AN: If you like what you are reading, you can help by giving my novel Rating.
As Grud engaged in a contest of strength with the many warriors on the other side of the gate trying to fully close the gate to re-barr it, Grud and his men were fending off spears that were stabbing at them from the slightly ajar gate.
Fortunately, Grud did not have to wait long as his main force joined the push, almost crushing him against the gate itself.
The moment the gate was wide enough, Grud swung down his axe, killing a warrior pushing the gate, and as the gap became wider, he stuck his arm through with axe in hand, and swung around from side to side, catching warriors with the sharp and blunt side of his axe.
Eventually, the gap was wide enough for one of his men to get through, and he did, only to get hacked to death, but it was not a death in vain, Grud slipped through the same gap and held up the corpse of the man to absorb some blows while he hacked away enemy warriors pushing the gate.
This eventually led to one side of the gate failing to be held shut, letting Grud's forces into the village to clash with gathered warriors inside, and soon after the other side of the gate followed, allowing Grud's forces full access to the gate.
As men rushed around him to join the melee, Grud stood awhile to catch his breath, and that was when one of his men came up to him with his spear. Grud then tied his oversized axe into a sling and slung it to his back, hefted his spear, and made for the front, there was much killing to be done and an appointment with some Witch Doctors.
***
As Grud swung his spear in wide arcs, reaping warriors like they were stalks of wheat, his men gave him a wide berth and followed in the wake of his destruction.
At this point, when the enemy was packed so close together trying to repel Grud and his men, there was no way he could miss because they could not retreat, and as Grud was slaying, the only things he had his eyes on, were the enemy in front of him, and the tendril of mana leading further into the village.
Eventually, Grud's forces fought their way into a more open area, and that was when both lines broke and bled into each other, leading to many individual fights. It was then that Grud decided it was time to find his own fight.
Looking for a path with the least amount of people and finding almost all directions equally chocked with people fighting, Grud decided to take the more unorthodox route, he slaughtered his way to a nearby hut and climbed it, from there he jumped from hut to hut, dodging arrows and falling thru some roofs, but he got back up and continued, all to follow that tendril of mana.
While there were some shouts of alarm and people chasing after him, none of them could outrun Grud's hut hopping, which led him to a huge single-story hut with two elite warriors.
When Grud jumped from the last building and in front of the two elite warriors, they only had enough time to draw their weapons and shout in alarm before they were cut down.
As Grud stared at the building before him, he could practically feel the weight of the hex pushing down upon his mana and knew he was at the correct location, and with a mighty kick, the door blocking his way flew off its hinges.
"He is here! Do it now! Burn all the blood!" Someone said from inside, and shortly after Grud noticed the sickly color of the hex mana attached to him tuned a darker shade, followed by more tendrils of different colors hitchhiking along that the original hex mana.
The moment all those different mana hit him, Grud clenched his heart as his heartbeat became irregular, his stomach felt like he had been stabbed multiple times, and he felt physically weaker.
This sudden hex assault made Grud lurch forward while leaning on his spear and dry heave.
"Now! Kill him or we all die!" one of the Witch Doctors shouted as around twenty Witch Doctors charged Grud with knives and staves.
Now, if any ordinary man was hit with the combo of hexes that Grud received, they would be on the ground already halfdead, but Grud was no ordinary man. So when the Witch Doctors charged him thinking that the Hex of Withering Strength sapped his strength to the point that he could not lift the great spear he was wielding.
What they did not account for was that Hex of Withering Strength worked relatively to the individual. So if it was cast on a normal man, they would be as weak as a baby, but when accounting for Grud's overall strength, even with the hex applied on him, he was at least as strong as two men.
So they were somewhat surprised that the first row of Witch Doctors was easily cut down and were stunned, but Grud did not hesitate and advanced forward to slaughter the Witch Doctors. After a few minutes of butchering men and women, all that was left was two Witch Doctors sitting around a few hex circles in a trance as they poured mana into the hex circles, each hex circle having either a piece of fabric or a weapon with dried blood crusted on them, and from what Grud could smell, it was his blood.
With two strokes of his spear, the heads of the last two Witch Doctors fell to the floor and Grud felt a weight lift from his mana, he then looked at the hex circles with disdain as he swiped his feet over the circles, then grabbed whatever was flammable around and put a torch to it and the building.
***
Adana was currently doing what she could to help, which at the moment meant helping the healers patch up the injured.
What was when a warrior who served as a guardian for her family grabbed her and pulled her aside, "We need to move, they have broken through the gate. We gathered all the women and children, you are the last one. Hurry" he whispered.
She was then yanked to where her home was within an inner wall as the sounds of fighting got louder and louder.
***
Blazebringer Village Chief, Tovak, was not having a good time, for the past few days, he had been hearing nothing but complaints about the limited food rationing from the absorbed villages, and now, he was getting his main gate breached, unlike the past few days where he would only get probing attacks that he left to his Hear Warriors, today, it turns out that the monster was back on the field.
Which honestly sounds impossible, the last he heard, the Witch Doctors told him the Monster was alive because their hex was affecting him, but with the reports of how many people managed to get a stab at him, Tovak was expecting that Monster to be on his death bed, not leading a charge to break open his gate.
So after getting armored up by his house servants, he met up with his fifty elite warriors and made their way to the front.
As they closed in on where the fighting was thickest, a shout of alarm came from behind him, "The Witch Doctor's hut is on fire!"
Tovak then turned to his fifty elites and said, "Come, we have a monster to hunt."