System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 82
Unlucky, yet lucky.
The tunnel was only wide enough for one person to pass.
Roy needed only face one enemy at a time.
His crossbow flashed silver, the Nekker at the front dropped with a shot through the skull.
Almost without pause, a second Nekker vaulted over the corpse, paws hitting the floor as it lunged like a beast.
No time to draw a bolt, the boy shifted his weight onto the tips of his toes and used the hand crossbow as a shield, sweeping it from right to left. The stock slammed into the Nekker’s jaw, shattering the needle-teeth in its mouth. It howled in pain and toppled.
“Kid, change position, go to the back!” the Witcher called from behind in a weak, hoarse voice, his right hand flashing through the air as he traced the Yrden rune, conjuring a purple ward that filled the narrow tunnel and slowed the Nekkers. “My leg’s injured, but my sword arm’s fine!”
“Shut up, Letho.” Roy retracted the crossbow and, with a grip in empty air, drew Gwyhyr. “I won’t cower behind a wounded man and be a coward. This time I’ll protect you.”
He seized the sword hilt with both hands and thrust. The sharp blade slid into the Nekker’s chest without resistance.
He then stamped down on the corpse’s chest to twist the blade free, letting the spray of blood stain his face; his eyes were red in that reflected light.
Gwyhyr slanted left to right in a second cut, opening another ribcage.
The narrow tunnel had one advantage: no room to dodge. Swing, thrust, pierce; technique mattered less, any honest strike would find flesh.
Yet his strength and swordsmanship were no match for the Witcher’s. He could not cleave a Nekker in two with a single blow, could not finish in one strike.
That left openings. The dying Nekker, guts torn and thrashing, still had the strength to swipe at his left arm, ripping through the leather and leaving a row of bloody gashes.
Pain spasmed across Roy’s cheek.
The Nekkers went mad at the scent of fresh blood; the ones behind shoved the wounded forward like a living battering ram, refusing retreat, using their comrade as a shield to crash into the boy.
Gwyhyr embedded fully in the “shield’s” chest, and Roy could not extract the hilt; a tide of brutal force shoved him backward and he fell.
One against a pack was always too weak.
A solid arm caught him from behind, the Witcher bracing him, forcing creaking, near-snapping bones back into a semblance of order; wide, mountain-like shoulders rose from the tunnel floor.
At the same time the Witcher’s muscular right hand looped over Roy’s shoulder. His fingers sketched a blue triangle in the air and shoved forward—
“Boom!”
A sharp, short crack of air echoed through the tunnel. The Aard Sign’s blast knocked the rolling wave of Nekkers backward, clearing a stretch of ground.
“If you won’t fall back, then attack from the front, I’ll support with Signs!”
“Mm!”
The Witcher and his pupil began a hurried, strange cooperation in the tight passage.
Roy, who usually hid in the rear firing cold bolts, stood at the front and led the assault—crossbow and steel alternating, switching between ranged and close. He pierced skulls with bolts, then with the sword he opened bellies and split ribs.
Blood thickened on him; wounds multiplied.
But his young face was like forged steel, he yielded not an inch.
The Witcher, used to leading charges, stayed obediently behind this time, applying hard-won battlefield sense. He threw Signs with agility; the Yrden ward underfoot held steady, slowing the Nekkers’ pace.
When a single Nekker lunged, he used Axii to cloud its mind and give Roy a chance to strike. When a mass barreled in, he unleashed Aard and huffed them away.
The duo’s coordination, from clumsy to fluent, sharpened quickly; in two minutes they’d killed more than fifteen Nekkers.
Bodies never stayed put more than five seconds before surging Nekkers dragged them out of the tunnel.
...
Swish—
Roy’s trembling hands drove Gwyhyr at a cruel angle into a Nekker’s eye, straight through the brain.
He withdrew the blade. murky blood dripped from the tip and a thread of dark red ran up his sleeve and down his wrist.
He huffed like a bellows and swayed.
In the rapid, fierce fight his chest, shoulders and arms were torn. The Nekker venom began to take hold: heat, stinging, weakness ... even his sight blurred.
Worse, the Witcher at his back was nearly out of magic.
Then Roy saw a big one break from the Nekker tide with a roar and charge like an uprooted cart. Muscles rippled across its body.
He shot instinctively. The bolt lodged in its eye but, unusually, failed to kill. It bellowed, an arrowhead protruding from its left eye, and kept coming.
Axii—
The Witcher spent his last Sign, clouded the beast’s mind and froze it in place.
Roy seized the opening and drove Gwyhyr into its belly. With the last of his strength he pulled the blade upward, slicing through entrails.
Blood geysered forth.
A normal Nekker would have lost the will to fight under that pain and bleeding.
This big one fought on with the tenacity of the damned.
Despite the grievous wound it retaliated with a final, deadly lash. Its deadfish eyes flashed hatred and cruelty. A scythelike, cold-gleaming claw slashed across Roy’s throat and cleaved away most of his chest.
In an instant snapped vessels, shredded flesh, flipping crimson skin and exposed white bone were bare to the air.
Gore spattered its face and head.
Roy felt a pain more savage than the first pre-potion. Pain to the edge of consciousness, he nearly blacked out.
It happened too fast to react. His life bled away, pupils blown wide and lifeless, the black of his eyes drained of light as a fathomless weakness and emptiness surged, a heavy dark swallowing him—his soul seemed to fall through the night.
Falling!
Falling!
Into silent oblivion.
“Kid!”
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