Choice - 16

Choice - 16

I glanced at the door, and after a small consideration, dragged two of the smaller cages to the door before starting to work on the beasts. I didn't expect it to be useful for long and even if it blocked for hours, there was little benefit to being locked in a room with no exit.

I expected the barrier to last a few seconds at most. Not groundbreaking, but it should be enough to give me some reaction time.

"Now, the weapon," I muttered as I glanced at the far-side wall, with several spears affixed. Unlike the weapons that decorated the walls upstairs or the one that was given to me by Toross upstairs, to kill the caged beasts the spears lacked the fancy decorations.

I grabbed one and realized the difference was not only the decoration. There was no magical sense of energy radiating from its surface, dancing under my fingers. No easy slaughter for me, I realized.

I walked to the weakest beast from what I could ascertain from a glance and stabbed. It tried to dodge, showing its rabid anger against people as none of them tried to hurt the other beasts, not even when they were piled in some of the bigger cages not intense enough to prevent them from dodging.

Unfortunately for the beast, the cage was too small for to escape. The stab was successful, but pushing it, took a considerable effort. Nothing like the earlier smoothness I had experienced with the clearly magical weapon.

"They don't seem as if they care much about the servants," I muttered as I glanced at the others on the wall. More than twenty, spread around like fire extinguishers, clearly there to be used if there was some kind of accident with the monsters.

But I sincerely doubted that they would have been useful, especially with the combat performance the unlucky servant who decided to make his last stand had displayed. The spears were only there to create a false sense of security.

It didn't surprise me. It wasn't the first workplace safety violation I had seen with potentially catastrophic consequences.

I wasn't standing lazily as my mind wandered. Even as my attention wandered, I was stabbing the beast repeatedly, and the wound recovered after each attempt. It took twenty stabs, most of it delivered to its vitals, to take him down.

[+183 Experience]

An extended effort, one that would have taken everything I had if it wasn't for the unfair playing field of the cage. "Life is not fair, little buddy," I muttered as I moved to the next beast then next

[+95 Experience]

[+133 Experience]

Madness.

Once again, I felt glad for the existence of Resilience, allowing me to resist whatever magical effect that shout had. Then, I turned my attention to the beasts, beasts that stilled for a moment before exploding into action once more, their roars even louder, their smashing even more desperate.

That was not the only difference. This time, none of the beasts paid any attention to me, every single one of them facing the direction of the shout.

"A mad gambit," I muttered as I looked at the beast, removing the barricade from the door even as I did so glad that I had only pulled three cages in front of the door.

Toross exploded into another cry. "Embrace the destruction, weakling!" he shouted, though this time, it was even more of a beastly growl than actual human speech. I doubted that I could have understood his words without the assistance of Perception. Even with that, it was a close call.

"Yes, my lord," a servant shouted, one that was cut off by a desperate cry, one that filled with a weaker version of whatever Toross' cries had been radiating.

The mention of destruction didn't make me feel better. The suffix of destruction that came attached to my archery skill felt considerably more ominous.

"A problem for another time," I said as I continued working. I opened the door but didn't step out. I might not have lived long in this new world, but I had to be an idiot not to realize that whatever going on was extraordinary.

And not the good kind.

"Let's see if I read you correctly," I muttered as I closed in the first cage. It was locked, but that was not a bother. I had already tested that the sigil worked to unlock the cages earlier one with no surviving beast, naturally and now, I targeted a cage with a solitary beast. Some kind of raging wolf.

I braced myself as I unlocked the cage, my other hand gripping the dagger tightly, ready to defend myself if I had misread the reaction of the beasts.

Yet, the wolf-like creature just dashed forward, completely ignoring my presence. "Excellent," I muttered as I went through cage after cage, unlocking them. I had no idea if Toross and the servants could handle all, or if it would end up in my death after they had been dealt with but at this point, it was not something I could actually pay attention to.

"Attack, kill them all, prove yourself worthy of destruction," Toross shouted, his voice making me shiver in fear once more. I didn't even want to imagine how I would have felt without Resilience acting as a barrier.

However, the deafening stampede of beasts was getting smaller much faster than I expected, which was hardly a good sign.

I dashed out of the room the moment I unlocked the largest cage, moving in the opposite direction of the stampede, hoping that I would be able to avoid Toross though I didn't neglect to grab a spear on the way out. Just in case.

I had no idea what was going on with him, but I had a feeling that pretending to be unconscious wouldn't work.