chapter 20 : darkness (3/3)

15 years ago, when Luke was 7, a supernatural phenomenon happened. That day, he was just finished with his daily dagger training and was preparing to rest. Then he saw a purple tornado heading his way from the sky.

There were no clouds, no wind and as it was a very fierce winter day, a tornado shouldn't have possibly formed. Within that tornado, a two-horned black skull was gazing at him with its purple-colored fire that served as eyes while descending along with the purple tornado. At that time, he could only stare in horror as it went nearer and nearer to him until the skull, which was thrice his height swallowed him and since then, he didn't remember anything other than darkness.

After the event, not only was he not trusted when he told this story to his superiors, he was even taken as a trash suffering from PTSD because of the deaths he brought...

His life became 'normal' again after this and he didn't encounter the skull anymore.

....

The ogre's face became that same skull and his vision only had this image. He couldn't see, sense or perceive anything else. He knew or rather strongly hoped it was an illusion. But illusion or not, he couldn't move. He thought that he would die so he once again triggered his death exchange as he would under no circumstances gamble his life. This time he chose Alex.

In fact, he chose people based on their usability. The more useful they seemed, the less likely are they to be extra lives for Luke. The process of death exchange was the same as with Lazuli, just that Luke didn't have the leisure to act like a trashy villain with dumb, evil lines.

Alex who didn't understand much of the situation only thought that Luke was related to Lazuli's mysterious and sudden death. His last thought was that he couldn't protect his little brother anymore, like a real shounen hero. But unlike them, he had no plot armor, he was part of it. As for his physical body, it had its head blown up and corroding. His death brings even more pressure on the still battling allies who were even more alert. The good news was that they killed the mini-boss once before Alex's passing.

.....

Luke regained his vision and saw the clearly shocked ogre. He was on the ground so he grabbed some dirt and threw it not at its eyes but at its nose, effectively making it sneeze and losing concentration. He then placed both his hands at its ears and firmly pushed some needles, coated in dark hands' energy inside before quickly retreating. His budding theory was right, only the ogre's skin reflected darkness element. If not, it would be an incredibly absurd ability for a tier 2, once again ignoring his own absurd ability. After all, that's just a useless detail.

The ogre was certainly not happy with that, the pain maddened it as it swung its spear towards Luke chaotically but its stats made each swing extremely dangerous. Luke had to continue retreating while he tried to figure out a way to impede its movements. Its chaotic spear swings and thrusts created wind pressure where they passed by. This gave an idea to Luke.

He stacked 20 dark hands and exploded them in front of its face, making it stagger from the breath of the explosion. He continued doing this repeatedly to generate strong winds, which ironically made it unable to breathe. As a tier 2 species, not breathing for a whole 20 minutes shouldn't have been a problem but considering its mental state, it was. It was trying to take deep, fury filled breaths, only to fail. Strong winds made it surprisingly harder.

Then Luke threw one of his daggers under its left foot, that was currently raised and as he expected, it went through its sole. It roared out in pain from the dagger traversing its foot through its soft and sensitive soles and took it out, making it grunt from the pain. The anger, funneled by its pride and confidence being challenged multiple times by a literally lower species made it lose its mind. All of its concentration-demanding abilities were unusable.

As it was distracted, Luke jumped over it, and once behind he... did what he knew the best how to do... he stacked a hundred dark hands on his remaining dagger and pierced a certain place, that will grant him the " wrong hole heaven piercing mania demon " title in the near future.

The internal explosion killed it but Luke was sure it would get up, he was still very alert as he retreated far away. He was ready to face its wrath. He is always asking himself why his enemies were so angry at him, before and after the system coming. ' I mean, we are fighting to the death, what's the point of getting angry? Anyway, it helps me more than it benefits them so no matter... '

The system manager who made some time to watch the fight was torn between laughter, pity, shock. In his 6 billion years of existence, he never saw this... way of fighting. Thinking about his most shameless enemies, he thought they would soon meet their master...