Chương 106: Chapter 104: Desperate Measures

I'm not the only one I need to worry about running out of stamina. I don't know if Vincent's stamina is draining or not, but if it is, I need to worry about that. He doesn't have that much stamina to begin with. I don't think he can last the same eight minutes that I can. And then there's Gigi. I know that both El and Ash can last a long time in a drawn out combat. I'm pretty sure El can outlast me, or near enough that it doesn't matter. But Gigi doesn't have the same stamina as the other two.

I don't know if she can last long enough to avoid getting killed. As soon as her stamina taps out, she'll lose half her defense and about two thirds of her attack speed. And then it'll probably just be a matter of time before the giants wipe her out. She'll respawn in Elmspire and have to level up with the quests she's already done. She'll also have to replace most of her gear.

I hope she can survive at least long enough to take care of the giants the three women are fighting – is it wrong that I so often refer to them as the girls? – so that she'll be able to just fall out of the fight and not get killed. There's also the question about the stamina of the giants themselves. While I hope that the giants run out soon, I can't count on it. I know that in theory all monsters have stamina ratings too, and that they will drain of stamina in a protracted battle same as anyone else.

But I've never actually seen it happen. I've never been in a battle with a beast long enough for it to do more than just breathe heavily. I've never seen a monster actually run out of breath. I manage to impair the one giant enough that it can't follow us, then I run to Vincent, pick him up with my free arm, and cast Dash. We speed away from the giants, and I draw my bow. The one giant moves quickly to follow, but I think Vincent and I can stay out of his range.

The problem, really, is that we're going to run out of plains eventually. We've got about a mile before the trees come back, but I'm not sure if that will be enough. We're now moving intentionally farther and farther away from the one wounded giant, and we may end up back in the forest after a few minutes. I do notice that my stamina starts to drain more slowly once I pull out the bow. I think it's because I'm not as focused on my footwork, not moving to dodge so often.

My body has a chance to cool down a bit, to calm down from the frantic pace that I was using when fighting the three, then two giants. Now I only have to worry about one, and I can worry about him from a distance, just pounding him with arrows as he tries to move closer. I'm further confirmed in my theory that the stones they were throwing were a spell, because the giant doesn't just stop and switch over to the other form of attack. It must be low on mana if it's still trying to catch us in its bare hands.

I get a good look at the giant. He's at around a hundred and twenty thousand hit points, so a little bit under half. Now each arrow that I hit him with is worth close to a thousand points of damage between the initial strike and the bleed. And Vincent is back to throwing his ice spears at the giant, so I think we can probably kill him. The problem, as I see it, is that we're getting farther and farther away from our friends. We're out of range for me to help them with their remaining giants.

And I can see that there are still two of them. But I can barely see Ash, El, and Gigi. They're so far away now that they're barely visible. Still, they are all still standing, so that encourages me a little bit. My stamina isn't refilling, so I don't use Rapid Shot or anything like that. Stamina is still draining, it just isn't draining as fast. I'm down to losing three a second instead of eight. I'm still tired. Still exhausted from this fight going on as long as it has. Win or lose, this fight was a bad idea.

This was, realistically, more than we can handle. We might squeak by, might eke out a victory, but this was still a bad idea. I wouldn't repeat this decision if we had to make it again. And I'll stick to that if we run into another group of them tomorrow, after we've all leveled up from this battle. Even with a few extra levels, I still think this is just a bad call. A minute passes. The giant chasing us is down under a hundred thousand hit points.

Good to know we can do about forty thousand damage in a minute between Vincent and I. That's actually a lot of damage. How are we able to do that? I'm responsible for a little over half of the damage, between the initial damage of the arrows and the bleed damage that they all cause. Are Vincent's spells really doing close to a thousand damage every time he throws one of those ice spears? I have the higher stats, and my spells top out at about seven hundred and fifty damage.

I know how has more spells than I do, and a higher spellcraft. I assume his spell levels are probably higher too. Does that make enough of a difference to account for that much damage? I suppose they could. I mean, Fire Bolt deals 600% of my awareness at level seven. If he's at level ten, it might deal 700%. And his awareness could be pretty high. I have to remember that there are more points given at each level the higher level you go.

At forty five, Vincent is probably getting twelve or thirteen points at every level to spend in his stats. And I know he isn't really bothering with strength, agility, and vigor. Nor with charisma. So he's probably got a pretty high score in all the stats that he does care about. He could be doing that level of damage with his spells. I mean, he kind of has to be, right? The giant isn't taking damage from other sources. If I caused twenty four thousand damage, the other sixteen thousand had to come from somewhere.

So it had to come from Vincent. Why am I thinking about this? In my distraction, I let the giant get too close to me. I should draw my sword again, but I don't. I just duck under his swing, leap out of the way of his kick, and then use Dash again to renew the distance between us. Every time I do that, I add about a hundred feet to the distance between me and the three warrior types fighting the other giants.

It looks like they're down to just one giant, but I can't be sure that all three of them are still up and fighting anymore. They're just too far away. The wounded giant, the one whose leg I crippled, is slowly making his way towards us. I don't think he'll be able to make up the three hundred foot distance in less than five minutes, but I can't be sure. They have a really long gait, and while he can't take full steps right now, he might be able to limp, or hop, a lot faster than I'm giving him credit for.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. We need to kill this nearby giant. His hit points are down in the seventy thousand range, and I really do think it's just a matter of time before he dies at this point. Vincent doesn't seem to be running out of mana to cast his spells, and I don't think I'm going to run out of arrows any time soon. Every so often, I pull out another bundle from my spatial bag and refill my quiver.

It barely slows down my shots at all. I manage to shoot at a pretty fast and steady rate. I can't shoot more than once a second, but once every other second is still pretty damned fast. The giant is a massive target, which definitely helps, but it still means I'm going through thirty arrows a minute. But that also means I'm doing close to thirty thousand damage a minute. Dash isn't off cooldown by the time we kill the giant. The crippled giant sees his companion fall and looks around.

He might not be that smart, but he can probably count. He can probably tell that where there were once seven giants on his side, there are now just two. Himself and one other. That means that five giants have already been killed. He's been sorely wounded; if a human were wounded the same way he was back on Earth, they'd probably lose the leg. Certainly, they'd never walk on it quite right ever again. I think that he will heal completely given time, and may get away with just having a limp for the rest of his life.

But that limp is significant. From the looks of it, all these things together are making him think better of continuing the battle. He isn't moving towards us anymore. He's making his way, in a sort of limping, hopping, skip, away from all of us. He's moving relatively fast, considering his wound. I could catch him if I wanted to. But I don't want to. I want him to get away. I want him to stop fighting. With him out of the battle, that means I can get to where my other friends are and maybe help them out.

I start to take an arcing path back towards the other battle, trying to give the retreating giant a wide berth. I want him to know that I'm letting him go, that I have no intention of chasing him. I don't want him to think that I'm coming after him. If he's decided to run, I want him to stick with that decision. My stamina is around three thousand, and still dropping. But dropping slowly enough that I can help with the battle.

Slowly enough that I might even try using Rapid Shot to take a chunk of health away from the giant. I jog, trying to catch my breath as I do. It's a weird experience to be able to do that, where jogging just isn't much more draining than walking. But I do have a vigor of 182. I know I can run a four minute mile. I know I can do it for more than one mile at a time. And I know such things aren't possible for normal humans. But normal humans don't have the stats that I have.

When I get within range, I launch a Fire Bolt at the giant, trying to distract him or dishearten him or something. Maybe I can intimidate him into running away too. I mean, we've taken out the rest of his companions at this point, and now reinforcements have arrived for the enemy. He might be willing to run away. As I get closer, I notice something bad.

I can see El, panting for breath as she chops again and again, blood trickling down her face from an impact, her health still above twenty thousand but trending downwards. And I can see Ash, gritting her shark teeth as she braces against another hammering impact from the giant's club. She's still perfectly healthy. But I can't see Gigi. Gigi is gone. Which means Gigi is dead. She probably ran out of stamina. It looks like Ash and El are getting close to doing that themselves.

I need to get in there and offer them a reprieve. I do fire the Rapid Shot, dealing about seven thousand damage after bleed is considered. Then, with a flick of my fingers, I unstring my bow, sliding it into my spatial bag and drawing my sword back out. I shoot another Fire Bolt at the giant, then I run in to engage it in melee.

"Retreat if you need to!" I shout, slicing at the giant as he staggers around, clearly on his last legs as far as energy is concerned. He's still got about fifty thousand hit points, but I'm thinking I might actually get to see a monster run out of stamina at this point.

"I can hold him!" Ash takes a desperate step backwards and starts breathing even more heavily, trying to catch her breath once she's out of range from the giant. El just roars and keeps attacking. She's going to run out sooner or later, but I guess she just isn't ready to give in yet. I understand; the giant is getting low enough on his points that it might come down to which one of them is tougher. And I know El always wants to prove that she's the toughest.

I'm not sure who she's proving it to; I already believe that she's the toughest. But she seems to want to prove it again, so I'm not going to stop her. Besides, it's good to have someone else flanking the giant. With her still engaged, my sword attacks do double damage. Which means I'm able to do about nine hundred or so damage with each attack. Vincent starts casting his magma spear spell again, and I see that it does a lot of damage. And it does lingering damage from burn. Not that much, I don't think.

But every bit is going to help. Then the giant casts a spell. Here I was, thinking the only spell they had was to summon the giant rocks that they throw. But he apparently has another one. Why the other ones didn't cast the same spell, or why he didn't cast it earlier is a mystery. But he casts it now, and his skin shimmers. I can't really tell what color his skin is; I'm working on pure dark vision here. The moon is still up, but it's nowhere near full right now, so there aren't really any colors visible.

I just notice that the skin shimmers, seems to take on a different texture, and then the damage that I'm doing drops down drastically. Before, I was dealing as much as 968 damage with every swipe of my sword. Once he casts the spell, my damage drops to 242. It's effectively like he just healed all the way back to full. I just hope that the hardened skin doesn't help much against Vincent's magic. My stamina is back to draining at eight points per second. That leaves me just over six minutes to finish this.

Looking at the giant, I don't think he has that kind of time. Already, he's swaying in place, staggering a little when he tries to move between El and I, trying to keep up with both of us, trying to decide which of us is the bigger threat. And then, a minute later, it happens. The club droops down and starts to drag along the ground. A few seconds later, it even falls from the giant's grip without me having to do a disarming attack. And the damage that I'm dealing goes back up.

Not all the way, but back up to about seven hundred damage per hit. The giant is out of stamina, and I'm still fighting strong. I can keep going at this pace for another four or five minutes at least. But it can't maintain that pace. And that means it's going to lose hit points at a prodigious pace. I think El is out of stamina too. Her attacks are coming much less frequently, but she's still there, still engaging with the giant.

She's still giving me the bonus of the flanking, which means that I'm doing about twenty one thousand damage in a minute instead of just ten. She isn't contributing much in the way of damage, but she is definitely making it possible for us to kill the giant. It goes down before the end of the next minute, it's death coming as a sigh rather than a scream, as it kind of just slumps over. There are no death throws for the giant.

It just tumbles over, exhausted and almost relieved to finally be done fighting, even if it because death had come for it. I look over at El. She's fallen to the ground, splayed out in the grass and gasping for air like a fish out of water. I wonder if it's possible to go into negative stamina. If it is, I think she just did. I let her rest.