《Heroes and Ancients》Chapter 7: Dancing With The Trolls
Advertisement
As soon as Luke stepped outside the house, the sound of battle could be clearly heard nearby and he immediately rushed towards its direction.
He then saw Roy's men fighting a group of trolls. Fortunately for the men, they were fighting against the weaker troll camp composed of a hill troll priest and two hill troll berserkers. If they were fighting against the stronger group of trolls composed of two hill trolls and a dark troll summoner then they won't even last a minute before they get wiped out.
Roy seemed to have connections to the police as some of his men were defending using riot shields as they tried their best to hold the trolls' advance and hit them with police batons from time to time while the rest were shooting with their pistols at the trolls to no avail as the troll priests kept on healing those who were shot.
Luke could see that there were three groups of trolls seeing the three priests actively healing the berserkers.
The men were obviously in a tight spot as they were getting tired and running out of bullets while the trolls still had the same vigor they had earlier and received almost no damage.
Luke was about to rush towards the trolls when he realized something important, he didn't have his hammer on him! how careless!
Seeing Luke staring dumbly at the trolls while so close to them, the leader of Roy's men felt like puking blood as he recogized him! 'Dammit wasn't he beaten up sommuch that his body went black and blue?!? Then what the hell is this fool doing here?!?'
As much as he wanted to say it out loud, he didn't dare to, remembering how his young boss actually saved this idiot's life and even took him to his sister's house to take care of him! Calming himself down, he instead grabbed his shoulder and told him "This place isn't safe sir, please leave immediately with the young boss and miss, I already sent a group of men to guide your escape"
Luke was about to ignore him but when he looked at the weapon the man was holding, his eyes immediately brightened up as he grabbed it and said "Oh sweet, you have a fire axe! Let me borrow this for a while!" and without waiting for the man's reaction, quickly ran towards the trolls.
The leader wasn't the only dumbfounded one as his men also saw how he was foolishly charging towards the trolls without wearing a single piece of protection. As if this wasn't enough, seeing his small build, they all believed that the young man was running towards his death!
"Damn it Luke! Wait up!"
The leader couldn't help but look behind him and saw his boss just arriving with his sister right behind him and he couldn't help but get anxious, "What are you doing here sir?! You should run before these monsters overwhelm me and my men!"
Roy didn't have any of it as he continued running as if he didn't hear anything and said "Stay here, Sunny. Luke and I will take care of these pests"
Sunny nodded at his brother and obediently stood beside the leader while the man currently felt like fainting. 'Boss! Please don't kill me when we meet later! Your son is obviously the one being unreasonable!' he thought while imagining his fate once Roy's father finds out what happened here.
Seeing Roy behind him, Luke had a huge grin on his face as he said, "Roy! Order your men to leave right now then cast Frozen Sigil immediately!" then picked up small rocks on the ground and placed them on his pocket.
Advertisement
Roy complied without further thought and shouted to his men, "You heard the man! stay back!"
Roy then felt his connection with the sigil tattooed on his right wrist and with a single thought it shone brightly for a moment as it disappeared on his wrist and reappeared as a frozen sigil in front of him as it floated in the air. The temperature around them sharply dropped as it suddenly started to snow and it quickly felt like a snowstorm was happening right in that area.
Roy's men were tongue tied seeing their young boss' ability, they all saw on the news those people who suddenly started having powers and felt how powerful those people were but now their young boss also has one!
They didn't dare disobey his orders after that as they promptly retreated and as they gazed upon Luke, they suddenly thought that most probably, this seemingly reckless young man might have powers too!
The leader also felt like he was in a roller coaster as his emotions were going up and down and the moment he saw his young boss actually cause a snowstorm he truly felt like he was about to faint! But thinking it deeper afterwards, he then felt so elated! 'Our young boss is going to be well known all over the world! Those people on the news can breathe fire for a bit or cause a small fissure? HAH! Our young boss can make it snow in our tropical country! Hahahahaha!' he was already planning on sharing the good news to his boss and imagined the reward he might give him and his men for taking care of his son as he watched Luke and the trolls about to clash with each other.
Seeing the men retreating, the trolls rejoiced as they became even more aggressive in chasing after them but as soon as they saw Luke confronting them all alone, they roared in anger thinking 'Those puny humans actually let this smaller human fight us all alone?! Do they think we are easily bullied?!'.
Roy's men were all anticipating to see how strong Luke was as they imagined what power he probably possess, 'will he breathe fire at the monsters? maybe he's so strong that he can easily knock them all out alone? or maybe he has a similar power to the boss that turns the monsters into blocks of ice?'
Reaching 1 meter away from the closest troll, Luke suddenly jumped in the air and raised the axe above his head.
Everybody who saw the scene were quite awed seeing how brave the young man actually was! How manly! He dared facing them head on! The men felt quite ashamed seeing this but the next scene made them almost fall to the ground.
Luke felt that he was quite cool while he was in the air; he obviously did that to impress the beauty, Sunny! Why else would he do something like that? What he didn't expect was that before he could even smash the axe to the troll's head, a troll at the side actually tackled his waist!
This resulted to the current scene where Luke was lying on the ground as the troll that tackled him was sitting on his waist! It was like a scene in a UFC ring with the troll on top of Luke punching him repeatedly while other trolls stayed back and cheered on him!
Everyone felt like vomiting blood at that moment!, 'This son of a-! Can you not act so cool?!? You actually got tackled before you even managed to land a single attack? You're even about to get beat up UFC style by a troll while his friends are laughing at you! Tap out already dammit!'
Advertisement
Roy was about to order his men to rescue Luke when he suddenly felt that something was strange, instead of the shouts of pain and asking for help he expected, Luke was laughing instead!
"HAHAHAHAHA! You'll have to hit me harder than that!" Luke shouted as he realized how amazing Reactive Armor was at work!
When he was tackled, he felt a sharp pain in his chest at the impact especially because of how heavy the troll was, but after the first few punches from the troll that truly hurt him, he felt that the strength behind the punches visibly decrease each time!
Reactive Armor at level 1 increases his armor 1 by point every time he gets hit, but this stacks up 5 times! 5 armor actually shouldn't be underestimated as it may actually save his life!
Many people who play DotA don't understand the mechanics behind armor but Luke understood it fully well! Every increase in armor actually increases his Effective HP. Effective HP is the total amount of HP that a unit has to lose before he/she dies and every point increased in armor increases ones Effective HP by 6%. Since every hit Luke receives increases his armor by 1 point, then after he gets hit 5 times, his Effective HP increases by 30%.
An increase of 30% in his Effective HP means that he needs to receive 30% more physical damage besides his total HP before he dies. Let's say, before Reactive Armor activated he had 0 armor and 100 HP, this means that his Effective HP is simply 100, but if his armor increases to 5 then his Effective HP increases by 30% and becomes 130 HP!
What this also means is that the damage he receives is significantly decreased every time his armor increases!
Luke could just imagine how awesome it would be once he levels Reactive Armor up and it would stack up 20 times, then by that time it would be like he had to be beat up more than twice as much before he truly dies!
What's more is that Reactive Armor doesn't just give armor, but also increases his HP regeneration by 1 each time he gets hit too! So once he gets hit 5 times, he regenerates 5 HP per second! This is a big help for Luke especially once he's fighting against more than a single monster. If he had Reactive Armor back when he was fighting those kobolds then he may have let them hit freely hit him while he casually wipes them out like a walk in the park.
Reaching for his pocket, he grabbed the few rocks he picked up earlier. He didn't pick up the rocks to try and pull the trolls like what he did to the kobolds but rather to test something out. In DotA, if you hit a hill troll priest, it won't attack you but will heal itself instead. The priest's healing ability is quite pesky so he wanted to see if this priest in real life will prioritize healing itself or the berserkers!
After he wiped out the kobold camp, he clearly felt that he grew stronger and it actually proved to be true when he threw a rock at a priest! The rock perfectly hit a priest on the head and it staggered for a second and started healing itself! The two other priests also helped healing him too! after a single cast of healing from each one of them, they still casted for another round before they stopped which meant that the damage Luke dealt needed 6 casts of healing!
He didn't bother saving on rocks as he then continuously threw them all at the same priest while aiming at its head again! The priest's head was bleeding after the barrage of rocks as its face was quite bloodied and wounded by hits.
While he was doing so, everyone else watching didn't know what to do! They thought of helping him but he didn't seem to be in any danger! 'What the hell, this idiot was beat up by gangsters earlier til his body was black and blue yet here he is now gladly taking shots from this monster! Is it his ability?! Does he have an iron body now or something?!'
Actually, after Luke ran out of rocks to throw, he was quite worn out from receiving the troll's punches. After all, he didn't become invincible after receiving his 5 armor! He just became harder to kill than before. The troll was also quite confused since after it fought other people a while ago, it figured that humans were quite weak, but this puny human could actually take a flurry of punches from him with no problem!
Luke felt that his HP was deducted to half at that point as even though this troll might be one of the weakest creeps in the game, it still had a better physique than him here in the real world! He had to escape from this troll as soon as possible.
Thinking so, Luke grasped some dirt from the ground and directly threw it at the troll's eyes. Shrieking in pain, the troll immediately stood up and seeing his chance of escape, Luke stood up and ran to the side.
Seeing Luke escape, the other trolls didn't bother about letting him fight one on one with a troll now and tried to gang up on him. Luke knew that he definitely had to make sure that he wouldn't get tackled anymore as he wasn't even sure how Counter Helix would work once he's lying on the ground.
Seeing the trolls want to surround him, he immediately ran around the area as even though the trolls were obviously stronger than him, they were also visibly slower than him and the snow from Frozen Sigil helped slow the trolls down! His HP was rapidly regenerating as he was running around the trolls and once he felt that his stacks of Reactive Armor was disappearing, he let some attacks from the trolls hit him and regained stacks of Reactive Armor.
Using this tactic, Luke's HP filled up in no time as if he didn't even receive any damage from the trolls! Everyone watching him were truly amazed seeing this! They couldn't imagine taking one punch from a troll themselves yet here he was letting the trolls hit him by his own free will! What a freak!
His HP back to 100% again, he realized that the priest he threw all the rocks at earlier was almost fully healed up too! Thus he dashed towards the priests and with a huge swing of his fire axe, hit the priest right on its chest!
This directly resulted to a huge splash of blood as the hit obviously did massive damage to the troll as it was clearly dying now. But Luke didn't end its life but instead hit another priest! If he killed that dying priest, then the other 2 priest's attention would be fully on him and attack him along with the other trolls. As the 2 priests didn't seem to care about him and continued healing the dying troll, Luke hacked another priest's shoulder this time!
The troll was in obvious pain, as blood were pouring out of its shoulder but the troll still continued healing the dying troll on the ground! 'Jesus Christ their program is honestly creeping me out now. At least try to heal yourself first? Geez' Luke thought as he shivered.
Since he was successful in making sure that the priests won't be bothering him now, he dashed back to the other trolls again. The trolls were obviously angry now with their eyes turning red clearly showing how they hate Luke to the core. 'These damn human isn't human at all! he's a monkey! Why is he so agile! and there's this bloody snowstorm slowing us down too!'
Luke then ran to the center of the group where he would hit all the berserkers once his Counter Helix activates. The trolls seemed to have learned their lesson as they didn't dare tackle him anymore, but tried to hit him with their weapons instead. Berserkers carry both a stone axe and a shield, but with how fast Luke is, he could easily make the shield useless and target the troll's blind spots. Even if they had shields, they didn't wear any good armor at all! They were wearing ragged brown tunics that couldn't lessen the damage they receive at all.
Luke's tactic was sort of like a hit and run but this time, he dared to stay in close proximity with the troll as he didn't mind getting hit once or twice. He prioritized hacking the trolls' legs to lessen their mobility and once he hit one, he directly moves to the next target, not giving them any chance to retaliate.
He would get hit a few times but he didn't mind it as it's keeping his Reactive Armor activated. It only took about 2 minutes and the 6 berserker trolls couldn't move around anymore as their legs were hacked so much that they couldn't help but kneel on the ground.
He did amazingly well but Luke couldn't help but curse at his luck as even though he already got hit quite a few times, Counter Helix didn't activate even once! Since he wanted to activate, he didn't bother with hit and run anymore and attacked the trolls head on now. The trolls were walking with their knees to surround Luke but he didn't mind as he believed that once Counter Helix activates, these trolls are definitely finished!
Surrounded by 6 trolls who kept on hacking at him, he grit his teeth to withstand the pain as his wounds kept increasing while he hacked back at the trolls.
"ARE YOU INSANE?! YOU WERE DOING FINE EARLIER! WHY ARE YOU TRADING BLOWS WITH THEM?!" Roy couldn't help but shout seeing Luke crazily trade hits with the trolls.
Luke didn't bother with him and continued fighting and his wish was granted in no time as just like the first time, he felt a tug on his chest and that familiar force swelled up inside him again as it spread all over his body and a feeling of excitement welled up inside Luke as he couldn't help but shout just like Axe in DotA.
"RAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" and while he shouted, he blurred for a moment as he once again spun in place with the fire axe slicing with no resistance the 6 trolls' necks.
Luke was covered in blood after that attack as the wounds on the trolls' necks spurted blood like a fountain.
Silence covered the area besides the priests on the side who were desperately healing the dying troll in the ground. Sunny covered his mouth as he stared wide-eyed at Luke. 'I... I didn't think he was this strong... He looks nowhere like the silly guy that he was a while ago at the house' she thought as she stared at Luke with a bit of fear seeing him all covered in blood.
Roy's men felt a line of cold sweat on their backs as they stared at Luke, they actually thought he was being reckless and believed he was weak! They couldn't help but thank the Gods that they didn't insult him a while ago after seeing how much of a battle freak he seemed to be. Who would want to fight against someone who didn't mind getting wounded as long as his enemy gets wounded too?!
Roy on the other hand felt speechless seeing this new friend of his, he didn't think he was actually this strong! 'What the hell. If I fought against him, all I could do is run away!'
Luke took a deep breath to calm himself down as he felt excitement all over his body after killing those 6 trolls. He then casually sauntered towards the 3 priests and without further thought, beheaded the 3 of them.
This time, the whole area was truly in silence as the trolls that Roy's men had a hard time even defending against were wiped out by Luke alone.
Luke felt quite tired, Both physically and mentally as he truly still didn't like being all covered in blood and even if he didn't kill people, killing a living being still bothered him a tad bit. He didn't mind everyone staring at him as he made his way back towards the house and said in a taunting tone, "What a nice exercise"
Roy's men felt like vomiting blood hearing his words and remembering how they barely damaged the trolls earlier! 'You monster! Don't compare us to you, okay?!? We're just normal human beings, you freak of nature!'
Advertisement
World in Ruins
Enter Alex, pretty normal guy, budding interest in girls, good grades, sadly orphaned. He knew what he would do after graduation. He had hopes and dreams, mostly unfulfilled, like every other teenager there is. He knew what life would give him. Until a decisive morning changed everything. Congratulations Humanity, your greed and destruction of Nature has corrupted your worldcore. While your parents fight at the front, you, the children, are given a grace period, until you turn 20 years old. Then you have to join them and clean the corruption.It can’t be cleaned through simple means, but fear not, we, the most esteemed and paramount council, have given you tools to grow in power. Your world may crumble to ash and dust, but you will rise like a Phoenix or decay in timeless strife.Rise, grow and conquer your foe. [participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge] - 04.22 Updates Monday & Thursday
8 102The Girl from the Mountain
Alexandra Bedford is a weapon, a young woman with telekinetic powers capable of leveling entire cities, born to fight in the desolate remains of post-apocalyptic North America. There is only one problem: she may be losing control of her abilities. Sixteen years after a global pandemic devastated the earth’s population, the lines in the old United States have been drawn between the Cheyenne Directorate in Colorado and the New England Alliance on the East Coast. The Directorate, of which Alexandra is a part, is a small but powerful organization dedicated to returning the country to its former glory. However, when a diplomatic mission to the New England Alliance goes wrong, Alexandra finds herself at the center of a bloody civil war. Battles are fought on the old highways and in dilapidated towns and once-great cities. And as the conflict escalates, all of North America faces the threat of being burnt away by nuclear fire. Against this backdrop of war, Alexandra tries to uncover the long-hidden secrets behind the plague, her abilities, and the two men fighting to decide the fate of the United States - Henry Bedford, Alexandra's father and leader of the Directorate, and John Martin, the mysterious figure at the heart of the New England Alliance who may hold the key to everything she seeks. None of this will matter, however, unless Alexandra can prevent the power growing inside her from taking over and consuming the very world she is fighting to save. Author's Notes: I appreciate you taking a look at my novel, The Girl from the Mountain. If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, military thrillers, and/or cosmic horror, I think you'll enjoy this story. I completed the novel's first draft back in 2011 and made significant changes in 2016. Since then, I've more-or-less sat on the manuscript while working on other projects. Thanks to a bit of prodding, I've decided to send this story out into the wild with some touch-ups and additional revisions. I welcome any comments or criticisms, and I hope you enjoy The Girl from the Mountain!
8 227Choice: An Important Thing
Choice. An important thing is it not? We always make choices. Every day of every week of every month (of every year), we do “choices”. I want to show you how important it is and I would gladly welcome the attention. I heard somewhere that the best way to make someone understand is to just let them experience it, so, here’s your first choice. CHOICE 01 Would you play this game, or not? Take your time, I’m not waiting for the people who chooses the latter anyways.
8 231The Dark Star Sings
Protected by powerful mages and soldiers, the citizens of the Antarian empire don't ever wonder what monsters lurk just past the shadows.One such species, the demons, exist solely to feast on humanity. Heralded by shifts in the stars, they twist the minds of their prey and savor the emotions laced into their flesh. No walls keep them at bay; no blade pierces their flesh, and no spells singe their skin.A single, strange, man named Valerian specialized in hunting demons. He travelled across the continent-spanning empire, purifying them as he went for many years, perpetually shadowed by a young boy named Aidan. The child did not care about saving people. Valerian was just all he had left. But then one day, Aidan held Valerian's hand for the last time. Six months later, with the hands of time soon closing the curtain upon him, Aidan found himself pondering Valerian's parting words as a girl riddled with scars stood before him, glaring at him with the same eyes he once possessed. She was the dark star, the plague child, the bringer of the end. The grandest demon of all. Aidan took a deep breath. "I want to save you."
8 112The Compassionate Killer and his travels in a new world
Allen Dreyar is the number one assasin in his world. Due to keeping this title yet not accepting any jobs for the last three years his colleagues were filled with so much envy that they decided to kill him off. But in his last breath Allen was able to lead his enemies inside his base of operations and bring them with him to the grave. When he came to he was in another space which was completely white. He met a person calling himself god and told him he was needed in another world. Follow Allen as he reincarnates into another world with the same abilities he had along with some additional powerups.
8 204About the Boy || Cody Bellinger
The best relationships usually begin unexpectedly.Completed November 19, 2017 ✓
8 71