RD 2 Ch 19 (Patreon)

Chapter 19

The feathers sliced through my legs just as quickly as they healed, and I stumbled in the last fifty feet.

“Bran.” Nyx’s voice was laced with urgency. “Get up. They are getting closer.”

“Carry me.” I tried to move, but there was something severed in my right leg that prevented me from putting any weight at all on it.

Nyx pushed from my arms and lifted me on her back as she started running.

The ‘murder geese’, as Nyx so aptly named them, flew down from the sky and pecked at me.

The first one felt like a hot poker had been inserted into my back as it tore out a neat little strip from my body.

These weren’t the friendly birds people threw bread to at the pond.

Nyx made it past the line that must have started the sanctuary because the birds stopped, and she sagged with relief. “You’re heavy.”

“Then put me down—gently, please,” I added.

“I wasn’t going to drop you like a sack of potatoes.” She huffed and pulled me off her shoulder.

“Wouldn’t have been the first time.” I grinned as she was careful in holding me and looking over my wounds.

“Didn’t realize I could pick you up and run for a moment there. Still getting used to being Wonder Woman with snake hair.” She grinned. “Didn’t really occur to me that I could just hoist you up with the same effort I might use to put on a stuffed bookbag.”

“Welcome to being superhuman.” I smiled at her.

She didn’t smile back as she looked at my wounds. “Shit, they did a number on you. I know you heal, but will you be okay?”

Even as she spoke, I could feel the itch of some of the wounds closing up. “Yeah. I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.” But even with my healing, there was enough cumulative damage on me that I was going to need a few minutes to get back on my feet. “But you should be happier. We hit the jackpot.”

“Did I drop you on your head?” Nyx stared at me like a fool. “You’re not even able to get up, and we hit the big time?”

“Use your inspect more.” I lay there letting Regeneration work. “Did you not?”

She didn’t let up on her stare. “Was kind of busy. Those honking hooligans didn’t exactly wait for me to inspect them.”

“Use it more. They are a boss mob and a swarm.” I grinned wide. “That means we can farm them.”

“Yes. Farm. By farm, you mean let them shred you over and over?” She pursed her lips. “Let me see your head. I clearly missed a head wound.”

I smacked her hand away playfully and laughed. “Swarm creatures regenerate their numbers. Individually, they aren’t worth a whole lot of experience, nor are their drops great. But they are endless as long as you don’t kill the whole swarm.”

“So, you are going to kill a few of them and drag yourself back here every time? Wait. Fuck me. You aren’t going to make me do that, are you?” Nyx had started to look out the entrance, only for her head to snap back to me.

“Your arrows would be nice. But you can stay somewhere safer. Besides, I think once we leave this sanctuary, we are going to get attacked. Not sure if we can get away from them before we get far. We might be trapped here until help comes anyway,” I pointed out.

Nyx’s eyes went wide. “Food.”

“I have plenty,” I reassured her and groaned as I sat up. “More worried about the other groups.”

“Zane’s strong enough to keep them safe for now,” Nyx said, her snakes going down close to me to inspect the wounds. “Your healing is uncanny.”

“Thanks.” I scrubbed some of the drying blood off me. “Ready to do it again?” I pulled my rings off and set them down, only taking out the S-ranked bone. I thought about taking off my clothes, but they were in tatters now anyway. There was no saving them.

“You’re serious.” Nyx shivered all the way down her hair to her snakes. “Do I leave my ring?”

“I don’t want a bird to cut my finger off and lose it. Not sure if they’ll come down for me to give them a good whack, but that won’t stop me from trying. I do have one ranged attack."

Nyx hurried to take off her spatial ring and set it separate from mine. "Hopefully, they don't break my bow."

"I'm pretty sure you can use petrifying arrow without a bow." Though, oftentimes using a supportive tool like the bow to cast would make aiming easier.

She hesitated and put the bow down. “I’m staying right by the entrance here.” She looked over her shoulder to make sure there was nothing in the sanctuary behind her.

It was empty to Soul Gaze. I had already checked. Even in my wounded state, I was more aware than her.

“Let’s do this before I chicken out.” She followed me, taking a tentative step through what I estimated as the threshold.

Picking up a rock, I walked out two steps at a time before pausing and taking another two.

When the honking terrors started to come out of the trees, and they made it very obvious, I bent down and stabbed the rock into the ground.

“Marking it?” Nyx asked.

“Yep. Alright, just pick one and try to do as much damage to it as you can before moving onto the next. Also, that petrifying gaze might be really, really nice. By that, I mean if you can ground one of them, I think I can bash it in that much easier.” I had to shout over the geese as they came over the trees heading straight for us.

Nyx did her job well, starting to throw arrows from her hand at the swarm, but her aim wasn’t wonderful, and she hit three different ones at first.

I took aim with Bloodbolt, picking one of them and hitting it twice in a row as they bore down on me like a wave. Winding up, I took a swing like I was aiming for the fences and broke the bird’s neck, causing it to land on the ground and dissolve into the instance floor. “That’s it! Petrify them!”

The Stamphilian Birds tore into me with their bronze beaks. Those beaks pierced me like I was made of paper.

I moved erratically, starting to learn the mechanics of fighting them. They stayed a dozen feet up and dove to attack. It quickly became evident that I could dodge a good portion of them by moving unpredictably.

A dim light came from Nyx, and a few birds stiffened, their wings stopping.

I was on them in an instant, the bone making a wonderful two-handed cudgel as I brought it down sharply on three of the birds before they shook off the petrification and returned to the air. “Retreat!” I laughed and snatched up some metal and coins, rushing for the entrance and diving into the sanctuary.

It was clear where the line was as the birds pulled up short, almost making a wall for a moment before flying away.

“Let’s mark that.” I pulled out a few of the bronze feathers and stabbed them at the edges of the cave where the wall of birds had been. They were close to eye level, so it was obvious.

“That was insane. You’re missing two fingers.” Nyx pointed at one of my hands.

“So I am. Didn’t even notice. The adrenaline really gets you in the middle of a swarm like that.” I laughed off the pain of my fingers regrowing.

“You're mad.” She shook her head. “What did we get for that insanity?” She pointed at the loot.

“We got four of them. I snatched up 32 gold coins. Not bad, not bad.” I put them on the ground. “The real prize are these, though.”

[Bronze Feather S – Razor-sharp]

[Stamphilian Bird Droppings S - Highly poisonous]

I was giddy with the dung.

Nyx looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You okay?”

“Wonderful. These can be purified into SS rank poison!” I laughed like a madman. SS-ranked poison! I could get drunk for a long time with that, and even get a step closer to upgrading my Poison Resistance to Poison Immunity.

“Do you like poison?” she asked.

“Ah. An ancient technique from my father,” I lied through my teeth. I had actually learned from a very drunk monk. “With this, I can refine a poison that will help me get Poison Immunity.”

“By the way, were those birds poisonous?” She pointed to my wounds.

I shook my head. “No status effects. Just the loot. I had hoped to get some of those beaks, but the feathers will do nicely. We could fashion some arrowheads out of them if we really try.” Humming, I sat down and started to lay some materials out. “Give me one of your arrows.”

Nyx handed it to me without hesitation. “What are you doing?”

“Making better arrows for you.” I took the bone and hammered the feather around itself to make a sharp cone before wrapping that cone around the tip of her arrow and then pushed the feather to wrap farther around the shaft and hopefully secure it.

My fingers bled all over, and I decided to draw some inscriptions on the arrow as I went. “Ta-da.”

[Piercing Bronze Feather Arrow - A Rank]

She held it up. “Only A rank?”

“I’m going to make you regret that statement later. A rank is fantastic given that I had an E rank arrow in the mix. Piercing will help you go through an S-ranked monster or an A rank with some sort of defensive ability.” I handed her the arrow with my blood on it.

She took it and put it in her spatial ring. “I’ll save it for when I need it.”

“Don’t worry. I can make more.” Stretching out my back, I was back on my feet, regeneration having done its job.

“Wait, we’re going back out? Again?” Nyx’s face was the definition of horror.

“Yup. We’ll have tons and tons of those bronze feathers. Oh. I bet I could get enough of them to make an armored dress.”

Nyx was still staring at me like a madman.

“Alright, back me up with more of those petrifying gazes.” I swung the femur over my shoulder and headed back out, watching out for the two markers I’d left. The one for where the sanctuary started, the other for where the stupid birds would notice me.

“Maybe we should only do this a few more times and then get out of here. They are only going to get stronger as they get more levels,” Nyx suggested.

“Nope.” Tomorrow, I’d hit forty-eight hours of the bloodline assimilating. The day after, I’d get this thing unlocked. At that point, hopefully it gave me enough to start crushing these birds.

I was also wracking my brain for an inscription that might make this fight easier. There was one for gravity, but it didn’t last very long, and the materials needed would be out of my reach.

Then there was another sort of firework—one with acidic mist. That was a great inscription for eating through the thin webbing of demon wings and knocking them out of the sky. However, I didn’t think I could apply that here with these birds’ metallic feathers.

It hit me. Magnets. Wait, copper. That wouldn’t work.

I passed the line for the birds, and they honked aggressively as they took to the air. “Whatever, just keep bashing them while I think through my strategy.”

Feathers rained down on me in a heavy torrent. Sadly, these weren’t like the Drugarfins. I couldn’t drag any of them into the sanctuary; it was like an invisible wall to them. It stopped somebody from bringing monsters into the sanctuary.

Nyx hit them with petrify, and I stepped up to bat, knocking two out of the air and towards Nyx in rapid succession.

“Use your hair and finish them,” I encouraged her.

The two birds roused as her hair snapped at the birds one after the other, all the snakes taking turns.

I smashed another two birds on the ground before twisting into one that was diving down.

Its beak went straight through my rib and the savage bird started gnawing on very important parts of me.

I rolled to the ground, bringing its body with me and twisting its neck with a satisfying pop as it dissolved, and I started bleeding a concerning amount on the ground.

“Bran!” Nyx looked up.

“’Tis only a flesh wound, my darling.” I laughed and swung the femur as I rolled and started into a run like a sprinter at the Olympics. Blood pumped out of my chest until I crossed the line to the sanctuary. Nyx was ahead of me, having retreated at the first sign of danger.

“Okay. Can you really keep doing this? There’s no need to be tough.” She eyed me.

I waved her concern away. She was new to all of this. In the greater world of fighting and almost dying, this was nothing. “Going to rest and then we’ll go again and keep going. How’s the experience?”

“Time will tell,” Nyx said, avoiding looking at my chest. “Let me know when it’s done.”

“Sure.” I put my hands behind my head and rested for a moment. I was pretty sure that bird got a good chunk of my lung.