Chapter 68

Chapter 68

Chapter 68

Shotgun guy just laughed, then he got tired of kicking – took aim – and fired again. Another good-sized chunk of wood blasted off the door into bits and pieces, but the idiot had been too close when he’d fired and recoiled as chips of debris hit him in the face and eyes. “Fuck!”

He staggered back, rubbing at his face and cursing loudly until he managed to clear his line of sight... only to blink rapidly as he came face to face with Riven to his left and Athela to his right.

“Hello chap.” Riven said with a friendly smile underneath the black hood, lazily leaning against the side of the building. “Care to die for me?”

Athela’s claws extended and flashed up, skewering the man’s stomach and kidney before her arm protruded out the left side of his back. Shotgun guy screamed in agony and horror, shock clear upon his features amidst Athela’s laughter right before Riven grasped onto the man’s neck and brought it forward – headbutting the guy’s face and breaking his nose in a gush of blood.

*RIP*

*TEAR*

*SPLAT*

“AAAHHHHHH!!!”

Riven found himself beating the man to death alongside his demonic minion. He felt no sympathy, no remorse, only a deep sense of satisfaction knowing he was - at least in his mind - doing the right thing. Meanwhile the screams and gurgles intermixed with the occasional small explosion of shadow whenever his staff would make contact with the man’s bloodied body.

Athela ripped a spleen out of the man’s gut as the guy tried to fumble with the shotgun he held onto for dear life, but Riven easily knocked it aside as it fired again. Coming down hard on the falling man in a downwards strike, one of Athela’s sharpened arachnoid legs whipped out of her back and severed the man’s left hand to send the appendage flying. Riven then brought his foot down onto the man’s neck with an audible crunch when the windpipe collapsed.

Surprisingly the guy didn’t die right away. His eyes bulged, coughing up blood and he quivered there on the ground in disbelief. Riven cocked his head to the side in confusion at how he hadn’t passed yet. Shrugging and walking over to the shotgun – he picked up the weapon and inspected it. Seeing that it had no bullets left in it, he walked back over and searched the dying man – finding only two cartridges.

“Good enough.” Riven stated flatly, then he stood up – gave his enemy a final swift kick to the face that sent his neck over at an odd angle with another crunch, and the man lay still.

Athela frowned his way. “Hey! That was my kill.”

“Sorry not sorry.”

From the holes in the door, within the dark interior, he saw the man and woman who’d warned him watching with wide eyes. The man inside had been shot in the leg when they’d tried to make a break for it out the back door and was being bandaged by the woman on the kitchen floor, and both of them wore expressions of mixed hope and horror.

It was a little ridiculous, Riven knew it, but he didn’t care. He was having fun, and as Cronie 2 let out a horror-filled scream and turned to run – Athela dropped from the rooftop above in a dive attack that skewered the man in six different places. Pinning him to the ground with her arachnoid legs, her hands and bladed tongue when into a flurry of motion as she tore his body into literal shreds that went flying like someone would see if you sent a log through a woodchipper.

“KINKY!” Athela exclaimed with an excited shuddering, beginning to let out a giddy laugh of pure amusement.

Seeing the body parts drenching his minion though, Riven had to take a step back and re-evaluate whether or not she would be able to get all that gunk off even with an hour-long bath.

He checked the dead men, not finding anything of value before proceeding over to the shotgun and picking it up. Casually loading the gun with the two remaining shells, he hiccupped and nodded in appreciation at his new loot.

[Shotgun]

[Shotgun Shell]

He sighed, again acknowledging that the identification information was still not nearly as good as it’d been back in the tutorial. He’d really have to find what the system had been referring to as an “Identifier”, because being able to compare items, enemies and ingredients for his totem crafting would be essential for the future.

Regardless he assumed the gun had stats just like his staff did. He’d never thought of guns as having stats before, but now that everything else had stats in terms of items and weapons... he could safely say it should be the same way. What DID surprise him was the abrupt sound of a strong heartbeat directly behind him that was inching closer... He whirled, and when he did finally see it... he froze.

There, not even five feet from him, was some kind of enormous cat creature. It was definitely not a native to Earth, had six clawed feet, and looked like a cross between a leopard and a tiger but had four fuzzy ears – the back set of ears being twice the length as the front set. Black spots intermingled with stripes along its otherwise yellow coat, and when it realized it’d been spotted – it lunged his way.

[Juvenile Wrath Cat]

Mana coursed through his veins and red sparks lit up across his skin amidst Blessing of the Crow. Black lightning exploded out of his staff a millisecond later, taking the cat head-on mid-air that had a recoil effect which sent Riven slamming back into the side of the house. It also knocked Athela head over heels, sending her cartwheeling down the alley with a shriek. Meanwhile the cat had gotten the worst of it though, and its body erupted into smoldering pieces like fireworks of fleshy bits amidst a torrent of destruction out behind the path the cat had taken. The fence behind it exploded and the ground underneath erupted to send dirt and debris skywards in a thirty-meter arc of desolation, and Riven’s staff hummed in pleasure as he coughed and picked himself up off the ground to shake himself off.

[You have landed a critical hit. Max Damage x3.]

To any onlookers, it had appeared that he’d moved so fast that his body had defied time itself... and to Riven... Well, he was just happy to be alive.

Cursing jovially and getting up to evaluate the remains of the dead cat, he cackled gleefully at the dead monster and pushed himself up from the ground. “You thought you had me, didn’t you – ya little bastard!”

Riven spit on the cat’s corpse, picked up a coin purse that’d dropped out of thin air as a reward from the system, chuckled some more, hoisted the shotgun and its remaining single shot onto his shoulder. His chest heaved with the thrill and excitement of the brief but stimulating fight, and he regained his normal respiratory rate seconds later. “Phew! That was a close one.”