Return of the Woodcutter

Chapter 192 - The Flood Stage 1 (part 2)

Aito landed at the bottom of the Deep Ditch, missing a wooden spike by a hair. He heard the ground tremble slightly under the weights of berserkers stomping their way to him, inexplicably attracted to his tanned ass.

'Alright, let's see if they are as stupid as Segolene told me.'

He rushed past the spikes, agilely avoiding them. The tremors got louder when berserkers exited the forest, barely hesitating, they started jumping down on Aito.

Sensing them thanks to his Domain, Aito looked up, then hurled his ax coated with Durability and Impact. The two headed weapon murderously made its way through three berserkers. Their bodies brought down by gravity were hacked in half.

A layer of purple blood was added to the already bloody trench.

Aito dashed, between the spikes, avoiding a rain of berserkers who tried to jump on him. He choose a specific area without corpses, and stopped there to make a stand.

Berserkers poured down on him like a rain of horror. He stepped to the side, back and forth, trying to minimize his movement while using Pneuma to recover from his wound and a part of his stamina.

By the time the area was covered with corpses, the 65th wave was over.

'Thankfully, I don't have to use my Unique Skill, or it would mean they numbered a lot more than I could handle. This is already hard enough,' he thought, trying to be optimistic despite his shitty situation.

ROAR!

Berserkers' roars resounded like a gong, announcing the start of a new wave. Sixty nine berserkers poured down on him, sixty nine berserkers lost their lives to the black challenger's ax and the Deep Ditch's spikes.

His improvised tactic worked better than expected and was good enough for him to keep his stamina. If berserkers didn't die impaled, they would either be crippled, injured by the fall, thus becoming easy targets. Some unlucky berserkers even had their brethren squash them from above.

Despite coming from above, berserkers never managed to corner Aito who kept moving around and killing them.

By the 85th wave, Aito was running on fumes, corpses filled the Deep Ditch from one end to the other. The sun was high in the fake sky, shining on the glade and Aito's face, revealing the gory scene that had yet to end.

On a break before the 86th wave, Aito effortlessly climbed his way up the trench, and headed towards his camp before eighty nine berserkers came for him. With no Deep Ditch to keep them at bay, he would be surrounded in no time. His only hope for survival was to get to his camp.

'Seriously…, just how many more waves are they?' He complained mentally. Aito had tried to ask Segolene but she told him he was better of not knowing.

No normal challenger alone would have survived the Flood for so long. And that was just the 7th floor! There was still one more floor to clear before the quest was over.

'Don't think about it, it'll only deter your moral,' he said to himself, entering his small size fort, blocking the entrance with his remaining spell bead Earth Wall. He reinforced it with logs prepared in advance, planting them in the ground, creating support for the Earth Wall that would canalize impacts into the earth.

The berserker "gong," as he came to call it now, rang from the forest for the 86th time.

Aito cursed, climbed his way up the thick stone wall, groaning through the pain of his bruises. Berserkers had rarely touched him, but when they did, they struck with enough force to destroy a common size car. He knew those walls of his wouldn't last long against them.

Patiently waiting for the raging bulls coming at him from the forest, Aito broke a healing bead and sucked in a mana bead, refilling his almost depleted mana well. He had barely used any skills apart from Durability and Pneuma, aiming for minimum effort.

Now, however, he stopped coating his armor with Durability. Instead, a golden light appeared on his ax as he took aim at his targets. Aito had used his stamina to almost his limits, preventing his mana and soul power reserves from going dry, keeping them for later uses, meaning now.

—Active skill: Cleave Lv3—

The air whistled under the wind pressure applied by Soulcleaver's blade. A yellow golden arc propelled outward towards five berserkers twenty or so meters away. Body parts crashed on the ground as five berserkers were hacked in half.

Aito grinned with a satisfied expression but also a bit of wonder. He expected Cleave wouldn't normally pierce through a berserker's thick hide and muscle with normal weapon. However, a soul weapon was different, of that he was certain now.

'What absurd power…,' he thought.

Meanwhile, 'Kill more!' Soulcleaver exclaimed in his head.

Aito agreed with the ax, how couldn't he when eighty four more berserkers were rushing at him? Thankfully, these things cared little for strategy. They outnumbered him, but did not know how to use their numbers properly and kept coming at him without encircling his camp entirely.

The black challenger kept swinging his ax, cleaving the air, halving berserker corpses, crushing one enemy waves after the other. Cleave was a useful skill, usable in short and long ranges. At long range it created air blades that hacked everything in its wake. Aito wondered why wind blades appeared golden yellow, though.

He had trained Cleave before out of curiosity and to familiarize himself with the skill. Air blades have always been golden yellow color. In the Khül's hand, they seemed grey. Well, maybe it had been because of the Grey Sun or maybe it was for another reason?

'Gotta ask Valinar about that later if she knows something,' he thought.

[I can think of an explanation,] the goddess replied. [For now, just focus and stay alive.]

Aito grinned, 'Ha, forgot how you keep stalking my thoughts.'

94th wave. 

'Kill.'

95th wave. 

'Kill.'

96th wave. 

Aito's vision blurred as he launched an air blade that decapitated the remaining berserkers of the 95th wave. Panting, he let go of his ax. Fighting his exhausted limbs pleading him to rest, he remained on his feet on top of the walls.

Some areas of the defensive wall were breached. Some corpses that had been lying on the ground disappeared, probably Segolene doing some cleaning. Trenches at the foot of the wall were already filled with monsters. The entrance to Aito's camp was destroyed.

His mana was almost depleted.

Cleave was a great versatile skill, its only drawback was the aura cost. He had a bit of soul power left, maybe enough for one more Cleave.

ROAR!

'Haha…, come.... I'll kill you all!'

One hundred berserkers came out of the forest, bringing with them terror, tremors, pain and death… for them.

As they neared Aito, he sensed his exhaustion progressively dissipate. His stamina increased by a slight amount, invigorating his muscles, enough for him to keep on going. Energy flowed through his body.

Jumping down the wall, he called back his ax and stood near the entrance, 'Finally… a little something to tip off the balance.'

—Unique Skill: One Against Many (100)—

Although a small boost compared to facing a thousand opponents, a hundred enemies were enough to rise his capabilities by a small but not negligeable amount.

"RAAA!" He roared to give himself courage as he launched Soulcleaver. The ax hacked its way through three monstrous bodies before lodging itself into a berserker that kept on running.

Aito dashed past the wall entrance. Charged at his enemies fist first. Stronger than them, he punched his way through the small army. He called back his ax. The soul weapon hacked down everything in its to return to its master.

'Kill! Kill! Kill!' Soulcleaver shouted in his head as he seized it.

He was tired, mentally pushed to his limits. The ax has been harassing his mind since the beginning of the fight. Little by little he started to agree with it. The longer he used Soulcleaver, the more he wanted to kill.

'KILL!'

Pissed. Angry. Tired. His mind entered a weird state similar to when he had been in the arena. Everything went blank.

Lost in his own bloodlust, Aito was blinded by the battle. The ax took advantage of that. An inexplicable hunger surged with such power it was impossible to control. His gift Fury activated on its own, bringing out his inner beast as well as destruction.

Broken rocks.

Fissured earth.

Bloodied flesh and pain.

Aito wanted more blood, more death, more… souls!

'Kill! Kill the weak! Take everything from them! Bring destruction and pain!'

Something happened at that moment. Engrossed in his own rage, Aito sucked in the air, activating a skill he knew he had yet did not know what name it bear.

Soul essence, power, and mana from dead berserkers' soul cores flocked to him. Aito sucked them in. Unwilling to be absorbed, they tried to fight back. However, they were given little to no choice.

Something forced the souls to their knees, pressured them, and compressed them. They could not resist the digestion process and were immediately assimilated into Aito.

'Kill! KIIIIILLL!' Soulcleaver went mad.

[Stop it, Aito! Don't lose yourself in the bloodlust or you'll go past your limits and hurt yourself!] Valinar warned him.

Aito was blinded. No matter how many times Valinar's notification window appeared, he could not see it. He could not see the many corpses around him, nor the waves he had killed.

He could not see that only one berserker remained, nor that its legs were trembling. Eyes empty, Aito sliced its legs and arms off so effortlessly he made it look easy.

Peering into the berserker's red eyes, Aito was about to deliver the final blow when he saw and heard something unusual. 

"H…help," the berserker said, tears running down its grey cheeks. "Help… me. I…"

Aito's bloodlust disappeared as he stared back into those bloody red eyes that seemed to belong to… a human.