6 Fatigue & Perseverance

'Shit!'

Quickly, I blocked the scythe with Gon.

Without even thinking about it, my body instinctively used the momentum to send myself flying toward the entrance.

As I "gracefully" landed, I quickly grabbed a mana potion and a health recovery potion. Drinking it in quick gulps, I began moving before Diamesca accidentally swung and destroyed the layout of potions I had on the floor.

"You're rather good at avoiding death. You're like a cockroach," he told me with a grin on his face.

'Even in this world, there are cockroaches? Fuck! Are there mosquitoes too?'

The shitty god never mentioned that in his novel.

Even in this world, I can't escape the clutches of these vile creatures that should've never existed in the first place.

"Or maybe you just suck at killing. You're a great demon over fifteen times my size and yet, you can't even kill poor little me," I sarcastically responded with an insult of my own.

"We'll see about that," he said. Earlier, if he was speaking like a human in a giant body, his voice now sounded eerie and demonic, befitting his look.

As soon as that switch in his voice occurred, I understood that marked the activation of his second state of battle which increases his attacking speed by half.

That doesn't sound like a lot and rather boring for a second form for a boss battle but when I've barely been able to dodge his bloodthirsty blade by inches, imagine how perfect I had to be with my reactions now.

'Liona, I'm going to place all my trust in you.'

With the bracelet activated, I continued to dodge his attacks by a few millimeters every time.

Why don't I keep the artifacts activated at all times?

Because, unlike mana that recovers based upon rest and magical talent, or codes that require fulfilled oaths, artifacts work on a time-based system that provides you a specific amount of minutes or sometimes seconds that they're allowed to be used.

Then once that timer runs out, the artifact literally falls asleep, and depending on the artifact, some take a day to wake, some take weeks, and rarely it took months but that was also a possibility.

For example, Brother's artifact, his greatsword's ability could be used for a minute in total before sleeping for four days.

As I reached Diamesca's feet, I began to slice them up without interrupting myself with a singular thought or any emotion that wasn't the desire to kill this demon in front of me.

I made sure to attack from the back so that Diamesca had to turn around to attack me.

It wasn't as if he couldn't use his feet to kick me. He just never used his legs in the novel so I didn't expect him to use them here either.

Again, another example of the shitty god being a terrible writer as he was so fixated on having a villain use a scythe as a weapon that he forgot about the other limbs that were free to be swung around like mountains ready to crush you.

Just because I wasn't in danger of a kick didn't mean that Diamesca wasn't able to get his blade in front of my face occasionally.

If the timing of my dodges were off by even a split moment or if I knew that I wouldn't be able to avoid the scythe, I had to resort to blocking it which sent me flying back up into the air or towards one of the walls.

Constantly, I was having my bones broken and resorted to drinking healing potions to repair them.

They weren't all-powerful though because it took time to fix the bones and if the damage was too much, it wouldn't be able to help. Instead, I used them more like a numbing agent to take my mind off the pain.

By now, the smoke had practically vanished and although it was still in the room, it was no longer thick enough to obstruct Diamesca's view.

Luckily, I had finished drinking the last potion that I had prepared before that was the case so I didn't have to worry about him destroying everything I had prepared.

I had about ten more seconds before Liona went to sleep and with reckless abandonment for my own safety, I began attacking using everything that I had.

Three seconds. I got down past the meat.

Gon fell asleep but I ignored it and continued swinging the blade which already had great base stats on its own.

Two seconds. I sliced through his bones.

One second.

Zero.

I was able to slice off Diamesca's feet causing him to begin to stumble toward the ground.

"You bastard! I will kill you" he yelled, shaking the rocky room so much that it felt like an earthquake had struck just the inside of the cave.

Just because he lost his balance doesn't mean that I was safe. Even as his big body began to slowly drop, his scythe still moved around aiming for my body as if he wasn't affected one bit by the loss of his equilibrium.

"Don't get angry just because you're losing to the so-called bastard," I told him as I began rushing back towards the entrance.

Before Diamesca get back up on his knees, I grabbed all the strings and one by one, attached them to the demon by hooking them onto his flesh.

"What are you doing?" he asked, curious but at the same time, I could also sense this feeling of worry that was starting to creep in.

"Hunting for whale," I jested.

Once I completed that task, I ran to the other side of the cave, away from the entrance.

Diamesca got up to his knees and swung his blade just to find that I was out of his range.

As I said before, the strings only reached halfway across the cave, and even as Diamesca began trying to crawl closer, the power of these spider webs as well as the iron stakes that were often used in dragon hunting, were able to keep him away from me.

"What have you done to me you vermin!?"

"Don't tell me that a great demon such as yourself is feeling like I'm being unfair?" I asked. "You're a thousand feet tall and complaining about this? Pathetic."

By taunting him further, I was able to get him to drop his scythe to the floor.

'Now here comes the real test,' I thought to myself while gulping.

A frantic and angry Diamesca placed both hands on his face and as if he was crying in frustration, he screamed and began to rip his own face off, revealing a black skull with blue flames in each of his nine eye holes.

In a tongue that I didn't understand, he began muttering words with his head planted on the ground.

'His characterization is so inconsistent.' I could only shake my head in disappointment again.

As he was in the middle of transforming into his final form, I was also spending my time wisely. I wrapped Gon up in its bandage and carefully placed it in the corner somewhere.

Then I sat down in the lotus position and began to rest my mind, my body, and my soul.

This transformation of Diamesca was going to take ten minutes so I might as well let the effects of the healing potions I drank work their magic as well as recover some of my lost mana.

Why didn't I attack him in the middle of his transformation?

Because I wanted him to transform. The poison I had injected into his body earlier with the needles, the more demonic energy that enveloped Diamesca, the faster it would spread and affect him.

It was a high-risk and high-reward situation. I was going to place myself in the most danger possible but as long as I survived the short timeframe, it would all be worth it.

As Diamesca began getting up, so did I.

"I appreciate your patience," he said in a voice that sounded like a thousand fingernails were scratching a blackboard.

"I'm a kind person," I replied. "I wouldn't want to rush a deadman towards his grave too soon."

"Let's see if you're still in the mood to joke when I burn your body into smithereens."

Each of his five fingers on both hands began to ignite and like ten lasers being aimed at me, beams of flames straight from the depths of Hell threatened to kill me.

There were no moments of rest. No spare seconds were left for me to think.

I just had to move. Continue moving. Never stop moving.

The moment I do, I will die. I can't die, so I continue to move.

These beams of fire were so concentrated that holes were being burned into the cave wall as the rocks were literally melting as soon as they were touched.

"Die you vermin! Die!" Diamesca screamed as he increased the strength of the flames even more.

Even as I was avoiding all ten beams with few centimeters to spare, the heat was intense that I could feel all the hairs on my arms burning off.

I felt as if my internal temperature had risen to a point of a fever so bad that I should've collapsed.

Because of how many beams were trying to burn a hole into my body, I needed to use all my limbs to dodge them. My legs and arms felt like they were about to fall out.

"Why won't you just die!?" he screamed even louder and chunks of the ceiling began to fall down, some of them crashing near me.

What an idiotic question for a demon to ask.

He was an embodiment of some of the greatest evils in the universe and yet, he was frustrated because a human wanted to live.

Simply foolish and shameless behavior.

Out of frustration, his beams began to become less focused. That didn't make them easier to avoid because the more reckless and unpredictable they were, the more I had to rely on my instincts.

Only five minutes had passed and yet, I was sweating as if I had run three marathons in a row.

I was fatigued to the point of desiring to give up and accept defeat but that was only in my mind.

My body refused to take even a single moment of rest as if it understood what the reward was going to be for just persevering a little longer.

Two beams turned off.

'!'

Another two turned off.

'A little longer! Survive a little longer!'

Another two.

'Come on!'

Another two.

Only two beams were left but as if Diamesca was coming to a realization that his life was about to end, the movement of these two remaining beams was so insanely radical and fast that I was in more danger now than I was when there were ten beams.

One beam remained.

As I was dodging it, I picked up Gon before running towards Diamesca who looked like a shell of his former self now.

Finally, after those short minutes that felt like hours, zero beams remained.