Chương 7: Battle Partners

~Four weeks later~

A dark blade swept over Edol's head as he ducked, a few unlucky strands of hair disappearing from the strike. His opponent was still the same as the one he had been fighting the day he arrived here, but a lot had changed in the last four weeks.

Immediately after dying, the demon had fallen into a rage, repeatedly attacking Edol with some sort of magic.

Perhaps because of how the demon had died, it seemed to love summoning earth spikes to impale Edol from below.

Edol couldn't remember how many times he'd died to those spikes… just thinking about the pain made his whole body shiver.

After a few hours of attacking him with only magic, the demon seemed to run out of steam, and went back to fighting hand to hand. This was the only time Edol stood a chance at landing a hit on his foe.

Over the days, his fighting abilities advanced. He started to see patterns in the demon's movement, and capitalized on them to approach his enemy.

As such, he had managed to triumph over the demon a number of times.

Each time the demon revived, it recovered back to full condition, and this seemed to include its magic power. The first few times the demon died it went on a rampage with magic, but after dying five times, it stopped using magic to fight. The look in its eyes… It seemed to enjoy fighting Edol, and fighting with magic made the battle too easy.

There was no real way to tell time in this dim, sunless world, and Edol's estimation of how long he had been in here- four weeks- was based purely on instinct.

The demon had been angry enough to forfeit sleeping for the first two days after its first death, killing Edol non-stop.

One might wonder how Edol hadn't gone insane by now.

Repeatedly dying in terrible ways, with the pain multiplied, how could an ordinary college student remain sane?

Well… maybe he wasn't quite sane now.

Edol tried to side-step another swing from the demon, but his reaction was a bit too slow. A sickening, meaty noise sounded through the air as his left arm was cleaved off, but his reaction to it was a bit too off-putting.

A happy smile covered Edol's face as he lunged forwards, raising his one remaining arm towards the demon's head. Another earthen spike was clenched tightly between his digits.

The demon tried to escape his reach, but Edol followed it without giving up any ground. Kicking against a random spike sticking up from the ground, Edol's hand finally reached the demon's head, and he thrust the spike in.

"Hahh… Edol 12, Ugly 3,286."

Edol smiled proudly. His ratio of winning battles was only increasing over time, and he was sure that he would eventually overtake the demon in combat ability.

Fighting this demon was just like overcoming a tough video game boss. Sure, there was a bit of pain that came with each loss, but the sensation of improving to overcome a powerful enemy was slowly taking control of Edol. The fighting was almost… fun.

Edol still died nearly three hundred times for each time he managed to take down the demon, but that only made each victory even sweeter.

This time when the demon respawned, its eyes were filled with an excited light.

"Grokak?"

It spat out a weird grunting sound. This was the second time it had tried to communicate with Edol, the first being just before its first death.

"Gahrak rohak?"

It fixed its eyes on Edol, seemingly waiting for an answer.

"No Ugly, I won't accept your surrender. You can't escape from the fight until my score catches up to yours!"

The score he referred to was the kill count- Edol wanted to avenge himself for all his countless deaths.

"Garak!"

The demon approached Edol at a quick rate, but didn't draw its sword.

"The hell is with that look in your eyes, Ugly? Hey! Back off, demon! I don't swing that way!"

The demon reached out its arms, seemingly trying to cup Edol's head between its hands.

Edol reacted in the way anyone might in the face of an unwanted advancement.

His steel toed boot repeated the same sequence that had taken the demon down the first time.

A second later, the demon respawned once again.

The excited look in its eyes was now a mix of three emotions- a bit of excitement from whatever plan it had, anger, and trauma. The feeling of those steel toed boots was the stuff of nightmares…

Ugly charged at Edol, covering the distance between the two in under a second. Edol was tackled to the ground before he had a chance to react, pinned under the weight of the demon.

Without giving Edol a chance to spit out any more misleading lines, it smashed its own forehead against Edol's.

The world swam in front of Edol's eyes after the impact, and he temporarily gave up resisting the demon.

A rough hand covered his forehead, and through his shaky vision, Edol could see that the demon had put its other hand on its own forehead.

Sinister red light began emanating from both of its hands, forming little whirlpools that looked almost like crimson blood.

"Ack, No! Get off me you demon!"

Edol tried to push the demon off, but with only one arm, he was unable to escape. A moment later, the red light from the demon's hands disappeared, and it moved its hands away. On the demon's forehead now lay a crimson mark, in the shape of a whirlpool. A single unfamiliar character lay in the center of the whirlpool, one that Edol had never seen in his time on earth.

If he could see himself, Edol would have seen a matching symbol on his own forehead.

The demon, now looking a bit drained, swayed a bit as it let out a deep breath.

Ugly leaned back, seemingly winding up for something.

"Demon! What did you just do to me?"

Ugly offered no answer, pausing for a moment, then bringing his head forward quickly.

The demon's head collided with Edol's, the first point of contact being the two whirlpool tattoos it had just created. The force of the collision was too much for both of their skulls, and both of them died on the spot.