Chapter 19: The Instinct of Anger (Patreon)

The fight had gone on too long. Ten minutes was not the length any fight should go on for. Zed believed every fight should be quick no matter how bloody or violent. Only wars went on for long.

In the ten minutes he’d been going against the Moscovian Sloth, he’d learned something gravely vital: no amount of force put behind his blows would make his tomahawk pierce the monster’s fur. If anything, he was more likely to break the tomahawk.

Another thing he’d learned the hard way was that fighting a beast that roared with its genitalia was an ordeal he would not wish on his enemy.

“Alright,” he muttered as he ducked behind a tree, “Maybe I’ll wish it on Jason, but only because he’s special.”

The monster smashed the top of the tree with a single blow, sending it toppling like a lumberjack with a special chainsaw. Zed scrambled out from behind the tree before its arm came down on his position and the earth shook.

In the past few minutes he’d learned the beast wasn’t exactly invulnerable. Like most things with a powerful defense in nature, it had a weakness. Its front torso—chest and abdomen—did not possess as much strength as its back. It was without hair, a simple presentation of black, taut skin. He glanced at the single cut he’d managed to score on it as he evaded a strike and avoided a downward blow. The cut was without encouragement, a thin line of red. superficial. Unfortunately, while nature had given the monster a weakness, or perhaps it was mana—he still wasn’t sure if they were the same—the monster had also learnt of its weakness. Thus, getting a chance to strike at its exposed front was like begging a god of futility for a reward from hard work.

But that was not his real problem. The issue Zed faced was in his fighting style. While it was nonexistent, in a manner of speaking—nothing but a man swinging a big stick with a sharp blade attached to its end—his lack of a result was slowly pushing him to anger. And in his anger he was slowly finding himself delving into the instincts of The Berserker.

Anger slowly began guiding his movements, rationality was becoming no more than a relegated opinion. His dampening state of mind had the beautiful advantage of quelling the fear he’d been doing his best to suppress quite easily. But without rationality Zed found himself actively halting certain attacks, scowling at the air when certain actions didn’t pull through.

Anger was consuming him and he feared what would happen should it succeed.

Still, it was the same instinct he feared that had led to the single wound he’d inflicted on it. So deciding there was a reason The Berserker had lived after every fight, Zed slowly allowed the rage consume him. It was either that or go on fighting until the beast finally got a blow in and he was splattered all over the forest.

But he didn’t simply let the instincts of a rage-filled man consume him whole. He eased himself into it, controlled how quickly he fell to The Berserker’s anger.

The signs began showing again when the monster brought down another tree with a downward swing. Zed slipped out from under the blow. He swung his tomahawk, aiming for the slight exposure of its abdomen. The creature moved in response and its arm shielded it from the attack. Again, Zed’s axe rebounded of its fur and he growled.

When the monster struck again, Zed’s growing anger guided him forward instead of away. Adrenaline pushed him to fight rather than flight.

Zed stepped to the side, avoiding the attack and slipped forward, closing the space between them. The monster’s attack shook the ground as it missed and Zed swung his tomahawk into its side. His swing slipped past its defense and sliced into the Moscovian sloth’s abdomen.

With a single hand, the blow carried too little force, and while it drew blood, it was merely superficial.

The monster roared at Zed, unmoved by his attack, and Zed swung again. This time he aimed his anger and disgust at the indecency it used to roar.

The monster darted away from him with a speed unusual in the fight, but Zed was too angry to appreciate the comedy in it. He was charging already.

In a matter of moments, rage-filled and swinging with the strength and determination of the mad, Zed had the monster on the back foot. A part of him knew it wasn’t his new found violence that scared it but a new found understanding that he was not hesitant to go for literal low blows.

Zed’s mind worked with each missed strike. His eyes watched and catalogued as he dodged and ducked, sought out counters to change the tide of the fight. He spun into a sloppy pirouette and weaved away from a stubby leg. He closed the distance between them and opened it with the grace of gifted anger, more bumbling bear than graceful butterfly.

The instincts of anger guided Zed better. Rage built, but there was a calculation beneath it. The violence of The Berserker, it seemed, was not completely blinding.

The monster had protected its genitalia with a determination it had not used to do anything else. The fact of its weakness was becoming glaring and Zed knew he needed to strike it where it hurts if he wanted to win. To do that, he needed a counter attack, something that would give him a perfect chance.

Zed’s mind skimmed through his arsenal of runes as he ducked another blow and swung his tomahawk only to keep it away. His rune arm possessed more runes than most rune mages he knew could call upon and he filtered them as he fought.

He was weak for some reason, his mana core a pittance of what it had once been, so he knew a mind rune would have no impact on the monster. His adeptness at using it had always been poor and monsters in a state of rage never responded well to mind intrusions. It eliminated a score of runes designed towards mental attacks.

Zed weaved his way behind another strike and scored another superficial blow. He could stack such attacks, build damage overtime, but the risk involved was too glaring. He didn’t know how much stamina his opponent had, and a simple mistake on his part would cost him more than he was willing to suffer.

He dodged another attack, spinning around a tree like a basketballer around an opponent. The move was sloppy and without grace. It raised a cloud of sand and leaves. Still, it sent him at the monster and he attacked from a different angle.

His mind continued to work in its anger, eliminating runes that would not serve his purpose and looking for runes that would support his meager mana pool. There was a soft nagging in his head that told him his plan was doomed to fail; a touch of doubt instincts had taught him never to listen to when fighting.

In the end, the answer Zed came to bore a lot of risk. He chose his rune and its execution. It didn’t require much mana as long as he timed it right. He wasn’t going to take the beast head on. Instead, he was going to attack it in a quick moment. He was going to take a power designed to last over the course of seconds and compress it all into a single moment. It was risky, but it was the only way.

Zed’s choice settled on a defensive rune, one of the force mana variations. A shield rune.

The nagging doubt in his mind rose to a crescendo. If it was a voice it would be a high pitch demanding he turn and run, screaming he was courting death in the presence of its mate.

Doubt in necessary times has killed more men than suicide, he thought to himself, pushing forward with the task. There was something not right with the thought. There was a comic intent beneath it, as if it was the serious thoughts of a man most accustomed to joviality. It was a taint on his focus and Zed killed it with the same efficiency he brought death to his foes.

He swung his tomahawk at the monster and they found themselves evading a flurry of blows given by each other. For every blow Zed evaded, he swung twice without result. But he didn’t allow it bother him, the outcome thus far was within his expectations.

Zed tapped into the mana in his core instinctively as he fought and found it potent. As little as it was, compared to what he was accustomed to, it was rich and full, while it wasn’t as much as what he remembered having, it was vastly more potent. He gathered it to a point, drawing all of it for a single action. He lured the beast into the frenzy of the battle, guided it into the consumption of logic that existed in every fight as he dodged and was dodged. Then it swung a vicious blow that left no room for defense.

Zed had been waiting for this very moment. Baiting it. He would take the blow, then he would strike from behind a shattered force shield.

The Moscovian sloth’s blow came and Zed raised his rune arm to meet it. He balled his hand in a fist, drew on all the mana he’d gathered, and activated his shield rune.

Everything else happened in the blink of an eye.

His tomahawk was already swinging before the monster’s blow connected. Its massive fist came within an inch of Zed’s raised arm. His mana flared as he activated the shield rune. But without a focus to hold it, his mana fizzled out.

The monster’s blow connected even as Zed made a futile attempt to lean away from it in the aftermath of his failure. Something broke within him and he heard it even before he felt it. The blow tore more than just flesh and muscles and shattered more than just one bone as the force of it sent Zed flying across the distance.

Only then did the nagging voice of doubt in his head subside.

As he soared through the air’s caress, pain slowly consuming him, Zed realized why his plan had failed despite all the thought he’d put into it, realized why doubt had creeped into him and his own thoughts had sounded odd in his own head. In this moment he knew it had been the stupidest thing.

He was not a mage with an armful of runes. He did not have a collection of mind runes or heat runes or defensive runes. He didn’t even have a single rune to his name. He was no more than a man with a tomahawk and something significantly wrong with his head.

He was not The Berserker.

Zed only hoped his regeneration attribute would hold him long enough to help him survive. Pain filled every piece of him as he was thrown into a tree. His back struck it with enough force to crack it and it knocked the wind out of him. Zed thought he felt the tree bend behind him but couldn’t be sure. Pain was white and hot in his mind and his vision was failing him. He knew he’d broken more than just his rune arm even as some distance echo in his head reminded him he didn’t have one.

Zed’s mind struggled to stay awake beneath all the pain, and a silence passed from his mouth where a scream was supposed to erupt. Pain was dragging him deeper into the unconscious but his body was refusing to allow it. It was as if it could not ignore the pain, as if—

Attribute: [Hypersensitivity] (Physical, mana)

• Your awareness of mana is abnormal and so are your already heightened senses.
• Careful, lest you hurt yourself.

He tried a self-deprecating smile at the sight of it but his jaw simply hung loose. A part of him feared it was broken.

Through his blurring vision, he watched the Moscovian sloth take its time approaching him on stubby legs and a wobbling gait. Whatever would come next would not be an experience he would want to wake up from.

If Jason was still watching, now was the time to intervene. Now was the time to show him what a Rukh rank mage was capable of. Again.

By whatever god Jason served, if he allowed a Moscovian sloth rape-eat him, Zed would never forgive him.

Zed’s eyes darted, wobbly in his head. He tried to peer through his darkening world in search of Jason and saw no sign of him. The overgrown asshole had left him out here to die. Again.

No!

Zed refused to die; refused to go out like this.

He tapped into the mana within him again, found it as easily as one finds the back of their hand and drew on it. He would learn something here and use it to survive. Then he would make it back to the others and spit on them.

He drew on the mana and felt it fizzle out as it spread to other parts of his body, parts that hurt with a blinding pain. Parts that needed healing and regeneration. The notification came alive as if informing him of why his own body was going to let him die.

Attribute: [Regenerate] (Physical, mana)

• You have bathed in raw concentrated mana. It flows through you; blood, skin, bones. You are as much mana as you are human.
• Increased life force.
• Heal simple injuries.
• Increased healing to complex injuries.
• Increase recovery in areas with higher mana density.

The Moscovian sloth stood in front of Zed now, towered over his fallen form. Then it prepared to eat and Zed felt the deepest depths of violation as it opened what was to serve as its mouth.

Even in the face of death he was more inclined to throw up than to piss himself.