Chapter 17
A chittering cannonball of fury rocketed over Riven’s head when his Blood Weaver leaped forward, sinking her mandibles into one man’s neck and injecting necrotic venom that quickly spread across his throat in a blanket of black. She left him in shock, clutching at the spreading, rotting arteries until his eyes rolled back into his head and he died in the grass beneath Riven’s shadow.
The loudly crying, shaking young woman the gangbangers had been pinning down was let go when they came to help their comrades, but Riven’s enemies had quite the fight ahead of them. The spider zipped around their feet with speed far outstripping their own—tripping them with silk made from enchanted blood that wrapped around their ankles. Then she went for their throats, too, one by one ripping out flesh or arteries in a gruesome display of violence amid curses and shouts for help.
Riven held his hand out and rapidly launched six more Bloody Razors at the foremost enemies who tried to respond, not giving them a chance to even get close. The repeated use of magic continued to surprise everyone, and the projectiles torpedoed through the air at a speed far outmatching what anyone here—aside from Riven—could dodge. It ripped open chests, guts, legs, and skulls—mutilating the surprised, screaming men in sprays of bodily fluids. His targets either died instantly or fell screaming to the ground, maimed with grievous wounds that were sure to be the end of them.
He turned, absolute rage still building in his heart, and he approached the three men he’d snared. Making it up close and personal while they squirmed and agonizingly wailed in the Unholy net, he rapidly slammed the butt of his staff into the faces of the three clustered men until their broken skulls showed brain matter on the ground while his demon kept the others busy. Then he raised his hand to send another set of spinning crimson discs out at a rather bulky guy who’d ended his fight with the African man in order to head Riven’s way. They’d seen Riven was the bigger threat here, and they still hadn’t given up despite their losses.
The discs ripped through the bulky man’s stomach and left him partially disemboweled, writhing on the ground, only to be met with a sharp SNAP. Riven’s boot slammed into the side of his face and twisted his neck back at an abnormal angle, quickly ending his life.
The fury in his heart propelled Riven forward. He didn’t yell, didn’t frown, didn’t even make any facial expression when he realized he was out of mana and there were still more people to kill. It was a big group—what could he say?
He mechanically flung the staff to his off hand to keep his mana regeneration going and ripped out the hatchet at his side to hold in his right hand. Driving forward into another man who’d been preoccupied with his minion, he felt a rib snap when the metal axe blade pierced his screaming target’s lung. Riven hacked again, and again, and again, sending blood flying out of the gasping man’s back while he lay in shock on the ground.
Athela turned and skittered to the next victim with a loud screech and chittering cackle of amusement.
“Come on, you bastards—HEY! DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING RUN!” Riven lunged ahead, shouldering another injured and rather rotund enemy that tried to flee and knocking the man over before bringing up the hatchet with both hands. There was a dead look in Riven’s eyes while glaring down at his intended victim, and the man screamed and begged to be given mercy.
“PLEASE, DON’T! I’LL LEAVE, I SWEAR!”
Riven only considered the man’s request for an instant.
What if this had been his own mother being handled like this?
What if it had been his sister again?
He snapped the hatchet down into his target’s blocking arms, hacking away at the forearms of the horrified, screaming man until Riven was able to find the man’s chest. It was almost like chopping wood.
*CRUNCH*
*CRACK*
*SNAP*
He slammed the weapon home while standing over his victim, chopping repeatedly into the fat, the ribs, and then the heart until the rotund man’s body went limp and his struggles evaporated.
The thought repeated itself in his head over and over as he hacked, slashed, and threw out another net of binding magic when his slowly refilling mana allowed it. Meanwhile others came off the African man they were beating to death to deal with him instead.
But Athela was there in an instant.
Shards of peppering blood crystallized from her webbing blasted them in waves. Threads of mana-imbued silk wrapped them up and pulled them away or tugged them in close toward snapping mandibles.
Riven fought alongside her, taking more than a single punch but grunting and bearing down while dodging a man’s tackle and bringing the hatchet down into the back of a cervical spine.
Holy shit. He was actually winning this.
His heart was racing; blood was everywhere; the screeches of his demon and the screams of the wounded filled his ears.
He whirled and met a fist to the face that sent him sprawling backward. Cursing and rolling to the side, he avoided a foot stomping down onto his gut and summoned another disc of swirling blood mana that exploded against the shins of another enemy, carving into the man’s bones and slamming his opponent’s face into the ground. Then the target’s ankles came down at an odd angle with a snapping sound, and his screams quickly ended when Riven drew his hatchet back and flung it in a spiraling arc to embed itself in the man’s face.
What if that had been his sister who’d been getting attacked?
The next minutes passed by amid a bloodlust that encompassed Riven’s mind, the question still repeating itself over and over like a broken record in his head while he finished off the wounded enemies one by one. He continued to stomp on their necks, chop at their hearts or heads, and blow through whatever mana made itself available to him as soon as he got it over the course of the fight. He did not blink or hesitate even once.
Then at the end of it all, the timer indicated five minutes left before the launch of the tutorial events.
[You have gained two levels. Congratulations! Please see your status page to assign stat points.]
The vase in his backpack began to vibrate briefly before calming again. A faint whisper of power and pleasure drifted through the air, originating from the vase itself, but he was way too far gone to notice.
Riven’s mind slowly cleared from the fog of rage that’d overwhelmed him. He was covered in viscera and blood that glistened under the bright sunlight; sweat poured down his face, and his heart madly beat in his chest. His clothes were absolutely ruined, and even the backpack would have to be cleaned or replaced after this. The bodies of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen tattooed men were all still in death, pools of bodily fluids collecting underneath them, and the younger woman had rushed over to her mother where she lay badly beaten with swollen black eyes and a bloodied face.
He was actually a little bit surprised that he and Athela had been able to kill all these people.
He glanced about at the carnage, seeing mutilated bodies and body parts strewn everywhere. It was a scene straight out of a slasher movie. All around them, for the second time since getting here less than an hour ago, dozens of other people on the outskirts stood horror-struck at the sight and maintained a healthy distance.
All except for one.
The huge African guy who’d first dived into the fray was covered in shallow cuts and large bruises, but he stood tall and limped over to where Riven was panting. Holding out a hand of friendship, he bowed his head in appreciation. “Thank you for doing what others would not. You are a good man. What is your name?”
The man’s voice had a thick accent, Nigerian, maybe—but Riven couldn’t be sure.
Riven gingerly collected the hatchet from the corpse at his feet, casually smiled, and took the man’s handshake with a nod of thanks. He had to look up just slightly in order to meet the man’s eyes, even though Riven himself was over six feet tall. “Riven. My name is Riven…what’s yours?”
“FEARRRRRR MEEEEEEEE!”
The dancing spider was hopping up and down on her six hind legs while wiggling her front ones up in the air and gnashing her teeth. Athela was chittering loudly as she did it, bouncing around, moving her butt up and down, and hissing every couple seconds while decorating herself with the innards of the men she’d killed. She was wearing a headdress made of intestines, and all Riven could do was look away and pretend not to know her.
“Hakim,” the man said with a small smile, releasing Riven’s bloody hand without a second thought. “You were very brave. Is that your pet?”
“Nope. I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Uh… Yes. I mean, no. Okay, she’s mine. Don’t call her a pet, though, she doesn’t seem to like it.”
“Should I call her a demon then? Identifying her says she’s a level 3 Blood Weaver demon.”
Riven gave the spider a sideways glance. “You guessed it.”