[56]

“I serve Koth, and I don’t care who knows it. Whichever lesser god you grovel before is your business. We aren’t here for that. What we are here for, is to talk about what you can do in a fight. The instructors have given me a rundown of your basic abilities, but I need to see them in action,” Gene Pew said.

The four of us stood in a cloudless desert. Hard sand and bright sun were the only thing visible for miles in any direction. Despite being in a heat blasted wasteland, the air was decidedly accommodating. Likely because it was a group dungeon mindscape designed for training, and not an actual place.

Our boisterous team leader surprised us, paying the fee for us to enter the training dungeon out of his own pocket. I hoped the charitable act was a sign that he was not as awful as his first impression. Yet the more he spoke, the more I believed common decency was an extreme outlier for his behavior.

“You,” Gene said, pointing at Joy. “Let’s see if you are good for anything besides looking stupid.”

Joy scoffed. “Have you seen yourself? Your tattoo’s look like the town drunk drew them on so he would stop mistaking you for an outhouse. Your mother was probably a goat. It explains how trampled your face is and the way you smell. Be honest, she mistook you for a turd and—”

Gene unleashed an enormous swing of his two-handed claymore with uncanny speed. The barbaric sword glowed with a deadly red energy as it came for Joy’s head. Our Wildling companion nimbly sprang away, barely quicker than Gene’s inhumanly fast attack.

“—tried to get a barnyard cat to help cover you up after her hooves didn’t work. It’s the only thing that makes sense for how ugly you—” Joy said, rolling away from another massive slash.

“—r face is. Hey, didn’t you say you serve Koth? He’s the god that created the undead mess. Little wonder he chose a simpleton for an ascended—” Joy continued berating our team leader.

Gene let loose a booming war cry, cutting off her words and sending up a plume of sand in all directions. When the debris cleared, only the plate mailed ascended of Koth stood before us, looking perplexed.

A second later, an arrow “clinked” into his shoulder, barely missing his exposed neck. The three of us slowly turned in the direction the arrow came from to see Joy drawing another arrow a good 100 yards away.

“Does he only pick mouth breathers?” Joy shouted, releasing another arrow.

Gene effortlessly blocked the arrow with the blade of his sword, charging toward the Wildling at a frightening speed.

Raxx and I ran after the plated warrior at a safe distance, laughing like children at Joy’s continued taunts. She shot off two more arrows before he reached her.

This time, when Gene was close enough to swing at Joy, she tossed a bottle in his direction. As before, the warrior brought his blade up to defend his face, but it did not send aside the vial as expected. A tiny explosion sent shrapnel flying in all directions, turning the already ugly man’s face into a maze of shallow scratches.

The damage looked mostly superficial, but both Joy and Gene stopped fighting.

“I win,” she said, smirking.

Gene’s face turned black nearest the wounds, causing the armored giant to stumble backward. Flesh began falling away nearest the cuts, and yellowish fluid dripped out the spreading wounds. Raxx and I looked at each other in horror.

Who knew Joy could do that?

Without another word, Gene picked up a large dagger from his belt and rammed it into his own brain.

All three of us winced. Death in the normal dungeons caused psychological scarring to offset the increase in skills and non-physical attributes. Supposedly, in the dungeon “training” mindscapes, that did not happen. But the three of us had experienced death in previous dungeons and could not help but remember the feeling.

A second later, he reappeared healthy and hale.

“Well done,” he said, grinning with mirth. “Does your necrosis ability work as well on the undead as I’m hoping?”

“Better,” Joy said without pride. “One nick and they melt away in seconds.”

“How often can you escape like you did in our fight?”

“Only when someone uses sufficient force against me, around twice a minute. It’s an ability called Momentum. Though, the undead do not strike hard enough for it to be a viable method of escape against them.” Joy answered.

Gene nodded, then turned to Raxx. “Fur ball you are up.”

I will be honest; I barely saw what happened in the fight. The two titans smashed into each other with bladed weapons, swinging at speeds faster than my brain could process. I was not sure if it was because of their ridiculously high strength score, or skill with their weapons. Feasibly, it was a combination of the two.

For every attack that Gene blocked from Raxx’s large sabre, wind would flow out in a random direction, slicing through the mail and cutting into his flesh. Blood poured out of the armor, coating the desert ground in red.

Every so often, Raxx would let out a heckling laugh. At first, I thought it was just because he was enjoying the fight, like anyone that knew him would assume. However, as the battle drew on, I saw Gene tremble gradually more after each cackle. It was as though the Sea Dogs’s laugh stole away his endurance.

Eventually, the wear and tear became too much for the chosen of Koth, and Raxx neatly cut off the top of Gene’s head.

“Great showing. You really know how to use that blade; at least B ranked, if I had to guess.” Gene said, slapping Raxx on the back. “Does your laugh affect the undead?”

Raxx shook his head. “Nope, but it gives my companions energy.”

That explained so much! The day I met Raxx was in Cen-Boleman’s class, and I did not think I would have made it through the torture without his companionship. Little did I know how true that was! I thought his laughing was giving me motivation, but it turns out it was giving me so much more.

“And the wind blades?” Gene asked.

“They work great against anything with flesh. All I have to do is swing the weapon.” Raxx said, shrugging.

“Very useful. You have a skill that makes you strong at a distance to compliment your already formidable melee ability.” Gene said, assessing the Harak.

I could see Raxx’s mane of hair stick up with pride.

“All right, pretty boy. They say you beat Reynold Kestev in a duel, let’s see what you got,” Gene said, giving me a smile full of missing teeth.

Hypnotize went to work immediately, pushing down on the battle junkie’s Willpower. Unlike previous opponents, I could feel him slipping out of it right away. The bullish prick had an exceptional Willpower that I had not expected. My power only slowed him down instead of trapping him in place.

With the large disparity of skill between us, I decided an attack under Hypnotize would be too risky. Instead, I started casting Darkness on the space between the two of us while I kept him firmly held within my hexing gaze.

A few seconds later, my spell enveloped both of us, and I cursed him with Haunt before he fully came to his senses.

I knew going for his unarmored head was a bad idea. My skill with my weapon was too low to hit a moving target as skilled as he was. Nonetheless, I felt confident about my ability to fight him. The poleaxe was designed to crush through plating, so I did not need to be strategic.

After using Haunt, I had two good seconds to swing for all I was worth before he was normal again. I aimed for his right arm, swinging sideways with my hips like a farmer reaping wheat.

Unfortunately, because of his preternatural battle senses, he parried the attack partway. Still, the axe head slammed into his gauntlet with enough force to shatter bone.

Gene stumbled back, grunting, and cradling the smashed arm to his chest. His other arm had no trouble swinging the gigantic blade around to a defensive position.

Not a good sign.

“Hah! Nice one. My turn,” Gene said, opening his mouth to let loose a war shout. Tongues ended his attack before it started.

“YEX NOOF!” Gene yelled, causing Raxx to fall over laughing. The dumbstruck giant leaped backward from a hallucination, mumbling excited gibberish.

Ugz took that opportunity to launch at his face from my jacket.

The balled-up newt monster cracked into Gene’s beat up nose. Before he caught his balance, my poleaxe came at him a second time. This time, I aimed for his leg.

He never had a chance.

The blade sheared right through the joint at his knee, neatly severing the limb. For all my weapon’s power, it was not enough to cut through the other side of his plate, and it got stuck in between the two halves of Gene’s leg.

Our team leader let out a disturbingly loud scream of pain as blood pumped out of his terrible wound. I summoned my poleaxe back and watched him flail about in agony. Blinded by the spell, seeing, hearing, and smelling things that were not there, all Gene could do was writhe around and curse.

He recognized the fight was over and ended it by killing himself with a dagger again.

“You are every bit as deadly as advertised.” Gene said, laughing. “That was one of the most unpleasant mind-fucks I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing.”

I nodded respectfully, not sure how to take the praise.

“Now, for the big question, does any of that work on the undead?” he asked.

“Only the Darkness spell.” I said with a tight smile.

“Eh, that’s not so bad then.” Gene said, stroking his hairless chin. “You can distract a large crowd of them and let us pick them apart.”

Then, switching gears, he said, “All right, I’m impressed. You guys have a good mix of abilities that complement one another. Harald can distract, confuse, and hit enemies with a powerful melee attack. Joy has exceptional range, escape, and debilitating attacks. And Raxx can go toe to toe with anyone, keep his team fresh, and assist at a range. This is going to go much better than I thought it would.”

“That said, I can’t let you guys get too big of an ego. I was just going easy on you.” Gene said with a savage grin.

A moment later, a helmet appeared over his head and his armor began glowing with the same red energy as his sword.

“All three of you come at me at once,” Gene said with a distorted voice.

Then we all died. A lot.