Game of Monsters - 05 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Highschool DxD.

This Ain't the End of Me

Joshua didn’t even know what he was about to say when he saw the Hunter appeared to be back, but his open mouth clicked shut when he noticed that it wasn’t the man that had walked through the door. In his place, a cat jumped in, falling a few steps down the stairs of the basement. A white cat with black splashes of color over its fur. A very familiar cat, actually.

“Cheshire?” Joshua asked in a whisper, barely believing his eyes as the amber eyes locked on his. “Cheshire...” He muttered again, as his brain rebooted and processed the information. However, a second later, the situation he was in surpassed the shock and he started talking again. “Get this bug off me, Cheshire,” He implored, hoping against hope that the feline would have one of its strokes of genius and know what he was telling her to do.

The cat blinked at him and, just as dread started coming back to his mind, it jumped a few times. With one, Cheshire stood on the basement floor, with the other, she found her way on top of the table. A third one put her right in front of him and with a swat of her paw, whatever it was that crawled on his chest was sent flying to the side.

The man let out a long breath of relief as he slumped down on the chair, his muscles finally relaxing for the first time in that night. But the rope all but choking him reminded him that he was far from safe there. In an instant, his eyes narrowed.

“Girl, I need you to get me one of my cards from over there,” He said, praying to whatever deity was listening that she would understand him one last time. ‘Come on, I just need this and I can work something out.’ “Cheshire, I’m going to spoil you rotten when we get out of here,” Joshua muttered as he saw the cat go for the cards, like it was the most natural thing she could do.

He was further shocked when the cat picked only one up with her mouth and then, instead of going for the table as he expected her to, the feline walked over to his hand, held at the back of the chair. The young man took a mental note to do something very nice for his cat and to never doubt her again. His hand trembled as his fingers found the card that was offered to him, his brain reminding him that no, it wasn’t a good idea to hold onto it too tightly.

Tracing the surface with his finger, he found the side with the circle drawn on it and smiled. Quickly, he cast the only spell he knew. He saw the flash of light draw lines with the silhouette of himself and the chair he was strapped to. Twisting his wrist, he pressed the card against the metal seat and he started falling backwards as the thing was absorbed inside the circle.

Joshua wasn’t quite sure how the whole thing went inside leaving his arms and legs free. He had half-expected it to go wrong. However, it was his only way out and, at that moment, he wasn’t going to question it. ‘Magic is magical,’ He thought flippantly as he pulled the ropes over his head, the space left by the chair being enough to get them off easily. He had better things to consider than the logic of magic of all things, at least for the moment.

His eyes searched for the thing that would have otherwise ended his life out of their own volition. He gulped as he saw the spider on the floor, a pitch black arachnid barely the size of his thumb. The thing was innocently lying on the floor, walking around as if lost, which it probably was, what with the Hunter bringing it here from wherever it had been before and then being swatted aside by a cat.

Joshua couldn’t have cared less though. His mind worked a mile a minute to solve the situation he was now in. His gaze moved towards the stairs, the only way out since the window was too small for him to use. Problem was, that way was also his captor and would-be killer. The young man was almost sure that there was no chance he would win against the other man. After all, it was implied that he had hunted other magicians, and that meant that someone had to have fought back at some point. The Hunter had to know how to fight hand to hand and that was his only way he-

‘Wait,’ He paused as a thought crossed his mind. Standing up, he immediately moved towards the workstation. His mind pushed all revulsion at the sight of the ‘tools’ on it and focused on his plan. His fingers wrapped themselves around the handles of two relatively normal looking knives.

“Cheshire,” Joshua said, this time being mindful of the volume of his voice. He didn’t know how the silencing spell or whatever it was the Hunter had over the basement worked. “I need you to hide yourself and attack the man that’ll come down here,” He explained hurriedly. Maybe he was being overly optimistic, going for a three for three with his requests for the cat, but he had to try. He needed as much help as he could get to get out of this one alive.

This time though, he could at least afford Cheshire not understanding, which made it that much more easy for him to just… hope for the best. He grinned from ear to ear as the cat settled herself at the bottom of the stairs, hidden by the last step. ‘I fucking love that cat,’ Joshua decided.

With a gulp he prepared himself for what was to come, making a quick dash to close the door just enough to leave it as it had been before. It was a good thing that the thing wasn’t facing right at where the chair had been, or the whole thing would have been much more complicated. ‘Now… I just need to wait,’ He thought as he settled at what he considered to be a blindspot for someone going down the stairs.

He would either succeed and free himself or he would fail and die. No matter how much Joshua had prepared himself mentally, telling himself that the world he was in might be dangerous and fight oriented, it obviously hadn’t prepared him for what he was currently living. Suspecting and knowing were two very different things, it seemed. Just like saying and doing. He took a deep breath in, his hold on the knives tightening to stop his hands from trembling. His eyes locked on the basement door.

Blue eyes moved back to the workstation for a moment, trying to memorize where the other knives were. Another deep breath in, sweat started pooling over his brow, drops threatening to fall over his eyes but not quite doing so. Distractedly, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

No sound came down from the house, no clue as to what the man that had tried to kill him was doing. Joshua could make a good guess though, judging by his savior. There was no hint of when the Hunter would come back, leaving him to speculate and worry. His mind torturing Joshua with all the ways things could go wrong now. His eyes moved back to the spider, still crawling on the floor, small, innocent and away from him, but still big, threatening and so very close in his mind. He thought he might have a mild case of arachnophobia after that day.

If he survived.

“Let’s continue with our little show, shall we?” Joshua heard as the Hunter took the first step down the stairs. Instantly, he threw a knife at the man. His Throwing Weapons skill wasn’t very high, that was true. But he had practiced and he also had time to aim. Thus, the knife hit its target, burying itself right into the madman’s thigh. “What the f-?!”

The older man never got to finish that question, as a mass of black and white threw itself at his face. Cheshire screeched as she clawed at the Hunter’s face. And Joshua, in the meantime, had already picked another knife to replace the one he had thrown.

He couldn’t very well throw another, as much as he wanted to, with his only ally being on top of his target. With that in mind, he charged, running up the stairs and reaching the man just as he got a hold of the cat and threw her away. Anticipating some type of magic from the Hunter, Joshua quickly slashed with the biggest knife, which was on his right hand. He acted without hesitation, lashing out desperately.

A second later, he pierced the madman’s abdomen with the knife in his left hand.

And then he did so again, with the one in his right hand.

Joshua pulled back his left hand only to thrust forward again.

And then with his right hand.

And then left hand.

And again.

Again.

...

Eventually, he stopped, letting out a wail that was more pained and fearful than victorious and brave. His trembling hands dropped the weapons as he stared at his handiwork. There laid the Hunter, on the stairs to his own basement, with who knew how many holes on his torso, sending little falls of blood down the steps. A deep slash cut across the man’s neck and one of his hands dropped next to it, as he had tried to hold the wound.

Another scream left Joshua’s mouth as he pounced on the body, punching the dead man’s face repeatedly as he continued shouting curses at the man that had threatened his life. Incoherent words and questions thrown at someone that would never answer. He would later wonder just what he could have possibly said, but his mind had no recollection of it.

In the end, what snapped him out of it was a soft sound, one he had come to hear a lot and would sometimes bring a smile to his face. This time, the only reaction it got was a turned head, but that was enough. As Joshua’s blue eyes settled on the black and white cat, he blinked. His tense shoulders relaxed and he stepped away from the corpse with trembling limbs.

He almost threw himself down the stairs as his gaze traveled back to the Hunter, suddenly repulsed by the sight and what it meant.

He had killed him.

He had killed him.

He had killed him.

‘He would have killed you,’ A voice whispered in his head. And Joshua knew it to be true. The Hunter had fully expected the spider to kill him even without him being there. The man had left him to die consciously and gladly.

And still..

‘Why do I feel so bad then?’ He asked the voice, which remained silent, unable to come up with an answer for the question. Standing up, he stumbled his way to the sink he had seen before and threw up. His knuckles turned white as he held onto it, his fingers all but burying themselves into the hard material.

Another mew reached his ears, this time followed by a soft touch on his leg. He didn’t need to look to know that Cheshire was rubbing herself against him. Probably trying to comfort him, in her own way. And miraculously…

It worked.

Still shaking from head to toe, he slowly used the sink to wash the blood on his hands. He had expected it to be… well, not so easy. He had expected to see the blood there even after cleaning it. But, no, his hands looked just fine. But the pitch in his stomach remained, and his limbs refused to stay still. He splashed water on his face a few times, as if waiting to wake himself up from the nightmare he was living.

No such luck.

He dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, turning to rest his back against the wall and giving a small, shaky and empty smile as Cheshire walked between his legs and put her paws on his shoulders. A moment later, the cat draped herself on top of him and his hand regained a semblance of stability as it started petting the feline.

“We are fine,” He said, his voice sounding distant to his ears. “We are fine,” He repeated. “You saved me,” His blue eyes focused on Cheshire, his only companion since he woke up in that bathroom. The one that had come to save him. “Thank you,” He muttered, picking the cat up and rubbing his face against hers. “Thank you, Cheshire.”

The only response he got was a mew, but at that moment, it felt like the greatest ‘you are welcome’ and the most comforting ‘everything is fine’ he had ever heard. He was still deeply disturbed, absolutely terrified and utterly in shock, but he wasn’t alone. And that last part was the most important for him right at that moment.

[Quest Complete: Survive the Hunter

Rewards:

+5 levels to all Stats.

+5 levels to Bond: Cheshire.]

[Quest Complete: First Kill (Dagger)

Rewards:

+5 level to all Stats.

+5 levels to Dagger Mastery.

+New Skill: Bloodlust.]

[Skill Maxed: Bond: Cheshire]

Joshua stared at the screens in front of him for a long moment, his arms still embracing Cheshire like his life depended on it. He stared, but he didn’t quite read them. The way they just floated there felt insulting, in a way. They were just there, casually, like this hadn’t been a near death experience for him. Like this was just another day in his life.

But as his anger bleed out, he realized that might very well be the case. ‘Is that the kind of world I now live in?’ Joshua wondered, both terrified and incredulous. He didn’t have much time to process this though, as his whole body started to hurt. His muscles started to ache, just like that burning sensation one has when they’ve been exercising too long. His head started to ache, similar to those times he would read on his phone or study for too long.

The only thing that didn’t hurt was the energy in him. The magic that he had been able to sense ever since he cast his first spell. It had been spent when he stored the chair, but it was now coming back, as if something was filling up his reserves once again. But those same reserves also felt much larger than before.

Soon enough though, all those receded and he was able to gather enough focus to actually read the screens…

And they made him sick.

Especially the second one. To be rewarded for such a thing. Yes, the Hunter was a madman, a sick, twisted person that would have killed him without a second thought. But the Quest didn’t mention the man. It just said ‘First Kill’. ‘Would it have been the same if I had killed any random man or woman on the streets?’ He asked in his mind, and he hated that he would probably never know the answer to that question.

A mew snapped him out of his thoughts, and he locked eyes with Cheshire for a second. Then, the cat gave his chin a lick and he almost smiled. Absently, he started petting the feline affectionately.

“He would have killed me and I killed him,” He told himself before sighing. “Just him, no one else. It’s fine, everything’s fine. I am fine. You are fine.”

Cheshire mewed again and this time his lips twitched up for a split second.

Then he grimaced as his eyes flitted to the side, finding the body on the stairs. Swallowing his apprehension, he set Cheshire on the floor next to him and stood up. His limbs felt strange to him, he realized as he took his first step. Everything felt stiff to him, but strangely light too. He guessed it made sense though. After all, he was more than twice as good at… well, everything. He hadn’t had any stat over 10, after all, and adding that amount to all his stats was bound to have a very noticeable effect on him.

It was fortunate that the change wasn’t so extreme that he wouldn’t be able to do stuff without careful movements. Slowly getting used to the improvements, Joshua made his way to the workstation, keeping his eyes firmly locked on his deck. The last thing he wanted to do was to see the instruments of torture that laid on the table.

When his fingers found the cards, he stood there, not quite sure why he had even gone straight to them. Yet another call from Cheshire brought him back to reality as he looked down at her amber eyes. Gulping down, he took a deep breath in to gather his thoughts and gave a resolute nod.

Squaring his shoulders and letting the air out of his longs slowly, he turned and walked towards the Hunter that was still lying on the stairs, bleeding all over the steps. Gulping down again, this time to push his nausea back down, he continued moving forward.

As he brought out one of the cards, he paused.

“Magicians always think that they are above dying.”

The statement repeated themselves in the young man’s mind.

“You should have known those words applied to you too,” Joshua said, not sure if he was mocking the dead man or if he was doing it as a sort of twisted apology.  Closing his eyes for a moment, he nodded to himself and activated the Storage Spell on the card. A moment later, the Hunter’s body was nowhere to be seen, only a pool of dark red blood remaining as evidence of its existence.

But at least the visage of the dead man wasn’t there anymore.

The dead man he had killed-

A tug on his pants brought his attention back to his cat. Cheshire wasn’t looking at him though, even as her paw rested on his leg. Instead, her amber eyes were locked off to the side on-

The spider.

Joshua stared at the diminutive arachnid on the ground. The Hunter had wanted him to die by its bite. It would have been the tool of his demise. He stepped towards, intent on just smashing it with the nearest thing. ‘I’m a grown man, damnit,’ He thought, anger filling his mind. ‘I shouldn’t be this scared of a fucking insect.’

But he was.

Moments ago, that little black thing could have ended his life, just like that. The smallest of changes on what happened would have led to his death and he was very much aware of that fact. And with just one step. Just the smallest of actions from him and the thing would just stop existing. Just like the Hunter.

“I found this by chance, you see, didn’t even need to buy it or anything, a good while ago.”

Out of nowhere, the Hunter’s words echoed in his mind and Joshua paused.

His eyes still locked on the diminutive creature.

Just one step and-

“I got it without effort-”

“It’s not the same,” Joshua muttered through clenched teeth. “It’s not the fucking same. So… why am I pitying a spider of all things, damnit.”

Cheshire’s mew got his attention again, and he locked his blue eyes with her amber ones. He stared for a long second, as if waiting for the cat to tell him something. Eventually, he slowly turned to the small spider, still crawling aimlessly on the floor.

“I’m goddamn insane already, I know it,” Joshua grumbled as he made his way towards the table and picked up the box where the spider had been previously. With it in hand, he once more approached the arachnid and gently made it walk back inside the box. The last thing he needed was to have it accidentally bit him while he was in the basement.

Although a part of him wanted to just… go back home, he couldn’t do that.

He needed to clean the place a bit. Erase as much evidence of his presence there. ‘And loot the place, that’s for sure,’ He thought, feeling particularly vindictive.

This was the house of a true magician, after all. The Hunter was bound to have something he could use. Be it a tome, or a scroll, or some item, something magical was bound to be around for him to pick up. And he would. After what the man had put him through, Joshua felt he more than deserved to get something out of it.

A pit formed in his stomach as his eyes strayed towards the drying blood on the stairs. A part of him not feeling like he deserved anything for what he had done. But the pragmatic side won for the moment.

As he set the box on the table, closed this time. He left the basement, partly to check on the house and look for a bookshelf or something. But mostly… because he wanted to take his mind away from the god forsaken place.

Carefully avoiding the blood, he made his way up towards the house and…

Joshua found himself baffled. Not because it was a particularly strange place or anything. Actually, it was the opposite. The place looked so… normal, that it clashed morbidly with the image of the Hunter in his mind or even with what he had seen in the basement. He wasn’t sure what he had expected the house of the madman to be like, but what he found was certainly not it.

A mew from Cheshire brought him back to reality, and he found himself grateful for the cat’s presence.

“God knows how lost I would have been on my own here, Cheshire,” Joshua said as he walked through the house and looked around. “If I even survived at all,” The feline let out a sound that was halfway through a normal call of hers and a screech. It sounded like she was scolding him in his mind, so he took it that way. He was past feeling awkward conversing with the cat. “Yeah, yeah… It’s just so raw in my mind though.”

He could still feel the cuffs on his limbs and the ropes against his skin.

The Hunter’s voice whispering disturbing, unintelligible words in his ears.

Eventually, he focused on what he actually wanted to do. Looking around the first floor of the madman’s house. Entrance, kitchen, dining room, living room.

The last one had one of its windows broken, which Joshua guessed was where Cheshire had come in. He crouched down to pet his little companion at the sight, to show how grateful he was. He had plans to show her even more later when he wasn’t so out of it.

However, there was another thing that caught his eye in the room.

“This is what I was looking for,” He muttered, looking at the bookshelf in front of him. It was in a corner of the room, a bit wider than a door and just as tall as one. Slowly, he dragged his fingers over the tomes’ spines. To his dismay though, most of them looked like normal books. History books, encyclopedias and the like. “They can’t all be normal though,” He mused out loud.

With a sigh, he gave up and pulled another card from his deck.

“This would have felt like a bad idea just yesterday,” Joshua said with a wry smile. After all, using the Storage Spell more than once was out of his range by then. Now though, with his magic three times what it had been previously. He guessed he could use the spell three times without problem, which is what he did.

As the bookshelf disappeared in a flash of grey light. He looked at the screen in the card. It occupied four squares, which he guessed was about right.

“Still good to go for a few more spells,” He realized, somewhat surprised. ‘Does the Magic stat affect more than just my magic reserves?’ He wondered as he walked through the house.

Unfortunately, even after using copious amounts of Appraisal on everything that could have been even remotely magical, he found nothing. Everything was as normal as it could get. He had even searched for some concealed Storage circle or something. ‘Here’s hoping that the bookshelf had some magic tomes concealed as normal books because I’ll be angry if I had to go through this and got nothing out of it.’

‘Well, not exactly nothing,’ A part of his mind whispered, reminding him of the stats and skill levels he got for surviving and killing the Hunter.

Still, he searched. In the end though, he found nothing.

[Appraisal has gone up a level.]

“Look at the bright side and all that, right?” He muttered at the screen. With a sigh, he turned to the stairs to the second floor. “Let’s get this over with, yeah?” He asked idly to his cat, receiving only a rub of her head against his leg as a response

Joshua would admit, he wasn’t really looking forward to seeing the man’s bedroom. Even if it was as normal as everything else had been, it still bothered him. Not to mention that he had noticed something that made him more than a little uncomfortable.

He only had a pair of jeans on him.

This meant only one thing. He would need to take some of the Hunter’s clothes to use, which made him almost want to throw up. But alas, he couldn’t very well try to go back to his apartment shirtless and without shoes.

“That’s the other thing though,” He grumbled as he went up the stairs. “I should move, I guess,” He realized with a grimace. “Don’t want to find out if someone else noticed my use of magic, to be honest.”

If the Hunter had found him, there was no telling of someone, or something, else had too. His mind was already running through his options. Moving somewhere else wasn’t an easy thing to do though, even if he had added very little in his current apartment, what with how short his stay there had been.

‘Something to think about.’

The first door Joshua opened after going up the stairs, led him right where he dreaded. The bedroom. He looked through the place as fast as he possibly could without feeling guilty for the possibility of missing something. Which meant that he didn’t go nearly as fast as he would have wanted to, but the night’s events had been a wake up call for him.

He needed every little help he could gather.

Unfortunately for him, he found nothing. And so, he left with a red t-shirt, a pair of black boots and the feeling of being cheated.

The next door opened to a bathroom that had nothing he couldn’t have bought himself.

The last door was partially open already and inside-

A hiss that definitely didn’t come from Cheshire greeted him.

Joshua almost jumped out of his own skin at the sound. The room itself wasn’t particularly frightening though. It was a study of sorts, he guessed. There was a desk in the corner that had a few books spread out over it that he definitely wanted to check. On another corner sat a table with two terrariums, one much bigger than the other. The bigger one was broken though, probably by Cheshire, if he had to bet.

He could guess what had been in the small empty glass cage by the webs that were strung inside. The bigger one didn’t need much deduction work, really. Not with the hiss that he had heard when he opened the door.

Not with the snake that was in the middle of the room, trapped underneath a laundry basket and a few more books used as deadweight on top of it. He couldn’t see it very well behind the blue plastic ‘bars’ but he could very much tell just what it was. He gulped at the thought that, maybe in another alternative world he would have been faced with that instead of a spider.

Shaking his head, he moved towards the desk to check the books that were on it and also the drawers it had on the side. There didn’t seem to be much more of notice around besides-

Joshua froze once more as he came face to face with a board set on one of the walls. The wall next to the desk, a part of his mind realized.

It reminded him of those detective movies and the like, where the character set up a whole display with a map, newspaper clippings, photographs and colored strings connecting stuff all over the place. Slowly, Joshua made his way until he stood in front of the thing and he grew disgusted at what he saw. Each picture was connected to two things: A place in the map of the city and an article of a body found somewhere. That last one was also connected with a string that pointed where the body had been found.

“The Hunter’s victims,” Joshua whispered slowly as blood left his face and his shaking hand extended towards the disturbing board. His eyes took in every single one of the pictures, older, younger, male, female, with all kinds of skin, eye and hair colors. Nobody was safe from the madman, it seemed.

Something else got his attention though. Over the map were small black crosses drawn here and there, with a black pin each and a black string connecting all of them. The string then shot out and connected with a simple sticky note. An equally simple word written in the small yellow square, although it seemed to be in a foreign language. Either that, or it was written wrong.

But that wasn’t the part that concerned Joshua. No, it was the fact that he was sure he had seen the word, written exactly like that, somewhere before that worried him. However, he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember just where had read it.

‘Khaos’

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

I find myself… surprisingly happy with this chapter. I like it, and I don’t think I did anything wrong. Wow, that’s a first. There are some parts that I think might not please some people, like how the Hunter was taken down, or the exploration and looting of the place. Or how affected Joshua is by killing. But it is what it is. If you’ve read Game of Shadows, you know I don’t make my characters unstoppable unfeeling killing machines… at least not from the start.

Originally, Joshua was going to be faced with the snake, actually. But then my mind started going over the background of the Hunter, building the character and all, and things started appearing. Things like the spider, which in turn changed how Joshua’s ‘death’ was supposed to go. So… Yeah, I had a case of butterfly effect in my own story before I even wrote it. Ain’t that fun?

I decided to publish this chapter two weeks early, but this doesn’t mean that this story will be updated every two weeks yet. I have to see if I can keep this up. But for the moment, I’ll try and see if I can write two chapters a month but I might go back to just the one.

Random Question: Would you rather have a Holy or a Demonic weapon? As much as my edgy self wants to pick the Demonic one, the life sucking aspect kind of makes it a no-no for me. Even if they are stronger than their counterparts to make up for that (which I’m not sure they are), I’d still prefer not to die faster due to my weapon.

See you.