Chapter 49

Chapter 49

Riven’s heart sank when he realized he’d been just barely too late to save the woman or the man out front, but there was still one person they could save.

His muscles flexed, his body stiffened, and he turned to Athela with a determined upward gesture of his hand. “Go.”Finnd new chapters at novelhall.com

She understood and immediately slunk into the room to start crawling up the wall while the satyrs were distracted. Riven took in a deep breath and exhaled; his warm breath blew out as a cloud of red mist from his mask. With a nod he activated the Blessing of the Crow, feeling his once-daily and hour-long speed boost activate. His heart raced, his muscles flexed, and electricity sparked across his body. He felt his stamina climb rapidly; it was as if he’d just simultaneously taken numerous energy drinks and snorted cocaine.

Now it was time to kill these sons of bitches, but his projectiles other than Blood Lance were too short in range to cast from here in such a large room. He could let off two of his Blood Lances first, but immediately after that he needed to get closer.

Wisps of blood energy radiated across either arm, and with curling motions to summon the magic, he felt his Blood subpillar radiate. He flexed his muscles again, shifted his weight, and launched both Blood Lances right before he lunged forward into the large room.

*CRACK*

*ZIP*

The Blood Lances blurred forward ahead of him and ripped through the skull of one and the leg of another before the satyrs even knew what’d happened. Numerous shards of spinning, razor-sharp blood projectiles followed him in and launched forward when he was close enough, tearing into his enemies in an arsenal of pain and surprised screeches. He saw a dismembered hand fly into the air and extended his staff forward to cast another volley—condensed blood accumulating around the weapon and then shooting forward to impale three of them for a second round. They exploded a second later, ripping the bodies apart even more with minor blasts of magical shrapnel after he infused more mana into the projectiles. Unfortunately two of the discs shattered against the bloodied stone altar, but the majority of his strikes rang true.

The yellow eyes of the hooded satyr went wide, and it animatedly flung its bloody dagger in a spinning arc at Riven’s neck with a shriek, but he dodged left at high speed with his empowered agility and cackled when one of its comrades was yanked up toward the ceiling screaming as Athela’s webbing bound it.

“Bitch!” Riven’s hand produced two large snares on either side of him that expanded and shot forward to meet the charge of the three incoming cronies. Each of the satyrs made enraged bleating sounds as they waved their bloody daggers in the air and raced toward him, bloodlust in their eyes.

One of them managed to duck low and avoid the snares while the other two were caught in the one on Riven’s right and tripped to the floor—screaming as needles along the black netting impaled them and began to sear away their flesh.

Green light erupted from the altar where the hooded figure was chanting, and a moment later an orb of sickly green power blasted forward toward Riven’s position when the nearest of the satyrs—dagger in hand—also lunged for him.

But even as Athela leaped from above to try and take the hit herself, a portal of flame erupted in front of her, and Azmoth took the attack head-on in a rush.

The green magic impacted against the huge four-armed demon as Azmoth roared, pulsed with fire, and charged, shrugging off the magical blast like it was nothing and causing the satyr caster to start bleating with terrified wails. The last thing that small satyr ever saw was a rushing bulldozer of death in the form of a flaming clawed hand.

The next moment, the spell caster—along with the majority of the stone altar—exploded into a spray of body parts, flame, and stone. Azmoth’s attack was utterly devastating given the brutalisk’s impressive strength, and there was little left of the smaller demon after that.

Meanwhile, Riven had erupted into an inferno himself when he activated Hell’s Armor and took the attack of the dagger-wielding satyr head-on—grunting as the demon slashed at him, but only taking minimal damage and countering with a flaming staff to the demon’s face.

The demon screeched and fell back as one of its teeth was sent flying, only to be met with shards of red webbing that erupted from Athela’s thorax—piercing it over numerous spots across its body and neck from where she was perched above.

The arachnid lunged ahead with Riven hot on her heels, the two of them beating and tearing at the downed, wailing demon together as Riven deactivated Hell’s Armor to save mana before whirling around and firing another large disc of razor-sharp blood a few feet in width spinning ahead in an arc to catch one of the satyrs that’d escaped his bindings.

[You have gained one level. Congratulations!]

Nice.

After finishing off the last of the ghouls within the cells with another Bloody Razor, Riven stepped over the mangled corpse of a nearby satyr and grabbed the gleaming set of ringed keys from the creature’s robes.

He shook his head and kept going. His attention was quickly turned over to the guy with the mohawk, who was sitting in his cell silently watching them with folded arms over his knees and his back to the wall.

Riven held up a finger and cleared his throat to get the man’s attention. “You’re from Earth, right? Hold on just a moment, I need to assign my stat points just in case something comes up.”

The man gave him a bewildered and simultaneously confused look, and Riven’s snort came out as another cloud of red mist while he got to work. When he put his points back into his usuals, his status page was coming along nicely. He’d really come a long way.

[Riven Thane’s Status Page:

He nodded in affirmation of his stats and closed the window. He’d been pushing most of his points into Intelligence and Willpower, and he’d also sunk a few into Sturdiness to keep himself alive. The result was that he could tell a very stark difference in the power of his magical casting when compared to the spells he’d started with in the beginning, back in Chalgathi’s trials. The snares and razors were the same type of spells, but now they had a hell of a punch and could manifest bigger and better for less mana.