Chapter 13 - You Have Skills Too? (1)

1

GROOOOAR!

The orc roared.

Perhaps it wasn't a roar at all, but merely a brief growl. To me, however, it sounded like an interminable howl. A full fifty seconds! For a minute or so, the orc's bellow kept ringing in my ears.

"Ghh, ugh...!"

Pain threatened to split my head open.

"Hey, focus your ass off."

The attendant spirit barked at me amid time that had slowed to a crawl.

"Don't get scared of trash mobs like orcs! Orcs are stupidly strong, but their attack patterns are simple. If you can tell where they're going to attack, you can easily dodge and counter. It's fucking child's play."

"That's... easy for you to... say...!"

"Here it comes."

WHOOSH!

The orc swung its club. No, it was swinging it. Slowly. Slowly but surely, the club came hurtling toward my head. If I stayed still, my skull would be smashed in less than twenty seconds.

"F-Fuck!"

I leaped sideways with all my strength. But my body wouldn't move the way I wanted.

'I'm so damn slow!'

Just one step. One step would let me dodge the orc's blow, but that single step was agonizingly slow. I was frustrated. So frustrated I thought I'd explode with rage.

I could dodge it! I knew exactly where the attack was coming!

"You can dodge it. Don't give up."

The attendant spirit spoke quietly.

"Focus aura in your feet. Strengthen your legs! Imagine sending the flow pooled in your heart down into your right foot. Hurry!"

Damn it.

'He's a ghost, but his mouth is as lively as ever!'

I'd felt aura for the first time in my life. How was I supposed to concentrate it in my legs? It really was easy for him to say.

But... I had no other choice. I had to try somehow. I might not fear death, but I still didn't want an orc's club to bash my head open!

'Move!'

The flow in my heart. Thinner than blood, it somehow felt cool and clean. Like a clear stream under a bright sky, perhaps? I concentrated on that cool sensation and tried to send it toward my right leg.

It stirred.

My efforts weren't entirely wasted: the aura shifted within my heart, but—

"Harder than you expected, huh?"

It was.

"That's because your body doesn't have channels for aura to travel through yet. The roads haven't been built! To put it another way, your body's a little trail deep in the mountains right now. You've got to turn that into a highway before anyone can say you know how to use aura."

"Hh, ngh...!"

Even as the attendant spirit rambled on, I kept focusing on my right leg. If my heart was a clogged faucet, my right leg was a cup placed beneath it. One drop. One drop. Aura dripped fitfully from the broken faucet.

"You're only able to feel aura at all because you took an elixir. Normally, you wouldn't stand a chance. Tsk. That young lady's hygiene is filthy, but her skill is the real deal."

SWISH!

The club stirred up a blast of air as it narrowly swept past my body.

WHOOF!

A small gust swirled in its wake. The wind struck my skin and scattered. One second, perhaps. No, if I'd been even half a second slower, that club would have shattered my entire body.

"What... hap..."

My relief at dodging the orc's blow lasted only a moment.

"...pens...?"

The orc snorted. It couldn't have liked that. Prey that looked as weak as me had dared to dodge its attack. It immediately raised its club again.

GRRRR!

This time, a horizontal sweep meant to smash through my waist.

There was no time to rest.

I concentrated aura in my upper body.

"Huh? What do you mean, what happens?"

"When... you turn the trail... into a highway...!"

It was still difficult. The faucet in my heart remained hopelessly clogged. There wasn't even a hint that water might come gushing out. My throat was parched with thirst, but the aura barely trickled out a drop at a time.

'I hate to admit it, but the attendant spirit is right.'

An untrodden trail overgrown with weeds.

It was an apt description of me as I was now.

That was why I wanted to know.

If I rose above this level.

If I escaped it.

"What... happens... then?!"

"Heh."

The attendant spirit chuckled.

"When old Markus killed you, he cut your head off before you could do a thing, right?"

He had.

I recalled that sight, the crescent moon tilting in the night sky.

The attendant spirit's words sank into my mind.

"That was only about the level of a nice, clean tree-lined street."

"..."

A tree-lined street.

That beautiful strike was only... only on the level of a tree-lined street.

"That means old Markus still has a long way to go. You go without saying. Zombie, I'm not riding your ass just because I'm a piece of shit. I'm riding your ass because you deserve it. Hehehe."

GRIND.

I clenched my teeth.

"Hmm?"

Stubborn defiance welled up in me.

"Hup...!"

I ducked my upper body.

WHOOOOSH!

The orc's club swept through the air above my waist. It was close. After the first attack, I'd barely managed to evade the second.

And I had absolutely no intention of letting it launch a third.

"Oh?"

I gathered strength in my knees.

"Well, look at this."

Then I concentrated aura in the soles of my feet. I didn't merely gather it; I tried to bend it like a spring as best I could. Five seconds, three seconds, one second. When I felt the aura had gathered, however clumsily, I leaped with all my might.

I angled my sword upward.

My target was the orc's Adam's apple!

"Guro?"

The monster looked down at me in confusion. I was reflected in its eyes, along with the tip of the blade I thrust forward. My blade grew larger and larger in that reflection. A split-second gap. My sword pierced its Adam's apple, and the orc's face twisted in pain.

KRAAAAH!

Beneath the evening sky, a scream spread across the vast hunting grounds.

Just as I thought, I did it—

"Don't let your guard down until it's over!"

The attendant spirit shouted.

"Orcs have thick flesh! Focus aura in the tip of your blade! No, that'll be too hard. Just pour it in like you're hammering it home!"

I did.

KRAAAAAH!

The orc's screams intensified. I wrung out every last drop of aura flowing from my heart and drove it all into the sword. With each drop that seeped into the blade's tip, the monster's screams became more anguished.

"Gruoh, graah... grrr...!"

SPLAT!

Blood spurted. The orc's blood washed over my face slowly, as though in slow motion. I didn't dodge it. I didn't even blink. Instead, I struggled desperately to channel even one more drop of aura into the blade.

"Die...!"

For one brief instant.

Through my hand, I felt the sword's tip pierce all the way through the orc's neck.

"Grrrr... rr..."

The orc staggered.

Even its staggering seemed to take forever. Slowly, it toppled backward.

THUD!

Since I never let go of the hilt, I fell forward along with the monster.

"Hah... agh, ugh...! Hhh...!"

I stared down at the orc's corpse, struggling to breathe.

But breathing wasn't my only struggle.

A throb. A moment late, excruciating pain swept through my entire body. My vision spun. Without exaggeration, it genuinely felt as though my limbs were being torn apart.

"Ugh...?"

"Does it hurt? Hurts, doesn't it? Yep. It'll hurt like hell."

The attendant spirit flew around me, taunting me.

"You went and used aura recklessly before you'd even opened proper channels. Of course your feeble body couldn't take it! Serves you right."

"You... bas... tard...!"

"Oh. But bending aura like a spring at the very end was good. You did well there. I'll give you credit for that. You always need to get creative with aura. People often get this wrong, but the smarter you are, the better you fight."

I couldn't care less about that right now.

"Hh, huk...! Ghh...!"

This pain!

The agony of bones shattering and blood vessels bursting. All I cared about right now was how to make this excruciating pain stop. Normally, pain dulled with time, but with time stretched endlessly by the elixir, there was no such relief. It simply hurt. It kept hurting.

I genuinely felt like I was going to die.

"Hurts so much you feel like you're dying?"

"Can't... you tell... by looking...?"

"Then you'll be fine if you actually die."

What?

"Forcing aura channels open normally leaves a person half crippled. Even potions can't fix it. The damage is permanent. So you just crippled yourself to kill one orc."

"What... are you..."

"I told you, Zombie. If you didn't have a regression skill, I wouldn't have recommended this training method. Old Markus takes elixirs too, but he just sits cross-legged for a while. He doesn't charge mindlessly at monsters like you."

This ghost bastard!

"But you go back when you die. What a sweet deal! Your body stays perfectly fine no matter how extreme your training gets. Man, I'm jealous. So jealous. If only I'd had a regression skill like yours!"

Wow.

How could anyone be this infuriating?

Did this guy happen to have a passive skill like [Taunting] or [Being an Asshole]? Otherwise, there was no explaining why his personality was such garbage.

"But Zombie, if you kill yourself, your kill count goes up again."

"So... what...?"

"There's no reason to raise it any further. It'd be dangerous if old Markus spotted you."

THOOM.

An ominous sound resounded grandly behind me. I'd heard it somewhere before, and not very long ago, either. When I turned around, my bad feeling proved right. A monster identical to the orc I'd just brought down stood there, drooling.

"Damn... it..."

The monster was the same, but my condition wasn't. As the attendant spirit had certified, my body was now half crippled. Pain wracked my entire body so badly that I couldn't move a finger.

"It's fine! There are tons of hunters who never get the hang of aura in their entire lives, but you chugged an elixir and got a feel for it on your first try. At this rate, a hundred deaths will probably do the trick! A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and a hundred deaths begin with one death."

The attendant spirit grinned.

"You can do it, our little Zombie! Let's go for death number one!"

At the same time, the orc's club began to descend. Slowly. Aimed squarely at the crown of my head.

I looked up at the club looming right before my face and opened my mouth.

"Oh... for... fuck's... sake..."

CRUNCH!

Your nose breaking, your skull shattering, and your brain bursting, in that order. Have you ever felt it?

You haven't, I'm sure. Good thing, too. It really feels like shit.

The only consolation, perhaps, was that I heard a voice the moment my brain burst.

[You have died.]

The world returned to normal.

More precisely, my sense of time returned to normal.

'Whew...'

A pitch-black space.

The place where I stayed briefly after dying, before regressing.

In that place I'd grown somewhat used to... floated someone I didn't want to get used to.

"Huh?"

It was the attendant spirit.

"Whoa, what's this now?"

'... It's where I stay for a bit when I die. When the Flame Emperor and the Sword Star killed me, I chose skill cards here. Well, for now, I'm going to call it the Underworld.'

"That's fucking fascinating."

The attendant spirit looked briskly around the dark space.

"But Zombie, why am I here too?"

'How would I know? Probably because you're haunting me.'

I sighed.

'If I wait a little, a voice says, "You will regress twenty-four hours," and then I regress. Oh, right. I'm also a little curious whether you'll regress with me or—'

I was just about to finish saying I was curious.

[Death has fulfilled the skill's condition.]

[Randomly copying a skill from the monster Orc.]

'... Huh?'

"What?"

The attendant spirit and I both froze. We turned our heads and looked at each other. He wore an incredulous expression, and my face probably looked much the same.

[Forming skill cards.]

Two bronze-colored cards rose out of the darkness.

Looking up at them, I muttered blankly.

'... Monsters had skills too?'

And the attendant spirit shouted.

"What the hell! That's totally broken!"