NOVEL NEXT Chapter 17 - The Revenant
I should have killed him when I had a chance, I thought cursing myself. Now, I had to face a sorcerer likely with decades of experience over me and a horde of undead at his beck and call.
Not looking good.
I thought about the scrolls I had in my pockets.
Hopefully, I have enough mana for both.
Löwe didn’t want to give me too much time to think it seemed, as he immediately launched a green fireball towards me. I somehow managed to catch it on the Blade of the Black Rose, but that gave the Nazi an opening to run over to me and swing his sword at me. The weapon bit into my left shoulder sending shockwaves of pain throughout my body, causing me to scream out from sheer agony. I’ve never experienced pain this intense here, it was even worse than the light magic crystals. The hit area on the paper doll turned deep crimson too. What was going on?
Oh. My resistances don’t work against magic weapons. And this likely has some funky effects on it too. Fuuuuuck.
I saw that Löwe was preparing to follow up with a punch of his flame-wreathed fist, but then the room flashed and he was hit on the side with a ball of hellfire. The Nazi staggered back giving me a chance to act. I focused on the scroll of Ice Lance. I felt my mana flow through it, and my left hand went cold as a half-a-metre-long icicle manifested inside. This did not help with the shoulder wound, but I persevered and rammed it into Löwe’s stomach.
I collapsed to my knees from pain and excretion but Aki was quickly by my side and fed me a healing potion. My shoulder immediately knit together and my paper doll gave me a clean bill of health again.
‘Those are all moderate,’ Aki whispered as she handed me stamina and mana potions too. I stuck the stamina potion in my pocket but drank the mana one immediately. My mind felt clear again.
It was just in time, as Maximilian managed to deal with his small ice-lance-in-stomach problem. And was coming back at us. His wound was still open, but not bleeding. Was the fuck not human too?
I could see the undead slowly emerging from Maximilian's little hidey-hole of horrors.
It was time to test out my new spell then. I pointed my hand at the Nazi's legs and cast the Gust of Wind spell. It worked, though it clearly lacked the “oomph” it should have had, based on what I've seen the Goblin Shaman do with it. Still, it was strong enough to cut Maximilian's legs from under him.
I got up and kissed Aki on the cheek.
'Thank you,’ I said. 'Take care of the undead, I'll keep him busy, until you can join me here.’
‘Will do,’ she responded. ‘Good luck!’
She hurried off to engage the undead.
'So it’s just you and me, Hans,’ I spat at Max.
‘Stop calling me that, you subhuman bitch!’ he growled at me and charged again. I launched a volley of Rock Spikes at him. Only one of them hit, but it threw the Nazi off his track, so I was able to dodge his charge.
‘You keep calling me subhuman, Hans, and yet it's you the ‘Master Race’ who lost to the Soviets. The picture of Red Army soldiers waving the USSR flag on the roof of Reichstag is one of my favourite pieces of historical photography.’
‘More lies!’ he took a wild swing at me. I tried to deflect it but misjudged the timing and the tip of the ghostly blade slid across my stomach. The wound was superficial but still hurt like a bitch.
‘Believe what you will, Hans.’
‘I told you to STOP CALLING ME THAT!’
He charged me again but this time I was ready. I jumped aside and slashed at him the moment he passed me by.
My blade raked him across his back causing the Nazi fuck to stumble. I tried to help him by casting another Gust of Wind but the spell fizzled out.
SHIT!
The casting mishap proved costly, as it gave Löwe time to recover and before I could react he sent another green fireball in my direction. I was too close to him to dodge and it hit me square on the chest. The force of the impact blew me back across the room. As bad as the sword hurt it was nothing compared to this. It felt like my entire body was on fire causing me to scream like I had never screamed before. The damage indicator was showing my torso very badly damaged. Through the haze of pain, I saw the Sturmbahnfuhrer charge at me. My sword felt impossibly heavy so I had to resort to one final trick almost literally up my sleeve. I focused on the Fist of Wind scroll in my pocket and channelled mana through it. I could feel wind gathering around my right fist. Now, I had to time it right.
Löwe leapt towards me his sword pointed to deliver a killing blow. Just as he started descending I punched out. As my hand neared his jaw I whispered:
‘This is for the Death Camps, motherfucker.’
The power of the spell far exceeded my expectations. It was powerful enough to launch Löwe straight into the ceiling. He impacted it with a sickening crunch and fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
I stared at him for a few seconds to see whether he would get up, but after realising Max wasn’t moving, I looked in Aki’s direction. The poor girl was lying on her back slowly getting surrounded by the undead. There was a burning something walking towards her followed by a lot more undead. It seemed that she had misplaced both of her swords, but was that a gun she was holding? That couldn’t be right. Did it belong to the Nazi? Why didn’t he have it on him? Did the fuck forget to take it?
No matter the explanation, it was time to help Aki. I dragged myself to my feet using the wall as a support. This was gonna suck.
Aki charged into the undead with almost reckless abandon. She hated how she couldn’t fight side-by-side with Lilyth, but she understood keeping the shambling monstrosities away from her… companion was incredibly important. She could still feel traces of Lilyth’s kiss on her cheek. Yes, she would do everything so that they would have a chance to figure out what exactly they were to each other.
A pair of zombies was the first to come out of Maximilian's lab: an elderly woman in a pink robe-thing and a tall tan-skinned man wearing a white sleeveless shirt and blue trousers. Aki noticed that his arms had tattoos of some snake things on them. The man seemed to be the more threatening of the two so she pivoted towards him and rammed the tip of one of her falchions into his temple. The bone gave way and the blade emerged on the other side of his skull dripping blood and brain matter.
Level 1 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 100 experience points (650/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
She ripped the sword out, whirled around and slashed at the woman. The falchion hit the woman just under her nose and deeply bit into her skull.
Level 0 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 50 experience points (700/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
At least I should surpass Lilyth in level soon thanks to this, Aki thought with pride. Then it will be my turn to protect her.
She tried to retrieve the sword but it got stuck. Before Aki could get the better leverage on it, she saw that more of the undead were almost upon her. Leading them was the man in the red coat. His eyes were glowing red, an unmistakable sign of him being a revenant. Behind him there were more zombies… and was that another revenant?
Deciding to abandon the sword for the time being Aki jumped back and sent a Lesser Abyssal Bolt at the redcoat. It exploded on impact and caused the man’s clothes to catch on fire. That seemed not to deter him all that much as he continued his march towards her, massive cavity in his chest and his skin slowly melting off. Aki felt nauseous seeing that, but there was no time for that. Since she was only left with one weapon an idea struck her. She kept backing away and took the Lance of the Longinus out of her satchel and removed it from its sheath. While it looked utterly alien to Aki who had only seen a few flintlock pistols carried by guards of traders passing through her village, a modern observer, like Lilyth, would recognize it as a large-calibre fairly ornate red semi-automatic pistol with golden filigree.
Still, she surmised, the mechanics of its use should have been fairly straightforward, shouldn’t they?
Suddenly, Aki heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor behind her, followed by Lilyth’s howls of pain. Involuntary, she looked in the direction and saw her girlfriend lying on the floor, her chest and stomach glowing green and looking badly burnt. Löwe was approaching Lilyth with a murderous expression. He leapt at her, but before Aki could see what happened something hot and hard hit the girl in her temple and knocked her to the floor. Her ears rang and her vision slightly blurred. Aki could have sworn a loud crack came from Lilyth’s direction, but couldn’t tell for sure. She started crawling away from the revenant and rolled over to her back to get a better view of the situation. As she did that, she realised that she lost her other sword somewhere, but somehow managed to hold on to the gun. Another thing occurred to her then as well: the revenant, now a little more than a charred skeleton, was still on fire. Yet, she did not sustain any burns best she could tell.
‘No descendant of mine will be hurt by her own fire,’ said a warm fatherly voice.
Did she just imagine that? She shook her head to focus and pointed the gun at the burning revenant, her hand shaking from strain, and pulled the trigger. A beam of fiery energy shot out of the gun and pierced through what was left of the revenant and two zombies shambling behind it. The power of the impact caused the revenant’s body to disintegrate into cinder and ash, while the shamblers collapsed to the ground, massive smoking holes in their torsos.
That thing is good.
Level 5 Revenant has been slain.
You have earned 500 experience points (1200/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Level 1 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 100 experience points (1300/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Level 1 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 100 experience points (1400/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Aki pointed her gun at another revenant - a moustached man wearing a grey-blue uniform, but before she could pull the trigger the undead’s head was pierced by a trio of stone daggers. It was thrown to the ground and went still. She looked towards where the spell came from. Aki saw Lilyth leaning against the wall, her torso an oozing mess of black and blue. She looked even paler than usual and seemed she could collapse at any minute. The Blade of the Black Rose was lying useless next to her feet. Lilyth weakly raised her hand and pointed towards something behind Aki. Then she collapsed to her knees. That brought the girl’s attention to reality. She turned and saw that three more zombies were almost upon her. They were positioned in such a way Aki managed to destroy them in two shots.
Level 0 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 50 experience points (1450/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Level 2 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 200 experience points (1650/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Level 1 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 100 experience points (1750/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Aki scrambled to her feet and hurried towards Lilyth.
Level 3 Lesser Revenant has been slain.
You have earned 300 experience points (650/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
Look behind you, I willed to Aki after she turned towards me. Focus on the fucking undead, not me.
I mustered enough strength to raise my arm. But that was it for me. Strength left my legs. I barely managed to keep myself upright on my knees.
FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!
I tried to get up again, but the strain almost made me black out. However, the ‘almost’ didn’t last long. I felt my consciousness slipping away from me, likely for the last time. But before that final darkness came, someone took me in their arms and I felt something jammed into my mouth. Apple-tasting liquid started pouring down my throat and after it ran out, another bottle replaced it. Strength once again flooded my body, I opened my eyes and saw Aki’s face over mine tears flowing down her face. When she saw I was conscious she hugged me close to my chest.
‘Thank the gods!’ she cried out.
‘No,’ I croaked back. ‘Thank you, Aki.’
That only made her cry harder. I was moving my still somewhat weak arm to comfort her when I saw something approaching us. It was a rotting Asian man in his 50s wearing a white shirt and black suit pants. So, I redirected my arm and gave him a face-full of Rock Spikes. That solved all of his problems.
Level 0 Lesser Zombie has been slain.
You have earned 50 experience points (700/2500 total experience points progress to level 5)
I then weakly hugged her back and said:
‘We still have some work to do, it seems.’
She helped me up and handed me my sword. I looked around the chamber. There were still around twenty undead in the chamber. I pointed the Blade of the Black Rose towards them to try to take most of them with the gravity attack when balls of green energy burst out of them and flew towards… No, it couldn’t be. He died. I killed him, didn’t I?
My heart sank as I realised I never got any “was slain” notification. As all of the remaining undead turned to ash where they stood, Aki and I looked towards what I thought to have been the mortal remains of SS-Sturmbannführer Maximilian Löwe. He was now levitating slightly above the ground. Two pairs of wings from the green fire extended from his back, and a halo of ghostly viridian skulls surrounded his head. He looked at me with a predatory smile.
‘Thought I was done for, mein Freund?’ he spat towards me. ‘Oh no. The fun has only just begun.’