Chương 11: Jungle Ghost

Nihil landed in the midst of the three fishmen in a crouch that would have destroyed the knees of any unenhanced human. The first thing he did after landing and jumping back up was to stab his goblin dagger into the gills of the only fishman who'd reacted to his entrance by pulling back his spear for a stab. He never got to thrust his weapon forward, falling to the jungle floor with a gurgle, hands dropping the spear to grasp at the gaping wound.

It was then that the fishman helping his anaconda-afflicted friend noticed the new danger, twirling around, spear extended in a defensive posture Nihil didn't bother pretending he was going to engage in a gentlemanly duel and slammed his forearm holding the dagger into the heft of the spear alongside a step forward. He dropped the dagger and grabbed the spear, allowing him to further pull himself towards the fishman and the fishman towards him.

A hard raised knee slammed into the fishman's stomach, crumbling the monster and causing it to spit a spray of phlegm right into Nihil's face. Nihil didn't care, violently punching the arm holding the spear at the elbow, breaking it, blood and bone bursting out of the newly created injury.

What followed was a swift execution of punches driving into the fishman's torso and head, followed by two hands grabbing the monster's neck and pushing its head down into a knee, this time for a fatal crack that dropped the adversary like a carton of eggs falling off a delivery truck. Nihil stood there, clenching his fists in-between the two corpses he'd created, before picking up the spear and taking a step towards the fishman who was still struggling against the desperate anaconda squeezing him to death.

Then he paused and took a seemingly erratic step to the side, doing a half spin as he did so. The fishman he'd stabbed in the gills rushed through where he'd just been standing before falling to the ground after not finding resistance where it had expected it. The monster fell, one arm extended to catch itself while another held the bleeding wound at the side of its head. Nihil watched dispassionately as the fishman laboriously fought against the ground in an attempt to get up.

Painful sounding gasps came from its fluttering gills and its gaping mouth as it struggled to its knees, before finally managing to stand.

"I guess there's no point in stabbing you in the gills," Nihil commented idly, taking steps back instead of forward. Right over the corpse of the fishman with the broken skull.

"But the oxygen you burned fighting, it's catching up isn't it? The fishman with the stab wound glared at him with empty eyes as it struggled to continue standing while its compatriot gave his last wheezing breaths underneath the deadly hug of the anaconda behind him.

"People don't understand how much oxygen you burn during a fight for your life until they've actually been in one. Considering you don't seem to have an ability to derive oxygen from a non-aquatic environment, the fight was already over the second it started." Nihil shook his head.

"It's still level 1 in the end. Win the fight by starting it. You only lose if the monsters can take you down alongside them." A pair of cold eyes watched as the stabbed fishman seemed to realise the danger of the situation, turning around to run back towards the base. Well, it was more of a stumble really. The fishman ran the way drunk humans walked after consuming more liters of spirits than they had kidneys. Left, right, down, face on the ground in a fetal position.

While Nihil watched the fishman expire, the other one was starting to get swallowed by the anaconda who seemed quite grateful for the meal. Minutes passed as Nihil took in the scene of chaos he'd created. What had been a calm jungle clearing just five minutes ago now had a badly bludgeoned corpse with more indents on its skull than eyes lying on the ground.

Another one of the fishmen had now been swallowed whole by a large anaconda and the last one had just taken its last desperate breath on the ground, hand that had previously been holding the wound falling limp to the side. Nihil looked down on himself and sighed. His clothes had several bright red spots of blood on them. That wasn't actually a very easy issue to deal with in a world that suddenly lacked any kinds of stores or washing machines. He scratched his head and decided to deal with it later.

Now, he had to start the next part of his plan. -/- Nihil had considered taking either Aliyah or Kevin, whose leg was starting to make a very decent recovery, alongside for the slaughter. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. The issue was that taking someone uninitiated in this kind of violence right into the thick of it could prove more dangerous than advantageous very easily.

It also didn't help that Kevin might have used the opportunity to push Nihil into the path of a spear, and that Aliyah might have frozen up and thus ended up needing protection. Nihil had instead chosen to do it alone, something that wasn't nearly as interesting as it would hopefully be in the future after he reclaimed his undead army.

He started by picking up the greedy anaconda which had swallowed one of the fishmen and dragging it into the deep jungle before yeeting the now much heavier anaconda beyond the tree-line which he had never seen the fishman cross. Then he returned to the clearing and did the same to the corpse with the gaping wound at the gills, picking it up and dragging it off towards the outskirts of the jungle, where he dropped it off onto the floor.

He kept the fishman that he'd killed without leaving any immediately obvious wounds beyond the small concave mushy part in the head alongside a few heavy bruises that showed even on its fishy silver skin.

"Help me, help me, help me," Nihil sing-songsed as he propped up the corpse against a tree, making it look like it was simply taking a small nap. Then he looked at the clearing with its obvious signs of struggle and started cleaning. Leaves, twigs and parts of the earth that had blood splatters on them were unceremoniously dug up by hand and buried in a similarly excavated ditch. Broken branches were broken off at the stem and thrown deeper into the jungle.

The corpse of the anaconda that had been killed by the spear… Nihil put it a bit deeper into the jungle, intending to take it to Kevin to eat later. Then? Then he did the same thing he'd done the first time around. One last glance around the now relatively spotless clearing, a satisfied nod, and a run against the heavy trunk of the tree he'd positioned the corpse across.

A detached arm shot upwards and Nihil fulfilled his childhood dreams of being Spiderman as he ascended the tree as his elbow and arm -connected by countless black threads- reattached. Then he simply sat down on a thick branch and waited. He didn't really have any idea how many fishmen there were on this island, but he knew that he had to get rid of as many of them as he could before they raised the alarm.

Three had fallen already, and considering the amount he'd observed over the last few days he didn't really believe that was any less than 5% of the tribe. If the tribe counted more than sixty heads, he would have seen more fishmen by now. If he could lie in wait until the inevitable search party arrived to look for the missing members, then kill another three, he estimated that would be 10% of the tribe dealt with. Then he'd let them stew.

The fishmen had shown rudimentary intelligence, they would know that something was hunting them. But knowing, and being able to act were two very different things. He'd let the fear keep them awake, steal their sleep at night, make them hunt less efficiently due to fear of what lay in the jungle. Then, perhaps in another week, when they were tired, hungry and scared, he'd strike again. Nihil glanced at the amount of experience he'd gotten during the fight, noting the full 50 that usually took him two days now.

"Well, never let it be said that close combat isn't exhilarating," he mused, before shaking his head.

"Pity the margin for error is so small." As he lay in wait, hours passed and the sun arched its way across the sky like an arrow finding its mark. Nihil waited patiently, playing with his threads and harvesting experience at the same time as the related skills became cheaper due to higher levels of familiarity. Unless the next group was particularly large he'd kill them with the threads somehow, he determined as he waited.

That would grant him more experience, start him on the road of determining the specific combat applications of his skill. He fingered the spear gripped in his hand and the dagger kept in the inside pocket of his training jacket. Then he made a rapid decision and discarded both, gently stabbing them into the branches of the tree to rot for now.

"Weapons are a crutch, skills are the only thing that matters," he reminded himself gently, before pausing as he heard the unmistakable crunch of footsteps on leaves. A twig broke somewhere. It was fascinating what the ear was willing to hear once you demanded a higher standard of awareness. Nihil watched with narrowed eyes as one single fishman entered the clearing, crouching at the knees, swivelling its fish-head and holding its spear with both hands, tip pointed forward.

'Just one?' Nihil wondered quietly as he observed, deciding to wait and watch. The fishman entered the clearing and only noticed the body of its compatriot after taking several steps in a direction that didn't lead directly to it.

'Severe nearsightedness, as expected,' Nihil mused, while deciding on what to do. Picking off a single fishman wasn't quite what he was planning on. He narrowed his eyes as he watched what the scout did next. Upon glimpsing the body propped up against the tree, it didn't, as Nihil had somewhat expected, immediately approach it. Instead it made some sort of gurgling sound. It sounded like something that would happen if a human tried to gargle hummus. The corpse obviously did not reply.

That was when the fishman did something that Nihil hadn't expected. It simply turned around and ran off. Just like that. No care for the body, no intent of further analysing the scene. Feet crunched on grass as blood pumped and the spear was transferred to one hand so the monster could run faster. Just a straight dip.

"I underestimated their intelligence," Nihil determined solemnly.

"Any fishman that's left out that long is already dead from lack of oxygen, that's obvious. The search party isn't there to save anyone, but to gather information. They don't even care about retrieving the body. This level of callousness… They'll convene tonight, make a plan." He propped up his chin on his hand while he squatted on one of the highest branches of the tree.

"Let them stew for a few days," he eventually determined with a giggle.

"The problem is, you need food, while I don't. You have to sleep, while I'm always awake. You don't know what happened, while I do. Your nerves will fray, your body always in a state of alertness while I can simply retreat to safety on the beach." Nihil waited there in that position until night set in before finally turning around to leave, taking the weapons once again with him, carrying the corpse of the anaconda over one shoulder.

"It's like shooting fish in a barrel," he muttered while shaking his head.

"The first few levels were really easy, weren't they?"