The Gamer's POV-Chapter 197: Home of the Hollow Ones [13]
The hollow one’s deadpan expression changed to shock as it dropped to its knees, before finally collapsing to the ground dead.
Uriel, who was breathing heavily, instinctively covered her left eye as the vision in that eye began to slowly dim, then fade. When it fully went dark, Uriel’s vision became a blurry, distorted mess, as her right eye had not fully healed from the previous price she had paid earlier.
She exhaled tiredly, rubbed the bleeding wound on her neck, and looked around. Then her expression soured even more as she took in the state of the battlefield. Through her distorted vision, she could see that things were looking bleak for the cadets.
There were barely twenty people left, and with the new set of hollow ones who had joined the fray, the odds had shifted entirely against them. But what made her heart truly sink was when her eye locked onto a disturbing sight further down the line.
She could see one of the ten hollow ones holding Alicia’s weak body by the hair. Alicia was barely conscious and her face was a mask of crimson as blood trailed down from a jagged wound on her forehead, staining her regalia.
Uriel’s breath hitched, and a faint "No..." escaped her lips. But before she could even take a step, the hollow one’s blade flashed, and in one sudden motion, it cut off Alicia’s head.
Uriel froze in place, stunned by the horrific sight, only to immediately hear a loud boom somewhere to her left.
One of the ten had just smashed a cadet’s head into the stone floor with a large war hammer.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Uriel to realize that the cadet who had just been killed was Roben.
Roben had a skill that allowed him to create clones of himself made of wood. After having his head smashed into the ground, the clones that had been fighting nearby began to shudder and crack, before splintering to the floor in piles of dry timber.
’This is bad...’ Uriel thought as she looked away from him, but just then, Leon jumped, grabbed her, and tackled her out of the way. In the seconds after, the massive ball of a flail suddenly slammed into the spot where she had been standing.
"Are you okay?" Leon asked in a panic as he quickly helped her up to her feet.
"Yes," Uriel replied shakily.
Still holding her arm with his eyes locked on the creature who was spinning the heavy flail in a slow, menacing circle, Leon quickly spoke. "You can’t see, so take a break. Quick, give me a halberd."
Without a second of hesitation, Uriel quickly dissolved into light, shifting into a halberd in Leon’s grip.
Leon adjusted his stance as he timed the spinning of the flail, while taking breaths out of exhaustion. Of course, just like everyone else, Leon was extremely fatigued. He had a fair amount of injuries and his golden armor was dented and covered in a thick layer of dust and grime. Currently, he had only one eye as he had used his ability earlier, and so, he couldn’t depend on his ability any time soon.
But against this creature with a flail, he felt like he didn’t need his ability. The halberd was one of the best counters to a flail, after all. All he needed to do was get the timing right, despite his narrowed field of vision.
And so, when the creature swung the heavy ball towards his head, Leon stepped forward and thrust the shaft of the halberd directly into the path of the chain. The chain wrapped itself tightly around the halberd, causing the heavy ball to whip around the pole.
With the weapons now bound together, Leon decided to use the leverage of the long handle to yank the creature off balance. But when he stepped back to yank, the creature didn’t budge. It was as if he was trying to pull a rooted tree from the earth. In that split second of realization that the physical mass of this creature was far beyond what he expected, it yanked him forward instead. Then, using its other hand, it punched Leon’s face so hard that his entire head twisted to the back, killing him instantly. The force of the impact was enough to send his corpse tumbling and skidding across the dirt back a few meters.
The creature then tilted its head, and a look of disappointment crossed its face, as if the kill had been too simple to be satisfying. After a few seconds, it lost interest entirely, and looked away. Then, it draped the heavy chain of the flail over its shoulder and began walking toward its next target.
Unbeknownst to it, the mirage of a golden, weeping lady had appeared over the corpse and in that split second, Leon’s head snapped back into its proper place.
The creature that had begun walking away stiffened as it instinctively felt something, and looked back only for the tip of the halberd to drive deep into its chest.
Its eyes widened slightly as Leon, who had stood up, yelled and drove the halberd deeper. The creature dropped to one knee, then it toppled over onto the dusty ground.
"Phew. Jeez," Leon muttered under his breath as he cracked his neck, wincing from the pain.
"I can’t believe it got me to use Mother’s Protection."
Mother’s Protection. That was Leon’s second exclusive skill. It was an ultimate automatic defense ability that activated to help him avoid all forms of fatal attacks once, after which it went into a long countdown. In simple terms, it was a skill that allowed him to cheat death, and that was just the active part of the skill.
Currently, the skill was at level 8, which meant he wouldn’t be able to use it again for the next three days.
"Ack, fuck," Leon cursed as he massaged his jaw, which was aching so badly from the sheer force of the impact that had killed him only moments ago.
