บท 20: London Bridge is Falling Down
Seneos sneered as he heard what the beast said.
"Yeah right, like I'll be able to stand up to you with just that. You're a 30 meters tall Moose-Serpent-Human thing that can swat away high-ranking hunters...Uh, warriors if you will. I cannot imagine being able to defend myself with just experience and skill." He explained before the beast shut him down.
"Be brave ! Do not put yourself down every two seconds, Leader. A ruler never does that. A leader is either overconfident, arrogant, or he is composed and knows his value. A leader that puts himself, or anything linked to him, down is no true leader ! Experience and skill will allow you to guess my patterns, strengthen your reflexes and do all sorts of things. There is more to life than power for us mortals !" The beast bellowed, nearly making Seneos fly away due to it being so close to him as the full force behind the voice hit him.
"I-I get it....No need to crush me with your damn voice. But what exactly will you have me do ? I don't really know where to start." Seneos asked in a shaky voice. However one could tell it held a bit more confidence than usual. Thus was the power of being pushed, of being encouraged.
The beast suddenly sat down, lifting up a cloud of dirt and making the earth tremble a bit.
"What will I have you do ? Nothing. You will do whatever you want, I will simply point towards a direction, guide you towards a path. Our relationship cannot exactly be a healthy one if I try to direct you despite the difference in our positions." It said, making Seneos smile.
None of them could hear Vodka muttering to herself in the distance. She could hear them perfectly, and she was not impressed.
'Too kind, too encouraging, too submissive....My data does not speak of a powerful beast that would so easily give away it's throne...This could be bad.' Such were her thoughts, and they continued on. Her Overlord was too easily impressed, too easily swayed by flowery words that encouraged him. He was too weak due to years of being put down, by others and himself. He couldn't see that the beast could very well be trying to manipulate him. A being that could easily control it's emotions like Vodka wouldn't be sold on those lies though, she would see to the end of this. Her thoughts on the beast only stopped when she hummed, perhaps to herself.
Back to Seneos, he listened as the beast started to give him pointers on how to fight effectively. The wolves were too terrified of it to make a single noise, so they merely remained a few meters away and hoped Seneos would be stupid enough to come to them. He certainly looked like he had been about to, so they could only hope. Most of them were drooling to the death.
"Firstly, you have less endurance, or stamina as some would say, than most creatures. You cannot afford to tire yourself, so no grand show of skill or anything, limit your movements to the minimum. You'll be able to show off when your stamina improves to acceptable levels. Secondly, keep in mind that those beasts are stupid. Or rather they are less intelligent than you humans, though I believe you like to tell each other that it is not the case to mock each other...Or whatever it is your human indeed to do by giving such importance to beasts. Due to their poor intelligence, they won't form any strategy beyond aiming for the throat and attacking in pack. This is dangerous, and you do not have any actual techniques to counter it. However..." The beast trailed off and smiled, it's mouth opening to reveal ranges upon ranges of razor-sharp teeth like thick needles.
"You will be able to somewhat fight them off in two ways. The cowardly but understandable way, which will have you hit one of them before returning to me. I do not like it, and neither should you, however at your level it is understandable. The other way would have you scaring them by going over the top. What I mean by that is simple.....Pick the one that looks the strongest and kill it. Rip it apart, you want to appear as a ferocious beast bent on devouring them. The Orcs of this dungeon used to do exactly that to scare their enemies, so they should be instantly wary of you. With some chance, they will actually take you for some small and pale orc. " The beast said, shaking it's fists excitedly. If it knew what a thumbs-up was, Sen thought it would have surely given him one.
So in the end, Seneos braced himself and walked towards the wolves. The Beast distanced itself from Sen and the wolves attacked as soon as they considered it to be far enough.
Sen aimed his knife at the first one that came to him and side-stepped. The knife found itself running through the left side of the wolf's head, killing it on the spot.
Before Sen could turn around to aim at another wolf, a sharp pain came from his right leg. He stabbed it's knife right in the skull of another wolf and grabbed it's corpse. He threw it at the other incoming wolves which bought him some time. The toughest looking wolf, which was the biggest one and the only one with a scar on it's body, came into view and growled deeply at Sen.
Sen lunged forward, right as it did the same. It tried to bit off his throat, but Sen predicted it. He ducked down and it passed right over him. He spun around and planted his foot on it's skull.
"Sorry about that." He whispered before driving his knife inside it's stomach.
The other wolves were already on Sen, one of them even having been fast enough to stab it's fangs inside Sen's left arm. He winced and grabbed the new wolf by the throat, leaving his knife inside of the wound.
He started to suffocate the wolf until he saw it's brethren jumping on him. Thinking of a plan in an instant, Sen put his forearms on the wolf's belly and used it as a shield. He then threw it away but nearly fell down because of it's weight and the sudden force behind his throw.
He huffed angrily and grabbed the knife, twisting it violently in the stomach of the yelping wolf. The wolves winced as they heard the cry of pain. One of them ignored it and still charged at Seneos who used the already wounded wolf to protect himself. Using wolves as shields proved to be effective, who knew that. Someone his size who wasn't a hunter would have had difficulty pulling off something like that, but F rank hunters were still stronger than the common adult humans.
Sen quickly took out the knife and stabbed it in the eye of the wolf that had attacked, forcing it to retreat. The blade quickly found itself inside the 'leader' of the pack once again. This time Seneos winced as the yelps intensified, and he began biting his lips.
'For fuck's sake, I'm sorry you poor thing. I know you're hungry, but I have fought enough of your kind in my disaster of a career to know I can't show weakness.' He thought, more to reassure himself than anything really.
He plunged his hand inside the wound and started to tear the flesh apart. The wolf howled as loudly as it could, it's vision darkening. Perhaps it was already dying, or perhaps it was simply because the night was falling inside this miniature world. The answer became clear once Sen finished ripping apart the flesh, soaking himself with the hot crimson liquid.
He looked at the other wolves, daring them to come at him. In truth he wasn't that sure of his chances since there were still five of them left, however, some of them had already fled. If others had fled, the ones left could too.
'Please....Run...' Seneos thought. The wolves winced and kept their tails and head down when another burst of gore splattered all over the ground.
Seneos looked down to see his hands moving on their own, tearing apart the insides of the wolf.
"What....S-Stop !" He screamed at his hands, as if they actually had a mind of their own.
They stopped, but not completely. They were not really still due to how much Sen was trembling.
Seeing this, the wolves whined and started to walk off, keeping a line of sight with Seneos all the while. He also kept an eye on them, before sighing as their pace fastened.
"That took more out of me than I thought...." Seneos muttered as the footsteps of the giant monster could be heard in the distance. It walked up to him and crouched down to speak.
"I think we've found the path your body wants to follow, but your heart doesn't seem to agree with it. Perhaps you should practice more. However, that guide is starting to get impatient. It really wants you to get to the throne room."
Sen nodded and tried to apply strength on his legs. He found out that he couldn't. He wasn't that exhausted, no, he simply couldn't move them anymore.
"Ah...Hmm, can you help me ?" He asked the beast who smiled and scooped him up with it's massive hands covered in hard scales.
As it walked back to Vodka, or at least to where it sensed her presence, it glanced at Seneos from the corner of it's eyes. He was shivering at the sensation of being covered in blood from head to toe. He too began to glance from the corner of his eyes when he felt a burning gaze fixated on him. An out-of-place wicked smile later, it already had made an assumption on what type of leader Seneos was going to become, or rather what type of man he would be. For a while that was. Everyone could change. But what a smile that was.
Since Seneos couldn't walk on his own, the beast ended up carrying him all the way to the ruins. It used a wide crack in the walls to enter and the group found themselves near the entrance of the throne room.
Before they could open the massive doors, however, Vodka spoke.
"It appears that we are finally going to find out more about this dungeon as well as about you, Overlord. That thing's little training session was useful, but this will allow us to know what your path is. Killing wolves doesn't tell much." Vodka said and Seneos nearly chuckled at how petty she sounded.
The beast pushed the metal doors and as they groaned, he responded to her little attack.
"Fights, especially gruesome ones, reveal a lot about personalities. You can't put on a mask in a situation of life and death, when you are covered in blood...Be it yours or that of the enemy. I reckon this path thing you are talking about is out of knowledge, but this fight revealed something else. Perhaps something hidden deep inside." It said and Vodka's many voices spoke right after. Even the beast seemed put off by all those different voices speaking in a synchronized manner.
"It revealed nothing we didn't already know."
"We.....Well, you are right I suppose."
*************
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