novelraw Chapter 168: Endless Horde
Chapter 168: Endless Horde
Aaron stood with a shaky breath, his body riddled with injuries as he gasped for air greedily.
He was hyperventilating, and around him were corpses.
A lot of corpses.
The dead bodies of the foolish nightcrawlers that dared to antagonize him.
With the help of his aura skill Dignity of the Weak, which he could keep activated theoretically for an infinite amount of time, the tides of the battles were turned.
It had a cooldown of 30 minutes, but the skill couldn’t end unless he willingly turned it off.
And Aaron was no fool to turn it off during a fight.
He had yet to harvest any of the corpses for their acid or the blood core, since no matter how many he killed, their numbers didn’t seem to reduce.
For every creature he killed, several more crawled out of the darkness.
All of them shared the same bloodthirst, their appearances nearly identical.
For a moment, Aaron even seemed to entertain the thought that maybe every nightcrawler was merely a copy or clone of one single entity.
And with each nightcrawler that crawled out of the darkness, that suspicion began to harden even more.
Otherwise, how could each of them look so similar?
But their lore aside, Aaron was struggling with their unending horde.
Each and every injury from their attacks was slowly piling up, making it a chore just to raise his hand.
It didn’t help that the swordstaff was a heavy weapon, unable to be wielded at its full potential.
To make matters even worse, the nightcrawlers weren’t just mindless bloodthirsty berserkers.
They had at least two working brain cells, which allowed them to block his path back to his campfire.
His defensive measures, the flashbanging bright light, were his last saving grace.
It allowed him to blind those dark, dangerous fuckers and also make them unable to use their nightmare-inducing powers.
He had felt it for a couple seconds before, and he swore that he never wanted to feel it again.
Those mere seconds showed him the most gruesome scene he could imagine.
His lovers, his family on Earth, and all the friends he had made in life... they were all dead and moving like zombies.
They whispered demeaning words, saying that he was the worst and that they wished they had never met him.
It was the most cliché and predictable nightmare for most, yet seeing the faces he loved speaking those words... it hurt.
But luckily his light burst out of him and freed him from that death trap, allowing him to escape the nightmare with a mere scratch on his back.
Aaron looked up, seeing the moon slowly and surely dipping lower into the sky.
He didn’t even remember how long he had been fighting for.
According to him, it had been at least a day, but of course that wasn’t true.
The sky was the proof.
Still, he had started fighting when it was midnight, and now it was nearly morning.
"Sir Aaron, the dawn is near! Hold on, please!" Alyssa screamed near his ear.
The stealth elder, however, was silently sitting on his other shoulder.
Hearing Alyssa’s worried voice, some sense returned to his brain.
He quickly commanded the nanobots to reinforce the ’cages’ of Alyssa and the stealth elder.
He could slightly trust Alyssa based on the worried tone in her voice and the fact that there was no benefit for her in his death.
But the stealth elder...? She had everything to gain from his death.
Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if she was feeling mad about his guard.
And true enough...
’Fuck, I should’ve acted much earlier! Now it would be hard to pierce this weird material.’ The stealth elder cursed inwardly, watching how the nanobots around her thickened and blocked her direct connection with his ear.
It had been left open earlier since the mushfolks were too weak to give him trouble.
But now...?
He was vulnerable and he knew it.
’That stupid girl... how did Melissa even raise such a foolish goody-two-shoes in her tribe?!
They are called the venom tribe for fuck’s sake!’ The stealth elder felt like pulling her mushroom hair, but she was worried it might actually get torn out of her skin, so she didn’t try.
Aaron kept dancing across the field, trying to get closer to the campfire while the nightcrawlers kept cutting him off.
He had his lights turned on, so most of the nightcrawlers were swinging in the dark, hoping to hit him.
But it didn’t reduce the danger.
Time ticked by excruciatingly slowly.
Every once in a while Aaron looked at the sky, hoping to see the moon gone and the sun coming up...
But to his dismay, the moon remained stationary.
How could the moon suddenly disappear when he kept looking up every once in a while?
And it was common knowledge that...
Time moves slowly when you’re hating it, and extremely fast when you’re enjoying it.
The universe wasn’t called sadistic for no reason, after all.
It was now Aaron’s turn to experience that...
***
By the time dawn broke through the canopy and the soft sunrays fell onto the ground, Aaron was half dead.
Nightcrawlers disappeared back into the shadows the moment the sun came up, as if they couldn’t bear it for a single second.
’Can I trust Alyssa...’
Aaron thought slowly, his mana at rock bottom and his focus all over the place.
Sure, the mana was recharging fast, but it didn’t help that his concentration was getting broken each time he tried to use his mana.
He was hoping to use his mana to lift a healing potion, allowing him at least some reprieve in this dangerous time.
But alas...
Thus, as the last option, he remembered the two mushfolks whom he had caged.
The stealth elder was an obvious no-go.
She wanted nothing more than his death for ruining her tribe.
She was collaborating and acting nice because he had strength and leverage, but the moment those were gone... she would betray him without question.
But Alyssa...
He remembered the worry in her tone last night and the cute, slightly clingy interactions she had with him...
Aaron sighed deeply, giving a slow order to his nanobots, causing Alyssa’s cage to break apart and her body to be freed.
Sensing the movement, she stirred in her sleep, looking around in obvious fear and surprise.
She was on his shoulder as he lay on the floor.
Everywhere her eyes could see, nightcrawler corpses were strewn around.
They seemed to be shriveled up like raisins, looking as if they had been left out in the sun for years.
But she ignored that.
Instead, she focused on the huge monster that had suddenly stomped into her life, flipping it upside down.
He was bleeding from several places.
And while she didn’t exactly know what the red liquid in his body was, she understood that it was nothing good.
"Sir Aaron, are you alright?" she asked hesitantly.
Aaron tried to open his mouth to speak, but blood filled his throat, causing him to cough out a mouthful of blood.
"Drink... me... that..." he wheezed out with great difficulty, shakily raising his hand and pointing at the potion he had taken out of his inventory.
It was a high-graded one, the only one he had since it was too expensive to be used wantonly.
And if he didn’t feel like he would die if not treated, Aaron would’ve settled for using a lower-graded one.
Alyssa looked at the huge bottle his hand was pointing at, before looking back at his face.
Her eyes stalled on his plump lips, her brain gears churning.
’He said drink me this, does it mean he wants to feed that to him? But why didn’t he say feed in the first place? she blinked, trying to understand if there was some deeper meaning to it.
Did he forget the word feed? But that should be impossible, the orb translates the language based on intent and not vocabulary.’
Cough cough
More blood splurted out of Aaron’s mouth.
"Faster!" he growled, making Alyssa yelp and snap out of her overthinking.
She hurriedly jumped off his shoulder, sliding down the contour of his muscles as she waddled towards the large glass bottle.
’He had this and was still asking me where to store the nightcrawler’s venom. Geez, this monster’s weird.
Is he greedy? This water inside must be something special that he cannot waste.’
She nodded to herself before scolding herself for having useless thoughts.
The bottle was too heavy for her, and despite using both hands she could barely lift it off the ground.
So she changed her method instead, using her body weight to push the bottle towards Aaron slowly.
The glass bottle grinded against the dirt, slightly sinking in due to the blood, but slowly and surely she managed it.
She brought the bottle near his face, climbing on his body and then the bottle to pull it open.
A sweet scent filled her nostrils, making her dazed for a second before she pulled herself together.
’Ah well... it is what it is.’
Alyssa jumped off the bottle, using all her force to tip it onto Aaron’s face!