An Endless Night

The shaman immediately waves his wooden staff. It hits Adanu Raksa so hard to the right, almost knocking him off into the ravine. But Adanu Raksa is still able to hold his ground on the edge of the cliff.

And again, several evil spirits are flying so fast after him. He waves his sword to the left, and another scream of pain breaks the silence in the middle of the jungle. However, as he averts back his attention to the shaman, he finds that shaman no longer looks the least bit like a human anymore.

His head has turned into a head of goat with a pair of curved horns, as well as the bottom part of his legs have turned into a pair of goat legs. Although the rest of his body is still like a human, he has become taller and bigger with black and thick fur covering his entire skin.

The shaman jumps high and then slams his wooden staff down so hard as he is landing back to the ground.

"Try to eat this!" he yells.

"I'm not as stupid as you," replies Adanu Raksa, before making a jumping-tiger moves to the left to evade the shaman's slam.

He rolls on the ground a few times. As he is getting back up, he already meets with a few of forest demons.

He takes some time to deal with them, slaughtering them to piece. But then, he suddenly receives a powerful slam to his left side as that shaman hit him from the rear with a sneaky attack.

It sends Adanu Raksa so hard to the rocky wall, and blood spurts out of his mouth. While Adanu Raksa is losing his balance after his body hitting the rock, that shaman is weirdly just standing still in front of him.

He is just standing there by holding his wooden staff straight to the ground, like showing off who is with the upper hand.

"That arrogant attitude of yours! I don't know how long have you fought these evil creatures so far. But there are still so many things you haven't seen in this world," he says.

"Who is acting arrogant now? You think you are that good just after that one hit?" Adanu Raksa replies as he gets back to his stance.

Adanu Raksa sways a little, and then, he starts his swift sword dance slowly, a unique art he hasn't shown at once so far. The shaman puts on a clown face, and then laughs just like how a goat usually laughs.

"Starting to dance during a battle? What's this? Are you losing out your mind after hitting your head to the rock?"

But then, he sees Adanu Raksa begins slashing empty air a few times, as if he is starting to build some kind of momentum.

As the times goes on, the tip of Adanu Raksa's sword is getting closer to the shaman. And then, his sword is starting to reach the shaman's chin.

The shaman easily deflects it by spinning his wooden staff. But weirdly, that black sword doesn't look like it has been knocked away at all. It just finds its course to keep moving, as if it gains more momentum after being knocked away by the shaman.

"What are you trying to pull now?" the shaman mumbles curiously, as he begins to realize something odd in Adanu Raksa's movement.

Adanu Raksa's sword movement is becoming faster as it keeps gaining momentum. The shaman parries it a few times, but he finds those sword attacks are getting harder and harder.

He waits for an opening to counter, but there seems to be no end to Adanu Raksa's sword dance. Until he can no longer follows that sword movement, the tip of that sword begins to peel his skin piece to piece.

"The hell with this? How could someone so young like you…"

"Aren't you so young yourself? Or perhaps, you are actually hundreds of years old demon taking the face of a young human," replies Adanu Raksa as he keeps peeling the shaman's skin.

Bloods are splattered everywhere, as well as the shaman's skins and fleshes. Even when some evil spirits and forest demons come approaching, it doesn't able to make Adanu Raksa to stop his sword dance.

Adanu Raksa continues slashing them all to pieces while still cornering the shaman in the same time. The sword keeps finding back its path to continue creating infinite arc of sword slashes.

Until at some point, Adanu Raksa's sword stops when it hits the shaman's side a bit deep.

"What the?" mumbles Adanu Raksa with a bit of disbelieving face.

The sword is stuck there. It makes him confused, finding his sword is unable to cut the shaman's body thoroughly as he expected.

"You monster!" he grumbles with an annoyed expression.

"You are the monster," replies that goat-like demon. "Now I know why The Carrion Flower Devil wants your life so badly."

The shaman doesn't let go of that small opening and spins his staff, hitting Adanu Raksa's chin from below. Adanu Raksa has no choice but to receive it, and tries his best to take his sword back.

He is back off and takes some distance. And there he finds the shaman is knelling down with one leg and gasping breaths.

However, all the wounds Adanu Raksa manages to leave on the shaman's body are now engulfed by some kind of weird flame. All the shallow cuts are also completely healed. Meanwhile, the deep cuts, especially the last one Adanu Raksa has dealt, are still engulfing by fire.

Those wounds, they are like trying to heal themselves, making Adanu Raksa starting to doubt his sanity.

"What are you? A goat demon taking human shape? Or, a human taking a goat demon shape?" inquires Adanu Raksa with a naïve tone, still trying to take that oddity as a joke.

"Screw you!" replies the shaman with a mad face, looking so pissed off with what Adanu Raksa has done to him.

That shaman is able to stand up, yet he is looking so weak and tired. He then reaches out his hand toward a group of evil spirits, and suddenly those evil spirits are pulled toward him.

He grabs them and starts swallowing them as a whole. Soon after that, he looks so refreshed, and all that tired face is completely gone.

"Thank you for eating them all. You make it easier for me," says Adanu Raksa, trying to ignore the fact that the shaman has been refreshed after eating them.

"I think you already know that there won't be an end to these evil spirits. I might have eaten them all, but more of them will surely come as long as you are still alive and attracting them to this place. And there won't be an end to me, either," says the shaman, closing it with an arrogant laughter.

It's effective to make Adanu Raksa falls to his deep thought. He is confident to keep fighting the forest demons until the dawn. But he doubts about this shaman, because he knows that this shaman won't just disappear when the morning comes.