Nether Feast - Chapter 2

I wasn’t out long. If it was any longer, I would’ve been dead before I’d known I’d survived the fight. I woke with a pain flowing through my gut, chest, and shoulders. The flesh of my shoulders had healed better than the rest of my body. Flesh always healed faster than cartilage and bone.

As much as I just wanted to lay there and fall into self-pity and hopelessness from losing my friends and being stuck in some unknown realm, I had no choice but to face off with another Netherspawn that was scavenging the bodies of my friends and the remains of the demons I killed. At least Arusha had survived.

Pulling up my stats, I was at least partial relieved at what I saw.

Status

Name: Ailen Reaver

Level: 13

Health: 220(+23) à 243

Mana: 424(+40) à 464

Stamina: 660(+198) à 858

Strength: 11(+1) à 12

Agility: 13

Constitution: 10(+1) à 11

Intelligence: 27(+1) à 28

Wisdom: 17(+2) à 19

I’d leveled, which helped to explain why I was still alive. Leveling didn’t always heal a person, but it certainly had positive effects. I also saw my new stats and was greatly surprised. Five additional points were the most a person could gain per level and it wasn’t always guaranteed. One’s advancement depended upon the training a person did between levels. Even a mage could limit their study for a time and do a lot of training to help advance their physical stats. For those that didn’t discipling themselves and work hard, they might just end up getting a few points. There was one exception to this. Life and death battle tended to grant a person the full five stat points.

The new Netherspawn was ripping into one of the demons I’d killed. It looked more like a large mutt than humanoid. Thankfully, leveling helped me to gather mana from the surrounding environment. Preparing a fireball in both hands, I sat up just enough to aim and launched one bolt with my good arm, catching the monster in the ribs.

It tumbled away before quickly coming to its feet and throwing itself into the air toward me. I watched it come. Raising my other hand with help from my good arm, I met it head on. I put my legs between us as it landed on top of me. I had to throw my head to the side so that its long gator-like maw didn’t clamp down on my face. My Fireball slammed into its chest. Its chest cavity seemed to collapse inward and suddenly I was soaked in a downpour of demon blood.

As I kicked it off, I felt the sting of fresh wounds on my stomach where its claws had raked at my gut. A wave of nausea washed over me. It wasn’t because of my wounds themselves, but because the demon’s blood had entered my body through them.

Chuckling painfully at the absurdity of dying to the demon’s corrosive body fluids after surviving the last couple attacks, I forced myself to roll over and pull myself toward the dead demon hound. I cast Mend, but even if my skin was already healing over, the demon blood was eating away at my insides.

I cast Mend on myself repeatedly and drained the demon of mana so that I could keep the process going. When the dog-demon was drained completely, I moved on to the dead humanoid demons and continued the process as long as I could. It was a losing battle, but one I could win if I had unlimited mana. I did not.

My death was looming over me. I wandered over to what was left of Nelson and found his long sword. Falling on a blade would be a far less painful way to go than corroding to death from the inside out.

I wasn’t from a soldier family, or even an adventurer one, but a simple family of merchants that owned a few farmlands and a store in the town where I’d grown up. As I was trying to figure out the best way to put myself out of my misery, another Netherspawn came, and it wasn’t alone.

I gave them a bloody grin. Dying fighting would save me the trouble from having to figure out how to end my own misery. It surprised me that I wasn’t that fearful. I wanted more time with Arusha and to ascend to higher realms, but mostly I wanted the pain to stop.

Coming to such a conclusion so soon seemed to awaken something inside of me. I was willing to die—just like that? Perhaps there was another option. Draining them would allow me to keep the healing process going even longer. If I could hold out long enough, maybe even level once or twice, my body might fight off the demon blood’s corrosion.

And so I fought, screaming as the internal pain spiked. Leveling up helped to give me just enough mana to cast five fireballs before I’d run out again, but even though my wisdom stat had gone up by two, I’d still need to draw the Netherspawn in close to actually kill them.

The shapes and sizes the demons could take seemed to have unlimited variety. I did my best to use my general identify ability that was such a simple use of mana that even warriors could use it. The information about the demons it provided was limited, but one thing was clear. These scavengers were around twenty to twenty-five. The only thing that saved me was that none of them practiced magic or had any range attacks. That and they fought each other over the bodies of the dead as much as they fought me.

As the ones I faced died, more came in a steady stream. Rest was even harder to come by than relief from the pain. A few times there were minutes between attacks, but mostly they just kept coming. As I fought, the number of wounds I accumulated only increased. As one of my wounds healed, many more took it place. The dog-demon’s blood wasn’t the last of the corrosive blood to enter my system. That too accumulated the more I fought, forcing me to constantly cast Mend and Mana Leech. Somehow, I hung on, but my life as well as my consciousness was dangling by a thread.

I have no idea how long the fighting went on. One moment I was half dead and the next I found myself alone in the midst of countless bodies. I walked over to the last creature I killed and leech it of mana before healing myself again. It was then that I realized that the demon blood was no longer corroding my insides.

There were numerous popup windows that I’d ignored during the fight, and I began to read through them. What I found left me both relieved and dejected.

Lesser Blood Tempering (Demon)

You have unlocked a rare trait. This trait has a low chance of being unlocked when a person has been infected with demon blood. Most often, the intake of demon blood is fatal. In the case that a person survives, it usually leaves their body weakened. Due to constant healing, and advancement in level, you have fought off the demon blood’s destructive properties and even integrated it into your own system. This grants you an increase in strength, agility, and a toughening of one’s body.

+5 Strength

+5 Agility

+5 Constitution

Hardened Skin

Hardened Skeleton

Demonic Digestive System

Bonus: You are now able to recover faster by eating Netherspawn.

At least my internal pain was gone. I healed myself again just to speed the process as I found another dead Netherspawn and drained as well. Continuing to look through my popups, I didn’t know how to respond to what I saw.

Mend has evolved into Lesser Heal.

Mana Drain has evolved into Life and Energy Syphon.

Fireball has evolved to Incinerate.

I had three different spells that had already evolved? Such an advancement would normally take months doing normal dungeon runs and training. Which begged the question, how long had I been fighting?

I had no time telling device, so I looked at my stats once again to try to decern as much as I could.

Status

Name: Ailen Reaver

Trait: Lesser Blood Tempering (Demon)

Level: 13(+8) à21

Health: 243(+319) à 562

Mana: 464(+539) à 1,003

Stamina: 858(+3,300) à 4,158

Strength: 12(+6) à 18

Agility: 13(+7) à 20

Constitution: 11(+11) à 22

Intelligence: 28(+15) à 43

Wisdom: 19(+16) à 35

Already level 21? How was that even possible? I’d gained +5 in my physical stats from my new trait, which turned me into a bloody monster for my level. Not literally, but close enough… It was then that I caught sight of my current stamina.

434 out of 4,158.

It was slowly going up, but it was moving far slower than it should have. Generally, stamina was quick to recover, but the more you exerted yourself the slower its recovery rate would become. I was unquestionably exhausted. That couldn’t be denied, but such a low recovery rate could only mean one thing. I’d been here fighting for hours, maybe a day or more without stopping. There seemed to be no sun here, so I couldn’t know for sure. Even if I’d found a way to recover from the corrosion of the demonic blood, I would soon collapse and no longer be able to fight even after all this. There seemed to be only one option. I looked at the information from my new trait one last time.

Demonic Digestive System

Bonus: You are now able to recover faster by eating Netherspawn.

Even if I decided to try doing as it said, there was no guarantee it meant I’d gain stamina. It might just apply to health or mana. With a lull in the fight, I needed to get away and find a safe place to rest while I had a chance.

The familiar scraping of heavily clawed feet was like a sudden knife to the chest. Was it ever going to stop? The bodies surrounding me might distract them for a moment, but I’d noticed that some Netherspawn preferred living prey and would come for me the moment they noticed I was there. Even as I thought of trying to sneak away, I knew it wouldn’t work.

I did something then that I’d never dare to do in any other situation. I licked my lips that were covered in demon blood. Forcing myself to swallow and trying not to vomit at the mere thought of it, I watched my stamina closely. When it began to tick up faster ever so slightly, I released a pent-up breath. I had no way to know if ingesting demon blood would kill me in the long run, but at least it might help me recover enough in the short term to survive another fight.

Grabbing ahold of the leg of a bird-like demon, I used the remaining eight inches of Nelson’s long sword to saw at it. I pulled away the turkey-demon leg that hadn’t even been cooked.

As I forced myself to take a bite, it was immediately clear that my new trait hadn’t changed my tastebuds. Normally, I would’ve emptied my stomach on the ground, but I was simply far too tired for that. Even as I swallowed what tasted of burnt iron, I watched my stamina. It was fifteen seconds before I saw what made the disturbing act of eating raw demon worth the questionable act.

I tossed what remained of my current weapon aside and prepared my new fire spell Incinerate in one hand while holding on to my meal in the other. As a lizard type Netherspawn climbed to the top of the pile of bodies at my flank, I unleashed a stream of flame that engulfed it. The flames only grew hotter the longer I held the spell in place.

More than anything I wished for rest, but immediate survival came first. I had no choice. Such lulls in my constant battle were rare, but the longer I fought, the more I grew—and the more demons I ate, the less tired I felt. Soon the concept of time slipped from my consciousness and all that existed was unending violence.

In the gray world of the Netherplane, I fell into darkness. It wasn’t the darkness from the lack of light, but parts of my humanity dimmed. Covered in wounds and blood, what being could distinguish me from the demons that hunted me? Besides the faint memory of seeing my friends suffer and die, the desire to survive and the desperate need to grow in power was all that I had left.