Children of a Lesser God

Chapter 208: Using The Sword

Chapter 208: Using The Sword

Holding the sword, Laz couldn't feel more awkward. He had never held a sword before. He had used knives to the extent that he knew how to not cut himself, but using a sword was a brand new experience for Laz.

He had read stories before of heroes wielding magic swords and slaying impossible creatures, but standing here, mostly human with only a sword in hand, Laz just felt stupid.

It wasn't to the point that Laz was an idiot. After all, swords can be used in only so many ways. Swing to cut or poke to stab. It wasn't rocket science. But be that as it may, knowing his life was now being determined by how well he could use this cold weapon caused Laz to feel more than just a bit hesitant.

But what else could he do?

Facing down the coyotes in front of him, Laz felt like he was going to be using a tooth pick to poke a grizzly. Before he had any more time to think about it, two of the coyotes charged at him at the same time.

Laz's first instinct wasn't to swing the sword, but instead to dodge. He jumped left as hard as he could and rolled, successfully evade both attacks.

Having narrowly made it, Laz regained his footing, just in time to see another sharp set of teeth come charging at his throat. Do to Laz's inertia, he could only drop backwards and kick out and up, sending the newest attacked flying behind him. If the beast hadn't been charging full tilt, Laz wouldn't even have been able to lift him. As it was, Laz's back and legs almost spasmed from the strain. He just barely kept from dropping the animal on top of himself.

As Laz once again got to his feet, he noticed the last monster come charging at him while the other three started turning around to attack him again.

Although it took a while to describe, everything happened within mere breaths of each other.

Laz barely managed to jump and roll out of the way with this newest attack.

'I can't keep this up. Right now I'm just like trapped prey that they are toying with," Laz thought to himself. He wasn't far from the truth either. Most animals don't play with their food and although these demon beast weren't just animals anymore, they hadn't developed much in the way of intelligence. So what they were doing wasn't toying with Laz, it was testing him out to see if he had any more defense. This was the reason they were making swift and evasive attacks.

It was part of their survival nature.

Seeing it look like Laz was in dire straights, Sarah had tears in her eyes. She knew that she had fucked up and even more than that, she had dragged Laz down with her. Had she just listened to him, this never would have happened. Interestingly, despite her emotions getting the better of her, she was still thinking of trying to help. As she sat on Tyr and watched Laz jump around like a corned rabbit, she suddenly thought of trying something.

"Hey... Hey you..." Sarah whisper towards what she thought would be Tyr's ear.

"Can you help him?" She asked, not even knowing if he would understand or respond. The only reason she was trying it was because Laz had been speaking to Tyr all along.

Tyr, hearing the question, turned his head over a bit to that he could see her. Tyr could only communicate words by using his spiritual sense. Even if he wanted to talk to Sarah, he couldn't. It would be like talking to a brick wall in that his words couldn't get through since she hadn't developed a spiritual sense herself. If he forcefully tried to do it, her head would be wracked with pain, causing her to either pass out or possibly die. This wasn't something he knew, it was just instinct telling him not to.

Seeing Tyr looking at her as though he had heard her, she tried again.

"Can you help him?" She asked again, pointing over towards Laz. Tyr looked over and then looked back at Sarah, as though considering her words. He then nodded his head and shook a little bit, causing her to lose her balance slightly. Knowing this meant she should get off him, Sarah complied, sliding off before hiding herself behind a tree. Tyr reached up with one of his legs and petted her head, using the flat side of his claw.

It was like he was saying, 'stay here.' Sarah nodded in understanding.

As Laz was desperately looking for an opening to attack, he suddenly saw Tyr run towards him without Sarah. He took a quick moment to notice that Sarah was hiding behind a tree before again having to jump out of the way of a bite. He could only say a silent thanks again to the girl who taught him how to use his body as a weapon. It was only because of those instincts she had drilled in him that he was still alive right now.

Tyr was not only fast, but he was also silent in his approach. Before the coyotes even noticed, Tyr had shrunk himself down to being the size of the coyotes, jumped up on to a tree and then launched himself off, directly landing on the back of the closest beast..

"TYR,"

:Hunting,: was Tyr's only reply to Laz. Tyr quickly clamped down his surprised victim and then bite down, injecting it with venom. Before the other coyotes could come to their pack members aid, the coyote stiffen up like a board and fell down flat. Normally, this would be when Tyr would wrap it up in webbing if he was going to save it, but since this was a fight, Tyr instead switched his attention to the next closest demon beast. He crouched slightly, making ready to jump at the first moment he saw.

The other coyotes were enraged and ignoring Laz, the three of them charged Tyr, intending to rip him apart first before catching the jumping rabbit.

Laz, having been given a moment of breathing room, stopped hesitating. Laz had no idea how strong Tyr really was, but he wasn't going to let him fight alone.

Seeing all of the beast jump towards the normally sweet and cute little Tyr, Laz felt himself become increasingly angry. As soon as he caught up with the closest beast, which also happened to be the biggest one remain of the pack, Laz jumped up and swung his sword down, intending on turning it's attention away from Tyr.

Had Laz's stroke of the sword been any more crass, Laz would have had to be careful of the sword bouncing back and hitting him in the face. As it was, his swing was fluid, awkward and left much to be desired. The only reason it had any decent strength behind it was due to his ability to free use his body thanks to his previous training. So even after he started swing, Laz just focused on keeping the 'sharp' portion of the blade pointed towards his target while using whatever strength he could.

He couldn't have even imagined how violently the result was going to be.

As the blade reached the back of the animal he was jumping at, the blade lit up, ever so slightly, and took on a dull, whitish appearance. Had Laz thought more about it, he would have realized that the blade light was similar to when he used just the barest amount of world energy in his attacks, back before he had gained his inner flame.

Despite it being the barest amount of energy, once it covered the blade, it became like a laser through butter, cleanly bisecting the demon beast in half down the middle.

"THE FUCK?" Laz yelled out at the result of his attack. Before he could even begin to understand what had happened, his body shuddered as waves of pain assaulted him.

"AAHHHH," Laz yelled, as muffled as possible while he feel backwards, still gripping the rusted blade.

His actions followed by his collapse drew the attention of the remaining demon beast, Tyr and Sarah who had no idea what was going on. Seeing this prey fall, the two remaining demon beasts charged away from Tyr and jumped at Laz.

But Tyr was already posed to attack. Seeing them turn their backs just gave him the opening he need.

Tyr jumped forward and once again landed on the closest beast, quickly locking it down before injecting the venom. This beast had the same reaction as the last one, it's body stiffen and it fell over, unable to move.

Seeing that all of it's companions were down, the last beast decided to leave and started running. It's flight took it right next to where Sarah was standing. Seeing the lone prey standing there in shock, the beast snapped out it's jaws, hoping to swallow her in one bite.

Before it was able to sink it's jaws of death around Sarah's young and healthy figure, a white light once more sliced the air, cutting off the beast's head in one, skill less and jerky motion. The beasts blood pumped out from it's still vigorous body and like a fountain, covered Sarah and the now pale as a ghost Laz. Seeing she was ok, Laz smiled a little before his body dropped to the ground.

This time, he was unable to get the pain under control as he rolled back and forth while shaking. The reason for this reaction was because he was using energy he had no right to use. Imagine if you squeeze a sponge out, and remove 'all' of the water. The sponge still retains it shape and looks fine. That's because although it is slight, there is still a minimal amount of water left in it. But if you leave that sponge for a certain period of time and it loses all of the moisture in it, the sponge will shrivel down to nothing and become hard like a rock. The only way for it to get it's full, flexible shape back is to either immerse it in water all at once or let the water run over it and work it in.

Laz was like the shriveled up sponge that had just drawn out the last of his energy to deliver those two strikes. He had no access to his core energy, so the only energy he could use was the negligible little bit that was normally inside his system. Normally, he wouldn't even be able to touch this energy since it was so sparse, but the sword was most than happy to draw it out of him.

And just when he thought the pain wave had passed, he saw the demon beast run towards Sarah and without thinking, ran over to chop at it again.

He was already a dried up sponge. He figured that the blade wouldn't have anything to draw upon and would just act like a regular sword, possibly even frighten the last beast so that Tyr could just chase it down really quick. The only reason Tyr didn't react like Laz was because he was still super young and his sense of danger wasn't as developed. He could hunt, but he wasn't too good at fighting.

That was Laz's plan, but the blade had one more storage with which to draw from, Laz's biological body. Drawing out the bit of energy that was even contained within his skin and organs, the sword was able to activate one more time, but now the backlash from it caused Laz's entire body to look shrivel up, like a tomato that had sat in the sun too long. Even just him moving in pain was causing his skin to crack and bleed from scraps and cuts.

"LAZ. NO!" Seeing him like this while even she was covered in blood would have been a touching scene, until what happened next.

The blood on Laz's skin slowly started being absorbed into his body, drop by drop at a time. The vigorous blood energy of the demon beast was the best tonic that Laz could ask for right now as it served the same effect as being immersed in water for the dried out sponge.

The blood was soon gone, but Laz had yet to recover. Luckily, Tyr, while not being too mature just yet, was still very smart. He quickly went over the headless body and dragged it back, positioning it so that the still dripping blood all fell on Laz.

After many tears from Sarah and Tyr jumping on the headless body to squeeze out every last drop on blood, Laz's skin finally looked refreshed and normal again.

It was still grey.

Laz opened his eyes as the pain died down. He truly looked demonic since now his clothes were all died red with blood but there was none on his skin or in his hair anywhere.

Before he could even tell Tyr that it was enough blood so that it would stop using the dead beast as a trampoline, a fast moving, soft and lightly scented creature jumped into his arms while crying.

It was Sarah.

She just hugged him and cried at the same time, sometimes almost choking on her own tears. Laz could only pat her back while telling Tyr he was good for now and to prepare the bodies of the demon beasts, instructing him to save a few for himself if needed but to get the rest ready for him to bring back to the farm.

"It's ok. I'm fine, ok?" Laz finally said after he felt Sarah stop crying from lack of tears. She finally settled down but didn't move off of him. Laz waited there for almost ten minutes before he finally sensed that something was wrong.

Sarah was burning up.