CH7: Hate The Monkeys

Night's end was a lever-action carbine rifle built when blood transfusions were the height of medical silence. By mushroom Jesus, he was nervous. A vent with a stud opened and closed to accept bullets like a shotgun but with modified handgun ammo. It held 13 rounds, and the ax blade at the butt of the gun was more trouble than it was worth. He could cut himself if he reached further back than the handle at any time, and he needed to get very close to use the ax blade. A bayonet would have been better, but he wasn't the one who designed the weapon. Silas wouldn't bother using the lever action if it didn't have a scope unless he had a lot more practice. The brass-lined scope was shiny and didn't have crosshairs. He also wasn't the one who installed it, and there weren't nobs to adjust it. For all he knew, the scope could be completely off, and that was a mind freak.

His heart hammered in his chest as he hid behind a corner in the cave, out of sight of the loudly cooing monkeys, very awake and dangerous. There were tribes in Africa that charged machine guns because they wore a nice coat of war paint. Monkeys wouldn't need the warpaint to charge him even if he could pick a few off.

The orgy the night before had been a thing of beauty, and Silas was sure there were quite a few bundles of green goblin girl joy on the way. With that in mind, he planned to kill as many monkeys as possible and take their blood essence. The goblins could have their meat; they knew more about how to butcher and use the monkeys than he did. Silas only wished he had toilet paper.

It felt like he had a big shiny rock, and he thought standing ten feet from a hornet's nest was protection enough. Sweat poured down his arms and around his eyes, enough to fog up the scope.

Grisha kept giving his rifle interested looks like she wanted to ask all sorts of questions but held back due to some unspoken rule. Then again, the monkeys had big ears, and she probably didn't want to alert the child-eating monsters more than Silas most likely already had. So while they didn't care about one of their outcasts getting yeeted in the dark while it was raining, this would be different.

He aimed for a monkey standing on the edge of its cave, looking out. The monkey had a bigger mohawk than others and probably weighed 50 lbs more than the others. It stood a little taller than six feet and had long arms rippling with muscle. Silas was sure the monkey would rip him limb from limb if it came to a one-on-one fight.

Slowly Silas held his breath and put his finger on the trigger. It was a powerful bastard with many lesser monkeys around it lower on the ledge. If he only had one shot, he would spend it killing the strongest monkey.

With careful control over his aim honed from hunting deer, he squeezed the trigger. A boom shook the cavern, and the monkeys looked at the sky in confusion. The monkey Silas aimed for rocked back on its heels and looked confused. Silas quickly pulled the lever ejecting the old round and loading the next one in the chamber. He looked through the scope and saw his target bleeding from a wound in its chest.

Blood came out in spurts from the wound, and two other monkeys attacked it. Biting, clawing, and screaming filled the cave while the monkeys fought to finish off the weakened alpha monkey. Silas took aim at one of the spectators and pulled the trigger again. Once again, the monkeys looked up while Silas pulled the lever, found another target, and fired. The first monkey fell, and Silas continued firing every time he saw a monkey in his scope; he fired to thin their numbers.

He had to kill them; monkeys would always be a problem, and the little bastards had to die. Silas whispered his scripture and felt an orb appear in his hand before he pushed it out toward the mouth of the cave.

Grisha gasped as the blood drained from the corpses into the orb. The monkeys had figured out something was attacking them but thought it came from above and hadn't bothered looking down. Silas waited until his orb fed on the monkeys, viciously draining their bodies with all the special effects of a horror movie. That's probably what it felt like to the monkeys; their entire world was turned upside down inevitability.

Guns were an equalizer that wasn't easily overcome. Normal animals without incredible abilities couldn't match firearms. While the monkeys were large, dangerous, and ridiculously strong, Silas had the tools to kill them.

"I'm going to go and get some strong gobs to help get the monkey meat home. Don't give them to the elves, no matter what they tell you. You didn't say you already have a lord stone." Grisha said.

Silas thought about it for a second, then shook his head. "This power comes from somewhere else."

Grisha turned around and shook her booty at him. "We're eating meat tonight, which means you get more gobs than you can handle," Grisha said.

Silas shook his head and raised his hand. The orb filled with blood essence shivered before floating back to him. It was in the black pearl. Once within the orb, blood essence could be drawn to the user through will or mental power, as the black pearl called it. From what his memories reported, they were the same thing. Mental power was a trainable ability cultivators developed as they rose through the ranks. Will was a trainable ability dark lords developed after they formed their stone that increased as they gained more monster girls.

Technically the goblins weren't his until he developed a lord stone and bound them to him. He was the same as Ur, technically. Once he developed a lord stone, he would have more control over the monster girls and even monsters under him, depending on his lord stone. Will was the one ability that wouldn't leave a dark lord after their lord stone was destroyed. It was also the one power that could be developed independently of a lord stone by those with the aptitude to develop it.

Vigil had it, but Silas's former self hadn't developed it through the family training texts. That had changed after gaining blood essence and eating his fill. The war section of Apocalypse Body Refinement enhanced him to the cellular level. Unfortunately, there were consequences to absorbing blood essence, but he had a plan.

Silas had stored his wet and ruined clothes for the occasion.

The blood essence-filled orb touched his hand, and he felt a massive flood of blood essence fill him. He was a dried-out sponge tossed on a spill. Silas swam through the blood as it seeped through him from his skin down to his bones as; a haze fell over him. Then, after the orb emptied of all the stored blood essence, the backlash hit him worse.

It started with a sneeze as he struggled to pull down his pants. Vomit sprayed from his nose in the worse burn he had ever felt before he ripped open his underwear and sprayed the ground. He had absorbed the blood essence, and it took him to hell. If puking while projectile diarrhea had been bad before adding, sneezing was worse. His body shook, and he lost strength in his legs as he stumbled deeper into the dark cave.

The sunlight he used to see the monkeys felt like fire on his skin as he shook, and cold sweat poured out of him. Tears rolled down his cheeks as the episode continued far longer than it had the night before.

When he thought the episode was over, it began again, and he was being too loud. Grisha was still gone, and the monkeys had climbed down from the cave wall. One tackled him biting a screaming.

Massive fangs punched clean holes through his body while he tried to fight off the monkey. He could barely breathe, and his strength left him at regular intervals. There was no way to tell how strong the blood essence was making him, but his ribs didn't crack immediately.

Blood flowed down his chest while he tried to fight off the first monkey. The others shouted and howled while Silas tried to protect his neck and balls. He punched the monster, and it fell back a step and shook off the blow. Silas concluded he was strong but not enough to kill a six-foot-tall monkey on steroids barehanded. He kicked the monkey away, and it grabbed his leg before biting down on Silas's ankle.

His mind was practically connected to his inventory which made pulling things out easier. He chose his rapier and stabbed forward as it appeared in his hand. The steel passed through the monkey's eye before the other monkeys joined in. Silas slashed out, but his weapon was stuck in the first monkey's skull.

The transmigrator chose the tiger spear next and stabbed one of the monkeys in the chest while the other three hit him.

He screamed out in pain and vomited. All of his struggles barely made a dent in their ridiculous strength, no matter how hard he fought. Silas hated them so much as they bit him and tried to find individual fingers to bite off. Silas grabbed one by the balls and squeezed with all his might, and the monkey released him, only for one of the monkeys to roll him over. They scratched and beat him; all of them were covered in Silas's shit at this point as Silas's mind searched for any advantage he might have in his inventory.

Night's end appeared in his hand, and he slammed the ax blade into the neck of one of the monkeys. He pointed, slammed the rifle barrel on the ground, and fought against the monkeys as he tried to get up. Blood poured out of him as he pushed himself up with one hand and punched the monkeys with the other.

His blows started doing more damage. One elbow stunned one of the monkeys long enough to get his feet back under him. Then he swung the ax blade into the chest of a monkey. It howled in pain, music to Silas's ears. He ripped the white tiger spear out of a monkey's chest and raised night's end before firing.

Silas pulled one of the vials of refined vampire blood from his inventory and downed it. An itching sensation spread through his body, and he felt like he wasn't bleeding out as fast. He thought about saying the scripture but going through the consequences once a day was enough. More monkeys charged him; he returned his spear to the inventory and fired rapidly. Seeing the monkeys suddenly full of holes and slowing down was beautiful.

He yanked the rapier out of a monkey's skull and poked a few more holes into the monkeys before they were good and dead. There was something fun about killing something that deserved to die. He hated the little bastards, and it was his pleasure to destroy them. Rapiers were great at sliding between ribs and slicing up internal organs, especially against unarmored combatants.

The waste removal episodes had stopped, and Silas began to get a feel for his new strength. It was good to understand it and know why he suffered. He couldn't wait to hunt the remaining monkeys to further test his strength. Then, an idea occurred to him that had escaped him before.

Silas said the scripture and created an orb. Once the orb absorbed the blood essence from the bodies of his enemies, he put it in his inventory. It was so stupidly easy that he didn't know why he didn't think of it himself.