Chapter 104

Rain stared at the spot Opal had just been, his body unmoving, uncomprehending. It had only taken a moment, she was there and then she was just gone, struck down, vanished. It had happened so suddenly that he half wondered if he had hallucinated it.

Then the reality of his situation made itself known, swarming blood crazed Orcs on every side burying him in bodies. A howling mob, a mindless ravening horde, hundreds made mad with greed for levels, taunted by Rain and his actions into a frenzied animalistic state. The crush only knew one thing; there was a monster to kill and power to take.

Rain lost sight of the sun beneath the stabbing punching kicking Orcs, the bright blue of the sky replaced with a desperate struggle in the dark, each motion a vicious attempt to kill the monster beneath and claim the leveling for themselves.

The problem was, the monster fought back.

Rain’s teeth enclosed an Orc’s throat and with a savage motion he ripped her windpipe out. Even as that happened his shadow paws independently squirmed their way through the pile, stop starting as they were sometimes blocked by armour or weapons, other times slicing through exposed limbs, disembowelling, decapitating. A dark mirror to his real paws which reached out and crushed throats, grabbing, fighting, even as his body started to fail, the onslaught of weapons and Skills and fists causing flesh to break down and disintegrate. It didn’t matter how tough his body was, the sheer number of wounds he was taking on would cause anything to falter.

A longsword found his belly and was forced through his flesh, piercing his guts, the Orc who wielded it literally foaming at the mouth with bloodlust, his eyes gone crimson with berserk rage, screaming his success, his glory.

Rain hardly noticed, not because it didn’t hurt, but because it didn’t stand out amongst the agony of the dozen other blades already sticking from him.

A massive flesh and blood paw flashed out and enclosed the Orc’s head, and then with a terrible strength it crushed the Orc’s head to pulp, bursting it like a watermelon. A wash of blood adding to the many streams of the stuff that wound their way through the struggling mountain of bodies.

Rain snarled, a deep animalistic sound, a predator pushed to the limit, backed into a corner, surrounded by those that would kill it. He thrashed, struggling desperately just to survive, to escape the weight of thousands and thousands of pounds of Orc crushing down on him, intent on ending his life before he even had a chance to look for Opal.

Opal could be dead or dying right now and there was nothing he could do about it trapped below these hundreds of levelers. The thought sent white hot flashes of searing emotion across his mind and he opened his jaws wide, wider, his teeth juddering, his punctured lungs refusing to cooperate, he forced them to work through sheer bloody will and a ragged mess of a roar slipped from his throat, weaker, far far weaker than his best, but with this many living beings this close by and on this many sides?

The shockwave that was released instantly killed those touching him, their orifices gushing blood as their bodies ruptured. Those just behind lost their hearing and bled openly, dying still, just more slowly, the ruin of their insides a sea of internal bleeding.

Rain pushed aside those dead and dying around him and squirmed forward amongst the crush. It seemed like he’d made no difference at all, there was just always more, the sight of the sky no nearer as he was still buried beneath the hundreds and hundreds of Orcs.

An Orc wearing an eyepatch bellowed directly into his face, spittle flying everywhere. His fist enclosed a brutal looking knife but his arm trapped between two other Orcs, unable to drag it nearer to stab Rain. But then the Orcs shifted and the eyepatch Orc found a gap, forcing the heavy knife nearer, not caring who he was cutting through on the way. Skills flashed to life around the metal in a blur of blue sparks.

The Orc was determined to kill him.

So Rain bit his face off.

The Orcish mass in some small part faltered as the faceless dead Orc slipped back amongst the writhing bodies, a shudder running through the mountain, like a ripple from a pebble dropped into a pool of water.

At first Rain thought he had killed some highly revered Orc, but then the seething berserk rage came on once more, as though the mob wasn’t aware of what had just happened.

Between furious frantic killing just to survive each moment a small worm of reason ensconced at the back of his mind began to work. He was a ball of instinct with no time to think, but still, the worm worked, and when he killed a second Orc wearing an eyepatch, just like the first, and the shudder happened again, the worm paid attention.

He doubted a normal monster would have noticed or understood what was happening. But he had been a human being once, a leveler in his past life, and with that the worm recognised there was something here, levelers with the ability to buff other levelers. Uncommon, but not unheard of.

The next blade that was stabbed into his flesh got stuck, failing to pierce his body, the one who wielded it no longer strong enough to injure him.

He realised now, he had wildly overestimated this vast horde of Orcs. In truth most were likely less than level twenty, and most of those in the teens, upper low levelers and lower mid levelers. He had thought most of them in the twenties due to how strong they were, but he had been wrong, the insane berserker strength they possessed was due to the eyepatch wearing Orcs and was not their own.

A motion caught his eye and he spotted another eyepatch amongst the press. With a snarl he lunged for them, claws digging into their face, the eyepatch shifting revealing a coppery metal eyeball beneath set with Orcish runes. He tore the Orc apart in moments. The other Orcs flinched and this time he felt it, their incredible power slipping slightly.

The worm understood.

When he’d enraged the crowd of Orcs he had also angered those with Skills that affected other levelers, a small number of support Classes. They’d used those Skills liberally and the Orcs had attacked. The mob effect had pushed their blood lust to greater heights and in turn caused the buffing Orcs to use their Skills again and again, a reinforcing feedback loop that he was only now breaking.