novelraw Chapter 96: Warning
Chapter 96: Warning
The battlefield got eerily quiet for Stanley after the man died. His eyes hurt to stay open, but he still continued staring at the man that had died from a single mistake.
Stanley’s hands trembled, whether in fear or anger, he himself didn’t know. A weird feeling emerged within him again.
He closed his eyes, the pain becoming unbearable by the second. He opened it once again and turned around to the monster that was getting ready to attack him.
Stanley did the only sensible thing he could at the moment.
He ran away.
With his vision impaired, fighting the monster was definitely suicide. He needed to get rid of the mud and then reset so he could fight the Crawler again.
He ran toward one of the streams that flowed down the town. Due to the rain, the streams were exceptionally strong today.
He washed his eyes quickly and turned back around toward the Battlefield. He looked in the distance, seeing clearly the man who had died from the attack.
Then Stanley’s eyes moved towards the small puddle in the distance where the muddy water was darkened with blood from another man that had died there before.
There was 2 other corpse not far away, from people that must have been caught off guard because of the Crawler’s sudden arrival.
He looked to the other side where the other people were fighting. There were deaths there too. The weird emotion that grew in his heart only go stronger when he saw another man in the distance get killed.
Many Defenders had arrived as well, but most were staying on the sideline, either scared or waiting for someone to give them space.
Stanley saw a few people he recognized too, who he was sure were running into their death, willingly so. Most of them couldn’t even fight as well as it was required to survive, and they were still going to their death.
’Such bravery,’ he thought, a solemn feeling growing in his heart. After all, he wasn’t brave at all.
He had come here not to risk his life to save the people. He had come here to get revenge on his mother.
If he died in the process, he wouldn’t be angry at all. However, the people in front of him were different.
Most of them had no reason to risk their life other than the fact that they wanted to protect those that were precious to them.
Fighting to protect was a concept that Stanley never felt as strongly as these people did. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t run away if his intention wasn’t for revenge.
He wondered if he should go back into the fight again. Someone had already taken his place and was fighting the Crawler quite well. From where he stood, he even saw one of the Crawlers get taken down.
Now, only 4 remained.
"Maybe I’m not needed," Stanley thought. "But what about my revenge?"
He still felt hatred for the monsters, but the calmness in his heart made it hard for him to act impulsively.
Since people were already fighting, he had no place to go. He could only stand and watch as the last 4 Crawlers were—
Stanley’s eyes slowly shifted toward something that moved in the distance. He turned around and managed to catch fo glimpse of something that made its way through the veil.
Other people noticed it as well as many of them started pointing toward it.
Another Crawler had somehow walked in through the veil. It was a scary moment that brought the Defenders to chaos, but a single Crawler entering when they were all gathered there wasn’t that scary at all.
What was scary were the 9 other Crawlers that walked in from behind it.
10 new crawlers had shown up.
The Defenders cried out, many moved toward the Crawlers that had come in. Within a minute, another set of battles started one which was a lot more dangerous than before.
There was one main problem with Crawlers that the Defenders had to keep in mind. When grouped up, the Crawlers were impossible to fight.
The danger didn’t just double when two were present. They got infinitely harder.
Keeping track of 3 limbs was way easier than keeping track of 6. With 10 Crawlers close to each other, the Defender had to keep track of nearly 30 limbs at each time.
They tried to lure the Crawlers away to an isolated location before fighting. However, that didn’t go as well as everyone could hope for.
As they were lured away, one by one, the people started dying to the relentless attacks of the monster.
Stanley’s feet moved on their own. As the feeling in the heart grew stronger, he knew that he must help them.
And that he must get his revenge.
He looked for a singular Crawler and went toward it. The Crawler had just killed someone, so Stanely replaced the man.
He jumped in, attacking with his sword as he did. He swung the sword, cutting deep into the Crawler, more than he had ever before.
He dragged his sword out, cutting even more as he did so.
The Crawler felt no pain, so it simply started attacking again. Stanley dodged and attacked back.
He could hear the painful cries of the people that were being killed around him. 14 Crawlers at once was not something the people could handle at all.
Over 100 Defenders had died when just 10 had shown up last time. This time, the casualty was going to be even more.
Stanley remembered that incident too and the memories of his mother’s death flooded him. His anger soared as he attacked even harder.
He focused entirely on the one limb of the Crawler he was fighting against while the others handled the other limbs.
He dashed back as the Crawler slammed its limb onto the ground. He closed his eyes, just in case. He had learned from the mistake and knew that keeping his eyes open could cause him problems in this situation.
He jumped back and slashed along the side of the tip of the limb of the Crawler. A significant portion of the limb fell off, disappearing into black smoke once again.
The portion regrew back and the Crawler went into attacking again.
Slowly, Stanley started getting into the battle. He ignored the painful cries of his surrounding people and the emotions in his own heart.
He was simply too focused on the battle now for anything else to matter to him.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t notice it when the man next to him had been killed by the Crawler and the Crawler now had a free limb to fight against him with.
Stanley dodged to the right and was about the swing his sword when something happened. He saw something.
A limb came from the side, hitting him in the chest as his body was instantly crushed with his innards falling out everywhere.
’What?’ Stanley was confused. ’What was that?’
His confusion forced him to stop his attack and looked at the other limb that he just saw kill him.
It was moving just as he had seen it move.
Stanley moved away right as it attacked, in the same manner, the same angle he had just seen.
Stanley was stunned for a second after the attack passed. He couldn’t tell what was happening. Was that his powers?
His power was supposed to warn him about dangers, but this... this was no ordinary warning at all.
This was...
A word came to Stanley’s mind. His eyes widened as he knew exactly what it was. He had never known what his powers were before, but now he was absolutely sure what it was.
This was what his brother had talked about before, wasn’t it? When people said they always knew what their powers were, this was what they were talking about.
"This is my power?" Stanley thought.
Just then he saw the monster’s first limb slamming down on him. Stanley calmly moved to the side and let it fall next to him. He slashed at it, taking away a chunk from it.
He saw the same limb swipe across the ground, flinging him far away.
Stanley pulled his sword out and jumped just as the Crawler started moving its limb. He cut it, even while in midair, and landed.
He saw the other limb come for his head from behind him.
Stanley ducked, the limb missing his head by a hair’s width. He turned around and chopped at the limb. His attack was getting stronger, he could tell. He was getting deeper and deeper, ever so slightly, into the Crawler’s limbs.
However, the thing that caught his attention right now was his powers. His powers had finally evolved from just mere danger warning into something more substantial.
The power to see the danger, rather than just know about it. The power to know what was going to happen a few seconds later.
The power of Foresight.
Stanley moved inward as he had just seen in his mind’s eyes that the Crawler would slam its limb tip first into the ground.
He sliced the Crawler’s limb from underneath it without any worry. He made multiple large cuts before he saw that it would slam down its limb.
He moved to the side, and a little back as the mud flung away right where he would’ve been standing had he just moved to the side.
He attacked again and jumped on top of the limb, stabbing his sword onto it while the Crawler’s other limb slammed when he had been standing before.
The people around him were waiting to move in to help him. However, seeing how easily he was handling the Crawler, they couldn’t help but simply watch the battle with a surprised looks on their faces.