I felt it before I had seen anything.
It was a bone deep rumbling, one that I could feel more clearly than the sun beating upon me.
Then it crossed the building. A blob of flesh, tortured faces moaning at me their grievances.
I didn't hesitate and found myself stabbing my sword into one of the heads.
Yet all the respond I got was the smiling faces of the other faces as their hands reached towards me.
I twisted the sword and slashed it outwards, blood and puss splashing in me.
It screamed in agony but the screams were not audible.
It was like some sort of psychic sound. One that echoed in my head rather than the air.
I clenched my teeth as it disoriented me.
Some sort of punch taking me to the ground.
My sword fell to the side of my body. It was just barely out of reach.
I wanted to grab it but I was not given enough time.
The creature had already recovered the lost flesh. Though it was slightly smaller and the face that I had pierced was gone.
It was not replaced. It gave me an idea of how to kill it but it would be tedious.
What it seemed like was the creature had as many lives as heads meaning that I would have to kill each and every one of them.
I sighed as I lunged towards my sword and limeades above.
The tortured faces followed my movements and tried to react but they were unable to as the moment I was near them I slashed as fast as I could.
Another psychic scream echoed in my head but I was ready for it.
I was able to ignore it and finish off the rest of the heads leaving it nothing more than a blob of flesh.
Sighing, I sat down and checked the ranking.
…
[Trial 1, Stage 2 Ranking]
[Imhop, 12p]
[Esstel, 11p]
[Furn, 11p]
[Joan, 10]
…
I scrolled down further and further until I found my name, it was all the way in the half way mark.
With one point I was barely above the rest.
I clenched my fist and found myself thinking about the purpose of the first stage.
If this second stage was so much more important as to have a ranking system and unique monsters. Why was there a first stage at all?
Was it all just to weed out the undeserving.
Maybe it was that as I saw that there wasn't as many names as I had counted in the lobby.
Maybe fifty or so had survived but still it didn't make sense. They could have just culled the others in this trial.
Though either way I shook my head from those thoughts. It was useless to think about these things when I could instead be racking up points.
It seemed that either these top rankers were able to attract them tk their location or knew where the higher ranking monsters were as it wouldn't make sense any other way.
I turned the corner and quickly hid myself soon after.
A blue barrier but the sky out as it stretched through the block and protected the group of elves that were there.
I found myself knocking on it, the thing solid as stone.
I followed the barrier and found more monsters pounding on it. Though it was all from one side. As if they had decided that it was better to concentrate their attacks on one place.
I would need to add intelligence to my mental dossier of their abilities as it wasn't something that a brainless creature would think of.
My breath wa slept out as I once again activated my circuits and counted the number of these creatures.
It was sort of hard to find the differences that denoted the individuals but I tried my best.
And at my final count I found them to be at the very least twenty strong.
It was right as I was about to leap into action that I saw the crack on the barrier expand.
The elves on the other side panicked for a moment before repositioning themselves.
They brought something out. From where I stood I could barely see it but it looked like some sort of grenade.
I watched as it flew through the air and landed in the middle of the creatures.
It ticked for a moment then exploded in a burst of flames.
The creatures screamed, all together this time.
I had already braced myself for the scream but this time it was worse.
I fell tk my knees for a moment, my eyes closed.
When I opened them again I saw that they were not dead. None of them were.
The one in the middle seems to sneer, all of its faces giving this smirk before it burst into flames.
It melted and melted before reforming into a hulking monster.
On two feet this time instead of dredging around with its hands. Its footsteps cracked the concrete as it approached the barrier.
It's hand burst into flames before it pounded on the barrier. The clear cracks shattered with the rest and the barrier shattered.
The elves eyes widened in panic, as if they weren't expecting that at all. Then they did something that I just saw as idiotic.
The leader pushed his subordinates to the ground and took off running. They seemed wide eyed at that, almost as if they couldn't believe they had been abandoned by the man.
I scoffed and watched as they were devoured by the creature. I couldn't save them even if I wanted to. I wouldn't have been fast enough even if I sprinted the moment that I saw them falling to the ground.
Still I wanted to fight that creature. It was tempting and I wasn't really thinking either way.
It was why a couple seconds later that I found myself in front of it.
It was about eight or so feet tall, at the very least three or so feet taller than me. But that meant nothing as I slashed at its legs.
It stepped back and dodged, the same fist full of flames pounding down on me.
I jumped back and out of the corner of my eye saw something. A glint of metal and the sound of muffled screaming.
It was tempting to look back and see what had happened but I couldn't as I was blocked by the flaming fist of the creature.
The fist had melted the concrete and taken its place. Our positions switched but unlike the creature I couldn't see above or behind it.
I just had to hope that whoever had done that was friendly towards me. Something that I doubted.
I would have run if I could but I already had the aggro and needed to see this through.
The creature charged forth with speed faster than I. Yet it was not enough as I had already predicted it and lunged to the right all the while slashing the air.
By the time the slash had gone through the creature was already in the way.
A psychic scream disoriented me for a moment but I had taken the most from that exchange. The creature's leg was cut off.
For a moment it bled but the stump was quickly healed. Though the leg was not there anymore.
And because of that it needed to hop to accomplish his goals.
I leaped into the air with as much strength as I could and landed on his shoulders. For a moment I needed to stabilize myself but after that I plunged my sword into its neck and jumped off as it fell to the ground with a thud.