It was just posturing, since Steven didn’t know if he was able to make the minotaur angry. Angry people do stupid things, so an angry minotaur would be brash and stupid, effectively making mistakes that he could capitalize on.

He could not lose this battle. There was a life at stake, and he doubted that Garth would like to spend forever stuck in a cycle of death. He certainly didn’t, and the girl, now a woman he supposed, had an actual life to live in this dreary place.

Steven needed every advantage he could get to defeat the one armed, crushed horned, and possibly angry minotaur that was attempting to slice him in half with an overhead chop.

He dodged to the side and swung his right arm in a slashing motion while casting Mimic Growth: Greatsword. The sword erupted from his hand mid swing aimed for the Minotaur’s arm, but found air. He dismissed the sword before it threatened to pull him off balance, and jumped backwards several times.

Since losing its arm, the minotaur had been making up for its lack of two weapons by swinging the remaining axe wildly, almost never being still. The only time that Steven noticed it not swinging the axe is when he gained a bit of distance that caused the monster to lower its head and charge.

The stone ground was becoming precariously slick with blood. Some of the blood was Steven’s but most of it poured from the monster’s stump. Steven’s two lacerations were not bleeding heavily, but they were unable to close due to the constant jumping, rolling, and slashing as he tried to gain the upper hand.

As he backed away in a series of hops, he had crossed the distance threshold which caused the minotaur to ready a charge. He glanced around and ran to the closest boulder, jumping on top to hang on to the torch as the minotaur slowly turned to follow his movements.

The monster charged and Steven widened his stance as he gripped the torch tighter. A second later the cave shook when the minotaur slammed into the boulder. The torch that he had been holding on to snapped and he tumbled off the boulder. He cast Partial Mimicry: Rat Claw on his right hand, and it exploded and reformed in a cloud of red dust. As he fell onto the monster’s back, he jammed the fingers of the clawed hand into the minotaur.

The monster reared up and began violently shaking, trying to dislodge Steven. He dug his claws in a little further before casting Mimic Growth: Shortsword on his left hand. The sword burst forth from his skin and he began hacking the blade into the shoulder of the monster’s complete arm. He heard little pops and saw small chunks of flesh fly away whenever the blade came into contact with several of the targets Garth had left.

The minotaur dropped the axe and stopped its bucking, reaching back to grab at Steven. He took the opportunity to stab the blade into more targets on the arm as the monster groped at him. The claw tore free of the monster’s back, and Steven started slipping down and dug four long gashes as he tried to dig the claw in to maintain position. The monster’s armor prevented him from finding any purchase and he fell off completely. It threw a backwards kick, the hoof landing perfectly in the center of his chest.

Steven's breath was knocked out as he was launched backwards and landed hard on the side of a boulder. He gasped and wheezed as he heard a whooshing noise in both ears and his peripheral vision began to recede. Every particle of his being screaming that he needed air, he held his breath and beared down like he was constipated on the toilet as he flexed his limbs as hard as he could to force blood into his brain to stave off unconsciousness.

His vision began to return and the whooshing noise was replaced by a grinding sound. Letting go of his breath, he was panting hard as he found the source of the sound. The minotaur had retrieved its axe and was dragging it behind as it advanced on the boulder where Steven had landed.

His entire chest throbbed. Every small movement he made with his arms sent another spike of agony into his ribs. He groaned as he pushed off the ground to lean heavily with his back against the boulder. The monster was twenty feet away, but closing in slowly. Aside from its damaged limbs, the minotaur had very little damage to its core.

But it was trailing blood from both arms now. Steven had to finish this quickly before he passed out. The kick to his chest had likely broken several ribs and tore his previous cuts even deeper.

Steven dismissed the mimicry and growth on his hands and held them out like he was pointing swords at the monster. It was about ten feet away now, Steven could see it flex its arm, preparing to bring the axe around in a wide swing. At around eight feet away, Steven pushed off the boulder with his back and screamed as he lunged forward. He cast Mimic Growth: Greatsword on both hands. Two greatswords erupted forward, piercing the monster on both sides of its chest.

He saw the Minotaur’s arm relax and it dropped the axe with a clang. It gave one last snort and its head drooped forward. Followed by the rest of its body. Steven felt his arms being wrenched towards him, so he dismissed the swords and dove through the monster’s legs as it fell to the stone ground.

He laid on the stone ground between the minotaur’s hooves for several minutes with his eyes closed trying to catch his breath and attempting to control the pain in his chest. He could do neither. Every breath he took caused the pain to blossom.

The whole cave smelled like blood, but Steven got a distinct whiff right in front of his face. Opening his eyes, he noticed that he was lying in a trail of blood left by the minotaur’s final approach.

“Holy shit! I was bitten by a werewolf not long ago,” he said to no one, groaning as he pushed himself off the bloody stone ground. He wanted to immediately reset the floor to make the pain stop and ask Garth if he could turn into a lycanthrope, but instead he stepped over the monster’s leg and retrieved the axe.

Butting the end of the haft on the floor, the entire weapon was longer than he was tall. The haft of the axe reached his shoulders and the wide half-moon head extended another couple feet past the haft. It looked more like an executioner’s axe than a battle axe.

He grunted as he hefted the weapon above his head, gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, and slammed the axe head down against the hip of the minotaur. It sliced through meat and bone like a hot knife through butter. He tried to lift the axe away, and found it lodged several inches into the stone.

Giving up on trying to lever the axe from the stone, he picked up the severed leg, folding it up neatly and placed it in his pouch. It took him several more minutes of labored walking to find the other axe and was ecstatic to find that he was able to put it in the pouch as well. It left about six inches of handle sticking out the opening of the bag, but he could deal with that for now.

He located the Red Eye and made his way over, passing Garth’s severed torso on the way. The waxy face had a weirdly triumphant grimace that Steven thought would haunt his dreams for years. By the eye, the desecrated naked body of the woman stared lifelessly at the ceiling as blood pooled around it in a crimson halo. Her spine was the only thing connecting the top half of her body to the lower half.

Soon they would be re-experiencing their deaths, safe from minotaur. He was about to tap on the Red Eye and reset the room before he realized that the woman was naked. Her clothes must not have a repair feature, even though she came from a noble family. Over a decade of being slashed and stabbed by the minotaur, the clothes simply ceased to be.

Laboriously returning to the minotaur, he located a large enough swatch of clean leather armor and cut it free with his claw mimicry. It had a few rips and tears from the battle, but it should cover the woman decently enough. He returned to the Red Eye and reset the room, inwardly sighing as his pain vanished and his body was restored in the black nothingness.

When the floor returned he heard two gasps, and a split second later the cave was filled with screams. Both Garth and the woman writhed on the ground doubled over. Steven found it a little awkward as he just stood there, and he remembered to throw the scrap leather over the woman.

Moments later Garth recovered, breathing hard, still clutching at his chest. “You did it!”

Steven had never seen a grown man cry so hard, and felt even more awkward while Garth slowly controlled himself and looked over to where his previous student lay.

“She stopped screaming before you did,” said Steven, noticing the look on Garth’s face. “Her body is fine, I suppose. But after what she went through…” he shrugged and shook his head. He didn’t really know how to address it. The several deaths he had experienced were nothing compared to the amount of time she had spent repeatedly respawning and dying.

“She should be ok, with time,” said Garth, standing and moving over to the woman. “You’re going to be fine now, Mari.” He reached down and tucked the leather under her body, and scooped her up in his arms.

“You know of any place we can hold a barbecue?” Steven asked, completely sensing the mood, but choosing to change it. "And could I be a werewolf?"