Chapter 42: Damn it
"Try to kill me."
The rabbit said, again and again. And he died again and again.
But slowly, after months of getting trapped in the Timeless Immortal Saint domain while time moved on at normal speed, Severin finally had the chance to fight back.
He had learned, with his death, the way the rabbit fought.
He learned its fighting technique, the part where the monster could dodge, avoiding attacks by an inch and striking back in unpredictable ways.
And the countless deaths had built his body; every part of his body had been trained through sheer effort, his muscles shifting like corded wire beneath his skin.
Like a metal beaten again and again, the repetitive movement of swinging the sword and literally fighting through death had carved the techniques into his body.
The only thing lacking was his energy—Etherion. It was well and good that he learned that much technique, but what good did it do when he wouldn't even be able to put it into proper use because of his lack of Etherion?
His body had been trained, surpassing the height that any normal human could hope to reach. But to the Etherion users, he was still nothing.
Still, Severin was glad of his strength. It was a crawl, a single step, but it was something that was made with his blood and sweat.
"You should try to kill me again this time," Severin said to the rabbit.
This time the rabbit didn't say anything and simply leaped at him with a speed that Severin couldn't hope to match, and so he didn't try.
He simply stood there, and when the rabbit struck down, his sword rose up to meet it, the edges bending, slanting so that when the rabbit's sword met it, sparks flew as it glided across its surface.
The technique of using the opponent's own strength to defend against them.
Surprise flicked in the rabbit's eyes, but this was something that Severin hadn't tried before.
Severin's sword swung underneath in an upward arc; he used almost all the energy in his body and managed to slash the monster on the chest before it leaped away.
Severin grinned. "Well now."
The rabbit stared at its chest in absolute shock.
It had been months of repeated deaths, and for the first time, Severin was able to do his first counterattack.
He scratched his head. "I've used almost all the little energy I have left. Time to go for my special skill."
He turned and ran.
Another surprise for the rabbit.
This was the first time that Severin would be running since he stepped foot into the room.
But the rabbit had its mission, and with the anger of getting hit, it leaped and ran after him.
Severin didn't run far. He stopped in the middle of the forest of swords that jutted out of the ground. "How could I hope to outrun you?"
Suddenly the air around them was lit up in faint blue lights as threads that were connected to different swords glowed. freewebnσvel.cѳm
And the rabbit was standing in the middle of it all.
"I told you, didn't I? You should try to kill me too."
The rabbit's next surprise came when Severin yanked the threads.
Shring! Shring!
Different swords were pulled out of the ground and came at the rabbit from all angles. The monster whirled with such speed that his image created a vortex kind of afterimage; his sword met the different swords as he began to slap them away.
But suddenly he jerked to a stop, his muscles taut. And blood dripped from his mouth—a sword pierced his chest from the back.
The rabbit was fast and would have deflected all the swords if Severin hadn't been smart enough to make more of the threads connect with other swords apart from the initial wave.
"Seems I killed you."
The rabbit said no words as it fell down dead.
Severin was breathing hard, but he was smiling just as hard. "Who knows how long I've been here, but I'm sure only seconds or minutes have passed in real life."
He looked towards the door that was now open to the next room. He picked his sword from the ground and made his way over without looking at the rabbit's body.
Without even noticing it, his footsteps had changed. He now walked in imitation of the rabbit. It was as if there was a slight gap between his steps, making it appear as if he was doing the 'blink walk.'
The next room was filled with a blue pool, large enough that it couldn't be crossed by jumping. He needed to swim over.
Severin stared at it coldly, and then at the other side where the door to the other room was already open. "So I have to cross over through the water, meaning the danger is in the water."
He went to the edge of the pool, and he hadn't even reached it when something in his pouch began to emit light. "Mucus of the Wiser?"
"Is the pool an Etherion pool?"
Severin swallowed at the possibility.
When Eric entered the dungeon, not only did his sword skills go up several notches, but his Talent Ability Rank went up a level—from D to C.
"The Mucus of the Wiser needs strong Etherion for it to forcefully expand the brain, perception, forcing the Talent Ability Rank to go up."
Severin stared at the potion in front of him, and he took a rough breath. Then, without hesitation, he placed it on his lips and drank its contents.
The Mucus of the Wiser tasted like slime and tears, bitter and sorrowful. It reminded Severin of all the sufferings he'd gone through in his life. And then it painted everything in hopelessness.
Why was he even struggling? When fate, through the author, had already written his place as something disposable? Besides, would this be the first time he was the random kid in the background watching others?
It had been so in all his years in high school.
So why struggle now?
He was an extra here, a random character written to fill up the crowd.
Why strive to be something he wasn't made to be?
Severin smiled bitterly, and in his heart, together with his mouth, he answered himself as he began to walk towards the pool. "Survival. I just want to survive. Damn it, even I deserve to be alive, random or not."