Not so thankfully: my face and back throbbed, and I felt several teeth loose in my gums. Blood coated my tongue, its taste bitter and metallic all at once.
Fucking furnar and its fucking sneak jab. Blood boiled in my veins and it was all I could do to restrain myself.
I was so… bloody… close.
More than the pain, the sensation of being on the edge was driving me insane. Of course, it wouldn’t be some unbeatable, unbreakable skill that would launch me to the heights of power. I understood that. It was just something to follow the [PARRY], so likely in the same vein, just better. Like every level of the skill made it easier to deflect a blow, this would probably just build on that. Incrementally. Because the system only worked in small increments from all I could gather.
But I wanted it. Needed it done. If that was the interface egging me on, or my own feelings, I had no idea in the moment.
That was probably why I spun right back around at the furnar attacking me, shifted the [IRON FLESH] to my free arm, and punched the fucker straight in what was left of its face. Granted, not the most effective attack imaginable, but with the previous shield damage it sent the artefact falling on its ass.
I didn’t follow it for the kill.
Took rapid stock. Three headcrabs getting ready to leap. The half-armed furnar picking up a fourth headcrab to brandish as a flailing club. And a final creature just pistoning its way across the muddy ground, charging towards me with the intent of a runaway freight train. That one was the farthest out and the least of my worries.
Just a little over a quarter of my MP left, draining steadily.
Perfect!
By a quick estimate, I had about six more chances to evolve the [PARRY] before I was out of victims. I spat a glob of blood, squared my shoulders, and allowed a grin to spread.
Pain and all, I rode that battle high to the internal tune of Army of immortals.
“Battle hymns did sound the call.” I sang it aloud. Couldn’t help myself.
First headcrab to leap was the first to die. It took careful aim for its attack, pounced like a cat on a mouse, splayed out its legs midair, opened wide that abdomen mouth and flapped its tongue in the wind. Quick as a gunshot. I met it with a downward swing of my fist. A meaty impact against my hardened arm. It hit the gound with a squelching impact and I drove my sword straight through it.
A successful [PARRY] didn’t need me using the sword. I’d been going about it the wrong way all this time. I could parry with anything because that’s what a fucking parry is: deflect an enemy’s blow and open them up to a follow-up. Sure, it made sense fucking now, emphasised by the same shock of the feel goods when I did the same to the next headcrab.
And then the next. Three dead, enough MP left to power the sword when I needed it for at least two more kills.
Two furnars and one weaponized headcrab left. They got suddenly cautious, circling me, as if whatever kept them animated suddenly grew a brain. I was panting hard, head light with a mix of adrenaline, excitement, and need to push into that bright moment of illumination my gut insisted would follow.
“Come on.” I waggled the sword at the one swinging the headcrab. “Come on!”
I was in the zone and I liked the zone. A lot. A bit too much. Way too much.
Okay, the zone was fucking terrifying and I struggled to keep my head on the goal. Parry. Kill. In that precise order. It didn’t matter how I parried as long as I did and then followed up with something. Through the hazy soup of my thoughts, the order of events was a bit hard to maintain.
Dodge the raking claws. Dodge the blind furnar. Raise the sword. Send the improvised club aside. Step in. Cut.
The furnar now missed two arms and a head. It toppled sideways, carried by the momentum of its wriggling weapon, and tripped up the other one. They went down in a tangle of limbs and shuddering mechanical absurdities. The headcrab got away, leapt for me, and got the same treatment as its brothers.
In the next moment the final furnar reached me. The thundering sound of heavy feet splashing through the mud announced I was about to get my head caved in.
[Iron flesh] fist met chrome fist and I was reminded painfully that I was a few kilos too light to pull off this kind of a counter attack. My shoulder nearly popped out of its socket again and I got spun around, feet splashing through a puddle, mud spraying everywhere. I went with the flow of the attack, ducked another blow mid-twirl, and came back with the sword singing through the air, mental finger pressed on the ignition key.
I realised entirely too late—halfway through atomising the deviant’s chest cavity—that I hadn’t actually parried its fucking blow.
“Shit!”
It was too late to stop the kill. The furnar fell apart, its shoulders and head separated from its bottom half by a sizzling, boiling crater. Red splashed my vision, the colour of pure anger directed inward, for wasting one of the few chances I had left.
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Now only one remained and it struggled back to its feet, with so little left of its head that I feared it would just expire. My world narrowed to that final foe and its stumbling, dizzy gait. It barely held upright but stubbornly advanced on me, arms moving like a puppet’s after all its strings got tangled up.
I’d either grasp the follow up to [PARRY] or I’d be screaming my lungs out for the foreseeable future. Part of me, that little rational side that kept an eye on my eccentricities, recognized how dramatic I was being but was ignored by the overwhelming majority made up of Eagerness, Excitement, Battle Lust, and plain ol’ Stubbornness. I drew a couple steps back, then a couple more while the furnar shambled my way. I waited out my MP, decided to not use any advantage, what with the thing being basically dead anyway.
“Come on,” I goaded it. “That’s it. Antennae, or whatever, on me.”
Its legs were making an electric whining sound and its arms moved with jerky starts and stops. My MP winked out. The exhaustion hit hard, but not enough to trip over. My eyes stayed glued to the creature. I dropped the sword, point first into the ground, and spread my arms in invitation.
“Now or never. Come on!”
It swung at me. I braced for pain.
Chrome met flesh as I punched at its heavy arm. Pain lanced up my shoulder, but I propped my entire back into that blow, turning it aside. This time I felt the shape of the new skill forming in my mind, oozing out of the interface, filling me with new information.
In that painful instant right after I diverted the blow, I saw my options clear as day and finally understood the evolution. [PARRY], and every other skill I’d unlocked so far, was nothing but the tip of the iceberg, the first taste of what my interface could teach me, and a pale shadow of what I could develop on my own later. Training wheels. What came after was where real power and knowledge lay.
A flood of new information almost had me miss the follow up. The deviant’s head was a mess of pulped bone and chitin, brain matter oozing out through the cracks. It’s throat was half-broken from the shield blow, and it would take no effort at all to end it.
I watched it stumble sideways, sway as if caught in a powerful gust of wind, and lose balance. My next blow caught it mid-fall, right in the centre of its pulped face. Knuckles shattered on impact, but so did its skull. Squishy brain matter gushed around the gaping wound, hot, soft and spongy. The creature didn’t make a sound and, instead, just sort of dropped dead, dragging me with it as it crumpled.
[Congratulations]
[You have defeated: Headcrab deviant x8]
[You have defeated: Furnar gatherer deviant x5]
[You have defeated: Black temple spider x3]
[You have advanced one of your skills: Parry - Initiate -> Counterattack - Journeyman]
[You have reached level 9!]
The healing pain shocked me straight out of that hyper-focused berserk state I’d fallen into. Like clarity following an orgasm, reality crashed into me like a Volvo truck.
I was. Wrist deep. Inside a furnar deviant’s skull. Feeling its brain degrading around my closed fist.
What. The. Fuck?!
I slowly rotated my eyes across the churned mud, the discarded chrome blades and arms, and the still half-rotted corpses. Beyond it all was Methol, behind the barrier, staring at me as if I’d grown a second and third head.
Because I’m a fuckwit, I drew out my brains-covered hand… and waved. The look on her face almost made the existential horror of that moment worth it.
Eternity crossed the barrier and came to land on my shoulder.
“Quite a spectacle,” it said, beady eyes looking about. “Congratulations on your victory.”
I shook the gore off my hand and rose to my feet as the corpse began disintegrating.
“Got a bit gruesome at the end,” I said and rolled my shoulders. Healed and with a full charge or MP, my only shock was that I wasn’t hungry. Given previous experience, it spoke of the furnar jerky’s quality. “Think I got a bit carried away.”
“Yes.” Eternity puffed out some smoke and followed the line of my gaze. “A bit might be an understatement. Are you all right?”
I shrugged as I ambled over to my sword and picked it up, then the shield. “I was having fun. Really wanted a new skill.”
[COUNTERATTACK]
[Your enemy needs to be taught why attacking you will be their last mistake]
[Turn aside a dangerous blow and immediately follow up with your response]
[“Thank you for this opening you’ve gifted me. Don’t mind if I exploit it.” Alassan the Fell Hand]
Nifty.
And it came with a lot of fresh muscle memory and fighting knowledge that I didn’t have before. Thinking back at what I just did, I saw all my errant openings, the failures to capitalise on my enemies’ weaknesses, and how bluntly I’d been fighting. A world of subtlety opened up. For the first time ever I thought about stuff like tracking a blow’s path, shifting my weight when deflecting, allowing momentum to carry me, and all the little ways in which I could and should get myself out of danger.
Mad stuff.
For all that, now that I was finally clear-headed, I’d still gone balls to the walls in on that fight for something that offered just a slightly better parry understanding. I still needed to train and practice and improve on my own.
Did it warrant me punching a hole in a deviant’s head? Probably not.
Was it fun in the moment? Fuck yeah.
“Was that you?” I asked as I picked my way among the puddles of awful stench. “Or the interface?”
“I provide nothing of the sort,” Eternity answered. We were indeed syncing up since it didn’t need any clarification for my meaning. “And neither does your interface. This, I’m afraid, was all you.”
The only proper answer to that was a grunt of acknowledgement. Nothing could push me to an extreme like that unless it was directly and internally motivated.
Like solving a good puzzle, or fixing a robot, or just getting a system running up-to-spec, progressing my skills was just as much of a dopamine treadmill, if not even more impressive. In a clear-headed state I could also call it addictive and recognise the danger it posed to my sanity. My behaviour had gone way past enthusiasm into reckless abandon and beyond even that. Unchecked, it could very well kill me in a more even fight.
Halfway back to Methol’s barrier a thought struck me.
“Why didn’t we get a node sealing message?” I asked, stopping to look around. “Did I miss one?”
Mouth of gold. Mouth of fucking gold!
It came from the forest like a ballistic missile streaking across the sky. Silver leaves followed its slipstream, rising into the air in small glittering eddies. Sound hit me a moment later, a powerful, deep buzz that reverberated in my gut.
It landed with a heavy thud and a huge splash of mud. Iron Man of the furnar variety.
Tall. Built like the furnar blacksmith. Chrome-plated, dragonfly-like wings on its back. Giant eyes as red as blood. And four arms each wielding a curved, thin blade. Two of them were chrome.
The other two set my heart into my throat. Black obsidian, glittering in oil spill shades of blues and greens. Mana swords…
Something fresh popped up in my HUD, centred on the new arrival.
[Furnar consort deviant]
[Risk assessment: Severe threat to life and limb]