Chapter 14: Chapter 14. Not a Simple Civilian
The number of monsters appearing here was far more than any of us had ever faced. Davi, Traikun and the fighters yelled as they engaged the purgers that were coming at them. I never saw them being this determined. It was a fight to the death for us.
Jeong Yewon gritted her teeth when she saw one of purger coming to her direction and, with a fork in her hand, was preparing to defend herself from the coming purger.
"Stand back," I told her while moving to stand in front of her. The purger leaped at me with its arms looking ready to smash anything in its way.
Instead of backing, I moved forward, toward the purger. Like a shooting snake, my arm swung and my knife slashed through the purger neck.
"Grug!" The purger was surprised. It frantically held its neck, trying to stop the bleeding. The blood pour out endlessly, like an overflowed river. The purger's went down holding its blood-gushing opened neck, life seeped away from it.
Great! Being an Acolyte, I was really more powerful compared to the ordinary purger.
Without wasting time, I jumped onto the purger on my side that was targeting Seo Daho. The purger was swinging its open palm toward Seo. It's just a palm, but if this palm landed on Seo Daho then the man would've at least had his neck broken. Seo Daho lifted his arm as his last attempt to block it.
It saw me coming, but wasn't fast enough to change its movement. Before its hand landed on Seo Daho's blocking arm my knife stabbed its neck. The momentum of the stabbing caused the purger to sway away from Seo Daho.
"Grgrl!"
As I pulled my knife out, the life of the purger was pulled along with it.
Both Jeong Yewon and Seo Daho looked at me with unbelieving expression. I had been calmed from the first time they picked me up with the bus. They had never thought I'd do this. Heck, I never thought I'd do this. Though I never thought of myself as evil, I certainly was never a saint.
I nodded at Jeong and Seo before started picking next target. The closest to me would, of course, be the group of fighters. With a knife in my right hand and a baton on my left, I made my way.
Traikun was fighting one on one with a purger. He was fast and precise. His knee hit the purger's chest and stop it from moving forward. The purger wasn't thrown away, though. It still stood strong. Traikun threw his second kick, the force contained within this kick was immense.
"Uh!" Traikun's kick landed on the purger's arm, as it blocked him. If this kick landed on another human being this should threw that person away, now, however, it was Traikun who slightly lost his balance. The purger used this chance to push him. Traikun fell and the purger was about to trample him. It's at this time I arrived and slashed the beast from behind. My knife went deep, almost cutting it in half. Traikun kicked it away.
I didn't stop here, I moved again.
Davi managed to slip and grab one of the purger, trying to lock its movement. When he was about to slam it down, the purger elbowed him right on the side of his head. Extreme pain assaulted Davi and he immediately lost his focus. Instead of the purger, Davi was the one on a brink of falling down. Seeing that its enemy was staggering, the purger didn't waste time. The claw swung down.
I managed to reach it before the claws reached him, stabbing its neck. The purger went down, it had barely made a growl before going silent.
"Phineas?" now, I got the same expression from the Davi like the one I got from Jeong Yewon, Seo Daho and Traikun. I didn't bother with it and moving on to the next purger.
Everytime I got close to one purger, I would immediately dispose of it. It's easy for me to do it because those purgers weren't originally paying attention to me. They were already busy engaging the others that I could just jumped in and finished them in one or two moves.
Whenever I finished helping one person, he or she would just stare at me at amazement. All of their eyes were following my movements. I didn't noticed this at first, but when I did I got irritated.
I yelled at them, "What are you doing? Go help the others!".
As if awakened from their folly, they immediately complied with what I said. They started ganging up on the purgers. This time, I could see the difference in their fighting style. They were fighting with more hope now. Of course, many versus one would tip the balance in our favor.
The purgers were going down at a faster rate as time went on. Wherever I went I would make sure to introduce them to the cold knife I was holding now. The normal purgers couldn't go against me one on one. As for the one being gang up on, they're falling down too. It took time but they were slowly killed off.
From the hundreds that survived the machine guns now only twenty or so left. Everybody was ganging up on them. However, among the purgers, there were still two yellow-eyed alive and they were still butchering our people. They were simply stronger and moved faster than the lower level ones. Even for me, they're scary.
"Focus on shooting those two!" I pointed at the two yellow eyed to the soldiers.
Some people who understood what I said helped to translate it. Most of the soldiers who still had their guns were shaking their head. The commander and one of his soldiers took out their handgun and started to shoot at one of the yellow-eyed. They were emptying their bullets on it.
"Kreeeee!" the particular yellow-eyed's attention was drawn to the commander and his man. It was bleeding profusely and it's angry. It started charging at them.
I ran and intercepted that bleeding yellow-eyed.
When we met, the yellow-eyed swung its arm while I dodged downward. I moved my knife upward and it thrusted the monster under the chin. It bellowed hard, then tried to grab me. I made a somersault backward and leaped forward again just as I landed. The yellow-eyed monster tried to catch me but it was staggering, weaken from losing too much blood, and missed me. I turned in the air and grabbed its head, locking it with my baton.
The yellow-eyed purger shrieked full of rage. As I twisted it's neck, a snapping sound was heard, the neck was broken and it went down.
The last shriek attracted the attention of the other yellow-eyed purger. That last yellow-eyed looked at me and ran toward my direction.
"No bullets," the commander shouted at me when I looked at him. It was in Korean but his gesture was enough for me to understand.
Well, this was just great, I thought. This one yellow-eyed only had minor wound from gunshot. It was not enough to make it hurt.
"Give me that sword!" I said to one of the fighter wielding a short sword. He immediately threw the sword to me. I let go of my baton and grabbed the short sword.
Clank!
When the yellow-eyed's claws met my sword, sparks flew and we were both stopped. I felt numbing sensation but could still held onto the sword. Then the yellow-eyed's other set of claws met with my knife.
Clank! It was a stalemate for us.
The onlookers were flabbergasted. An ordinary human being could stand one on one with a higher level monster like this?
Before, when they saw the large amount of purgers that were coming for us and how easy for the yellow-eyed to slay us human, even after heavily wounded by gunfire, they all thought we didn't have any chance to survive at all. But now, not only the ordinary purgers were defeated, even the yellow-eyed one was stopped.
With both our hands occupied, we were both struggling. This monster was as strong as me. I suddenly thought of something I saw yesterday. On that very second, I jumped backward. At the same time, the yellow eyed's tongue shot out.
"Damn, too fast!" my thought flashed and I immediately activated, "Titan Armor!"
The yellow-eyed's tongue hit my chest squarely. The force threw me back. The onlookers were gasping. They were frightened. I was even more frightened.
I stood up, touching my chest. This Titan Armor was amazing. The tongue attack was the yellow-eyed special attack. I assumed it's stronger than the claw attack. However, I wasn't injured. My shirt was torn exactly at the part where the tongue landed, that's all. This made all the difference. I had just proven that my strength was comparable with the yellow-eyed and now I found out I have great defense as well.
This great defense was not free though. It did consume quite a good portion of my stamina. Still, it felt good.
Subconsciously I grinned at the yellow-eyed purger. Without wasting time, we both were going at it again.
The clash between the yellow-eyed claws and my weapons caused sparks flew. It was blinding to the eyes of the onlookers. Not only the sparks, even the sounds of us hitting each other were making the people frightened.
I could not, no matter how hard I tried, break the claws. It had the same quality as my sword and my knife, if not better.
Fortunately, even though the yellow-eyed was faster than the ordinary ones, it's still not as fast as me. Because of that fact, I could maneuver myself and hit it. It wasn't easy though. This yellow-eyed purger had amazing reflexes and unbelievable stamina. Some of my attacks were blocked by it and it even managed to score several tongue attacks on me.
Once or twice was alright for me to activate Titan Armor but later on I started to feel the toll it took on me. My breathing was starting to get heavier and heavier.
"Not good!" this had became a battle of attrition. And I realized that I would be the one losing if this kept going. I needed to change my tactic.
Since I already managed to make it bleed in several places, I decided to focus my attention and relied on my speed to avoid getting hit by its tongue attack. Thus I could stop wasting my stamina because of using Titan Armor.
Whenever it attacked, I dodged. And whenever I dodged, I tried making a small effort to counterattack it. Small additional wounds started to add on the yellow-eyed body. I stopped taking the initiative to start an ambitious attack. Just simple dodging, stabing, dodging and slashing.
This simple tactic worked. The yellow-eyed purger couldn't land a single tongue attack anymore. As for its claw attack, I merely blocked or dodged them.
The yellow-eyed was beginning to show weaker attacks and slower response. It was already minutes since we started fighting. The beast was amazing to be able to hold such a long time while bleeding profusely.
When I could start attacking again, the yellow-eyed was already so much weakened.
"My turn!" I saw this as a chance. My stamina was also almost depleted, I knew I should take this chance. The passive tactic had now changed. My sword and knife stabbed and slashed everywhere, making it bleed even more.
Finally, the yellow-eyed purger succumbed and fell down on its knees. It couldn't even avoid or block when I stabbed the short sword into its neck. It struggled a bit but could not do anything of worth and then with a slashing on its throat I ended its life.
The onlookers, who were watching intensely, suddenly erupted in cheers. This sudden turn of event made everyone rejoiced. The fighters and soldiers ran to me and lift me up. There were shouts of joy everywhere. People were patting me on the shoulders and words of congratulation were delivered, or at least I thought of those as congratulatory words since I didn't understand Korean enough. I could feel their excitement were as real as can be.
"You should be the one titled Undefeated," Davi said sincerely while hugging me. Oh if he only knew, I thought to myself, before this world changed I would not even have a slightest chance against a real fighter like him, much less an ordinary purger.
Traikun, with his limited English, wrested my arm and shouted, "Good! Good fighter! Strong fighter!"
Davi and Traikun made me think a bit. They're experienced fighter but they didn't find that I wasn't really a fighter?
Jeong Yewon came to me. She made a slight bow, the bow Korean usually made when greeting. After that, to my surprise, she moved closer. To the point we were almost cheek to cheek. I could smell her lovely fragrance and feel her breath. And then she whispered directly to my ear, "Thank you."
After that, people were taking turns to shake my hand. I grinned and smiled for a long time that my face felt distorted.
The reinforcement came, a bit too late, and dumbfounded when they saw that we had survived the onslaught.
The commander decided that we couldn't maintain two frontlines. They started to work on closing the other bridge. Minimal guards were put there which served only as warning. They focused their defense on one bridge only. All resources were gathered to defend that one bridge.
The refugee who ran away were coming back. Thousands of people were now back to their original camps. They heard about how we survived this ordeal.
I didn't know what to do with this sudden celebrity status I got and I didn't like how I was given a private room all by myself. I was guessing the commander did that to allow me to rest without getting disturbed all the time.
I went to find the commander. When we met, I asked him something that make him astonished.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone