Chương 63: Stasis

One Mind/Two Bodies coalesces into my perception, slowing down the surroundings. The giant ball of roiling fire falls to me like an act of god. My arm struggles against the chain, but there are two of them. Thoughts speed like a train through my mind. None of my skills can help me. None of them even– My eye widens.

"Stasis! Ten seconds!" I yell. An unnatural feeling urges me to select a location, so I choose the floor beneath me. Orange fills my vision, and my skin starts to burn. My insides pull. My vision goes black for an instant. In a blink, the world returns. The fireball is gone, and the stone under my feet is covered in soot. The assassin is crouched at my feet, examining the golden chains that now lie unattached. I don't hesitate, and bring the cannonball down with full force on the assassin's head.

It looks up, surprised, and tries to dodge, but it's too late. With a brutal crunch, it slams into the ground and goes limp. Chime The king looks at the scene in disbelief, reaching up and pulling its weapon from the throne. I can't fight another front-liner without support. It's time to do something risky. Stasis, three seconds. I reach back and throw the cannonball full force at the mage's feet. The instant it leaves my hand, I set it as the anchor.

The pulling sensation is stronger and comes from the direction I threw it. A flash of black consumes my view and disappears just as fast. I'm standing a foot away from the mage, halfway across the room. Alarm grows on its face as it turns to me. It meets my fist with another violent crunch of bone, crashing to the ground. Chime The level-up powers through me, placing strength back in my body and breath back in my lungs. A line of danger shimmers down my spine. I dive to the left, narrowly avoiding the king's blade.

Before I can think, I lunge to the left to avoid the follow-up. A circle of danger tingles in my chest, making me push up onto all fours. The danger transfers to my arm. I flex it, but it doesn't move. It only hangs there limply. Before I can react, the arrow comes. My elbow explodes. BOOM The column to my right explodes as well, the arrow embedding itself in the wall behind it. The command demands that I move, but for the first time, I resist it.

My vision won't leave my forearm, which tumbles to the side and lies unmoving. I look at my shoulder. Nothing but mutilated flesh and a sharp spike of bone. Wh-what? The blade impacts my side, carving my flesh out and sending me collapsing to the side. Reality slams back. Pain pushes through my side, with tingling agony driving through my shoulder. The king walks forward with a stern expression. Its sword is poised upwards in a clear, practiced stance. I scramble to my feet and rush to the front of the hall.

The king keeps pace alongside me. It swings while running. I jerk back, but losing balance from my right arm causes the blade to land and carve more flesh out of my side. Tiny, quarter-sized fragments of bone spray out with the blood. Turning, I bend around its next strike and throw a punch. The king's blade gracefully pulls up from its awkward position and digs into my arm. More pain. My arm is parried to the side, the blade pushing up and cutting into my neck. Hard plates of bone inside resist.

I jerk my head away from the rest of the strike and kick out, forcing the king to step back. Before I can keep running, I crouch. BOOM I burst back to my feet and run. As I run by, I lean down and grab the axe of the guardsman. In one motion, I flip around and swing it in an arc. The king effortlessly deflects the head of the axe above it and drives the sword forward. I dodge around it and kick out. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The king steps back, giving me enough room to recover the momentum and swing again. But again, it's parried and forced to the ground. The king steps on the shaft and pushes down, making me stumble forward into its next attack. It stabs, piercing through my abdomen and gliding between the plates of bone. Hunger, nausea, and agony blend together as I'm forced back. It steps with me, twisting the blade in my gut.

"GAAAHHH!" My screams echo through the hall. I slowly walk away. The king walks with me, keeping the blade in place. It doesn't smile. Fury paints itself on its face as it grits its teeth and drives the blade in. The blade digs deeper, widening the wound and pushing me further back. Panic starts to overpower the command. My breathing turns ragged and my heart rate rises. The king lets go of the blade, pulling out two daggers from its back. Panic rages through my mind, and an idea flickers. Stasis, one second.

I kick a piece of debris in front of my foot and send it behind the king, setting it as the anchor. Both daggers fly towards me. At the same time, I reach for the hilt of the sword in my stomach. Unable to reach it, I grab the blade instead. My body pulls, my vision blinks. I pull the sword out by the blade and scream. Dark blood splatters from the wound as I flip on my heels and stab down. The king has both daggers plunged into someone who isn't there.

The tip of the sword makes contact with the king's head, but stops. My hand starts moving. The metal cuts into my palm and fingers until I grip harder and force the blade through the skull. I fall into the motion, pushing the blade deeper into its head as we both land on the ground. I pull my fist back to finish the job, but the sound in my head makes me go limp. Chime Another level-up washes over me, giving just enough energy to get me back to my feet.

The sanctity only lasts for a few seconds before danger re-ignites on my back. I quickly flip off the corpse. Just in time to see the arrow blast through the king's armor and tear off half its back. The pristine golden armor seems like nothing more than cardboard in the face of such raw power. Holy shit! Climbing to my feet, I break into a sprint towards the only remaining enemy. The longbowman's delay between shots becomes clear.

It has to pull each arrow out of the quiver in several pulls, then carefully position it on the string. Jaw clenched and arm shaking, it's clear that the hobgoblin faces serious exhaustion from firing so many times in a row. I jerk to the left. BOOM Air blows my clothes to the side as another arrow flies past and slams into the far wall. The archer releases the bow, clattering to the ground. It pulls a shortsword from its hip and rushes at me. It's only an auxiliary weapon.

I slip around the swing that moves like molasses compared to the king's. One last hook crushes bone and sends the archer thudding to the ground. Chime No level-up follows this time. My breath comes out harsh and powerful. My eyes don't leave the corpse of the archer, replaying the fight in my mind several times over. I turn to the main hall. The four corpses are strewn in different places in various states.

Splatters of blood stain many places on the stone floor, mixing with the dust and stone fragments that result from the archer's shots. In the center of the room lies my hand. My gaze pulls me to my right arm. Or what it used to be. Halfway down my bicep, there's only red, leaking slowly onto the ground. A void opens in my gut, even more than the hole that's already there. Nausea hits like a truck. I fall to my knees, releasing the contents of my stomach.

I recover as quickly as I can and run to the center of the hall. The sight of my hand close-up brings nausea up again. It's clear that Heal Tame won't be able to fix this. If it were cut by a sword or axe, there might be a chance for me to reattach it if I act quickly. But more than a quarter of my arm, the entire elbow, is just gone.

"Kevin, focus." Errant thoughts wash away as I stand. Wait, doesn't stasis give increased regeneration? Without thinking, I activate it. Stasis, eight hours. I set the anchor below myself, and the pulling sensation quickly starts. Smiling weakly, I turn inward to prepare for a quick recovery. Abruptly, it releases before the black comes. Confused, I look down. None of my wounds have changed. Blood is splattered against my chestplate and covers my legs completely, dripping out slowly from all of my wounds.

With my mind still enhanced, I look inside my body and find myself drained of all mana. Status. [Health: 1485(345)] [Mana: 905(0)] [Stamina: 1560(178)] I wince at how low the numbers are. My health goes down by one every few seconds. I don't worry, since I know bleed immunity will outpace it. Not wanting to sleep here, I turn and look around. The large doors at the front of the hall still stand closed. What? Where are the guards? Surely, they would have been able to break through my hastily-made pillars by now.

Maybe the mage locked the door remotely? Or perhaps the guards are too scared to walk in? Shaking my head, I walk around the room, looking for something that leads to the next area. After a minute of wandering, I find an unassuming door behind the throne. Exhaustion digs deep now, dragging my steps. Pushing the door open, I see a wide hallway full of doors. On the right are four doors with different symbols on them. A bow and arrow, a shield, a knife, and a staff.

On the left is a single larger, more ornate door with a symbol of a crown. These must be the rooms that the king and his underlings lived in. The symbols are a bit much, likely put there by the system for added simplicity. At the end of the hallway lies another door, probably the way to the next area. Pain pulses through every inch of my body, urging me not to waste time. I push open the mage's door, looking for some method of recovery. The inside is the size of a classroom. A double bed sits against one wall.

Across from it is a desk with a few books stacked on top. I push through and search through a dresser, but it's filled with robes and other mundane things. Sighing, I give up and move back to the hall and push into the king's quarters. The inside is at least three times larger. The bed is the same, big enough for seven people to sleep on comfortably side-by-side. Other furniture adorns the other sides of the room, but my eye catches the dresser. On top of the deep, dark wood stands a glass bottle lined with gold.

A speckled, red liquid shines like the first sunrise in a thousand years. Hope fills my heart. I quickly sprint over and greedily snatch it up. I reach over to pop the top off, but the stump in the corner of my vision reminds me of why that won't work. Before the mood can drag me down, I rip the top off with my teeth and down the entire bottle. Heat spreads through my chest, concentrating on my stump. Probably should've identified that first. I start to walk to the bed, but hunger starts to fill my stomach.

My head snaps to the door.