With Na-Ri joining the fight, Xander hoped the fight would soon be over.
"Hana, where's its weak spot?" Xander asked as he took a step back to get a breather.
"It doesn't really have one since it can heal from any injury," Hana responded.
"Damn," Xander said.
Xander and Na-Ri now sandwiched the devil while Hana stood behind Na-Ri, bow knocked and ready to shoot.
The devil, on the other hand, stood tall and proud, a serious look on its face for the first time.
Xander met eyes with Na-Ri and gave her a small nod. Once she gave a nod back, Xander took it as the signal to attack.
Both Na-Ri and Xander closed in on the devil, but it was no slouch. It ran toward Xander, wanting to take out the lightning user first. As it brought down its massive spear, it created four massive shards of ice and shot them at Xander.
Xander, upon seeing the shards, used an ability he hadn't ever had to use, 'Gravekeeper's Shield,' which created four gravestones of death qi and blocked the attack.
Xander dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding the spear, and brought his katana forward horizontally but was forced to stop once the devil pulled its spear to the right, ready to chop off Xander's legs.
Xander quickly used 'Necrotic Barrier' to block the spear while he dashed further to the left, bringing his katana down vertically this time with as much lightning qi as he could pump into his blade.
The devil once again blocked with a wall of ice, but the lightning was able to break through it and leave a large charred slice on the devil's shoulder. Before Xander could continue his onslaught, he was forced to block three more ice shards, but while he was blocking, Na-Ri had finally made it, bringing with her the heat of the sun.
The devil struggled and struggled, but no matter how much or how hard it tried, it was futile. Once Xander made up his mind to intervene, the death warrant was signed.
Eventually, it was brought down with a well-placed ice arrow to the face and then a clean horizontal cut from Xander's katana. Seconds later, the devil's head was rolling on the ground.
Xander looked up from the head with a smile on his face, happy the fight was over and everyone was alive. He first looked over at Hana, who allowed him to get the finishing blow with her well-placed arrow, and after giving her a nod, he looked toward Na-Ri's direction and immediately regretted it.
She was fuming.
"So what's your excuse? I said you better have had a good one, and I meant it. Why were you following us, and why did you intervene in my fight, especially when you don't want to join in these exact types of fights?" Na-Ri yelled.
"Will you be quiet? You don't have to yell. Your fight probably already attracted half the damn forest in our direction, but your yelling will definitely get the other half as well."
Na-Ri just stood there, her foot constantly tapping, clearly waiting for Xander to answer her question, but unluckily for her, Xander didn't plan to give her what she wanted.
"Why did you have to fight the devil in the first place? You could have easily avoided this entire thing, and your life wouldn't have been at risk. Do you not know all the things that could have gone wrong whether I was here or not?" Xander shot a question of his own.
"First you didn't want me to save an innocent boy, and now I'm not even allowed to kill an evil devil? Why did you not have a problem with saving Hana from the demon and devil, but now you have a problem with this?" Na-Ri shot back.
"That was before we knew how deadly the demons and devils were, and before we knew how dangerous this entire f***ing planet is. You should know by now that it takes both of us to take down one of them. And what if your fight and all that yelling attracted something even deadlier over here?" Xander said.
To this, Na-Ri didn't really have an answer. It was true that she had failed to think about attracting something even deadlier toward them. She had been blinded by her impulse to stomp all the evil out of the world, and to her a devil was a great place to start.
"Whatever. Are you going to be traveling with us now, or are you going to keep following us like a creep would?" Na-Ri said.
Xander didn't like being compared to a creep, especially when, in his mind, he was their savior, but he still nodded his head. "Fine, I'll stick with you guys, but you've got to stop being so impulsive and think about all the options first."
"We'll see," Na-Ri responded.
"Let's just get the devil's core and get out of here," Xander said.
Na-Ri began to dig through the devil's corpse to find the core, but that's when Xander's Mirage Sense started sending warning signs.
Xander very urgently said, "Something's coming, and fast."
As he said that, he looked to his left, where he was sensing the movement, and that's when he saw death in the flesh.
[Common Fogclaw - E-rank - Entry]
"It's a f***ing E-rank! Run!!" he yelled at Na-Ri and Hana, and before he even had time to think about his own survival, he was pulling out his katana, ready to give them time to escape.
The only problem was Na-Ri clearly had the same thought, and Hana was frozen in her tracks.
"Run, you idiot! I said run!!" he began to yell at both of them. At the same time, the E-rank Fogclaw made its move. In a flash, it ran forward right at Na-Ri, who was the closest to it.
Xander once again didn't have time to think, so he moved first. He dashed forward in a flash of lightning and shoved Na-Ri out of the way while yelling, "Get Hana out!"
Na-Ri was barely pushed out of the way in time as the Fogclaw swiped horizontally and knocked Xander back 20 meters into a tree.
Xander began to cough up blood, but before he had time to yell "Run!" one more time, he was already back in front of Na-Ri and Hana, pushing them along.
"Get out of here!" he yelled as the Fogclaw rushed forward again, this time raising its claw and enlarging it to the size of a small car.
"Boom!"
"Ahh!!!!" Xander yelled as the claw smashed down on Xander, completely crushing his entire lower body.
"Run!" he yelled one last time, and Na-Ri finally took the hint and took off in a glow of yellow with Hana in tow.
As they ran off, Xander did the only thing he could do.
He grabbed the beast's attention.
He started to summon lightning bolts down on the beast while stabbing it with his katana and throwing his knives at the beast.
'So I'm finally going to die. I wonder what will happen?' Xander had no clue how his Reaper's Revival trait was going to work, but he was now betting everything on the divine trait.
"Why the hell did I even do this?" were Xander's last words. As he lay there, he still had no clue why he had decided to risk his life for theirs.
Just as Xander took his last breath, everything went black, and that's when the ball of death energy that he had felt deep inside his body, what seemed like years ago but was actually less than two weeks, started to migrate out of his body.
Seconds later, Xander had regained his consciousness and could only see thanks to his soul sense.
He noticed that he was floating about a foot off the ground, and the ball of death energy seemed to be invisible to the naked eye.
…
[First Trait: Reaper's Revival] - [Death Charge: Fully Charged]
…
[First Trait: Reaper's Revival] - [Death Charge: 0%]
…
[Summon body - Y/N]
[You have one hour to summon your body before your soul crumbles]
[1:00:00]
[59:59]
[59:58]
…
***
***
***
[Name: Alexander Stone]
[Rank: G-rank - Entry] - [Saturation: 2%]
[Death Core] - [Attunements: Death 100% - Life 10% - Other 50%]
[First Trait: Reaper's Revival] - [Death Charge: 0%]
[First trait Rank: Divine]
-
[Rank: G-rank - Entry] - [Saturation: 2%]
[Lightning Core] - [Attunements: Lightning 100% - Other 45%]
[Second Trait: Mirage Realm]
[Second trait Current Rank: G-rank]