Chương 114: Chapter 119: Gremlins

A gurgle escaped the little creature who tried to sneak up on me, a see-through hole becoming visible as a spike of aura retracted from his chest. I turned around as a message informed me of its passing. Ding! ──────────── You killed a Gremlin Ambusher Lv31 ──────────── Great, now I could feel a dozen of the little shits approaching from all around. It seemed that that guy, Cole, didn't lie. The way forward was barred for those who didn't have enough strength.

I took another look at the little monster while passing beside it. It was ugly as hell, grey-green, with little animal pelts as clothes, pelts that weren't even properly cleaned or sewn, giving me the unforgettable view of his genitals. Yes, his. The rancid stench that came from him was something that should have alerted me way before my senses. That much it stank. A bone dagger was still clenched in his hand, a hand too big for the size of its body.

It was barely a meter tall, but the thing was nearly as big as mine. The proportions of its limbs were all wrong, and generally it was just revolting. I had only a scant few minutes to ponder the letter, hardly enough to think properly about how to proceed from here, but the interruption could be what I needed, a way to calm my nerves.

As more gremlins started to position themselves around me, I decided to try something that was hinted at in the name of many skills, in particular one that was cited in the letter too: Hexfield. On paper, it was a zone all around me that would become cursed, and everyone entering the area would suffer from a weakened version of my hexes, and curses if what I was thinking would work. I first expanded my aura. I did away with hardness completely, with the exception of a small film protecting myself.

I pushed most of my aura out, making it as thin as possible. Instead of a liquid or solid as it usually manifested while using the skill, now it resembled a kind of mist, or smoke, steam maybe… It made everything around me lose its colors, entering my black-and-white world. As the aura encompassed nearly a ten-meter radius around me, a couple of the gremlins got caught in its midst. It was a strange feeling. I knew they were there.

My senses told me so, but now a new one was giving me information about their exact shape and, in a lesser way, their own aura, or the little they had. Their aura felt foul, as repugnant as their appearance, but I wasn't going to waste time analyzing them. No, the first part of my plan worked, beautifully at that. It felt like my aura was breathing after I had kept it compressed so much all the time. Only now I was realizing how much effort it was to shape it into barriers and weapons.

By nature, aura wanted to expand, to cover as much volume as possible, like a gas. I refocused. Having a high processing speed did not mean that I could waste it during a fight. Despite this fight not being dangerous to me, it was just sensible not to develop bad habits. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The two gremlins were moving back, trying to exit my aura, but I shifted it, making it take a more oval shape to keep them in.

Then I put my will into a fragment of my aura, the same way I did for my darts usually. I gave it a command: accept the Hex, become a conduit. My aura was already cursed by itself, it shouldn't have trouble carrying something like that. The skill worked, but not as I intended. A little amount of aura near the gremlin got hexed.

The skill did nothing to the aura itself, but it consumed mana to activate, and despite trying to push that aura against the little bastard that was now throwing a knife at me, it wasn't interacting with the enemy at all… It was funny, the sensation of the knife passing through the aura to reach me. I could feel it in a way that was uncanny. In a moment it reached me, clanking hilt-first against my barrier. It wasn't a good throw.

Even if I did nothing, it wouldn't have hurt me, but another dagger was already on its way to me, along with a couple of arrows and a ball of liquid, all coming from different angles and from up in the trees. I left my barrier to deal with the physical projectiles while I focused on the liquid. It was dark to my monochrome vision, but I couldn't say exactly which color. For sure it wasn't water, and it was magical in nature. Being the slowest projectile by far, it was good to use as a test.

I pushed my aura against it during its passing. I could feel it condensing on the side of the liquid, slowly and softly pushing its trajectory away from me. In the end, the dagger and arrows clinked against my barrier, ricocheting away, while the blob of liquid got moved nearly a meter to my right, falling behind me. Nice. But still too slow to deviate the fastest projectiles. I'd need more practice, way more practice. I took a step forward and condensed my aura around the two gremlins still there.

I tried again to imprint a hex into the aura itself, but the skill again pulled from my mana. I had to find the trick to make it accept my aura instead. For now, there was no way I could cast it the way I wanted. I looked at my two guinea pigs and decided to follow another route to deliver my hexes. I created a will-infused dart, then used the aura imbued with the hex I had just made and merged it into the dart. The projectile started to instantly destabilize, the skill buckling and trying to release the shot.

I let it go. The gremlin on my right went down like a sack of potatoes, a hole in its brain. How did I do it against Vix? I felt the skill resonate with my aura there for a moment, but I used a mix of mana and lifeforce, and no hex… let's try again. I hexed the other gremlin, then started to pull a little of its lifeforce. I could tell I couldn't take too much, vitality wasn't his best stat. But I took it anyway, and willed a small dart into existence, born with the purpose of becoming something more.

It was barely five inches long, created with a mix of mana and stolen life. Then I willed my aura to merge with it. A grey mist entered the golden-blue projectile, forming another dart, superimposing itself onto the one already formed. The energies didn't push each other around, but interacted in a strange way. A hum filled the air as the little dart over my hand vibrated and shifted.

It looked like two darts were there, distinct from one another, but depending on the angle, they seemed one and the same, like some kind of optical illusion, a trick of the light. Last step. Hex. The dart became darker all of a sudden. The mana went from light blue to dark. The skill buckled like a wild horse, but I kept it under control as I let the projectile go. It flew true, piercing the gremlin's chest and embedding itself into a tree.

The little monster fell to its knees, looking down at the hole it now sported. A faint discoloration was present around the skin, and I dispelled the hex I had put it under to better see the effect of the dart. I felt the presence of the hex I cast on the dart on it, but different. Instead of a weakening hex, it was something else, but I couldn't understand how. The good thing was that I could use it as a bridge to apply Drain the Accursed, so it meant that it worked, but how exactly I didn't know.

I took as much lifeforce out of it as I could in the seconds before it died, then turned to face the other monsters. The forest was very quiet as I scanned my surroundings and found nothing. Little bastards… they ran.