The imp was essentially kiting him , throwing out a fireball every few seconds . The closer Zac got to it the harder it was to dodge . After a minute he had been hit another 3 times by the when he got close . The first time it barely grazed his arm so it was not too bad . If you could call the pain of getting stabbed a hundred times not too bad . The second hit him in the gut , which almost made him double over and puke his guts out from the agony . The final one hit his leg .
That hit had made him unable to keep chasing the imp . He could barely put any weight on the leg , it felt like it had been paralyzed . The pain was so bad he almost swung his hatchet to chop it off . He knew that he would not be able to dodge anymore when it threw its next fireball .
In a last desperate attempt to survive , he hurled his hatchet with all strength he could muster straight at the chest of the flying demon .
Chapter 16 - Choices
Zac was on his knees , panting heavily . His clothes were a completely burned and bloodied mess . All around him were signs of the imp’s rampage , with pockets completely drained and devoid of life . Zac realized that the fire of the imp did not burn like a normal fire , rather it burned life-force or cosmic energy . His burns looked like all moisture had been drained from his skin and it now had a pallid grey color . It was like those parts of his body was like that of a desiccated corpse’s .
The corpse of the imp was lying against a tree roughly 10 meters away from him , the axe still firmly planted in its chest . The constitution of the monster was quite frail , and it had died immediately when the axe hit .
As soon as the monster had died , it seemed as though the source of the fires had been removed . The fires had quickly extinguished , the marks left behind the only proof they had existed at all . Had it not quickly dissipated then the fire would fire would have completely destroyed him . Maybe not his body , but all his life-force .
Zac was nauseated and on the brink of passing out , but he somehow summoned power he did not know he had and got up on his feet . He shuffled over to the imp and yanked out the axe . He had no energy to look through the corpse , and simply continued his way back home .
He was almost delirious by this point and was barely able to keep his bearings . Luckily he was quite close to edge of the island now , and almost on the opposite side of the pillar . The monsters were pretty scarce this far out still , and he didn’t encounter any more demons that night .
With the last strength in his body he managed to stumble back into his camp . As soon as he saw the familiar sight of the metallic camper his legs simply gave out . He fell down onto the ground end let the sweet darkness embrace him .
It was midday the following day when Zac woke up again . Body was stiff and he sported a splitting headache . It was as if he had been drinking until passing out last day . He spit out some gravel he had got in his mouth and slowly got up .
After a quick check-up it seemed that most of the wounds were in decent shape . None of the scratches and tears from the demons were still bleeding . Some of the more shallow wounds were just a white line today . A few of the worse wounds would have to stay in bandage for at least another day though .
The spots where the black fire had burned him yesterday were still a bit grey and shrunken , but had gotten noticeably better . He felt that he headache he had likely came from these wounds . The fire yesterday must have had some magic properties that damaged in other ways than just burning . He shuddered when he remembered the pain from those blasts .
He prepared some breakfast and sat down in a camping chair to go over yesterday’s results . He brought up the status window with a thought to go over the gains .
Name Zachary Atwood
Level 18
Race Human
Alignment Human (Earth)
Titles Born For Carnage , Ultimate Reaper , Luck of the Draw , Giantsbane , Disciple of David , Overpowered , Slayer of Leviathans , Adventurer , Demon Slayer I
Strength 46
Dexterity 33
Endurance 34
Vitality 43
Intelligence 29
Wisdom 29
Luck 44
Free Points 0
Nexus Coins 3 370
He had gained almost 3000 Nexus Coins with just one day of fighting , which seemed quite good . If he based the gains on the amount of cosmic energy he got from the different monsters he could somewhat guess how much each kill gave him . He would say that he had gained roughly 100 for each demon dog he had killed , and between half as much and double that from the demon hound . The largest amount was rewarded from killing the imp . He still remembered that burst of energy even though he was almost delirious . If he hadn’t gotten that extra energy boost after the fight he might not have made it home .
Still , the amount gained yesterday was far short of most of the buildings he had seen in the town building interface . It made sense , as building a whole town was usually not done by the efforts of only one person . If he had a few hundred people who came together and gathered Nexus Coins the amount gathered would be massive , even if the other people were far weaker than himself . There simply was power in numbers .
The thought gave him a sense of urgency . It was undeniable that he had likely gotten a quite impressive head start compared to most people , even though he was not too happy with his current situation . But if some great leader emerged in a tutorial village and created a large force he might lose his head start . Abby had mentioned that the system liked those that stood in forefront . If someone was going to get titles and other advantages from building a town first , then it should be him .
It might be better for humanity if some country leader or military general got that head start . But it was the apocalypse , and he had his goals . He needed to be a bit selfish in that regard , and couldn’t just give away opportunities to others and hope they would use them for good .
He also noticed that he had a new title , Demon Slayer I . It was from the quest he had received in the beginning , which had told him to kill 10 demons . The title gave him 1+ all stats when fighting enemies of demonic alignment . However , he didn’t quite understand how the title worked . He should have activated that title somewhere mid-day , but he had felt nothing different when fighting afterward . Zac thought that the 1 stat point perhaps was too low a number for him to notice anything .
He was somewhat surprised that he hadn’t received any sort of follow-up quest , along the lines of - Kill 100 Demons - . The line behind the title indicated that it should be possible to upgrade it , but he hadn’t been given any indication of how . Zac guessed he had to add it to the ever-increasing list of things he did not know .
After looking over the status page he opened the building interface . There were two things that Zac wanted to build , and they cost 3000 Nexus crystals each .
The first was called a F-Grade Nexus Node] and looked like a large hovering crystal from the description . Its function was to access certain aspects of the System . Nexus Nodes seemed to have more functions depending on how high grade it was , with F being the lowest . The Node was the worst of the bunch in other words . But it gave access to two functions that Zac was extremely interested in . It gave access to the class system , and sold basic skills .
The other was another array , namely the F-Grade Small Scale Gravity Array] . This was an array meant for strengthening oneself as he saw it . The subject of training was something he had mulled over from the start . Even before allocating the first 30 points he had gotten he had noticed that his stats were skewed .
When he counted backwards from his titles and the points he had allocated he had found out that his base stats differed quite a bit . Before the effect of the system he had 7 strength , 3 dexterity , 4 endurance , 5 vitality , 5 intelligence and 6 wisdom .
He assumed the normal stats were around 1-10 for most humans , as he was somewhat average before the System arrived . He wasn’t particularly smart , and not extremely athletic . He worked out at a gym 3 times a week which would explain the strength . But he was not limber at all , and he rarely did cardio . Therefore he had lower dexterity and endurance . Vitality and intelligence seemed harder to train , as they seemed more of an inborn quality .