Chapter 63 – Fighting For His Life

"RUN!" Damien shouted at his daughter and her friends, infusing his voice with the power of his command class skill, without which he knew that they would have been helpless against the reaper, unable to flee to safety, just like he had hoped.

Rest assured that his skill would take them away as fast as they could go, the man resolved himself to fight the monstrous undead before him. Although nervous both for himself and his daughter, he held firmly onto the crimson red wrapped hilt of his family’s sword and lifted the blade into the air, readying himself to attack.

Opposite the man, the reaper just stood there. The undead’s shadowy cloak shifted and writhed around him as it just stared at him with those beading red lights it called eyes. Just the sight of this monster brought back bad memories; memories of seeing his father drained of all his lifeforce, turned into a lifeless husk of a man.

Hesitating not even for a second, the incredibly sharp, enchanted length of Damien’s sword, a weapon that was passed down from father to son for many generations, lashed forwards in a blur of motion. Under more mundane circumstances, Damien would have had no chance of striking the undead abomination that stood several metres away from him with his sword, as he had tried, but this was not a mundane circumstance. No, there was nothing at all mundane about Damien.

Magic users weren't the only ones that could go above and beyond what their normal class skills would allow them to do. For those that pursued the martial arts there was another path. A path that was much harder to pursue and only came to them in the third tier instead of the second, that of the path of aura manipulation.

As one such aura user, Damien pulled from the raging torrent that was his inner energy, infusing his blade and the class skill he was activating to surpass the normal limitations that the system imposed on it. Although his blade sliced through empty air, the trail of his arching slash class skill shone with the crimson light of his aura as his inner energy pushed it forwards.

The arch shot out from him in the blink of an eye, heading straight for the reaper. However, when it reached the reaper, the undead monstrosity just stood there. There was a brief flickering as if the monster had momentarily fazed out of existence, but the flickering was perfectly timed to allow the arching slash to pass by it unscathed. As the slash continued on past the reaper, it devastated the tree line behind it, completely bisecting any tree unfortunate enough to be in its path until it ran out of aura to continue going.

Having fought a reaper before, Damien was expecting this to happen. The most annoying part of these monsters' repertoire was their ability to faze in and out of reality, but they could only do it once every few seconds, a fact the man knew well. As such, he rushed straight for the reaper before its fazing ability had a chance to recover.

Propelled forwards by both his rank 10 charge skill and the full power of his 220 might score, there was an explosion in the man’s wake as he momentarily broke the sound barrier. Not to mention that his own boots, which were rather ordinary and thus incapable of supporting his full strength when brought to bear, were left in tatters.

The moment Damien crossed the distance to the reaper, he fluidly shifted his momentum into a downward arch while activating his power strike skill. Unfortunately for him, the reaper merely raised one of its skeletal hands, forming a thin blade of shadow to intercept the man’s attack. Although very thin and lacking any real substance, the reaper's conjured weapon blocked the attack well enough, resulting in an explosive impact that rung out through the forest.

The undead abomination lowered its jaw as it pressed its weapon back against Damien’s with all the unnatural strength it could. From within the black void of its skeletal mouth came an unholy screech that tried its best to rip the man’s mind apart. However, he was easily able to activate his steel mind skill in time, reducing the damage to only a little bit of bleeding from the ears.

Pulling back from the clash of weapons with the reaper to make another strike at it, for a second it looked as if Damien was going to trip on a wayward tree root, and as the undead monster swung its shadowy blade to take advantage of that fact, it fell into the man’s trap. The image of Damien tripping instantly shifted as his distracting feint skill broke from the activation of another of his skills, flurry of blows.

At nearly the same split second, five different sword blows rained down on the reaper, the strength of all of which were once more empowered by his aura. The first of the man’s flurry of strikes struck the undead monster in its skull, but its fazing ability had time to recover by then and the tip of the sword slashed through empty space. The next three strikes came down only to be met by the reaper's sword, which had been instantaneously repositioned during the moment in time that it was fazed out of reality. However, Damien expected as much and used those three strikes to turn its blade away, allowing the last of his flurry of blows to strike true.

The reaper let out a howling scream of pain as the enchanted, mithral blade cut into its shoulder. Where normal, mundane weapons would have been completely infective against such a monster, both the magic in the weapon's enchantments and the aura infusing his strike allowed for substantial damage to be done to it. That said, though, in a fight between beings as high level or high tier as these two, such a substantial wound was actually nothing to them.

Unlike in fights between low-level individuals, a single moment was not all it took to decide who lived and who died. No, fights between incredibly powerful individuals were a battle of attrition to see who would run out of steam first.

As such, the reaper was not at all distracted by the pain of having a blade cut through its shoulder. What little physical damage that was done to its skeletal form by the blow was instantly mended by the necrotic energies that held it together, depleting said energies only slightly.

The reaper lashed out with its sword in a wide arch, one Damien saw coming easily enough and jumped back to avoid. What the man didn’t see coming, however, was the fact that the sword shifted shape, taking on the form of a scythe at the very last second. The last reaper he fought had never done such a thing and only fought with a shadowy sword for some reason. Although he tried his best to raise and block the blow from coming, the end of the scythe managed to reach and cut a short wound across his chest.

Damien gritted his teeth, feeling the familiar sensation of a reaper's wounds sapping the life from him. For someone of his strength, this kind of wound was not a big deal and would not do any lasting damage as long as he wasn’t injured too much. Too much damage from the reaper's unholy weaponry would weaken him for a while afterwards until his body and soul could recover the life force stolen from him. Luckily, though, this was only a minor flesh wound.

A slight sigh escaped the man’s lips as he tightly gripped his sword, eyeing up the reaper across from him. Although he was a few levels higher than in his last fight with a reaper, that had not been an easy fight then. And to make matters worse, even if he had the time to put on armour, the only kind of armour that would have been of use and resisted the reaper's ability to just faze past it would have been the set he wore last time he fought a reaper, the armour of a Royal Knight of Artellan.

Of course, because the armour belonged to the kingdom and, by extension, the king, he had to give it up when he fled the capital with his wife. Although his dear friend, King Aeldan II, offered to let him keep the armour, Damien knew he had to refuse.

After explaining everything that happened to Aeldan, who he trusted completely, he knew that the fact that the king was willing to just let his most powerful knight go without so much as addressing the fact would be suspicious and draw more than a few eyes toward him, especially after said knight’s father was killed by those seeking the keys only days earlier. If a set of royal knight armour, something that was worth a small fortune, had disappeared as well, it would have drawn too much attention, to the point that Damien feared those that killed his father might have gone after his closest friend as well.

However, there was nothing to do about it now. As such, Damien put those distracting thoughts to the side and rushed toward the reaper once more. The wound on his chest was already healing as he activated his heal minor wound and recover skill in tangent. By the time his sword met that of the reaper's, there was no sign that he had ever been hurt the first time.

Again and again, the undead monster and the wayward Royal Knight of Artellan clashed blades. Again and again, class skills were activated and abilities used. Despite Damien’s tremendous rank in his sword's general skill, that of 42, the fazing ability of the reaper really made it hard to do lasting damage. Luckily, his class skills gave him a bit of an edge, and with most of them being at the cap of rank 10, they had pretty short cooldowns.

Over a long period of time, the wounds each of the two suffered began to pile on more and more, slowly wearing them down. What had taken the most damage, however, was the scenery, as the forest around them was completely devastated. For over a hundred metres in every direction from the log cabin, no tree stood upright in the wake of their battle. Even the log cabin did not fare well, as the reaper managed to throw Damien into and through it at one point, causing significant structural damage to his long-time home, which made him sad more than it actually hurt him. A constant in his time with Velyna and a reminder of his last few years with her mother was now ruined.

After the destruction of the log cabin, Damien tightly gripped the hilt of his sword as he activated a particularly dangerous skill of his. Not just for the reaper, but for himself as well. Especially when infused with his aura.

The power of his furious rage class skill flowed through the man, increasing the effects of his might by almost threefold. But this skill was not without its downsides. As Damien’s eyes glowed bright red, his anger and fury were firmly fixed on the reaper before him. The feelings of hate flowing through him accompanying the power of his skill were overwhelming. It was all he could think about to the point it turned him into a wild animal.

Damien shot forward once more, closing the distance between him and the reaper as quickly as when he used the charge skill to initiate their fight, but he did not use that skill this time as it was still on cooldown from another use of it a couple of seconds ago. Luckily, fighting with his skills was so ingrained in the man’s muscle memory that even while enraged and out of control, he could still string together skills in a series of fluid strikes.

As such, he opened up with an arching slash that then came around again in the form of a power strike, at the end of which was a flurry of blows to finish off with. Unlike before, when the reaper could stand firm and block the man’s attacks with as much strength as they came with, the monster was slowly being pushed back and overwhelmed by the empowerment of Damien's furious rage.

In a last-ditch effort to turn the tides, the weakened and slowly fading reaper stuck out with its sword, forgoing defending against Damien’s onslaught. The shadowy length of its blade managed to firmly lodge itself in the man’s shoulder just as his sword managed to lodge itself inside the reaper's chest.

As the reaper’s weapon sucked away at Damien’s lifeforce, he unleashed everything he had left, not in the form of a skill, but a pure, chaotic use of aura. Damien’s aura exploded forth from his blade, from within the reaper, tearing its body apart and dissipating what was left of the necrotic energies holding the undead abomination together, leaving nothing behind as the reaper disintegrated into dust blown away by the wind.

As soon as the reaper was dead once more, its efforts to steal Damien’s life force stopped completely. However, due to his exhaustion over the last few hours and the number of injuries he sustained, he was unable to keep himself upright as his furious rage skills ran out.

Unbeknownst to Damien at the time, a small mithral coin fell from the reaper as it died. The man was too exhausted and too close to dying to care about anything else. Luckily for him, though he wasn’t actually going to die, however, it would still take him quite a while to fully recover from the fight.

He guessed it would be a week or so, but it would be even longer before he found his way to his daughter. From the Great Forest, it took about a month of travel to get to Artelax, maybe half that if he was going at a pace only someone of his strength could travel at.

Still, though, that was not a good amount of time for Velyna to be alone in the capital city. Those that killed Damien’s father, those that sought the keys to the Crossroad, probably still had eyes and ears in the city. But as dangerous as sending his daughter there was, her staying here would have been even worse.

If Velyna had stayed in close proximity instead of running as they had, there was no doubt in Damien's mind that she would have died. Either the reaper would have done it or one of Damien’s wayward strikes would have accidentally hit her, and there was no way someone as low level as her could have survived that. Of course, he could have always been more cautious of his surroundings, but given how very close to killing him the reaper came, if he was distracted like that, he would have likely died instead of it. And then, of course, the reaper would have killed Velyna anyway, so it would have mattered little. Sending her alone into the Artelax was definitely the better of the choices, even though it was putting her in great danger.

"No… Not alone… Please protect her Evelyn… Sophia…" Damien mumbled as his exhaustion took him and he passed out.

Name: Damien VarsenRace: HumanGender: MaleAge: 42

Class: Royal Knight of ArtellanLevel: 86

Might: 220Agility: 90Vitality: 165Intellect: 30Willpower: 40Charm: 30

Class Skills:Aura Manipulation, Rank 8Arching Slash, Rank 7Bastion of Steel, Rank 6Charge, Rank 10Command, Rank 10Distracting Feint, Rank 10Diving Thrust, Rank 7Enduring Bulwark, Rank 10Flurry of Blows, Rank 10Frightful Compulsion, Rank 10Furious Rage, Rank 10Ground Slam, Rank 10Identify, Rank 10Impaling Thrust, Rank 10Mend Minor Wound, Rank 10Power Strike, Rank 10Steel Mind, Rank 10Recover, Rank 10Resist, Rank 10Warding Shield, Rank 5

General Skills:Battle Focus, Rank 37Bows, Rank 20Cleaning, Rank 35Cunnilingus, Rank 22 Cooking, Rank 32Dagger, Rank 26Etiquette, Rank 18First Aid, Rank 36Gardening, Rank 34Guarding, Rank 15Heavy Armor, Rank 40Leadership, Rank 17Marching, Rank 21Riding, Rank 28Running, Rank 33Shields, Rank 39Spears, Rank 34Strategy, Rank 18Swords, Rank 42Teaching, Rank 24

Traits:Defending of RoyaltySlayer of MankindNature Companion’s Bond (Broken)