Chương 7: The Leech and the Lion

Field Journal — On the Fourth I keep telling myself I'm only observing, yes. I am a calm scholar, ink steady—but this girl, this Fourth Hero, she doesn't walk like men walk. The road bends for her. I saw it. I swear on my own bones I saw it. Morning—blackhold demons jump out from the woods we were camping in, blades out and hungry. Bad luck, yes? But she trips—trips! —on a loose pebble like a fool child…

and she falls straight into them, knocking two down, their own knives stuck in their ribs before they could even shout. The ambush was over before it even started. Afternoon—the hill we're trudging down breaks. The whole side of it slides, roaring like sky falling. I was thinking: we're finished, we're finished, we're all dying here. But then she runs up and finds a hollow in the earth no man could've found, and we hide in it to avoid the landslide. Night—we accidentally let our steel rabbit run free.

So we were without dinner for the night. She lost her temper for one rare instant, kicked at the dirt, and there, under her boot? Something shiny. A relic! Apparently it's a powerful relic, too. Mepyr's gonna like it. But she doesn't even look surprised. This isn't lucky. No. No. It's as if the world can't decide to kill her or crown her, so it does both, again and again, until I'm the one who feels sick.

'Blessed' and 'Cursed' by divine fate, huh? I think if these Heroes ever walk into the sea, it will either part for them or drown them louder than all men. I will continue observing. (I shouldn't.) —'Private Journal of Oleksei Varin', Written by Oleksei Varin Orland stayed perfectly still as the three giant leeches stared down at him. Staying still came on instinct.

There were magic beasts he had to run from at once, beasts he had to shout at, and beasts he could bluff with a bit of bravado, but plenty of beasts in Rusalka's forests ignored him as long as he didn't startle them. Lesnik foxes he hunted all the time, for instance, were super skittish. Some burrowfang moles could be walked around if they didn't smell blood on him. Even a shimmerbear, if it was well-fed and lazy enough, had once let him back away without trying to bite his head off.

So he made himself breathe quietly. He dimmed the lantern a little with a thought, shifted one foot back—then another, and another, and another—trying not to scrape the sludge too hard under his shoes. Take it easy. Do it slow. No sudden movements. But as he backed away, his eyes kept flicking around the cavern. Bones littered the ground in every direction—human bones, most of them. There were also tattered clothes, boots, rusted tools, and bits of belts and satchels rotting into the sludge.

It didn't take him long to realize this place was less a den and more of a pantry, so he grimaced as he neared the mouth of the cavern. The back-away-slow-and-they-won't-hurt-him idea only applied to beasts that didn't have cravings for human flesh. Unfortunately, the God-Sucking Leeches clearly seemed to prefer them.

Name: God-Sucking Leeches Grades: Uncommon-7 Might: 64 Dexterity: 33 Resilience: 35 Clarity: 28 Mana: 307/307 (+7/hr) General Description: Giant blood-sucking leeches with four legs and a thousand teeth each, capable of growing up to ten meters long. Whenever they consume blood, they can rapidly accelerate their regeneration and gorge themselves in size, allowing them to then vomit a wave of toxic blood using their mana.

Well, shit. The closest leech let out a shrill, ugly screech that bounced around the chamber. The other two answered immediately, and in the same breath all three of them stretched. Their necks—if those awful, distending lengths of flesh even counted as necks—shot down as their bodies stayed anchored to the ceiling, their thousand-toothed mouths snapping straight for him. His panic did the thinking.

He jerked his gauntlet up, shoving mana into it as he did, and a massive slice of earth tore from the ground to slam into the descending leeches. A crude attack; it did the trick anyways. The slab of earth hit the leeches hard and ugly, smacking all three off to the side with a heavy impact that shook the entire cavern. Good enough! Orland turned and ran, sprinting back into the tunnel he'd entered through.

Behind him, the screeches erupted again, and the sound of the giant leeches forcing themselves through the narrow tunnels behind him followed close after. The tunnels were narrow in many places, but the leeches combined were just a bit bigger than all of them. He didn't look back at all, but he heard them shoving themselves through bends, claws and teeth and wriggly flesh scraping earth as they came after him.

They had territorial advantage, and they'd catch up to him soon enough, so he focused on what he'd noticed on his way in: cracks. Weak curves in the walls, support ridges where the earth looked a little too damp, a little soft—they were all advantages for him to leverage. As he ran, he slashed his gauntlet out at the first weak point in the wall and imagined ripping a chunk free. The wall gave with a deep crunch, and the ceiling behind him partially caved in.

The leeches bashed through it with barely any effort, but that was only one of many obstacles. Twenty paces later he reached another bend where the tunnel narrowed around a soft pillar of packed clay. He yanked again as he ran past, and the pillar tore free, yet another section of the tunnel folding behind him. Orland grinned despite himself. Using his gauntlet was starting to become second nature now. A pull here, a break there, a push here, a shove there, each collapse came easier than the last.

Defending while fleeing was always the most thrilling part of any hunt… but even still, running out of here with three giant leeches on his tail would make him look pathetic as the 'Hero', so he absolutely couldn't run forever. How could he get them off his back? Better yet, could he collapse enough earth on them to crush them to death? Probably. Maybe, if he put all his mana and strength into bringing down the entire weight of the forest. There was no other way to find out but to— Thump.

Every muscle in him clenched as he heard a deep sound from above, though he didn't stop running. Thump.

"... Huh," he murmured. At first he'd thought it was just falling rubble or his own pulse making nonsense in his ears, but no, there it was again: that deep, rhythmic thump from somewhere overhead, separate from the leeches' frenzied pursuit behind him. Considering these tunnels seemed to run all throughout the forest… Now he had a new, better plan.

"Let the monsters fight," an old man whispered in his ear. He didn't even jolt when he heard it. One, he had no time to spend jumping, but two, that was also his plan. He tilted his head when the tunnel split, chose the path where the thumping overhead sounded strongest, and ran that way. At one bend he ran straight into a collapsed dead end, so he slammed his gauntlet into the wall and poured mana hard into it, picturing the earth folding inward, opening, breaking through.

The wall exploded, exposing another set of tunnels beyond. He dove through the hole just as one of the leeches smashed into the blocked end behind him, blowing the rest of the wall apart as they kept chasing. At another dead end he did it again, this time with less panic and more confidence. Punch. Crack. Collapse. Duck through. He was getting lucky and he knew it, but luck was still better than dignity on a gravestone. The thumps overhead were getting closer and closer. Good! Don't move too fast now!

And just as he was about to start running out of breath, the tunnels widened and opened into yet another vast chamber. He skidded to a halt in the middle, panting hard. This cavern was even more messy than the one he'd encountered the leeches in. Bones lay everywhere in massive piles, mixed with scraps of armor, rusted blades, and heaps of clothing fused to the ground with pinkish-red sludge. Above him, though— THUMP. He forced a grin onto his face. There you are.

As the giant leeches burst into the chamber behind him one after another, he turned and faced them, lifting his gauntlet to the ceiling. Then he yanked down with his whole body—pouring more mana into his gauntlet than he'd ever tried—and a massive crack tore across the ceiling. Dirt and stone rained down at once. Both Orland and the leeches jumped back to their respective ends of the cavern as the giant hole gave way above them, sunlight blasting through into the damp cave in a bright shaft.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. But it wasn't just debris and sunlight that fell through the giant hole. Orland froze as the giant lion with a mane made of pure gold—and he meant real, actual gold—crashed down into the cavern, hitting the ground with enough force to make the entire chamber shake. The lion was as large as the leeches themselves, but far more muscular and far more imposing.

Its entire body was covered in golden fur, and six red eyes burned in its face, three to each side. All of them were open and alert the instant it landed—and in but a split second, it seemed to understand exactly what was happening down here. Before Orland could even gulp, the lion pounced at the nearest leech, jaws closing around its neck with an awful wet crunch.

The trapped leech shrieked and writhed, trying to coil around the lion's body like a serpent, but the golden beast only dug in harder with two claws wrenching it down into the ground. Then the lion ripped its jaw back, and flesh split and blood sprayed into the air. Orland immediately snapped out of it and threw himself behind a mound of bones to take cover, but the other two leeches weren't nearly as fearful as he was.

They lunged in together, flanking the lion from both sides, but as their mouths snapped in to bite the lion's neck, Orland heard another horrific crunch —the sounds of their hundreds of tiny teeth shattering as they failed to pierce the lion's golden fur. They tried again. They scraped against it, slid over it, tore at it, but caught only tiny, tiny tufts of fur each time.

The lion ignored them completely until it was done killing the one it was crushing under its claws, and then it casually swiped at them with its hind leg. One swipe. That was all. Those razor-sharp claws crossed one of the leech's body and eviscerated it nearly from head to tail, opening pink flesh and spraying a gush of black blood across the cavern.

"Chisel me blind," Orland whispered, peeking at the beasts from behind his mound. It wasn't a fair fight. The second bloody leech slithered back and tried to put some distance between them, but the lion pounced on it so quickly it didn't even manage to scream. Its entire head disappeared into the lion's jaw with a single chomp, and while the lion continued chewing and clawing the rest of its body into shreds, the third leech learned.

It recoiled from the lion, scrabbling backwards, before climbing the walls with its four limbs and vanishing through the hole in the ceiling. Three of the lion's eyes followed the escaping leech the entire time, but it didn't decide to give chase. It was too busy ripping the second leech apart to care, and only once the second leech stopped thrashing weakly under its claws did it finally lift its head, spitting out chunks of minced meat like it was disgusted it even had to put them in its mouth.

Now, standing over the two eviscerated leeches with the shaft of golden sunlight beaming down on it, the lion looked almost divine in nature. The roar it then let out was even more divine, shaking the cavern, every tunnel beyond it, and the entire forest above them.

Name: Sunmane Lion Grade: Rare-0 Might: 124 Dexterity: 23 Resilience: 85 Clarity: 152 Mana: 611/611 (+18/hr) General Description: A giant gold-pelted lion with three eyes and eight claws on each paw. Its teeth and claws have anti-spirit properties, and its third eye is particularly sensitive to mana, allowing it to see extremely tiny fluctuations of mana in the air.

Furthermore, its fast-regenerating and flexible golden pelt makes it nigh-invincible against all forms of impact, slashing, and puncture damage unless significantly higher than its resilience.

For his part, Orland didn't dare move. Not that he could with his ears ringing and his heart pumping like a war drum in his chest. Whatever this lion was, it wasn't local. He'd never seen a beast as giant as it, let alone even a fraction as strong. This is what's been wandering around the forest the past few days? Why? Is it looking for something? He swallowed and kept his head low behind the bones. If he'd run into it by himself, he'd have been shredded before he even got his first curse out.

It showed up in the area around the same time as the Hero. Was it… looking for him? The lion shifted. Orland's whole body tightened. He watched as it lowered its head over the torn leech carcasses and sniffed, as if wondering whether it wanted to feast on them—but then it gave a contemptuous snort and turned away from the carcasses entirely, leaping out through the giant hole in the ceiling with one strong kick. Loose dirt and chunks of stone flew across the chamber as it vanished back into the light. …

Is it really gone? Once the dust settled, Orland peeked over the bones. No more lion. The two leech carcasses were still sitting there in the middle of the cavern, though, mostly intact. Did the lion really hate eating leeches so much? That was fair enough, honestly. The leeches looked foul. And if he had to guess, the third leech that got away probably wouldn't be coming back to Rusalka's forests anytime soon—not if that lion was still going to be stomping around—so he could consider his job as the 'Hero' done.

I did it. The 'Hero' did it. As he let out a soft breath of relief—and it would've turned into a shout of triumph—voices echoed through the tunnels behind him. This time, the voices weren't in his ear. There were men calling out to him and one woman too. Probably Rurik, Milena, and the other guards. His head snapped towards the sound, and everything inside him shifted back from exhaustion to pure panic. They're coming in? Why?

He could not let them come in here and find him crouched behind a pile of bones with two leeches seemingly mauled to death by something else. No way. He quickly bolted from his cover and sprinted across to the leech carcasses, clambering up one of the huge bodies with a wet, sliding struggle. It wasn't easy. He nearly slipped a few times and got his feet caught in some of the wide, gaping wounds, but then he got an idea from that.

On his way up, he stuck his hands into one of the wounds and coated them with warm gore.

"Ugh." No time to complain, though. He ripped his hands back up and smeared the blood across his chest, his sleeves, his trousers, and then—after a moment's thought—through his golden hair too. It was better if it looked dramatic. Then he climbed higher onto the carcasses until he planted himself directly under the shaft of sunlight. Light mattered. Heroes belonged in the light. Alright, he exhaled steadily. Showtime.

The first nobleguards burst into the chamber with blades drawn, boots splashing through sludge and blood. Rurik came in behind them with his own sword raised, Milena at his shoulder despite all common sense, and then they all stopped so sharply as they looked at the already-over carnage. Because Orland stood atop not one, but two dead God-Sucking Leeches with blood all over him. He dared say he even looked brilliant under the sunlight.

"... Why're you all here?" he asked in as casual a tone as he could muster, running his blood-soaked hands through his hair one more time.

"Didn't you say you were going to wait outside until I came back?" No one answered him right away. Milena's mouth actually opened and stayed that way for a second, while the rest of the guards all stared between Orland and the leeches and the terrible, terrible damage done to both carcasses. But Rurik found his tongue.

"We… we were," the Head Guard said. Even he sounded off-balance.

"We were going to wait, but then we heard that tremendous roar and felt the whole earth shake, so we thought, perhaps, something had gone wrong and the Hero needed our assistance, but…" His gaze dragged over the two leech carcasses.

"There were two of them? Two this cycle? And you still…" Orland flashed the man a grin and hooked one thumb at himself.

"A great slayer doesn't need to be tall if his beast falls down low enough," he recited from the picture book. He still had no idea what the line really meant, but apparently that didn't matter. The guards exploded into cheers as relief and excitement burst through them. One man laughed loudly and slapped another on the shoulder. Another shouted in complete disbelief that the Hero actually managed to fight off two leeches at once.

Rurik just kept staring, and in his eyes Orland saw half a soldier, half a boy seeing a legend walk out of a song. Orland immediately felt a little guilty being the subject of their admiration, but then Milena skipped forward before the carcasses to smile up at him, and it made his heart skip a beat again.

"You're strong!" she said, breathless.

"That roar you made was so cool!"

"Uh… yeah. Of course." He nodded profusely.

"I'm the Hero, after all." That got another cheer out of the guards, which was fortunate, because inside his skull he was still relieved Milena seemed to have mistaken the lion's roar for his.

"Andrei, Jovan!" Rurik said to two of the guards.

"Run back to town and get reinforcements here! We're gonna need more men, hauling equipment, butcher's hooks, preservation salts, and lines of carts if they can fit the path! Go!" The chosen guards saluted and sprinted out at once, while Orland frowned, tuning out the rest of Milena's ceaseless compliments.

"Wait. Why are you calling for reinforcements?" he said nervously.

"The leeches are dead, right? No need to investigate any further. Let's just go back to town and—""We must harvest the leeches, of course!" Rurik said, turning back to him with glowing eyes.

"We'll need more men to strip them of their teeth, glands, hide strips and blood sacs—if any are still intact—so they can be used as offerings for relics. Naturally, since you were the one who took them down, you'll get to keep any relic we can obtain with those parts, but just leave the butchering and the hard work to us!" Orland blinked. Then he bent down, grabbed the torn edge of the leech's skin with both hands, and started wrenching the wound open wider.

While Rurik, Milena, and the other guards watched in half-shock, half-astonishment, he dug through the leech's insides, ripping out teeth, glands, skin strips, blood sacs—searching for anything that looked decently valuable. He grimaced at the bloody stench of it, but he kept digging nevertheless. He may not know much about the anatomy of leeches, but typically speaking, the most valuable part of any magic beast was… Aha! He felt something firm, veiny, and organ-like.

Grabbing it tight with both hands, he braced one shoe against the leech and yanked. The leech's heart resisted with a wet suction for only a brief moment before it popped out of its chamber, and he held the giant, dark red organ over his head with a triumphant grin.

"Can I keep this for myself?" he asked excitedly, looking down at the guards.

"You can keep the teeth and skin and sacks and all the other horrible tubes, but I want this one. Is that okay?"

"Um…" Rurik still looked a bit taken aback by his frenzied digging, but the nobleguard recovered quickly with a nod.

"Of course, Great Hero. They are your prey—""Great! And Milena!" He turned to the heiress with a bright smile.

"Show me how to obtain relics through offering magic materials to an Altar… or… whatever." He paused for a moment. Rolled his eyes up. Then he shrugged and hugged his giant leech heart close to his chest.

"I mean, uh… obviously, I know how to obtain relics, but I don't know if you know. This'll be my second test for you. Show me… how to do it?" Milena blinked once. For a second, he started worrying that all the blood, grime, and mud on his body was turning her off—gods, did he really just dig through the carcasses like a wild animal? —but then she gave him an excited smile in return, lowering her head.

"As you wish, Great Hero!" she said brightly.

"Follow me back to the Belograd Manor! Rurik and the others will clean this place up!" Orland grinned. He hopped off the leech carcasses to follow Milena and one accompanying nobleguard immediately—eager to learn how it was possible a raw, bloody organ like this heart could be turned into a relic—but as he left the cavern and the rest of the guards behind, he couldn't help but glance back at the tunnel he'd initially run out of. The tunnel was dark. And even quieter.

Yet if he'd run past anyone in there while he was fleeing from the leeches, he felt like he would've known. So what was that voice I heard? And why's it kinda… familiar? He stared at the tunnel for a second. Then for two more seconds. When Milena turned and asked him what was wrong, he said nothing and resumed following her out of the cavern.