But the old man didn’t even flinch! The fact that his jaw was askew and bleeding didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. With a snarl, he yanked his trapped hand free and ran after us. A second later, there was a cry: Fang’s dart had hit the old man in the eye, and Valkyrie, who had assumed a fighting stance, rushed at the hissing mage and slashed his face, leaving a long cut. But the Priest still didn’t care — the cut began to heal almost immediately.
Ivan was saved but it became clear that only Rat and Valkyrie had a chance of getting away from the nimble mage. The rest of us would have to fight and... and probably die while doing so.
***
“What now?!” Amoeba asked from atop Rat’s back. As he was the slowest member of our group, we had to give him a mount, lest we risked losing him immediately.
“You’ll see,” I said, smiling.
Amoeba’s reply was interrupted by a chilling howl. Once we turned the corner, we almost stopped dead in our tracks.
“Val-man! Scar!” Lorkal shouted, pointing at the giant dark figure.
Scar was walking toward the gorge. He spotted us on the bank of the Aal, but decided not to chase us through the dense forest. Instead, he waited to see where we’d go and trap us in a narrow gorge between sharp rocks.
The giant took his time. He knew that his meal wouldn’t run away. Fortunately, Rat had managed to hear the sound of his footsteps beforehand, so we managed to reach the exit of his trap in the nick of time.
The sun was sinking behind the mountain slopes, leaving the location in the night’s grip. Only a few rays of light broke through the rocky ledges, illuminating Scar’s figure and betraying that of his victims. But besides Scar, we had a second pursuer — the Priest. Blinded in one eye and hit with a broadsword, he was really angry. If at the beginning of the chase the mage still retained a speck of humanity, now he was rushing forward, guided by uncontrolled rage. He squealed and barked constantly. The sound echoed repeatedly against the walls of the gorge, hitting my ears with force. I fought the urge to cover my head with my hands. The Priest’s clothes, which already looked like rags, were now tatters. It seems that the high and mighty “deity” was one step away from getting down on all fours and gobbling up the first thing that fell into its jaws.
I wondered who was stronger — Scar or the mage?
“Listen to me! When we run out of the gorge, the hunters — go left, the rest — go right! If we can throw off these two, we’ll meet at the shore! If not, run around and keep them away from the village! Is that clear?!”
“Aye!” Ivan shouted.
“Avl-kron so, turn left!! Lorkal ordered, breathing heavily.
“Thank God, he understood.”
***
Seeing that his prey had sped up, Scar roared and broke into a run to intercept us on the way out. But he didn’t make it.
Exerting all our strength, we got out of the gorge and ran in different directions, trying to hide in the dark forest from the two most dangerous inhabitants of the Mountain Valley. I didn’t know if it was because our lives were on the line or if it was pure chance, but my order was perfectly understood. Everyone went where they were told. Only Ulter, for some reason, followed us instead of his friends.
At the very exit of the gorge, I managed to shoot a lightning bolt at the Priest. The newly acquired Visor helped: I hit the old man’s leg. With a squeal, the mage lost his balance and skidded over the sharp stones. This gave me the necessary head start.
But then things went wrong.
Or rather, things didn’t go according to my plan. Instead of going after the wounded Priest, Scar suddenly turned in our direction and, jumping up, landed a few feet away from the screeching Willow. We slipped between his legs and ran toward the forest. But the giant was surprisingly quick. Shaking his belly and dirty beard, he cut us off without much trouble, and grabbed our surgeon.
“Spider!” Valkyrie shouted.
Not knowing what to do, Spider sliced through Scar’s meaty finger, miraculously making it to the vein. The giant screamed and threw him violently to the ground, licking the wound (and, I could have sworn, drinking his own blood with relish). Despite the height, Spider landed quite successfully, breaking only one leg of his eight legs.
“Oh, thank God...” Amoeba said, looking at his bruised but very alive friend.
But it was too early for celebrations. Behind us, Priest screamed.
Trying to keep my composure, I looked around. We were trapped: on one side — a giant, on the other — hills and stone, and behind us — an angry mage.
When Priest saw Scar, he hesitated. Neither of the two was in a hurry to attack first, unwittingly giving their prey a few seconds to escape.
It was time to use the ace I’ve been saving up for rainy days.
Knowing that there was no chance in hell that I could mind-control the mage, I turned to the giant.
“Mental Attack!”
I couldn’t make Scar my pet even if I wanted to. Even if I couldn’t see his level, I knew that he was probably as strong as the Priest. But he wasn’t smart nor magically talented. I could control him for a little while. A couple of seconds was all I needed.
But the System wouldn’t give me even that much.
You cannot control Scar.
Mental Strength too low.
Inside, everything that could possibly turn cold turned cold. Cradling his broken leg, Spider whispered:
“Well... It was nice fighting with you guys. Ivan, I’m sorry for the jokes. Valkyrie, at moments like these, people usually declare their love, but, unfortunately, we didn’t work out... Loki, I confess, before the Apocalypse, I used to visit a psychic. Sorry for making fun of your colleagues.”
Priest and Scar, still looking at each other, slowly walked toward us. We were trapped. There was nowhere to run.
Was this really the end?
***
When Scar was no more than a couple of feet away, I made a last desperate attempt to put him under my control.
You cannot control Scar.
Mental Strength too low.
“Damn it!”
Attention! You have received a buff from [Ulter].
Mental Attack activated.
Successful use of skill [Mental Attack].
Reward: +1 Mental Attack; +3 Control
Congratulations! You have reached level 108!
Scar froze instantly, staring blankly in front of him. A second later, he stepped over us, putting himself between our group and the Priest.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the exhausted Ulter fall to the ground, whose unexpected intervention helped me execute my plan. Ivan picked him up. I had to make sure to keep the giant under my control for a couple of more minutes.
The duel was inevitable. The giant got in the mage’s way, and the latter wasn’t used to giving in.
The Priest managed to dodge the first blow and even tore some meat off the giant’s calf, but the second lunge pinned the mage to the ground. The giant put all his weight on him, trying to squeeze the Priest’s brains and guts out. His face was a picture of madness: yellow saliva slid down on the twitching mage, and even we, twenty feet away from them, felt the stench from his mouth.
However, the Priest managed to get out of the death grip and, jumping up, broke the bridge of the giant’s nose with a well-timed blow. The blood gushing from his nose turned the battlefield red within a few moments.
Taking advantage of the enemy’s confusion, the mage performed a whole series of skillful techniques, leaving numerous wounds on Scar’s body. Two fingers and pieces of torn flesh flew to the ground... However, in a narrow space, the giant still had the advantage. He waited for an opening, then leaped straight at the mage, slamming him into the stone.
The Priest struggled for a few more minutes. Third Eye showed that he had successfully ripped open the monster’s stomach and was trying to reach the vital organs. This was his mistake.
Congratulations! You have reached level 109!
/>
Congratulations! You have reached level 110!
Congratulations! You have reached level 111!
The Bargolas’ savior suffocated under the fetid mass of guts and blood.
Chapter 18
ROVAL
Scar managed to get to his feet only on the fourth attempt. My skill was coming to an end, and I could barely keep the giant from pouncing on a group of small creatures standing nearby. Saliva was dripping from his mouth, as if he had already imagined how much he’d enjoy his dinner. Even the severed fingers, the slashed abdomen, and the broken nose didn’t distract him from this tempting thought.
However, I was in no hurry to send the giant away. I went to the Modification Lab and installed several mods in Scar’s small brain: Transmission, Collar, and Leash — all of which helped strengthen my control over the beast. What for, you may ask. Well, just in case.
As Scar limped away behind the high rocks, Amoeba decided to check on the Priest, who was in a small pit, buried under all the guts and gore that had poured out of the wound on Scar’s stomach.
Leaning over the pit, the biologist whistled.
“He’s intact! I thought the old man would be crushed. How heavy is Scar? Twenty tons, at least...?”
Indeed, the Priest was unharmed, except for a few bruises and two busted eyes. He had simply suffocated. That is, he died because of his own mistake. But not without a fight and showing us just how strong he was. To slice open a monster a hundred times your size, cut off several of its fingers, and break the bridge of its nose — this was the real indicator of the mage’s power. And to think I had hoped that Ivan could break his jaw with his stone fist. Without Scar’s help, the Priest would’ve torn us to pieces with his bare hands.
In fact, he would’ve done the same to the giant. What could have happened if the mage hadn’t managed to get to Scar’s neck? The old man was frighteningly strong.
“Good job, Loki!” Tail nodded respectfully. “I can’t believe that you managed to tame such a beast!”
“Thank you, but I can’t take all the credit.”
The chase and the fight had pushed out of my mind what had happened just fifteen minutes ago. If it hadn’t been for Ulter, we would’ve been smeared all over the gorge. But how did someone like him possess magical powers? Moreover, how come that his powers were similar to mine?
Ulter, whom Ivan had caught after he had lost consciousness, was still out of it but was already beginning to recover. He opened his eyes with difficulty and looked around. The fact that we were still alive and that Scar was gone didn’t seem to surprise him. All he did was nod to himself and stare at his feet once again.
“You mean...?” Willow looked at me in surprise.
“Yeah. The Priest was right: Ulter isn’t like the rest of the Bargolas. But why that is, I don’t know yet. Third Eye shows a high concentration of magic and a significant level of intelligence. Still, that’s little to go by... And I doubt that asking him would be of help.”
In all honesty, I doubted that we’d be able to get anything out of Ulter even after he came to his senses. Just like we couldn’t figure out how come he suddenly knew Russian.
“Exhaustion,” Spider concluded after examining the young Bargola. “He’ll be fine but we’ll have to carry him for a while.”
“No problem.” Ivan chuckled, throwing the little one over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
***
We had no idea what to do with the Priest’s corpse. Bury it? It’d look strange. Personally, I had no intention of digging through Scar’s guts to fish out the mage who had nearly killed us.
“Maybe we should, like, I dunno... Put a tombstone or something here at least?” Ivan suggested.
“I highly doubt he was a religious man,” Spider said. “Besides, what do we care? He can lie there for all I care, and fertilize the ground. He’s not good for anything else. Some poor animal will find him and get a nice dinner out of him.”
As disgusting as that sounded, the surgeon was right. All that was left to do now was to return to the gorge and see what had happened to the White Granite after the death of its owner. There was a chance that the wall hadn’t disappeared (and wouldn’t disappear), since it required the Priest’s intervention. And the Priest, to put it mildly, was unable to intervene.
“Valkyrie, go get the Bargolas. If they’re not at the river, come back.”
She nodded and took off in the dark forest on the horizon, in the cracks of which the bluish curve of the Aal could be seen.
***
We got lucky.
After the Priest’s death, the wall had parted, opening a passage deep into the mountain range. We walked for quite a bit down the darkening corridor, then came back and sat for another half an hour, eating pieces of dried meat from the sacks securely strapped onto Rat’s back. The rodent was chewing on Scar’s severed fingers — all in all, we were enjoying life, looking at the night’s sky and the twinkling stars.
I wondered, if there was no Steel Giant or other disasters, would we be able to figure out how to go to space? And if we could, where would be land? Would we leave the Game’s boundaries, breaking through the black fabric of the sky, or would we reach other planets and even systems?
Finally, the frightened Bargolas came running, led by Lorkal.
It was only now that I realized how hard it must’ve been for Valkyrie to persuade them to follow her to where two of the most dangerous creatures in the entire Mountain Valley were. Not to mention the language barrier. No wonder they took so long.
“Well? Is the passage open?” she asked, exhausted, and took a piece of meat from Amoeba. She tried her best not to look in Willow’s direction. The latter, lips pursed in displeasure, also looked away.
“Yeah, but we didn’t explore too much. We’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain — the Granite has been removed. Whether the gorge really leads to the long-awaited freedom or not is none of our business,” I said, emptying a waterskin made from a stomach of one of the elks. “Lorkal! We’ve done our job. Go check it out.”
“Ar-kron do Scar?” the hunter asked cautiously, cringing at the mention of the giant’s name.
“He’s gone. And the Priest... He, erm... He also left.”
“Don’t worry, they saw the corpse.”
I felt bad. Despite his weird demands and suspicious nature, the Priest ought to have been a deity in the eyes of the Bargolas. I mean, how would you feel if someone tried to kill your God? Well, I know Spider and Amoeba, men of science, would just snort. But the Bargolas... Technically, it wasn’t us who killed their God, but Scar. But trying to explain this to them, a group of NPCs in a state of shock who didn’t understand more than ten words of your language, was near impossible. When they fled into the forest, they saw the Priest running after us. And when they returned... That same Priest was dead.
I had no clue what Lorkal thought of all this. Third Eye could clearly distinguish between fear and bewilderment — these emotions were more prominent than the rest, and even more so the lack of mental activity. Lorkal seemed to have stopped thinking. But Roval, who, as I understood, could move into the mind of any Bargola, could have a lot of thoughts about this situation.
It’d be foolish to hope that he didn’t know about what had happened.
***
As Lorkal and the hunters stared around in dismay as they went deeper into the darkness, I decided to deal with my skill points.
“System?”
Warlock
Level: 111
Faction: Gray
Specialization: XCUS-22309-SJSA-22032-11
❖ Rank: 3 [30/1,000]
❖ HP: 900/1,100
Evolution Points: ~15,000
Physical Characteristics
Size: 12
Perception: 9
Stamina: 10
Damage Resistance: 5
Mental Strength: 19
Speed: 6
Damage: ~250
Available paths and skil
ls
Unallocated Points: 16
Genus: (faction skill), level 3
Heir (unique), level 36
[ESP] (unique and personal skill), level 50
● Control (basic skill), level 25
● Mental Transmission (passive skill), level 14
● Evacuation (unique, class skill)
● Mental Defense (unique, class skill), level 20
● Mental Attack (unique, class skill), level 44
● Dark Manipulator (legendary skill), level 22
● Mental Mask (unique skill), level 29 + Heavy Disguise Mod
● Magic Compass
[D. Mutation] (legendary path), level 19
● D. Peddler (basic skill), level 10
● D. Scout: level 10
● D. Armor: level 7
● Mutation Transmitter (sub-section of D. Mutation)
❖ Linguistics: level 14
❖ Third Eye: level 27
[Parasite] (personal path), level 49
● Laboratory (basic skill available to all parasites)
● D. Augmentation: level 45
● Connection: level 17
[Demon] (path of the Piper), level 30
● Rat-Catcher of Hamelin (legendary skill), level 30
● [Portal Operator], level 23: transfer size – 6 players and 3 NPC
● Visor
What would be the best investment? The Mask or the Portal Operator? Or maybe Linguistics so that I could better communicate with the Bargolas? Or Mental Attack to make it easier to tame larger opponents? There were many options.
Reborn: Evolution: A LitRPG Series (Warlock Chronicles Book 3) Page 21
