The Secrets of Eternity Island, Part 3

The giant lifted one leg. Of course, it intended to crush him. Under normal circumstances, he should be able to withstand a few blows from that. But in this state, there was no way to withstand even a single direct hit.

Perhaps he should have run away. But it was too late for second thoughts.

The giant lowered his leg quickly.

Not too quickly. Jonathan managed to get out of the impact zone, rolling to the side. That didn't mean he was saved, though. The shockwave threw him like a rag doll against a wall.

Jonathan gasped.

Out of his mouth flew not only saliva, but also blood.

Shit. It wasn't even a direct hit, he thought, holding a hand to his chest. But it broke a rib, at least.

His legs were shaking from the pain. From the shock.

Still, he thought it was too soon to back down, to give up. Maybe he could kill this creature, only this cave wasn't a favorable environment at all.

Maybe he would have no choice but to kill it in the first place.

It was another thing to try to flee, and quite another to be able to do so on such a small island, from a strange giant of all possible monsters, besides. With that in mind, Jonathan started running towards the entrance of the cave.

That is, towards the giant.

Because it was in his way.

When he was almost right on top of the giant, Jonathan dropped to the ground, sliding between its legs. The giant ducked, trying to reach out with one hand, but fortunately it wasn't fast enough. If it had caught him, he could have considered himself dead. Devoured, which was worse. He didn't want to end up in a creature's stomach.

If he had to die before he got his revenge, at least let him die with some dignity.

Jonathan got to his feet as fast as he could, after sliding, and kept running.

He ran out of the cave.

He ran all the way to the beach, and as expected, the giant gave chase which made his weakness even clearer. Perhaps the only one it had. It possessed destructive power, but offset by its meager speed.

Jonathan felt as if something had set fire to his left shoulder.

He gritted his teeth, his eyes straying to where the pain was coming from. What he saw was some kind of acid devouring his clothes.

"Damn it!"

Hastily, he took off his coat, tossing it aside on the sand.

So that was what was continually shedding from its skin. Not the skin itself, but some kind of acid. As if he didn't have disadvantages to spare, simply being near the creature was dangerous.

The acid must have fallen on him as he slipped between the giant's legs.

Jonathan had been very lucky it had been just his clothes. He imagined the acid burning a hole in his head. Was there nothing he could do, after all?

After dropping the coat, he had left the gun belt on his chest uncovered.

As he thought... He could try this.

Jonathan pulled out a pistol. Already loaded, of course, he aimed and fired. And, of course, nothing happened. The water had ruined the internal mechanisms, the powder had gotten wet, or both.

"Shit!"

He threw the gun away, more useless than usual. How Jonathan hated those things. He much preferred swords. Yes, there was the obvious advantage of range. But even in the best case scenario, with a gun you could only kill two, in the middle of a fight. With a sword you could kill as many as it took. Or as far as you could go yourself.

The giant was slow, however. Jonathan needed to think, and he had time to try.

Although he already knew what he would find.

Jonathan reached for another pistol, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired. As before, it was useless, and he discarded it immediately afterwards.

To his surprise, when he got to the penultimate pistol, it did fire.

The giant recoiled from the shot, and Jonathan allowed himself to get his hopes up, but it didn't take him long to realize that the reaction had been more out of surprise than pain. For, after a moment, it continued its march anyway.

As if nothing had happened.

This creature on a forgotten island had simply never seen a gun before. That was all. It made sense, they were a relatively recent invention, on top of that.

Jonathan had an idea, suddenly.

He wouldn't dare judge it as good or bad, yet. More importantly, it might be the only option he had in his current state. With renewed purpose, Jonathan turned, running again.

He didn't intend to run away from the creature, but to kill it.

So he would moderate his speed to allow it to follow him. Well. To be honest, it wasn't like he could run very fast either after being thrown against the wall. It felt like he had dozens of knives stuck in his chest, scraping every time he inhaled and exhaled.

Jonathan glanced back over his shoulder and his mouth dropped open. Moderate what? The giant was running now, it didn't want him to get away.

Jonathan spat.

So it'd just been playing with its food before. Very well, but that didn't change anything, he could still carry out the plan.

As fast as he could, he traveled the same path he had done along with his crew, before he was betrayed. The path to the cave, to the ravine where he had fallen. Almost as if he was turning all the way around.

Almost.

The one who would fall would be the giant, now.

Jonathan thrust his sword into the sole of the foot that was in the air, as it swayed in an attempt to regain balance. He prayed that it would be a weak spot, and it was. This time, the sword managed to penetrate the monster's skin.

Superficially, but enough to do the job.

Jonathan withdrew the sword. Little remained before he was dragged along with the giant into the void at the bottom of the cave.

He watched it fall from the same position Leonard and his band of traitors had watched him. That was the last thing he should be worried about in a life and death situation, but he couldn't help but think about it, uselessly distracting himself.

He watched his enemy fall with satisfaction.

"Is that thing dead?" Talking to himself was going to become a habit, at this rate.

The answer was that it wasn't.

In pain, from the way it began to writhe on the ground and the grunts it was emitting, but clearly still alive. Not even in agony. It would get up, if he let it, sooner or later.

"Okay. Okay."

He had no choice. He really didn't.

Jonathan didn't fall. This time he just jumped.

This was one of the craziest things he had ever done in his life. But not the biggest of them all. And to get here, he had survived all those crazy things. This time would be no different.

Part of him trusted his new class, even if something went wrong.

Jonathan landed on the giant's back. He fell to his knees from the force of the impact, almost dropping his sword. But he put his hands on the creature's back, which was almost worse. He couldn't allow bare skin to touch the acid this creature was made of. He pulled his hands away as fast as he could.

Jonathan preferred not to check it with his own eyes, but the pain was enough to tell him that his hands hadn't come out unscathed.

Still, as long as he could still grasp the sword...!

Jonathan had thought the giant possessed three eyes, but it was actually four. It had another one in the center of its back. Hovering over the fourth eye, Jonathan raised the sword with both hands and brought it down hard. Burying it deep into the eye socket.

This was an obviously weak spot, very different from the creature's practically impenetrable flesh.

The giant screamed.

It scrambled harder, trying to throw him off.

But it didn't need to try so hard. Jonathan didn't have any intention of staying on top of the creature. Because of the acid, of course. He could already feel the acid eating away at the soles of his boots.

It worked fast, despite the high quality of his equipment. A good weapon.

Jonathan jumped off the giant's body.

One of the giant's arms, like a huge mace, shot out toward him. Jonathan slid under the arm and thrust the sword like a kind of spear into the eye of its chest, which it had exposed by half rising with the blow.

It burst like a balloon. Blood and other fluids poured out thickly.

The giant punched, but only close to him. The shockwave was as striking as last time, but the sword buried in the creature's eye gave him a good foothold, that way he managed to stay on his feet.

The ground shook.

Not only that. Between the cracks, the acid from the body flowed. Devouring the stone as if it were nothing.

Terrifying. In such a short time, Jonathan's world had been turned completely upside down. But now he was one step closer to victory. He could do it. He could do it! He didn't have to run.

Jonathan ran up the other arm, towards his enemy's head, there were only two eyes left. He had to hurry, his boots provided temporary protection against the acid, but they would soon become useless.

The giant opened his mouth.

To be devoured was a terrible fate, but what his enemy intended was not to swallow him. The thing spat a gob of acid from deep in its throat.

Fortunately, his reaction time was excellent, regardless of his stats.

He ducked, continuing to run, and instead of hitting him the acid hit the wall behind him. It quickly devoured a good chunk of it, leaving no debris behind. If he died here, there would be nothing left of him. For one thing, there was no one to bury him, unlike with Benjamin. The poor bastard had at least been that lucky.

So he would win. He had no choice but to win.

Jonathan had to do this quickly, so as not to prolong the contact with the monster's skin for too long. Fortunately, the two remaining eyes were where any humanoid creature's eyes should be.

In other words, they weren't difficult to hit at the same time, unlike the other eyes.

Near the head, he leapt straight for its face.

Jonathan placed the sword diagonally. Cutting the eyes cleanly, at the same time. When he saw the two split down the middle, the first thing that came to his mind was cream puffs, for some reason. His empty stomach lurched.

The creature's blood hit his face, forcing him to squint, as he fell. Good thing that it wasn't acid, too.

Jonathan landed, driving a knee into the ground.

Soon after, the giant fell again. Blind, dying, as desperate as a mere animal could be. His gamble had succeeded. He had succeeded.

No, not quite. He wasn't done with it yet.

The adrenaline was leaving him, however, as if the battle had already been won. That allowed him to realize that it wasn't that he hadn't broken anything in the fall, but that he hadn't realized it until now. He had dislocated an ankle. The pain was starting to come in waves. Stronger and stronger, joining the dozens of "knives" cutting into his chest.

It wouldn't be easy to finish the job, even though he had already come this far.

He had run out of such soft spots to destroy. And he hadn't thought of a way to finish it off after doing that, because Jonathan had believed, hoped, that the fall would be enough.

Everything that came after that had been nothing but poor improvisation.

While thinking, he backed away from the giant, who was writhing on the ground and striking blindly, swinging his arms in all directions, wild, purposeless, not knowing where he was hitting. That made it more dangerous than before, in a sense.

An idea occurred to him, at last.

Jonathan would say he wished it had come to him from the beginning, but without having done all this first, he wouldn't have had a good chance to put it into practice. Now was the best time, with the monster blinded.

Jonathan pulled out the last gun.

He probably wouldn't be so lucky for it to fire, too, that the last two had been saved. But he wasn't looking for that, anyway, the other one had fired and what good had it done him?

Yes. All he needed was the powder inside.

He emptied the powder onto his hand, clenching it into a fist. The excess slipped through his fingers, falling to the ground, and more would fall as he moved, as he carried out his plan. His bet, perhaps better said.

It didn't matter. He didn't need that much.

Jonathan dodged the monster's arms as he ran straight for its mouth. His arms raised in a cross in front of his head, protecting it.

He was more concerned about the acid spreading everywhere as a result of the creature's wild movements, truth be told, even though a single direct hit could make him explode like an overripe melon.

When he got close enough, he poured the powder into the giant's mouth.

And that was it. That was it, his grand plan.

Then he turned and tried to walk away.

Jonathan's luck at dodging ran out. But while he couldn't avoid the blow itself, he at least managed to avoid it being a direct hit, managing to get his sword in the way. Jonathan was thrown backwards by the impact of the blow, even so, he fell to the ground and kept rolling on the sand, swallowing dust.

He was unable to get up.

After that, he could barely get to his knees. He was breathing as if he had a punctured lung. Maybe he had.

Too close, he thought.

But he'd made it.

The giant was animal-like in intelligence, but that didn't mean it was stupid. There were very cunning animals. Jonathan took a deep breath.

"I'm here!"

And the giant was blind, but there were other ways to sense one's surroundings. Like sound. It should realize that his prey was out of arm's reach, and therefore....

There was an explosion.

The giant's belly caught fire and the fire was spreading rapidly, consuming everything it touched, even the acid.

The screams of the creature filled his ears. It was simply a creature that had crossed his path, not Leonard or any of the traitors, not that damned Count, who had done that to his family. But still, what satisfaction.

Part of that feeling was surely due to the amount of experience points he had gained.

Part of that feeling was probably due to the amount of experience points he would be getting for defeating an enemy like that despite the obvious difference between them. Also, it was easier to level up at the beginning

Part of it, but not all of it.

The rest had to do with spite, which was the only thing that kept him up and moving.

Jonathan checked his stats screen.

He hadn't leveled up yet, but he saw immediately that he had received three hundred experience points just for killing that beast. It was a great start at regaining the strength he had lost.

The giant fell and finally stopped moving.

The fire would continue to devour him inside and out, until there was nothing left.

Jonathan smiled. It was just a gamble, since it was the first time he had seen that kind of monster. But he had turned out to be right. By creating that acid inside it to spit it out, the creature had set fire to the gunpowder, sealing his fate. Or so he had thought.

Jonathan didn't smile for long. Suddenly, the giant was on the move again.

What the hell?

It was dead. It had to be dead, otherwise it wouldn't have received the experience points. Jonathan darted backward quickly, assuming a fighting stance. If that hadn't been enough, he would have to run after all, right?

The blind giant stood up.

But that was all. It didn't move. It didn't even try to attack him.

What was going on? Jonathan had a very strange feeling. A prickling sensation as if he had bugs under his skin. The stats screen was still open, on it he saw good news. Now there was no doubt.

This was the power he had been looking for, the legend hidden on this island.

The power to kill an immortal.

He had unlocked a Class Skill. Its name and description left little room for interpretation, explaining perfectly what had just happened.

Wake

Raise the dead, giving them new life.

Jonathan shuddered.

This...

This was what he needed.

The Secrets of Eternity Island, Part 3: FIN