, and roots. Not the tastiest food, but it did its job well enough. I woke up feeling a little better.

That day, I did nothing other than stay at my spot and mostly sleep. A few days passed that way of me sleeping and eating a plant-based diet. Hunting took too much energy. On the fourth day, it was finally time. My arm was in shape again. My ribs didn't hurt. And my Mana was as full as it could be. For the past few days, I thought carefully about how I wanted to approach this situation. How would I find out who in the group set me up and how to ambush that person?

I came to the conclusion that I was being a dumbass. I was just going to kill them all. Cruel, I know, but no other option seemed feasible enough at my current strength, and failing that objective was out of the question. I couldn't risk further accumulation of Calamity Points. 7 Points seemed to have already done enough damage. The group was still there when I arrived. They looked a little worse for wear but mostly just exhausted and disheveled.

There were a few small injuries but nothing that would provide me with an advantage. I waited for them to fall asleep. They were dumb enough not to have anybody on night watch. I approached slowly towards the first sleeping person. I didn't recognize him. He snored slightly before I infused mana into my hands and snapped his neck. He died without pain. Guilt swelled up inside me but I pushed the emotion down. There was more at stake than my feelings and morals—the lives of my people.

I moved to the woman next to him. She died too. The process went smoothly until only Max and the girl remained. They were on the other side of the group, so they were last. However, it seemed that my last kill was louder than expected. The grueling crunch of bones being broken seemed to have awakened the couple. I stopped being silent and burst towards them, my target being Max. My Mana-infused fist smashed into his solar plexus, caving his chest in.

He flung across the forest and smashed against a tree before limply sliding down. He was dead. My objective was not complete. He wasn't the perpetrator. My eyes widened as a feeling of dread assaulted my mind. I moved solely on instinct and threw myself to the side. Three giant gashes formed on my chest, and blood began to pour down my torso. It hurt like hell.

"You son of a bitch," the girl spat. Her long, claw-like nails were covered in my blood as she looked at me with a gaze full of hatred.

"You should have just been killed." So, she was the one who set Timothy up. Why and for what? I didn't give a fuck. I was here to fulfill my objectives.